The Virus (27 page)

“Yes, I think we are.”
Geoffrey answered.

The sound of Lieutenant
Dan’s voice, though not nearly as deafening as before, was still
gutturally resonant—no reduction in volume on any speaker could
alter that—as he answered, “It has been noted. The provisions will
be with us shortly. Is there anything else, Mr.
Summons?”

“No, I guess that’ll be
all.” With that, and an audible click of the speaker, the brief
conversation ended. Geoffrey watched through the miniature window
as Lieutenant Dan said something into his two-way before resuming
his gaze on the road ahead. Geoffrey was certain that the
lieutenant general demanded the same extreme level of alertness
from his comrades in the surrounding armored vehicles. The first
legitimate telepath and the potential savior of the world beside
him were well protected from danger, that much was for sure.
Unfortunately for Delilah’s previously-sheltered constitution, they
had not protected her from the sights of the chaos that was
characterizing the outside world. Shortly after the brief
conversation between Geoffrey and Lieutenant Dan, the mirror truck
rounded a corner leading into the outskirts of the city nearest to
the military complex. Trash, debris, broken glass from the
shattered windows and doors of businesses and other buildings,
layered the landscape in thick, glistening folds like a heavy,
dirty snowfall.

It’s highly unlikely that
Dr. Crangler would’ve approved, or Lieutenant Dan would’ve
traversed the scene at all, except that it was the only road
leading to where Geoffrey and Delilah were being taken for their
scheduled outing. It looked like a war zone. This town, as well as
virtually every other town on the planet, had been and still was,
suffering the devastating effects of populations of people that
gruesome death had darkened their lives and left them with no
further reason to remain civilized. Mothers, daughters,
granddaughters, sisters, wives, aunts, nieces—women of all walks of
life, languages, and hues—had, along with their unborn and newborn
children, been tragically and violently snatched from the land of
the living by The Virus. Though he didn’t realize it, it hadn’t
been a few months, but a little over a year since Geoffrey last
laid eyes on the open world outside and beyond the secret facility
where he was confined, and in that time, not only had countless
women and children died, but they left behind millions of former
boyfriends, fiancés, husbands—all who would’ve been new fathers—not
to mention their own fathers, uncles, brothers, etc., every single
one of them left grieving without anyone to turn to for
answers.

Nearly overnight,
pregnancy became a byword, a certified and unavoidable death
sentence, and worse, a ruthlessly slow and violent death sentence.
Things had taken an even worse turn when it was soon discovered
that even if the fetus was aborted, the change The Virus had
inspired in the female body meant that she would still die a slow
death from asphyxiation as soon as her body discarded, or the
remains of the killed fetus were taken from her preparing womb. As
can only be expected, the act of sex itself took on a completely
different connotation now. Who, besides the most base and
death-craving women, would lay with a man, when it meant that she
would be hazarding a slow and agonizing demise? Also, thanks to
their Virus-altered biological functions, contraceptives were
rendered useless, as none of the specialty medicines seemed to work
anymore. Normally, contraceptives worked by manipulating or
otherwise obstructing natural processes in a woman’s body, but now
that those processes had been drastically tainted, no pregnancy
preventive treatment worked as it should. Condoms alone still
retained their marginal effectiveness, but again, when her life was
being risked in a much more real way than ever before, what woman
in her right mind would wager upon a thin film of latex?

Members of the feminists
federation would’ve had a field day—after all, weren’t filthy
minded, degrading, overreaching men, with their overinflated egos
and underinflated penises, the very source of pregnancy? They
would, were in not for the fact that it was women and their
children who were suffering the brunt of The Virus’s destructive
prowess. In fact, many more women did, in the wake of all that was
taking place, join the ranks of the man-hating feminists who
desperately wanted to wear the proverbial pants of the world. To
the suddenly swelled ranks of this consortium, the male population
was demonized outright. Sperm banks were vandalized, burned, and
destroyed, and the filthy males who contributed to them (as well as
any other non-blood related male in sight) were all but assaulted,
though many were indeed assaulted, and some even killed. The logic
of these modestly-numbered but ardently-voiced women, was that if
they drove away or at least stayed as far away as possible from men
and their semen spewing genitalia they could distance themselves
from the horrifying effects of The Virus. These women willingly
and, in fact, eagerly turned a blind eye to the fact that they,
like every other member of their sex, were already infected by The
Virus, as could be clearly deduced by their unnaturally flaking
skin and yellowed eyes.

Perhaps, if they didn’t
get pregnant, they wouldn’t suffer gruesome deaths like many of
their peers, but they, thanks to The Virus, still bore the
potential for their demise irrevocably in their body, and would do
so for the remainder of their days on the planet. To help them
continue to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to this unsettling fact,
many of them tried not only to avoid men, but to also avoid
themselves as well. Not unlike their feminist counterparts, they
were adamantly discontent with the lot that life (or, in this case,
an alien consciousness) had chosen for them without their
permission, and took every pain to avoid being reminded of it. Many
of them buried themselves in bulky pants, long sleeves, and thick
scarves to hide their shedding skin, if from no one else, then from
themselves, and often wouldn’t go near anything capable of casting
a reflection that would give them full view of their discolored
eyes. From many of the males they harassed as if they were the
reason for all this carnage, their group earned the name the ‘No
More Mirror Movement’ for their reluctance to acknowledge what
could not be denied—that they, too, were infected. Whether they
blamed men for it or not, they would’ve been laughed at for their
childish behavior, except that what was happening to the human
race, whether male or female, was no laughing matter.

How news of The Virus had
leaked to the public in the first place was anybody’s guess, but
truthfully, not many people were surprised; with the
instantaneousness of 21
^st
century’s global
communication, there were no true secrets anymore, or if there
were, they certainly didn’t stay that way indefinitely. Also
somehow leaked, was the rumor that the government had known of the
alien life form from which The Virus came, for years. They had
known and had done absolutely nothing to stop an impending attack.
This added fury to the public’s already bleak and maddening
sadness, so much so that after the towns had been completely
destroyed by constituents of all kinds, every government building
and agency, no matter the purpose, was set upon next and destroyed.
As Geoffrey and Delilah looked on now, wide eyed and mouthed, at
what had become of the world they had both once known, they saw the
destruction of despondent and confused souls but not the
carnage-seeking masses themselves. Not a single person was to be
seen anywhere as the mirror truck and its accompanying armed patrol
vehicles cut their wide swath through the wreckage-cluttered
streets and thoroughfares. They were all, nearly every single man,
woman, and child not already claimed by The Virus, either in or
headed to, the hearts of towns, setting ablaze police stations,
armories, social security buildings, and courthouses, anything that
reminded them of the government that failed to protect
them.

The savagery was so bad
that hostages were taken from some government buildings and
tortured mercilessly for a perceived crime with which they had
nothing to do. Police, responsible for maintaining safety and
peace, were themselves deprived of those very luxuries, as they
were pulled from squad cars and beaten to a gory pulp by the insane
crowds. Of course, many officers gathered together to wage an
offensive, but the public they were facing were not the rational
thinking men and women of a former time. These were zombies that
only closely resembled living, breathing human beings. In reality,
the losses they suffered at the hands of The Virus had rendered
them hollow shells, people as bloodthirsty as the undead. When
officers were finally forced to open fire with live ammunition,
they found that even real bullets were not a deterrent. What was it
to a husband of many years to be shot down by an officer’s gun when
his wife and twins had just died slow, painful deaths, and right in
front of his eyes? The firing barrels of shot guns held no
discernible meaning for the son who knew that his pregnant sister,
the only family he ever had, would soon face the same fate, also in
front of his eyes, and there was absolutely nothing he could do
about it.

No, firearms and the
injuries they promised meant nothing now. In fact, most people
welcomed death these days, and to those who didn’t welcome death,
it didn’t matter, it was coming anyway. It was the same everywhere
across the country and around the world. Luckily, Delilah and
Geoffrey didn’t see the roving crowd wreaking havoc at the heart of
it, but they did see the bedlam left behind by that crowd, and it
was nearly as ugly. The mirror truck continued on to its eventual
destination, passing through the fringes of this town, as well as a
nearby one, but everywhere, the scene was virtually the same. The
specially-adapted cargo truck could’ve just as well driven around
in endless circles and the views of yawning devastation would be no
different. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, buildings were
destroyed. The larger ones that were yet standing bore an eerie
resemblance to decayed human corpses, the structures eaten away at
the fringes and every window completely obliterated, giving full
views to interiors blackened beyond repair by the once insatiable
flames that had consumed them. Only the largest buildings even
survived. The smaller ones were mostly leveled to their very
foundations. Stop signs, phone booths, traffic lights, everything
that once represented order and civilization, now lay helplessly
gnarled in the already-destroyed streets and yards. Some of the
lights still flickered weakly as if they were crying out the
remainder of their electrical energies; the only tears they could
produce for what had happened to mankind.

Cars were everywhere in
the wreckage. A rare few were unharmed and left unattended in
streets and on sidewalks, doors ajar. It was obvious that the
occupants had left in a hurry, but most were destroyed, or crumbled
together in what had obviously been heinous and epic car wrecks. As
Delilah looked on, aghast, at the sights around her, she was
startled nearly to the point of wetting her pants, by a harsh thud
and subsequent roar coming from the other side of the mirror truck.
She turned instinctively, not knowing what to expect, but what she
saw was a strange distortion of what looked like thick heat waves
fighting to enter the glass. After a few seconds, her initial panic
at the abrupt sound receded enough for her to recognize that what
she was seeing was not a mirage, but rather torrents of water
bathing the outside of the mirror truck. The torrent passed along
the side of the cargo area of the truck as it continued to move on
and then was gone. The back doors of the truck were of the same
heavy glass as the sides, so Delilah saw clearly as the truck moved
along, that a fire hydrant had been broken open and its powerfully
dense spray was what assaulted the truck and caused her
start.

As if I weren’t scared
enough, already!
she thought to
herself.

“I know, right. Sure
scared the hell out of me too,” answered Geoffrey.

Delilah turned to him, her
face contorted in confusion. “What?” she asked.

Geoffrey answered
quickly—too quickly, “Oh nothing, I was just thinking out loud.” He
looked like a young boy who got caught doing something he
definitely shouldn’t have been before he could catch it. He turned
his face away, hopefully in time, and scanned the horizon. “It’s
gotten pretty bad out here, huh?” he asked, hoping to change the
subject.

“Yeah…I guess it has.” The
brokenness in Delilah’s wavering voice at all the atrocity she saw,
was so profound, that, even though Geoffrey was relieved that his
little slip up hadn’t caused more damage, the gravity of the
surrounding scene seemed to grow in his eyes as well. In the
relatively short time that he had known Delilah, he had never seen
her take what was happening to the rest of the world so seriously.
Dr. Crangler would’ve borne out that conclusion as well. There was
that fleeting moment of true realization much earlier, when Delilah
heard from Doctor Crangler the awesome death that The Virus was
inflicting on pregnant women, but other than that, Delilah had been
shielded from the full reality at hand, and that, more than by the
thick, steel barriers of the underground facility. Her life, her
entire life, had been one of ease. Most people would have no way to
properly assess such a world altering event as that which was
currently happening, but Delilah even less so. As Geoffrey had
already seen, the pathways of her brain had been conditioned to
luxury and privilege, and there was no way for it to fully sink in
that the entire planet, including the portions of it that she had
seen in her reign of opulence, was suffering a blow from which it
may well never recover. There was no way for that reality to sink
in…not until now.