Plague Chapters 1-8

A novel under construction

As you know, I am sharing with you—chapter by chapter—a new novel that I am writing—as I write it. Raw? Sure. But I am hoping for some critique, discussion, and ideas along the way. A brain-attacking plague has killed off a sizable portion the population and left the majority of the survivors intellectually depleted, bigoted, hyper-religious, and prone to fascism. A young woman is separated from her husband and child and thrown onto a railroad car with a number of others—all bio or chem researchers.

Plague

Gary Simonds

Chapter 1

“… and I will redouble our efforts in eliminating entirely the vermin who have brought so much suffering to our shores, who continue to conspire with traitors within our government, who seek to collude with an international cabal of terrorist organizations bent on our destruction, and who insist on opposing the will of our God, our savior, our—”

“Jesus, honey, turn that goddamned thing off. I heard something out there.”

It was my husband, Caleb. He moved toward our bedroom’s window and peeked between the drawn curtains.

I reached for the radio and snapped it off. I could now hear out in front of the apartment tires squealing and car doors slamming. Caleb turned towards me, eyes massive, lips pale, sweat running down his temples.

“Shit, baby. This is it.”

He headed into the closet and came out with a baseball bat. His hands were white and trembling.

“Where are you going?” he asked, looking over at me.

“You’ve got that,” I replied, heading towards the stairs. “I need something. A fire iron, a butcher’s knife...”

“Jesus no, Aliah,” said Caleb, catching my arm. “Here, you take this. I’ll go downstairs.” He handed me the bat. “Go get Isa and get in the space, as we planned.”

“The plan was for all three of us to get in the space,” I replied, realizing that I had not given Isa, our four year-old daughter, a millisecond of thought, my processing scrambled by the sudden invasion of reality into our lives.

“They know someone’s home,” he said, now in a hoarse whisper. “If they find no one here, they’ll tear the place apart. The will find us. They mean business. There must be at least four rollers out there. Maybe I can convince them that you two are away. Maybe all they want is me.”

I knew he was right. I had to rouse Isa from her bed and usher her quickly and silently into a hiding space we had constructed anticipating an event such as this.

“Don’t do anything stupid, baby,” I pleaded as I threw my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Maybe they just want to harass us.”

“Doesn’t look that way. They’re in full assault gear. They’ve come to get us. Or me. Please, go get Isa and do as we planned. If they want to talk, I’ll talk. But if they try to come inside…”

“Please, Caleb, no heroics,” I said as he turned away.

He ran down the stairs.

All sound became muffled, as if I was underwater. I couldn’t hear myself breath or my own footsteps as I bolted for Isa’s room. The silence was pierced by a shrill whine as I seized her and untangled her form a web of twisted bedclothes and stuffed animals.

“Shh baby,” I whispered as I carried her back to our bedroom. “We’re going to hide in our secret space, just like we’ve practiced.”

I sat her on the floor of a generous but near-empty walk-in closet—a luxury feature of so many pre-plague townhouse apartments. At its back was a false wall that Colin and I had constructed when things began deteriorating, when it became clear what might happen to the likes of him and me. Behind it lay a space, barely big enough for the three of us and some food and water.

In the advent of circumstances like this night, the plan was to hide out in the space until we were certain the immediate threat had cleared. We would then make our way under the cover of darkness to an ancient Subaru, stowed in a rented storage unit several blocks away. It was packed with hiking clothes, freeze-dried food, medicines, blankets, flashlights, weapons, water, first aid materials, and cash. Upon escaping the area we would head…well…who knew. But somewhere. Perhaps to Eastern Canada where sanity was rumored to still prevail, or to an old family log cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. Somewhere. Anywhere.

But we were lulled into false security. The seizure and deportations had settled to a trickle in the area. Besides, we believed we were special. Exemptions. Despite being obvious targets. And after months of evasive returns to home from our work, and hiding out in the space in the evenings, we loosened up. Even reacquainted ourselves with some of our neighbors. Went back to eating dinner in the kitchen. Sleeping in our beds. Like a normal family. Yeah, right.

Isa and I made it into the hiding space and I pulled the false wall back into place. Hopefully, it was true, divulging none of the secrets that lay behind it. Isa sat on my lap, still awakening but tense and whining.

“Where’s daddy? I want daddy.”

“Shh, my love, daddy will come for us soon. Until then, we must be ever so quiet. You just go back to sleep here all warm and safe on my lap. Hug your Georgie, and close your eyes. Everything will be alright…”

She clutched her Curious George and wiggled her way deeper into my breast, as I scoured the air for hints of what might be transpiring downstairs.

A crash made me jump, almost causing me to spill Isa to the floor. A door had been kicked in and I could hear yelling, much of it Caleb’s.

Come on Caleb. Cool things down. Be cooperative. Convince them to leave us alone.

It was still possible. But he had to be cool. At six-six and made of nothing but muscle, if he was agitated, they would be agitated. And they possessed all the real weapons. But when he chilled, and spoke in soft serene tones, it had a calming effect on all around—the massive bull proving to be docile and meaning no one any harm.

The yelling stopped.

But it did so too abruptly. Immediately after a crackling sound.

Shit. They tased him. Jesus, that isn’t good. Better than shooting—that’s for sure. But what now?

What now was a lot of voices moving about the family room and the kitchen. And then on the stairs. And then in our bedroom.

“Check for fake walls,” a voice called out from out in the upstairs hallway. “The neighbors said they saw them bringing in lumbar and drywall a few months ago.”

The neighbors? What the in Christ’s name? Our neighbors? Who would do this to us?

My thoughts were cut short by the sound of tapping along the side walls of the closet. And then the more hollow sound of knocking on the wall separating us from them.

“Captain. Over her. Got it!”

Some shuffling of feet and, moments later, the head of a sledge hammer smashed through the wall inches from my face.

Isa screamed.

I grabbed the bat and shimmied as far away as possible from the light spilling into the space.

More sledgehammer strikes. Then hands pulling at the wall and dislodging it from its moorings. I stood and pushed Isa behind me. As my eyes adjusted, I made out at least four of them. All in blue-black uniforms. Red on black insignias on their chests. The Special Service. They sported full riot gear. Helmets with face shields, and probable bullet-proof vests. Heavy black boots with likely steel toe guards. They carried at the ready stun batons and taser guns.

I’m not as big as Caleb, but I’m not small. Former all-American rower at Stanford. I went at them with the bat. Sudden enough that I knocked one to the ground and another into a wall.

Then a crackling sound, and an Isa scream.

Chapter 2

Fireflies danced in the thick summer air. Isa darted about the wooded lot, giggling at every failed attempt to capture one. Colin and I rocked on the front porch, sipping beer from bottles dripping with cool condensation, savoring the simple joy of the show. Isa herded a cloud of the twinkling fairies to a small clearing and, like the conductor of an orchestra, waved a Dogwood baton in circles. The fireflies ceased their Brownian motion and began rotating about her as she squealed with delight. Then, she looked directly at us and pointed the baton our way. The fireflies obeyed and shifted the counterclockwise parade towards the cabin and up onto the porch, encircling Caleb and I. Round and round they flew in tightening circles to within inches of our heads.

They were there, flashing their way around me, like electrons around atom, when I came to. I was on lying on the floor of some vehicle in motion. My aching head lay on Colin’s lap. He was awake, gently brushing my hair, as best he could with zip-tied hands. I tried to move and noted my hands were similarly manacled. Isa sat beside us, face buried in Colin’s shoulder.

I sat up slowly, and looked about. There were interior lights. Dim, red, but enough to see that we were in some sort of police van. The benches were full. As was the floor. Many others. All in zip-ties. All distinguishable by the color of their skin.

Chapter 3

It’s not clear exactly how or when the plague started. In fact, the original victims likely went unnoticed or ignored in some far off corner of the world. God knows how long. Until they could go ignored no longer.

From that point on, we know a lot. We know that it wasn’t caused by some genetically manipulated microbe, accidently or intentionally released from a military laboratory in China or North Korea, or by a heretofore unknown virus that chose to leap from another species to our own, out in the jungles of Africa or South America, or by a prehistoric bacterium released from its permafrost sarcophagus in a melting Greenland or Siberia.

In fact, it wasn’t caused by an organism at all. Rather, the whole thing—all the deaths, all the suffering, all the collapse of institutions—everything—was due to a chemical. Not a living thing. Just a chemical. A naturally occurring chemical. A biochemical. That is, one made and found in living things. A protein, as a matter of fact. One of the tens of thousands of different types of proteins found in all of us. You know, a building block of life. But not a living thing, in and of itself. Just a chemical. Just a protein.

Yet this biochemical, this protein, having secured its foothold, tore relentlessly into the fabric of the civilized world and knocked humankind back a good hundred years, perhaps spelling the beginning of the end of the Anthropocene.

A Prion.

That was the type of protein.

Supercomputers, armed with artificial intelligence, had it figured out before it even reached our shores. And the supercomputers predicted, with admirable accuracy, the time course of the resultant disease’s spread across the country and the eventual death toll. They weren’t so sharp, though, about the elements of our failed response or, for that matter, about their own impending demise.

But the computers accurately called out the plague as a Prion Disease. As noted, a prion is just a protein. A protein is a chemical made up of a combination of simpler chemicals, called amino acids. These amino acids are strung together like beads on a chain, often many hundred beads in length. Once strung together, the chain twists and turns and balls up into a specific shape. The sequence of the amino acids, and the shape the balled-up chain assumes, gives each protein its properties. And they are mighty properties. Pretty much all of what we are and what we can do, is due to the dizzying array of proteins in our bodies.

Proteins are critical components of the structure of our cells. They form a scaffolding-like infrastructure within the cells. They make up important components of the walls that hold the stuff of life within each cell. Enzymes are also proteins. These are entities that promote and accelerate the critical chemical reactions that are going on all the time within each cell. Critical chemical reactions that keep us going. Antibodies—those warriors that help fight off infections—are proteins too. And so are the ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors that are instrumental in how our nerve cells signal one another, and thus allow our brains to do what they do. I could go on.

DNA, the master plan for all that we are, is not a protein. But it is a blueprint for the production of all the proteins we depend on. An instruction manual for the construction of each and every protein we need. It directs what proteins are to be made, and when. The proteins then take over and enact every other function of life.

It is worth repeating, all cellular, and thus organ, and thus human functions are at the behest of proteins. And it’s estimated that we may employ over 400,000 different types to keep our bodies and minds working.

Proteins, themselves, don’t usually cause transmittable diseases. You may be unlucky enough to have defective proteins, or a deficiency of certain types of proteins, that causes one disorder, one “dis-ease,” or another, but in general, you can’t transmit such disorders to someone else by coughing on them or having sex with them. Some can be transmitted genetically to your offspring, but not through contact with your fellow humans (or animals, or the environment). That is the realm of infectious agents known as pathogens—viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. But these strange proteins called prions can cause disease, and can be transmitted from one human to another.

I say strange, but if you were to look at their chemical equations, you would find that the line-up of their amino acids may be identical or nearly identical to certain normal proteins doing their regular jobs in the cells of our bodies. That is, they may have the exact same line up of beads on the chain as fully functioning, indispensable, every-day proteins in our cells. But somehow, prions refuse to twist and coil and ball up into their proper shape like their normal relatives. After the amino acids, the beads, are strung on the chain, the prion protein folds all wrong.

Rather than assuming a nice tight, intricately aranged bundle, prions take on the configuration of a flat sheet. Like a single layer of, let’s say, a puff pastry. Make that, a single flat layer of puff pastry with some undercooked areas. The undercooked areas turn out to be sticky and seek to attach themselves to nearby normal proteins of the same chemical equation (the same beads on the chain sequence). In so doing, these flat prion proteins cause the normal proteins to come out of their balled-up configurations and become flat and sticky too. Layer upon layer is added on—like a puff pastry—until most of the normal relatives of the prion protein in a cell are transformed and stuck onto the growing pastry.

This is problematic for several reasons. One, it decommissions the normal proteins that become stuck to the prions, shutting down their normal function. This can represent a big loss. It certainly can be to our nerve cells—the most common target of prion diseases. Two, these puff pastry structures became very long and tangled and shut down many other functions of the affected cells, often killing them. Third, these misfolded proteins are somehow able to escape their cells and make their way to other cells within the same person, causing progressive widespread dysfunction and cell death (often in the brain). And, most ominously, these prion proteins are capable of making their way out of one person and into another.

Chapter 4

Prions were a problem before the plague, perhaps even a sizable problem. It was hypothesized that degenerative neurlogical diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons were due to prion-like miss-folding of certain brain cell proteins. But that was hypothesis and was hotly debated. On the other hand, a handful of other thankfully rare afflictions were definitively due to prions. Kuru was a fatal neurological illness caused by prions, but you had to eat the infected brain of someone who had the disease to get it yourself (a practice in some remote tribal communities). Creutzfeldt-Jakob, another fatal neurological disease, was at one time most commonly transmitted through insufficiently sterilized neurosurgical equipment. That is, it was directly transported from one person’s brain to another through surgery.

In other words, prion diseases were contagious, but not very. Until the plague. The plague prion—coined the “Omega Prion” or the “OP”—proved readily transmissible between humans. Between us. Via both our lungs and our gut. Breath in enough, or ingest enough, and you got the disease. And the OP proved remarkably stable, holding together its perverted structure outside of our bodies for hours, perhaps days, drifting upon the winds, or just chilling on surfaces. Then, some poor bastard would come along and inhale it, or gobble it down with their cheeseburger.

I really should say all us “poor bastards,” because the OP proved to be the most transmissible pathologic agent in the history of humankind—getting into every person on earth in a matter of a couple of years, ignoring every measure and precaution we took to stop it.

Once in our bodies, OP, like its relatives, had a preference for brain cells (as well as our pigment cells, called melanocytes, but I’ll address that detail a little later). Once firmly established in them, the prions did their thing and the cells would start dying within a few months. In a good quarter of the population (as much as half in some regions), the end result was rapidly progressive dementia, uncontrollable seizures, and death, in anywhere from three months to nine. Hospitals became overwhelmed and for some time, people were dying in the streets. Once the disease was better understood, though, most deaths were the result of euthanasia.

For reasons still poorly understood, in the rest of us—the survivors—the brain destruction would come to an abrupt halt. In the majority of those who did not die, the prions did the predominance of their damage in the frontal lobe, resulting in a variable deterioration of “executive functions.” That is, the brain’s ability to carry out some of its highest cognitive activities—abstract and critical thinking, high-level mathematical analysis, logical progressions, assessment of future ramifications of actions and plans, moral evaluations and comparisons, appreciation of the lot of others, reading the emotional state of others, and more. In other words, many had their brains returned to teenage levels of concrete, narcissistic thinking.

This was coupled in many with scattered destruction in the temporal lobes, creating a dangerous mix. Circuits in place for moderating the activity of the amygdala were stripped away, and emotions such as anger, fear, and suspicion, rose closer to the surface and became dominant drivers of behavior. And somehow, into the mix was sprinkled an increase in religious pre-occupation and magical thinking.

So now we had a surviving population, moderately to significantly diminished in intellect, that was susceptible to heightened states of suspicion, fear, anger and hyper-religiosity. The result in so many already primed citizens was a profound distrust of all who were different, a reactionary response to anyone or anything that challenged their belief systems, and a willingness—no, a need— to rabidly follow those who proclaimed themselves as their saviors.

Not everyone, though. Five to ten percent of us carried a genetic “defect” in the proteins that were the target of the OP’s evil ways. Fewer of our proteins were seduced into the new and harmful puff pastry configurations. Most, but not all of our brain cells survived the onslaught. Don’t get me wrong, we all took a hit, but in many of us it was light. I know I lost some mathematical abilities, and some childhood memories, but I didn’t find Jesus.

Remember, earlier, I mentioned melanocytes? Well, melanocytes are the cells in our skin that give it its color, through the production of a chemical called melanin. The more melanin, the darker one’s skin and hair. The less melanin, the more “fair” one will be. Yeah, throughout human history, melanin probably caused more antipathy, more conflict, more oppression, more senseless slaughter, than any king, country, or religion—making it all too easy to divide people into groups, groups who could then go on to hate, subjugate, and eliminate other groups.

Well, as it turns out, melanocytes possessed similar OP susceptible proteins to brain cells. It makes sense, really. In the earliest stages of embryonic development, melanocytes arise from the same progenitor cells as brain cells. Anyway, along with losing brain cells, people lost melanocytes. The two parallelled each other. The more brain cells you lost, the more melanocytes you lost. Thus, the greater the intellectual loss, the greater the loss of skin pigmentation.

Those who had the defective (but, in the end protective) proteins in their brain cells, well, their melanocytes carried the same defective proteins. So, along with losing less brain cells, they (we) lost less melanocytes, and thus less skin pigmentation.

To complicate matters further, those of darker-skin prior to the plague were more likely to carry the defective proteins and, thus, were more likely to be resistant to the ravages of the OP. The death rate was higher in lighter skinned peoples. In their survivors, the intellectual decrement and emotional dysregulation was greater. In addition, they became whiter and more fair haired. This was not good. The effects of the plague were breaking down along racial lines.

Religious leaders, in conjunction with the ruling government, seized upon this and reframed the scenario. The OP, rather than a scourge, a plague, a disaster, was an act of God. Humankind had been granted a miracle, a leap in evolution towards a higher, more spiritual plain of existence. God had specifically selected for elevation, the more righteous members of an already superior race, and blessed them with the hallmarks of angelic purity—brilliant white skin, blue eyes, and blond hair.

Those who reached the highest levels of purity (the most outwardly fair) became known as, “The Chosen.” Clergymen and members of the government who weren’t lucky enough to fully reach such levels, hid from the sun and bleached their skin and hair to fit the bill. Those of us who were the least affected were originally termed “OPRs” (Omega Prion Resistant). Then, as the social order reconfigured, as “Resistors,” for we were defying God and rejecting his miracle. And we were so easily identifiable. Distinguishable, from a mile away.

The people, in their grief and their fear, and their diminishing rationality, ate it up. The great culling had been explained. The suffering and grief justified. They had been chosen by God. Chosen for an elevated existence.

All well and good, unless you were a resistor. But they (we) were being sent away, systematically extracted from this new Eden.

Chapter 5

In the decade leading up to the plague, the world was dipping its toes ever deeper into autocracy and fascism. With the plague, it plunged in, unreservedly. Here in the U.S., the already bombastic and intellectually-challenged President made his move when the death rates hit their peak. He put the country under martial law and reconfigured the government under one party, The Party. Oppositional politicians, disaffected journalists, and contrarian scientists were whisked away, vanishing into night.

Reportedly, they were being taken to religious training centers where they could be re-introduced to the word of God. Where these centers were located, or what happened within them, was never explained. It was clear, though, that once someone was taken there, they never came back. Nor were they ever heard from again.

Not that communications were as we had once known them, linked as we were by interconnected computers in our pockets, with their video calls and electronic messaging of every imaginable kind. That all became history.

You see, once the religious connotations were affixed to the plague, and The Party proclaimed it a good thing, those in power were terrified that the scientists would come up with some sort of cure, or at least a preventative measure, and flip the script on them. They were almost correct. With gene-editing, it was possible to convert newborns to a more resistant genotype (nothing could be done for those whose brains had already been pillaged).

Just as real progress was being made, The Party banned all related research. Suddenly, genetic scientists started to disappear. Then the biomedical engineers. Most of those left behind had lost too much intellectual capability to do anything useful, so were made the heads of labs and Chairs of academic departments.

Yes, The Party wanted the OP to continue doing its thing. Continue cull the herd. Continue to create a new race of beings. A superior race—one freed of the type of abstract thinking that had tied up human spiritual evolution in its philosophic and relative-moralistic knots. A superior race, of supremely submissive sheep.

Next to disappear were the computer engineers, coders, and analysts. With the right design and programming, there was a risk that even without the genetic scientists, computers might come up with workable solutions. So the computer nerds had to go too. But, to The Party’s dismay, through integrated systems, the computers continued to communicate with each other and spit out biomedical instruction manuals on how to prepare and administer the critical genetic insertions—completely on their own—no scientists, no programmers, no engineers required.

Until they started spewing out garbage.

Whether through a deliberate act(s), or an unanticipated weakness in digital functionality, spontaneous errors began cropping up in codes across the computational universe—like the random mutations in DNA base pairing that was responsible for evolution. And apparently, without human oversight and correction, the errors compounded themselves with astonishing rapidity.

Artificial Intelligence crashed. Then, all interconnected systems. Any computer still linked to the web became sick and died. Older computers gathering dust in closets and attics continued to function but without those annoying upgrades that used to pop up every few weeks (days?), they began to crash as well—or degrade to the level of glorified word processors. Satellites became electronically untethered so all large scale telecommunications went down. Most messaging reverted to wire-dependent transmission.

Transportation was also affected. Newer vehicles, that synched automatically with the cloud, fried out in the blink of an eye. Older versions, that were kept isolated from external digital influence, kept running, until a slow attrition due to natural chip decomposition and decompensation started sidelining them. At the same time, though, various vehicles were being converted to straight-up internal combustion and mechanical functionality. At least for the rich and the powerful. And the military. But not for the rest of us. Gas had become hard to acquire and prohibitively expensive. We depended on our feet, bicycles, Jerry-rigged motorized bikes, and hyper-crowded buses and trains.

The world had gone from digital to analogue in a matter of months, and that was just fine with The Party. Their actions and decrees could still be broadcast through radio and disseminated via newspaper and newsreel. Collective protest was impossible, short of small local rallies. These were easily quashed by a newly inaugurated national police force, and assorted deputized paramilitary groups.

Rallies of another kind sprung up everywhere, however. The party had begun attacking the Resistors, making sure the cognitively-decremented masses knew who was at the root of any of their problems. Malignant torchlight parades wound through the streets of every major city, calling for the deportation and/or elimination of the Resistors. Resistor homes were marked with a blue schematic depiction of the OP with a dripping read line running through it. Stores were looted. Books were burned. Resistors were blocked from free movement within the cities, and were often physically abused and even lynched out in the country.

Then, the great roundups began. Those least affected by the OP, those of too much skin pigmentation, the Resistors, began to disappear. In ever-increasing numbers. Always in the dark of the night.

Caleb and I? Well, we should have been a couple of the first to go. Neither of us suffered much melanocyte degradation and thus, for the most part, kept our natural skin tones. Caleb’s mother was Lebanese, his father African American. My father was a mutt, of widely mixed, but dark heritage. My mother was Native American. We both stood out like sore thumbs. But it was still acceptable to be black or brown in professional sports—as long as you didn’t populate marquee positions. Caleb was a defensive end for the Broncos. And, The Party quickly learned that doctors required a certain amount of cognitive flexibility—particularly when computerized diagnostic and prescriptive services crashed. So, Resistor physicians were absolved from deportation, as long as they toed the line. I, thus, was allowed to continue training in a neurosurgical residency at the U.

Despite watching the madness escalate, and friends, colleagues, and relatives disappear, we conned ourselves into believing that we were exempt. That we would remain exempt. Of course we took precautions. Naively more concerned about the mobs than The Party. But we believed the storm would pass over us. In fact, we thought that it had passed over us. Us, and our very white neighbors. Our Chosen neighbors. Our Chosen friends.

Chapter 6

After I came to in the police van, we traveled for probably a couple of hours. My internal compass said east, but who knows. We eventually stopped and were ushered into a dilapidated high school gym where our zip-ties were cut. We joined hundreds of others. All dark of skin. There were no beds, no bedding, no chairs, not even bleachers, just hardwood floors. All doors were sealed off. There were no windows. There were no bathrooms, just a bunch of five gallon pales in each corner. No privacy screens. No sinks. No hygiene materials of any kind.

There were three water fountains, but only one produced an easily accessible stream. The line was interminable.

Once a day, wheelbarrows of MRE’s were pushed into the room. Crowds gathered around. We were, for the most part, orderly. But, of course, some tried to hoard. Particularly when it was clear that there was not enough food for maintenance caloric intake. But most agreed to ration, and squabbles were held to a minimum.

Beyond food-related discussion and negotiating, there was little open discourse. We were certain we were being observed. Hushed whispers filled the daytime air. Labored breathing, snoring, coughing, crying and moaning were the sounds of the night.

Looking back, we were shockingly passive. There were many of us. And many of us were still able-bodied. No senior citizens. God knew what was happening to them. And we never saw more than five or six of the Black-Shirts around. The showed only bring in the food and to toss more latrine buckets into the room. We could have easily overwhelmed them. Taken them hostage. Or broke free. But we were sickeningly submissive.

I suppose it was fear, and lack of sleep, and hunger. And who knew how many agents were in the building. Or nearby. And what would we do if we escaped? And what would they do? Probably hunt us down like animals. Shoot us. Or worse. But I had always thought I would be more rebellious. More militant. More combative. That I would fight back. No matter the odds. Yet, there I was falling into a routine that had been forced upon us. Hardly even forced. Just presented to us, and we complied. But I had Isa to protect. She had to be my first priority. Thus, there would be no rocking of the boat, no making waves. I figured I had already pushed my luck back at the apartment. I mean, they could have killed Caleb and me back there.

Days passed. How many, I don’t know, but I suspect it was over two weeks. The purpose of holding us there? Who knows. Probably to weaken our will. To debase us to less than citizen levels of self-esteem and self-righteousness. Guaranteed it wasn’t their first run at this. There were scratchings in the walls from previous inhabitants. Mostly names. Some dates—going back many months. Some prayers, some poems. Most were hard to read in the dim lighting. Some, I would run my fingertips over. It made me feel connected with and caring about those who went before us. Some stirring of humanity. Humanity that was rapidly draining from my being. Replaced by rage, and hatred, and nihilism.

“There are four doorways that will soon be opened. A, B, C, D.” The sizable man in black riot gear bellowed at us, awakening us from our sleep. “We will call out names and assigned doorways. Those called will proceed immediately, and in an orderly fashion, to the designated doorway, and pass through when told to do so. Each will lead to specific processing centers.” A friendly smile broke through his stern visage. “From there, you will be relocated to more comfortable and permanent lodging.”

A happy murmur followed, but the man hadn’t finished and gestured to the croud to quiet down.

“One warning. Do not attempt to resist or escape. We have orders to shoot you if you do. If you comply, you will not be harmed.”

A torrent of questions flowed over the man but he turned and made his way towards doorway A. The crowd parted like frightened livestock making the man’s exit unimpeded.

I had not noticing the lettering over the doors prior to this—handwritten as they were in black marker upon faded brown construction paper—but, suddenly, I could focus on nothing else. They felt like the most important symbols in the world.

A couple of hours passed. We were hungry. They had not bothered to feed us that day. We hoped they would do so somewhere in the process of delivering us to our new and more comfortable locations. Then, all four doors opened at once with loud metallic clangs.

There was an initial rumble of voices, but it quickly settled as we pricked our ears to hear the identification of the doorways to our individual fates. Names were called out with attendant doorways. Most were sent through doorway A. It seemed like families with young children were sent through B. This was a relief. Families were apparently being kept together. Perhaps things weren’t going to be so bad after all.

One very large man, bigger than Caleb was called to Doorway D. He moved to it, leaned the top half of his body through it, then recoiled and refused to move. A scuffle ensued with several Black Shirts. We called to man not to fight. That he would get shot. But that’s all we did. No one came to his aide. No one stirred from their seats on the floor.

They didn’t shoot him. But they discharged multiple stun batons over his massive body. He went down. Hard. Convulsed. And seemed to stop breathing. They dragged him out through the doorway before we could see if he was dead.

Made sense to use the batons. Shooting him may have precipitated a riot.

After some escalated murmuring, all returned their attention to the doorways.

A couple more hours passed before we heard our names. About a third of the original crowd remained when we headed towards our assigned door.

We passed through Doorway B and were funneled across a court yard through a cattle shoot toward another building. After all the time in the darkened gym the sun was blinding. We reached a line of fellow detainees. We stood there for another couple of hours in the brilliant sun as families, one after one, most like ours with only one child in their arms, disappeared into the building at the end of the shoot.

Finally, we reached the front of the line. We entered into a small, grey, cinderblock room. A young man in some sort of uniform sat at a wooden desk facing us. Behind him were three more doors labeled A, B, C. Between the doors were metal bookshelves filled with ledgers. By each door stood an agent. Full riot gear. Stun batons at the ready. Guns in holsters.

The young man was diminutive, offensively pimpled, and whiter than summertime clouds. He had a diffusely sweating, Charlie Brown-round head, with a shock of black hair retreating to well behind his coronal suture. He motioned us forward to a white line on the floor about three feet away. He looked Isa over, then Caleb. He seemed to shrink back for a moment under Calebs’s hostile stare, but then went about his business inquiring as to Caleb’s occupation.

He seemed impressed when he learned Caleb was a professional football player. He gave a slow nod of approval. He then reached behind for a ledger with a Roman numeral I on its binding. In it, at the bottom of dozens of other names, he wrote Caleb’s and the date of his birth. In an adjacent column, wrote “Sports.” He wrote Isa’s name and date of birth below with an arrow pointing to Caleb’s name.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned to me.

“What’s your name then, honey?”

Caleb stepped over a line on the floor affecting as threatening a posture as possible but was hit in the abdomen with the butt of a stun baton and retreated. The pimpled face gnome asked again, and I answered appropriately. Same with date of birth. When he asked my occupation I noted that I was a neurosurgery resident at the U —although I wasn’t sure we were still in state, so I added “the University of Colorado.”

His eyebrows raised and he looked me over. After fixating on my chest for an interminable period, he nodded, turned, pulled another ledger off a shelf with the Roman numeral III on its binding, and opened it. I felt a paralyzing wind blow through me. He wrote down my name and date of birth, and in an adjacent column wrote “Neuro S.”

With this, he nodded to the guards who stepped towards us. He seemed to chuckle then looked towards Caleb and Isa and motioned with a tilt of his head towards doorway A. Then, he looked at me, winked, and motioned towards doorway C.

Caleb and I collapsed toward one another screaming “no, please, please don’t separate us.” We fought the arms grabbing at us. I heard electric crackling and Caleb went down. Isa was screaming. I knocked one of the agents into the wall but heard at least a couple more cracks of electrical discharge.

The world went black. And that was that. The last time I saw either of them. Chris. And my dear Isa.

Chapter 7

I came to on the straw covered floor of a railroad car. Dusty light coming through grates in the roof and some slits in the walls revealed about twenty other individuals huddled in various spaces. Most, but not all, dark of skin. We were on the move but at a slow pace. Presumably out of Colorado. The stench was near unbearable. Hay. Sweat. Soiled clothing. Feces. Urine. And more than anything else, fear.

My head was resting on someone’s lap. As my eyes came into focus, I saw the face of a kindly, greying, middle-aged woman. She was stroking my hair. I tried to sit up. But couldn’t. Everything hurt. A lot. I groaned.

“Easy there, sweetie,” the woman said. “Just rest. You’ve been through hell. Or so it looks.”

I looked down. I was in unfamiliar clothing. Yoga pants, a torn up t-shirt, and a scratchy wool sweater. No underwear.

“How… how long have I been out?” I asked.

“We don’t know for sure. At least a day. That’s when they threw you in here. Naked. All battered and bruised. At first, we thought you were dead. But you began to moan. And cry.”

“Naked?” I asked.

“Yes, all except your socks. The ladies here gave up pieces of their own clothing to at least give you some cover.”

“Do you know what happened to me?” I asked trying to shift my body to a more comfortable position but found such a thing didn’t exist.

“We assumed you were raped. As beautiful as you are. Not that that matters much to them. Everyone in this car has been.”

“Raped?”

“I’m afraid so. Likely repeatedly. Likely they did so with you drugged, or in coma, or both. I suppose it’s better that way. No memories of it. But you must have aggravated them somehow because none of us received such a beating.”

“Raped? All of you?” I asked studying her face, perhaps uncharitably, but my brain had yet to come fully online.

“Seems to be the ticket onto this luxury liner. We’re all going to need to find some medications when we can, especially antibiotics.”

“And you all gave me these clothes?”

“Everyone who could pitched in. Not a great fit, but you are one tall, muscular woman.”

“Thanks. I mean for taking care of me. Who are you? Where are we? Where are we going? How long have you been in here?

The woman chuckled. Another woman, younger, South-Asian appearing, came by and offered me a ladle full of water. The two sat me up and helped me drink. I didn’t know how parched I was until the water fought its way down my throat. Although warm and turbid, it tasted like Heaven.

“I’m Helen,” the older lady said. “I’m a proteomics professor at UCLA. I was first in the car. Been in it for more than a couple of weeks. We move for a while, then stop and do nothing for a few hours or days, then start again. Picked up a bunch of other scientists along the way. In fact, everyone in this car are scientists. Where do you work?”

“Um, I’m from the University of Colorado.”

“Yeah, I could see we passed through Denver—didn’t stop until we were well past it, though. What’s your field?”

“I’m a neurosurgery resident.”

“A physician?”

“Yes.”

“Not a scientist?”

“Not really. No.”

“Hmm, I wonder what they’re up to. Could they have thought you were a scientist?”

I shook my memory banks, trying to spring some open. At first they were jammed shut. But with enough pounding and wrenching on their handles, images started to leak out. I was back in that cinderblock room. Then, the events there started to arrange themselves into a narrative.

“Well, the guy who sent me this way wasn’t very bright,” I offered.
“Ha! That’s probably the understatement of the year,” said Helen.

“I remember… he wrote…yeah, that’s it… he wrote “Neuro S” for my occupation in some book. Maybe they think I’m a neuroscientist.”

“Sounds plausible. And I suppose you are of sorts. You might want to stick with that for now. I can’t imagine they would go to all this trouble collecting a bunch of bio and chem professors just to execute us all. They have plans to use us somehow, I can almost guarantee.”

***

We traveled on, in the same car for over three weeks. We were stationary more than we were in motion, though, stopping, often for days, at one railyard or another. For what purpose, we had no idea. They never communicated with us. They just left us there in the heat of the day and the cold of the night. MRE’s and buckets of water were passed through trap doors once a day. Every so many days, fresh buckets for bathroom needs. No sanitary materials, though. No extra clothing. A new bale of hay or two every few days, and that was it.

During certain stops, a large sliding door would open, two or three new women would be shoved in, and the door would slam shut. They were always bio or chem scientists and we would help them acclimatize to their new surroundings. Space on the floor became a scare commodity. As we moved into the Midwest heat, the air became suffocating. Everyone had explosive diarrhea. The miasma of that car was so thick, and tasted so foul, that it was impossible to talk. But talk we did. In the dark. In the filth. In the fear.

Helen and I quickly became close. She watched over me, helped me tend to my wounds, and soothed my tears. We would speak for hours about happier times, and things, and places, and about experiences we had in common. In the third week, though, she developed an upper respiratory infection. A bad one. Fever, chills, rigors, sever congestion, constant coughing. I would have bet it was Covid. Brought on board by one of the newbies. Then her cough productive and she became hungry for air. It was clear she had pneumonia. We pleaded with the people outside to get her to a hospital, but they ignored us.

She was already debilitated, malnourished, and dehydrated before she got sick. Once the pneumonia set in, she rapidly deteriorated. She soon went unresponsive, and by the next morning was dead. This forced even more crowding as everyone sought some distance from her corpse. We called out to the guards for help but were again ignored. I therefore moved her to a corner and covered her with fresh hay. It was all I could do.

The next night, rats found her and began tearing at her flesh. I fended them off as much as I could with a shoe. Our pleas to have her removed intensified. But to no avail. The next night scores of rats invaded. The car was filled with their squeals and gnawing, and our shrieks and retching. A young Northwestern PhD candidate in histone research and a mitochondrial DNA professor from the University of Washington helped me kick and smack away as man as we could, but it was a losing battle and we all came away with bites and scratches that we were sure would fester and eventually kill us.

By the third night we gave up and let the beasts feed, covering our ears and eyes as best we could. On the fourth day, the door slid open, three burly men in military camouflage entered, warded us off with stun batons, grabbed Helen, and through her out of the door onto an awaiting cart, on top of three or four other bodies.

One of our car-mates mad a dash for the door before it was closed. She was hit with a stun baton just before she could make her leap—to where she believed she was headed, who knows. They must have hit her with max settings, though, because she was knocked out for the next twenty four hours. That night we all pitched in in keeping the rats away from her.