Darrell Bain - The Melanin Apocalypse

“Go ahead, Ed. What do you have for us this morning?”

Tomlin glanced at the door to be sure that it was indeed closed. “I really don’t like discussing vital matters here, Mr. President.”

“It’s fine, I assure you. This office is as secure as anyplace in Washington.”

Tomlin wasn’t as certain as the president was; recorders had become so small and unobtrusive they were hard to spot, even by professionals. Nevertheless, he began.

“First off, the war. There’s some good news there. It looks as if the damned J—as if Israel did get all of Pakistan and Iran’s nuclear missiles and the bunker busters we sold them took care of that facility Pakistan had buried so deep under the mountains. They were a little more circumspect with Iran. They only took out the nuclear weapons facilities and the missiles they knew were armed with nukes, leading us to believe they intend to send a big commando team in to shut down their uranium enrichment facility.”

“Why should they have let Iran off?” Vice President Santes asked, still aggravated at Tomlin’s derogatory, almost-voiced remark about Jews.

“It’s a little too close to home. I believe they were afraid of fallout, whereas the facility in Pakistan was pretty well contained—and farther from them.”

Santes nodded and Tomlin continued. “At any rate, the Isreali Air Force did a remarkable job. The Middle Eastern states that declared war have no effective air cover left and the Israeli army is doing just about as it pleases. It appears as if they’re not immediately intent on conquering any of the adjoining countries, but merely pushing the opposing armies back far enough to put their artillery out of range while the virus they turned loose is creating havoc in the Arab ranks. The CDC projects a very high kill rate for Middle Easterners carrying the particular gene it’s targeting, which by the way, no one has figured out yet.

Smart. They can sit back and take over the neighboring countries after the Arabs are dead with no risk.”

“Crazy is more like it,” Santes commented. “What could they have been thinking of?”

“Maybe that killing every Arab they can is the only way they’ll ever be able to live in peace.”

“It won’t work. The world will remember what they did once this crisis with the Harcourt Virus is behind us. If you ask me, they’ll be even less secure in the long run simply because of the overwhelming number of Muslims in the rest of the world. However, I guess that’s not germane to the discussion right now. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“Thank you Mrs. Vice President,” Tomlin said, the exercise of having to use her title as distasteful as always in his mind. He thought women had no business participating in the world of geopolitical military affairs. Or even in government above a certain level. Santes should have remarried after her husband died, he thought, instead of going into politics.

Marlene Santes wasn’t fooled by politicians of Tomlin’s ilk, but sometimes she found it advantageous to let political rivals think otherwise. She listened as Tomlin continued with his briefing.

“Well, that’s the story in the Middle East so far as the war goes. We’ve communicated secretly with Premier Luria and he’ll accept some of our oil field workers to augment his special forces. They’ll help secure the oil fields as the Arabs die off, and idle them down until we can get more troops into the area.

In return, we keep the munitions in the pipeline to them so long as they’re needed. If that virus continues spreading the way it has so far, we won’t have an Arab problem before long, just like we won’t… like we won’t have any more problems securing our chromium from South Africa,” he finished lamely, then added as a distraction, “The whole African continent has disintegrated into complete anarchy except for a few of the northern sections that were the last to be infected. And with the new virus, I guess those will go soon, too. Lots of Arabs there, as well as dark skins.”

The vice president, as well as everyone else in the Oval Office, knew what he had started to say first, but she and the others politely ignored the slip, while Tomlin cursed to himself. He hated the idea of having not only a woman but a goddamned Spic in the vice president’s seat, even if she was light skinned and still pretty and slim enough to make a… he got his thoughts back to the briefing with difficulty, only to be interrupted by the vice president again.

“Edgar, why are we helping a nation that’s committing genocide? I know the Israeli government is denying they have anything to do with the Arab virus, but we know better, don’t we? So why?”

President Marshall answered her, truthfully. “Marlene, we didn’t choose to have that situation thrust on us on top of the problems we already have at home, but since it was—well, we can’t let the nuclear plants contaminate the world, nor can we allow the oil fields to go untended. Despite all our efforts, we’re still dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and so are our allies.”

The vice president nodded, face impassive, and Tomlin continued.

“All right, now to South America. The Harcourt virus is loose on that continent too, of course, but it’s spreading a bit slower due to the remoteness of some areas and transportation difficulties. Our intelligence from there indicates that it would take a major effort on our part to secure the nuclear power plants because of so much antagonism against North Americans and so much of the population still alive.

The virus isn’t killing as high a proportion of Hispanics as it is blacks, but it does get all the dark skinned ones—and there’s plenty of them in South America. Or were, but the ones left are so angry that we don’t dare show our faces. Our recommendation is to ask the United Nations to send troops.”

“You’re living in a dream world, Edgar,” General Newman said abruptly. “Don’t you realize how many of the peacekeeping troops used by the U.N. have always come from countries with a high proportion of dark skinned people? Besides, even the countries that are still functional are having problems of their own, just like we are. You won’t get much help there.”

“Then what do we do?”

The general shrugged. “If any of the South American nuclear plants go, the fallout will stay below the equator, according to our meteorologists. They’ll either have to take care of the plants themselves or suffer the consequences.”

Vice President Santes winced, a visible expression. She knew the general was right, but she failed to see how anyone could be so blasé about human life and the ecology of a whole continent. She started to say something, then realized the others were looking to her for a comment, simply because she was Hispanic.

As if where her great grandparents were from gave her some special knowledge of a whole continent, she thought. A typical stereotyping so common to politicians. And to humanity in general. Skin color and national heritage were ever present in American affairs these days and there was no way to avoid it, distasteful as it was. “Isn’t Brazil a Portuguese culture? Doesn’t it have a high proportion of whites?”

“Not enough to sway the rest of them far enough to allow our troops into the country. And I haven’t got them to spare anyway.”

Santes eyed the general. He was the type of person who took the hard realities of military affairs and applied them to every single aspect of life, whether they were a good fit or not. He cared nothing about people, only how they affected the military. But it was useless to say anything. Perhaps when Marshall left office she would run for the presidency. In the meantime, she had little influence on the direction of government and it was senseless to pretend otherwise.