Brian Steele - 4POCALYPSE - Four Tales of a Dark Future

The infected began to burn, that mass of bodies breaking apart as some ran or fell into the water and some simply stood and were taken by the flames.

People in both boats began to cheer.

I felt terribly sad, then turned away and looked to Alcatraz, and the future.

We reached the island a half hour later, fighting currents and rough water. We moored the Zodiacs at the boat dock where ferries once disgorged carefree tourists from all over the world.

I took a head count. Thirty-five of us had survived, most of that number small children and teenagers.

People sat together listlessly after climbing out of the boats. I started issuing orders.

The Zodiacs needed to be pulled out of the water. We didn’t want to chance losing them in rough weather.

I needed people with flashlights to investigate Building 64. I knew that some of us could sleep in cells in the cellblocks, but Building 64, once used as barracks when the island was a military fortification and later as apartments for prison workers, might have habitable space as well.

Someone had to check the water tower and see if there was drinkable water available. The island has no natural source of fresh water, but there were drinking fountains supplied by the water tower. We needed—

Clyde began barking and yanked his leash out of my hand, running south around Building 64 to the open space of the old parade grounds.

I followed, and soon saw that Clyde had found Randall and Ayala, who were standing near a beat to hell dory, soaking wet and exhausted.

“Boat got messed up on the rocks,” Randall said.

“I didn’t hear a motor,” I said, over Clyde’s ecstatic yipping.

“We ran out of gas halfway here,” Ayala said, setting down a long nylon bag. “Had to use the oars. Conejo!” He walked past me and a moment later I heard his daughter let out a joyful shout.

Randall set down another bag. “It got crazy back there,” he said. “But we got some guns.”

The following day, after a few hours of restless sleep in the cells, we discovered another survivor; a park ranger in a dirty uniform. He was my age and half crazed, with a poorly splinted broken leg that was free of infection but would heal improperly and leave him with a limp. He had been hiding at the north end of the island. We had searched all the buildings for food and found none, but we did discover that the water tower held plenty of water, for now. When I asked the man how he had survived he said, “Fishing.”

“I’ve got a job for you, then,” I said, looking at his nametag. “Ranger Hawthorne.”

Within a week we began getting down to business.

We gathered all the blankets and mattresses we could find in the cells, most of which were dressed like a movie set since Alcatraz Prison was a museum, and used them to make comfortable beds in the most central cells, living space furthest from the damp drafts coming through the old outer walls.

We had watches posted in high places; the old dock tower, on roofs, on the water tower, and in the lighthouse, to watch and listen for planes and helicopters. We put kids up there. They had the sharpest eyes. We observed the careful use of lights at night. The island must appear unoccupied to anyone who might be watching from a distance.

The lighthouse was still operational after the presumed fall of American civilization. Now powered by solar panels, it was the oldest light station on the West Coast, We left it running.

Water was rationed, but Hawthorne was pulling fish out of the bay every day.

An older woman who wore a tie-dyed t-shirt under a cable-knit sweater and insisted everyone call her Sister Sunshine swore that she could get small gardens growing on every side of the island if someone could find seeds for fruit and vegetables.

Seeds went onto our WANT list, and it was a long list. We realized that as risky as it might be, sooner or later we would have to make a run across the Bay to Sausalito or Tiburon to grab some essentials.

Renfield spent all of his time up in the lighthouse, sending and receiving messages on his radio.

Helicopters passed overhead twice, traveling from the East Bay to the Marin area. Lookouts shouted the alarm and anyone who was out in the open ran for cover.

Smoke still hung over San Francisco despite often-brisk winds, indicating that fires were still burning in the city.

Dr. Anders suggested a simplified method of immunization against the smiling sickness; a cupful of pureed maggots.

The Doctor only had a small tabletop magnifying glass to work with, “No more than a toy,” as she described it, but she was able to see the living parasites, giardia motivus , motorboating around in drops of blood on slides prepared from carefully packaged samples of infected fluids she had brought along.

She added a few parasites to a sample of her own uncontaminated blood and watched them multiply at a frightening rate. Working on information she received from Renfield and me she tried the simple approach first. She cultivated some maggots, ground them into a fine paste, and added a dab of that paste to the drop of blood containing parasites.

The parasites were not affected at all.

For now, there would be no cure for the smiling sickness.

Yet when she added a dab of the paste to uncontaminated blood first, and then introduced parasites to the blood, the parasites died.

Until she had better facilities and equipment Dr. Anders would not be able to determine exactly what prevented the parasites from gaining a foothold in immunized blood, but those deadly little bastards died fast, and that was good enough for now.

We couldn’t decide who should test our potential cure, and we debated that for days. Kids were not an option, neither was anyone with a skill we could not lose, like Hawthorne, our fisherman, or Conaghan, who was an engineer and was keeping a close eye on the solar panels. I was trying to convince some of the older folks to draw straws and receiving outraged responses when Randall came into the Ranger’s station, our venue for sensitive discussions.

He held up a glass vial full of blood. “Is this infected stuff?”

The doctor gave him a wary nod. He took a police issue Glock from a belt holster and handed it to her, and before anyone could react he took a sip from the vial.

“Ate some of that maggot paste you made yesterday, Doc,” he said, belching against the back of his hand.

Randall was fully immunized and fine… if you didn’t take into account how goddamned crazy he could be.

I told Renfield to get on the radio and share the cure. He did, and came back to me hours later saying that most of the people he talked to didn’t believe there was any cure, that the UCTF was now broadcasting on the AM and emergency shortwave bands and telling people there was no cure and that they should gather at specified safety zones to ensure their well-being. There were rumors that the safety zones were nothing more than slaughterhouses for innocent, disease-free men, women and children. The man in charge of the Unified Containment Task Force, known only as General Morturn, had declared himself to be ‘Commander in Chief and Defender of the United States of America.’

News from around the world, more rumor than fact, was just as grim. China, Russia, India, Pakistan and North Korea had engaged in brief and limited nuclear wars. The United Kingdom and France were forming a new Franco-British Empire, fiercely protecting their borders to the exclusion of all others. Germany, Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe were falling back toward fascism. Mexico was utterly lost to the smiler sickness, as were the countries of South America, and Africa; brutal tribal wars had spread across that continent. Canada had fortified its southern border with a volunteer civilian army, a militia called the Northern Fusiliers. The only nations on Earth that were staying ahead of sickness outbreaks were New Zealand and Australia, which were said to be pouring all of their efforts and resources into building a defensive naval force.