Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 Page 2
It looked like most homes I had trespassed upon over the years; a real mess. Telltale signs that the occupants had left in a hurry, or had already been ransacked more than once. There was a sculpture of a small cast iron bullfrog sitting on a shelf by the door to greet me. Looking upon this miniature icon it had occurred to me that I missed the croak of frogs by the rivers and lakes; not something that one usually thinks about until it's gone. From what I had heard through rumor, frogs where one of the first animal species affected by the virus and had nearly went extinct across the globe. Crickets too were rare, so much so that noticing a single solo chirp echo in the night was as uncommon as a shooting star. In their place was now filled by a blanket of eerie silence throughout night.
As disheveled as the house was, including the rank smell of musty upholstery, it was still far more inviting than being caught outside in a downpour, especially so since the eruptions of freak lighting storms were dangerously unpredictable. I didn't bother scrounging for food; if anything had been left behind it had either been scavenged or the bugs and mice had long since devoured it, and likely something else had also eaten the vermin in kind. Food was scarce as it was. Dysentery and malnutrition usually ran rampant in small towns of people who didn't have the knowledge nor the basic means to survive on their own.
After the event, it was an astounding joke how so many people tried to trade paper money, jewelry and even pure ounces of gold and silver for food; at the very least, the banknotes had the minimal use as toilet paper. Precious metals weren't so precious anymore if you couldn't eat with, shoot with, nor light a fire with them. However, though trading weapons for food was commonplace, it became an even more dangerous endeavor if the unscrupulous person you were swapping items with decided to test out the given firearm right then and there; taking your life along with all the plunder for themselves. Everyone had his or her own definition of what honor was anymore. Honestly, if a sticky or dangerous situation came down to a decision between me or them, I would tend to pick 'me' also.
I stepped over the broken furniture that littered the main entry, bypassing what appeared to be the kitchen. Usually what you would find left rotting in people's refrigerators would make your stomach churn and was best avoided. Anything that could make you ill was a real risk; let alone a cut from a rusty nail as bandages and antiseptics were rare commodities these days. I remember the old documentaries I had seen in college about the 'preppers' as they were called from 'wacko's' to 'conspiracy nuts' to just plain backwoods hicks preparing for the end of the world, and all the hokey shit they had believed would someday save their ass. A decade later nobody was laughing at them when Apophis fell out of the sky and turned our world into a spectacular clusterfuck.
Long before the asteroid strike, popular rumors flung around were either about how the ancient Mayans had somehow predicted the coming of a new age. A great deal of gossip centered on all the corrupt insurance agencies and the scams they pulled on the unwary public along with the rampant banking fraud that nearly destroyed the fragile economy which set us upon this course. Life on a global scale would have actually taken an upswing if the soaring human population rate had not been so out of control. A few nations began implemented mandatory sterilization for convicts and the mentally disabled, or even lowering themselves to offering bribes by promising monetary compensation for anyone who accepted voluntary compliance.
The effort was all a frivolous social experiment that failed horribly. Its condemnation was compounded after it was discovered that the pharmaceutical industries worldwide had been quietly and secretly adding anti-fertility elements into a number of medical prescriptions. When the media blew that story wide open, the drug companies turned around and blamed their conduct on the local governments, claiming they were only following orders; when suddenly overnight, all these conspiracies were swiftly silenced.
The crash of the Net in 2026 was loosely blamed on computer hackers and then on solar storms when skeptics couldn't find any proof of sabotage, and then escalated onto any other hogwash that could be dreamt up. The pile of unsubstantiated misinformation flooding the news waves always pointed its nasty little finger back to covert government involvement and their all too frequent efforts of going to extraordinary lengths to cloak their secret agendas. Shortly thereafter, the free internet world-wide-web as it had been known since its birth was replaced by 'Wave', "a new and infallible technology for our modern era of communication," as the propaganda touted.
The general population wasn't stupid, we knew all media was now being censored by automation, but there was nothing we could do about it. Any public blog, chat or dialog or uploaded transmission was read, reviewed, deleted or rewritten within nanoseconds. Of course, there were a few exceptions that slipped through the security net, and those rare incidents were either followed by tragic freak accidents that ended the life of the suspected perpetrators which, needless to say, was quickly erased from media sources and nobody would ever hear about; or news events that were glazed over under the disguise of an open and free speech media. It was a method of whitewashing that had actually been in practice for over half a century.
half a decade after Apophis struck, there was a lot of confusion about some relevant but missing facts when the asteroid event happened in 2029. It was one of those puzzles that slowly gnawed at the back of your mind whenever you let it; the kind of incompetence on a level that you're unable to grasp, let alone fathom. Considering, that with all our given technology, how did our space laboratories, astronomy facilities and all our scientists manage to fuck up so badly?
Who was too actually to blame was merely water under the bridge at this point. Whomever or whatever group of sneaky secretive spooks responsible were likely already dead or held up in a claustrophobic military bunker somewhere bickering with one another as to how they have nobody left to order around. Then again, maybe that loose analogy is merely unsubstantiated paranoia, citing our inability to admit that sometimes "shit happens" and people will always be looking for someone else to blame for their current state of affairs ...but then again, maybe some 'shit happens' on purpose.
I clicked on my light as I entered the farmhouse; my solar charged flashlight was one of my prized possessions, which had saved me from breaking my neck in the dark more than once. Thick clouds moved in from the approaching storm as the door rattled behind me. The interior of the building took on a grim familiar air, the kind you sense to when roaming such domestic ruins as you sift through peoples shattered lives. I try to push the thoughts about that back, which was hard for me and always has been.
I would always find myself think about the people who had lived in the vacant buildings I explored; judging what tastes they had in their decorations and for what possible occasions long past they had collected their trashed memorabilia or trinkets, now left scattered among the ground like so much insignificant garbage. My mind would be driven to wonder about the child that once wore a small crumpled sweater now crumpled in a mound on the floor. Sometimes I would come across old family photos, as prints were rare since most modern images were digitalized on battery power displays and were now forever lost. It was a swelling ache I felt inside which saddened me to think the people I saw within these discarded photographs were now dead, or worse; had become infected and lost who they had once been.
Oddly, there were no pictures on the walls within the farmhouse, just a few crappy shelves and empty broken frames on the floor. Even in old abandoned buildings, you still have to be careful of your step or rotting timbers that were merely awaiting someone to put a few pounds of pressure in the wrong place. In some cases, I had seen Mother Nature entirely reclaim old settlements; with trees sprouting on roofs, branches and vines muscling their way through weakened brick walls that had crumbled apart in surrender to the invasive greenery.
Whenever I found an uninfected rat or two, I would consider myself lucky and make a quick meal of them. Some wildlife still survives in the deep forests, though most are so deformed and m
utated or blighted with abnormal growths that no sane person would dare consume them no matter how easy to catch or how hungry you were. It was just not worth the risk no matter how well you might cook it.
The Kriotin virus affected more than just the human race; many other species fared far worse. Almost every class of mammals also contracted a form of the disease, which physicians had first thought was a super aggressive form of rabies, which the MN4 virus was commonly confused with during its first few vital months of exposure. When it became painfully obvious that the usual conventional vaccinations were failing in patient trials, they finally linked the sickness to the alien debris and dust particles from the center of the asteroids mass and its fallout that was filled with irradiated organic molecules, which had already dispersed throughout the Earth's lower atmosphere after impact.
It was common knowledge that for eons comets and asteroids deposit proteins and bacteria on our little blue planet as they've done since the dawn of time, which in some scientific arenas was accepted as the original building blocks of life. Apophis itself was no different, and there were no rules to say that whatever alien germ was hitchhiking on that lump of rock had to be benign or compatible with our ecosystem. Hell, we were long overdue for a biological plague anyhow, and it was certainly more interesting than some watered-down bird or swine flu virus, which was nothing more than a fart in the wind compared to this typhoon.
Contracting KRI wasn't fatal, and actually fewer than half the people who were infected with it became dangerously violent, many just regressed into something akin to severe autism or a dysfunctional depressive state rather than anything close to being manic or schizophrenic. Those victims that did were unfit to care for themselves for the most part, and would waste away if left unattended. This category of infected became confused and unresponsive, could not feed or cloth themselves or had any recognition for others. Survivors would often see them wandering the streets in a incoherent daze or huddled in dark corners, twitching in fear at every little sound. It was a horrible way to die.
At first, there were scattered reports of a vaccine, but it wasn't a cure for those already infected. As it turned out even that empty promise was a crap-shoot, it was just some antigen in its test phase created out of pure desperation to sate the public fears. Unfortunately, the virus was constantly mutating. It's genetic markers would change so that an antibody might work one day but not the next. Sometimes entire families were wiped out in a matter of hours because they had a genetic weakness in their DNA at that given phase.
Some people never reacted at all as if they had a natural immunity, though their luck was short lived as those few became the subjects of grim experimentation by cruel doctors who were desperate or pressured for a cure. Most often, the immune patient ended up as a dead guinea pig sliced up on a shiny steel lab table. It wasn't long before you realized that your best bet was just to keep your fucking distance from anyone who either looked infected or exhibited early stage symptoms.
The early symptoms were the real problem, given the catastrophe that affected everyone's lives. Most people were depressed as it was, and all too frequently innocent survivors who were unable handle the stress or were already crying over a dead loved ones sometimes ended up with a bullet in their head despite the fact they weren't infected. People were scared, and all too willing to pull the trigger out of fear. The world had gone insane ...not that our species hadn't been all along.
Rain had begun to pelt the dirty glass of the window panes as I continued my exploration of the house, at least it would be a test if the roof would hold its own and keep me dry until morning. The first rule of surviving on your own is to scout out an entire building to make sure it was safe to be in. Unfortunately, near the end of the hall I stumbled across a dark stairwell and vented an audible sigh of regret upon finding it.
"Well, shit," I whispered out loud to myself in hesitation, knowing I had to investigate, though I really didn't want to.
It's not that I was afraid of the dark, but I spared no personal love for cellars since they most always had merely one point of entry or exit. For a brief moment I juggled the thought of sleeping in the barn outside instead, but by the condition I had seen of the rotting exterior and gaping holes in its roof, there was no way I was going to spend a dry moment out there in this storm. Besides the fact that one of its large doors was hanging askew from its frame with no means to secure it.
I set my flashlight on to its brightest setting and descended into the gloom below as the tattered floorboards creaking under the weight of each step. I spied odd ends of furniture and broken boxes were tossed about as if a whirlwind had passed through the room. The cellar was unusual, as its dimensions extended beyond the footprint of the foundation of the house above; appearing to be nearly twice as large. Most likely it doubled as someone's bug-out shelter back in the day and had been raided at some point by scavengers moving through the countryside. Still, I had to investigate to see if it was safe and in the remote chance I might something of practical use had been left behind; a coil of rope or can of fuel; pretty much anything l that could come in handy for bartering.
It was when I turned the edge of the stairwell at the bottom landing when my heart stopped. I was used to seeing dead bodies, but what I saw before me put me in shock. In the narrow light from the lamp my eyes pieced together the image of desiccated human arms and legs that intertwined in a layer of filth. As hardened as I was to such scenes, I still jumped when I saw a leg twitch, then an arm, and the huddled pile of Weeper's slowly began to stir. One after another, they wriggled up from the tangled mass to shade their bloodshot eyes from the glare of my light. One of them hissed in annoyance as glared into the blinding light just as their putrid stench hit me like a brick wall. Lying their there coiled in their own feces, more than a dozen infected began to shamble to their feet. Flying up the stairs, I ran faster than I ever had in my life.
All of which events happened nearly an hour ago since I had disturbed the nest of weepers which had chased me relentlessly through the wet forest. Most of the time the duck and hide techniques are efficient enough when trying to escape their pursuit, but from the gaunt looks of this hive, it was rabid hunger kept them lingering on my trail. No matter how much ground I gained, they would not give up. I assumed I had lost most of them among the thick layer of tress and rocky terrain, but there were still two or three I couldn't seem to shake.
It was by sheer luck that I had stumbled upon this collapsed office building; and realized I might a better chance of finding a way to barricade myself in, rather than running blind through the sheets of rain during a violent electrical storm on open ground. That is when I dove behind a massive broken pillar for a spare moment to catch my breath, shivering from the cold. As I huddled there in exhaustion, I peered across from me to notice an old oil painting of a merchant ship by an ocean dock with three girls standing near a grassy shore; the damaged canvas sitting crooked in its cracked frame against the far wall where its corner had been exposed to the rain. Time seemed to stop for me in such moments; it was the way my mind seemed to cope with the stress of what my life had become and what little of it I had left to cling on too.
Apophis
I cannot count how many times I have asked myself; "is it even worth it all?" Honestly, I don't actually think there's anyone who didn't ask themselves that question a hundred times over since the day of the impact. Understandably, there were no rulebooks to go by and very few 'intact' families had managed to survived this long; everyone knew the definition of loss in one form or another by now. Watching a close family member or friend turn into a dysfunctional cretin or a raging lunatic was tough, but showing sadness or distress over their suffering would only put you on a watch-list as a suspect of also being infected. Any emotional signs of remorse or sadness mirrored the early stage symptoms and people would treat you like you were a rabid animal until a medical diagnosis could be administered to test your health; that is, if they didn't shoot you stone dead first.
Due to these symptoms mimicking emotional grief, the human race quickly drifted into becoming calloused and unfeeling; in ways making us worse than the poor victims who contracted the disease itself. In its wake, mankind lost an important sliver of its own basic humanity.
I gathered my strength and scrambled up the side of the shattered wall, finding the smooth concrete was dreadfully slippery in the pouring rain. Daring to look over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of one the weepers standing in the muddied clearing staring back at me. Whether its sex denoted it as a he or she was unclear, for its skin was covered with grime and tangled hair. It just stood there in a hunched pose, as if in pain; and I could feel its glare wash upon my face as a low growl issued from its broken lips. I was a little astonished that they were able to pursue me this far through the storm. Human sense of smell is pretty weak compared to most animals, especially so in such harsh weather; but they might have retained their more predatory traits that enabled them to track my path through the woods. In my haste I hadn't exactly been as quiet as I wanted, snapping several branches as I pressed through the forest undergrowth after losing my balance more than once in the slick mud and brambles.
I was guessing there were two, maybe three still on my tail. There was no guarantee what would happen when they eventually caught someone. Sometimes a victim would just be stripped of their food and belongings or would be beaten senseless if their prey struggled. In the rare cases, they were killed violently and their bloody bits and pieces consumed if the infected were exceptionally hungry. Humans were scavengers after all, and have been since the dawn of time. Regardless, any type of physical contact whatsoever signified a high chance of contamination, so when you saw a Weeper you either hid or ran.