Until the End of the Summer
John Birge © 2007
The hottest summer that Anna could remember was five years ago. She had still been in Uni at that time, and was nearing her business MA, at twenty-three years old. The nights had been warm, the time had been high and her expectations had been great – they were still. Thing is, this bug complicated matters. It complicated matters a lot.
It was a warm summer again, but not as warm as the one five years ago. But it was worse. She was grateful that she had not grown up in towns, cities, counties, areas, continents of the world where humidity meant plenty of carriers. Plans to evacuate the remainder of mankind to Arctic regions had been put temporarily on halt – for how long few knew – but it was sure to resume again after the summer, or September at the latest.
Sitting by her workstation, she allowed herself the luxury of dreaming herself back to that summer. The long, warm summer nights, which sometimes meant study, other times the warmth of bed and body, and yet others meant ferocious student drinking orgies, and they all kept coming back to her now. Replayed, cut-up and professionally edited through Inner Vision.
Then, she had a boyfriend that she long intended to marry, the one she dumped two months later because he had no goals and no motivation to go places. She had hoped to change him, to make him ‘get up and go', or at least do something else than pissing about, looking on the net for anything but jobs.
Ridding herself of that yoke, she had graduated with honours. She had no intention of doctoring economics, however, and quickly became assimilated into the human resources market, successfully landing a job with KDW Financing. She advanced quicker than usual there, until she had the position of assistant manager in merely three years. All this without any real challenge or effort.
So all things considered, her job at the CDC was a no small achievement. She had approached the branch with her CV, which was by no means impressive. However, somebody-somewhere had decided that rejuvenation was in place, those who needed no training in the latest programs and such things. So a lot of people lost their jobs, and Anna and others got their first. Oh, she had had lots of jobs in the past. Aside from working in a café, she had been a city gardener, personal assistant, shop assistant, receptionist and marketing person, depending on what time in her life and time of the year, but all before twenty-one. And of course the job at KDW did look nice.
The office landscape reached wide and far, almost 300 metres from one end to the other, but it was still the smallest of twenty-two departments. The London office was much bigger and one day she would earn a promotion and go there. She did not care that much for the city in itself; as a matter of fact she almost hated it more than she loved the job there.
This thing about the bug did not bother her too much. It gave her a lot to do, which in turn meant that she would be noticed for being so good at her job and ready for a promotion. Or at least, that was what she had thought at first. It was clear now that it was a matter of hanging tough for as long as possible, to earn that promotion in blood, sweat and tears.
Cinley had been promoted to dept. head last Thursday. It would seem Mr. Ollarby was not up to the job after all. How swinely male! Whenever something that could be considered a crisis was approaching, out through the window went equality and in came patriarchy. Ollarby, in his turn, had replaced Winters, who had been her boss for two years. This meant that there were no real bosses, nobody whose word would carry much weight when this ‘crisis' was over. At the CDC, thought Anna, everything was a crisis, everything is in ruin. Woe is me; the world always looks like that. As far as she was concerned it would sort itself out, and she never lost faith in that.
She had really liked Winters, they had a relationship beyond just work. Anna brought her coffee or tea, and they made small-talk. They'd gossip about co-workers, office performance and other depts. Well. So, okay, things were a little worse than they had been the previous years. No. Not even that. More urgent certainly, but hardly as apocalyptic as everybody made it out to be. The only way in which the disease spread was insectile, in particular by haemophiles. It did spread cross-species, but those infected were not contagious. So with all these factors, it should have been nothing more than a minor outbreak. But you had to consider the vast number of insects in the air now, it was summer, it was hot and humid and everywhere there were blood to be sucked and people to be infected. How do you protect yourself against assassins smaller than a bullet? Even so, comparing to earlier threats: There had been nuclear warheads on the loose, a comet or two passing uncomfortably close to Earth-
“-and let's not forget global warming,” she thought to herself. The summers had gotten hotter. So what if Winters had told her that was illogical? Winters was dead, and thus no longer her boss. They could disagree on some things now.
As if all that was not bad enough, Cosgrove, who had handled the South, had taken ill and was – recuperating – at home. This was more of a blow to Anna than she led her co-workers to believe, for Cosgrove was a good man, and Anna thought he would have been a good man for her . But no, it was not to be. He had most of the qualities a man should have, i.e. a real man, an adult male. Responsible, tactful, determined, ruggedly handsome and the weight of the South on his shoulders: A real man. In his hard-to-place South-West-East (definitely not North!) accent, he would deplore the insufficient supply of vaccine in Doeville, and in the same breath make it absolutely clear that there was no point in discussing the matter further.
That was exactly was Anna thought, too. No point in dwelling on reasons, or accusing people who are only doing their job. If there was no vaccine to be had, that was the end of it. Whenever there were cries of distress in one plagued region, Anna usually forwarded the call to somebody else, who undoubtedly left them hanging, until they (very soon) died – just as long as she did not have to deal with them.
“Hey Anna, they need more people down in retrovirals, interested?” It was Dickie, coming towards her, no doubt to break her concentration on work.
“I don't see what I could do there.”
“Oh, you wouldn't do any research of course. They're short on just about anything, or so Mack says.” He leaned forward. “Including attractive assistants.”
“That bad?”
“Uh-huh. I'd say... four more weeks, then good-bye human race.”
“Oh, you're the one for high morale. Yeah, real booster. Why don't you do some work?”
“I am.” He sloppily scraped a few papers from the printer.
“Dickie!” cried Anna.
“What?”
“Stop messing with the paper!”
Dickie stopped and looked at the barely wrinkled papers, laughed and went back to his seat.
Anna shook Dickie's pessimism with a smile. He was just a little dour, but actually not too bad, good for laughs and reasonably good-looking, though his hair was awful. Most people's hair was awful nowadays. They looked dazed, fresh out of bed from a hangover, which possibly a few of they had enjoyed earlier today, and about to be rejuvenated by the first cup of coffee. They drank coffee all the time. She printed a blank page. It came out perfect.
The wicked thing about this bug was that the patient, once infected, was beyond help. The term encouraged within the CDC was ‘subject' instead of ‘patient', but Anna tried to do her best to remember that these were all actual people dying. And a lot of them too. So many, in fact, that it was impossible to help them all. “Come to think of it, we can't do anything at all.” Acceptance.
Once the virus was contracted, it mutated, spawning countless insidious inbred cousins to itself in a matter of hours. After the first mutation, there is nothing to be done for the patient. It infected and mutated so quickly that a cure was nearly impossible to develop.
Date of expiration varied greatly, anything from two days to several months. Again, nobody could say just why. The hypothesis was that viral bodies were eliminating themselves, like communist party members squabbling after a successful revolution. In the end, however, one prevailed and that was the end; the onslaught of the host began.
The idea to collect various mutations and continually inject infected people with them, thus always keeping a steady supply of viral rivalry, had been disappointing, and the idea thrashed. Too many pigs had died.
Two months ago, it was estimated that within a year, all of mankind would be extinct.
“But things are not entirely that grim and hopeless,” thought Anna, because there had been one important breakthrough: inoculation. It was still very limited, and very hard to produce. But if administered, the inoculation was successful, and not a single case of infection been seen since, even with high exposure to contagious materials and bodies. Preventing the first single infection was the key.
When they first learnt that no office workers were to be inoculated (at least not yet), there had been loud protests by some of the staff. Even Winters, her favourite boss, had declared the decision a ‘bastardly stupid' one. But there would be more vaccine soon, no need to worry about that. The only thing you had to do was to stay clear of insects, and all would be fine.
In fact, the work-hours had also changed to make sure as few insects as possible was around humans. The entire race was at the mercy of the smallest. Oh irony, thy name is… What is irony? Certainly not insects, that's for sure. And if it was, it was not amusing. Do irony have to be amusing? Anna thought so.
This did not include all insects, of course, though contact with anything that had more than four legs was not recommended. In essence, as Dickie had once put it, ‘stay away from blood-sucking bastards', which was a useful tip, if you wanted to stay alive.
Anyway, the decimation of mankind had slowed down. Part of the reason was that people were aware of the danger more than ever, but mostly because there were a lot fewer around. And that went for all living things affected by this plague. Swine, birds, monkeys, cows, bears, dogs and all in their respective families were the primary groups that were now nearly exterminated. Great tragedy no doubt. Not to sound anthropocentric, but they did not matter a great deal right now. Not to Anna, and not to anybody else. Nature's revenge.
“Anna, I'm homing, don't stay down all night,” said Dickie as he passed her.
“Very funny. I'll be going home in a few minutes.
“Lift? Safest car there ever was. One-oh-one percent bug free.”
“Oh-one? No thank you,” and added: ”I've seen your car.”
“Ouch!” Placing his hand over his heart, he smiled lovingly and said good-bye.
When she saw Dickie skipping across the parking lot, casually spraying around him as he walked, she got up and went home.
Home was Kaiser Gardens 115:2. Anna had quickly developed a homecoming routine, a routine which could very well be the difference between health and sickness, life and death. Cleaning the entire flat with sonics was very simple. Like unlocking your car remotely before your enter, ten steps from the door she clicked, waited the confirmatory beep and then all was well. How simple to stay alive in a world where everyone is dying and helpless to do anything about it.
Closing the door behind her she waited for the steam bath of DDT. She always thought it smelled... deadly. Quite safe in itself, but it still spelled death to all smaller life forms who would breathe it. “Do they breathe?” she wondered as she brought crisps and dip to the living room for the late-night television. “Do insects breathe? Do they have lungs? Consciousness, on some level?” She did not particularly like asking those questions, because they only led to other, more difficult questions that she did not like to burden herself with. Who is murdering who? Whose apocalypse is this? Why is the apocalypse always anthropocentric? What is life? And what lies beyond death, the final frontier?
She shuddered as censored versions of those questions stalked the corridors of her conscious mind. They remained like the insects. Deadly, but caged. At bay. For the time being.
Anna did not care too much for drama, and since it was 23:30, a good time to watch some news.
There were lots of rumours now, but there were always rumours. Anna thought rumours were remarkably similar to this outbreak; if you let one past, the rest would follow and with them.. well. Rumour had it, she knew but never repeated, that there was no interest in administering the jabs which could save mankind.
Thus, it mutated. There was no cure. If there was, a secret organization withheld it, government and political conspiracies, enclaves and military. Add the component that one of them manufactured the virus and there you had it: chaos. Even at CDC, when somebody became infected, rumour had it that they had not died, but had been inoculated and transported to a safe hiding place. Even at the CDC! This was co-workers, friends and their families! Anna despised rumours and those who spread them. She had been furious with Dickie when he said, albeit jokingly, that Winters had gone to colder places.
Why everybody, as in all of mankind, could not just relocate to the harsh, healthy arctic climates was never quite articulated. The demand for housing, food and such would be impossible to accommodate if it had been done when the virus was first noticed. Certainly, there was reason to that. But now, with less than a billion left? She corrected herself. A billion people were still a staggering number. Imagine all those people. Visualise. Not to mention how to get them all there.
Anna had decided that it was probably for the best that only the few and brightest went up there, the top scientists, researchers, politicians and business leaders. They were needed the most; to organize, to impose some order on a world that would otherwise quickly descend into anarchy, madness and chaos. “Because people are irrational,” she added. The rest was from the news.
Thank God the news was still a source of trustworthy information. Still plenty of networks to choose from with their biases. There was no problem getting the whole image, which sometimes seemed hopeless, even to Anna.
First news item : The date for complete evacuation was pushed forward. Again. Distributing the inoculation was the main problem. Because people were not allowed to migrate, due to concerns that the virus would migrate with them, it was very difficult to reach people. Of course, that martial law had been instated when it was still thought that humans could be carriers. Why hadn't that ban been lifted? She had not thought about it, but now that she did, it made no sense.
Second news item : And she thought “No, it can't be.”
Her heart ached, pounded and pulsated like the worn-out muscle it was. Far too heavy and far too experienced, and now this final blow; Winters' face on the screen. There she was, alive and well. And safe. She should have been glad, but was furious. That shameless pross! How dare she..? She calmed herself down, listening intently and loathingly to each and every word that came out of that woman's mouth, like sickening clouds of infesting insects.
Interviewer: …Now joining us is Helen Winters with CDC in Haven. Good evening Miss Winters, I understand you have good news from Haven?
Winters: Yes, indeed we do, Tom. We have been able to synthesize enough inoculation jabs for distribution across the U.S. and Eurasia. Starting tomorrow, the martial law is no longer in effect, and all CDC employees will have been inoculated and ready to do the same for others. We urge all citizens everywhere to remain cautious and vigilant. We still do not have a cure if you are infected. I repeat that, there is still no cure.
Interviewer: Yes, as Miss Winters here said, exercise extreme caution since you will be outside, where people haven't been in awhile. The disease is outside, and you will be smack in the middle of it.
Winters: Indeed. Once again, all citizens must be very careful when venturing outside. There is plenty to go around, and if you are infected along the way it will do you absolutely no good. So take every precaution, we will not run out of jabs, and as Tom said, it would be very stupid to condemn yourself to death when life is just around the corner.
Interviewer: Thank you very much for joining us, and may I say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for the good news, it's much needed down here.
Winters: My pleasure, Tom. Be safe. Remember, we can beat this thing together.
“Lying sack of-,” thought Anna and changed the channel. Dickie had been right, she admitted that. She poured herself a stiff drink, finished it quickly and had another. She tried to calm herself down; now was not the time for pride, tantrums or decadence. There was much work to be done. She put away the bottle and had coffee instead. For some masochistic reason beyond her comprehension, she watched The Swarm and fell asleep on the couch halfway through.
# # #
Two months later, September (when evacuation was ‘at latest') was rushing in, to the joy and relief of the terminally decimated CDC employees. Except Anna. Not for petty reasons, she had forgiven Winters for her cowardly promotion long ago. Whatever had made her do what she had done had been for the greater good. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it is to eliminate the unwittingly murderous insects. No, Anna wanted to wait until she the cat was out of the bag, or however that axiom went. It had been two months since inoculation day, but still people who were not sick before that day were dying. The inoculation had failed, and there was still no cure.
Besides, she was no the highest ranking CDC employee on site. She had gotten her well-deserved promotion at last and come insect hell or insect water, she would do her job to best of her abilities. Somebody had to maintain order around here, and Anna was up to the task.
Dickie was dead. He had been inoculated just like the rest, but even so, he never showed up for work anymore. It was Dickie would have awarded her the honour of big chief before he left and never returned.
Nobody was safe, things were still as bad as ever. Worse, in fact, since the I-day mass rejections. A massive surge in panicky and badly planned mobility after the announcement had, just what they had been warned about, caused a massive increase in the number of infected. Travelling in the warm wet summer, millions had died worldwide. The infection rate had soared in a way not seen in months. Persistent rumours claimed it was an extermination scheme, that everybody had been gunned down when they tried to pass through the checkpoints where they were to be checked for infection. All these rumours…
What was once cities of great significance and population had been reduced to gigantic dilapidated slaughterhouses, with the only human presence those dead or dying. London, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin... Anna was beginning to accept the adjective ‘apocalyptic'. There were only millions left now, now counting Haven, and many of those alive were infected, and doomed.
With Dickie gone, Anna was all alone at work. But it was not just that Dickie was gone, her CDC branch was down to four people working, each managing several districts. And Anna was the boss now. “Spineless and dependent,” she had thought. No doubt they did not want to shoulder the responsibility. Anna did.
And she slept at work, no longer going back to her flat. She had ran out of DDT, the sonics relied on power, which were out sometimes, as well as the exterior nightmare catchers and there was nobody alive to fix any of these necessities. Besides, small armies of infected people terrorized the streets, rightfully unafraid of insects and perhaps rightfully without inhibitions, but wrongfully without morals and armed with whatever they came across. Outside was dangerous, the threat coming from men and mosquitoes alike. Stories of them infecting healthy people so that they would join them in their end time orgy of destruction and debauchery seemed far too plausible to ignore. Automated defence systems had been shipped down from the North, but how many of them were now in possession of the desperate and dying was uncertain.
Ignoring calls, she half-attentively watched the news. Phoners still reached out across the functioning phone service, searching for a voice, for solace and a friendly voice. She could not deal with them.
A message interrupted the news, covering the screen. It read “pick up the phone, Anna.” She did, and was stumped. Dickie's face. Dickie's voice.
“Anna, its Dickie. Remember? Hello? Anna? Hey!”
“Yes,” she replied, confused.
“I'm – I guess this is going to sound strange either way – I'm in Haven.”
“Oh,” was all she could muster. Him too.
“Yeah, I'm up here with… Listen, I want to ask you something. Confidential.”
Barely audible, Anna automatically murmured an approval.
“I want you to come up here. Things are way, way worse than they are letting you know. And I have asked around, you can bring one person who is discreet, trustworthy and rational.”
“Oh,” again.
“So I thought of you. I want you up here. Please say you'll go.”
“I don't know,” she replied, devoid of emotion.
“Aw, come on. It's a chance to save your life, for Fox's sake!”
“What about work?” Her head felt so strange and so alien that she just could not get a grip.
“Forget about work. You're down on your knees, for crying out loud! There is” – He calmed himself – “There's no point in staying.”
“Why are you telling me this? I would have been happy thinking you died.”
“But I'm not dead! We can be together.”
“Be together?”
“Yeah, you know... Together?”
She stared at the news, her mind somehow wishing the voice came from there, but it was muted.
“Why?” she said.
Pause. “Because I love you.” Very declarative.
“Oh. And what if-”
“I know, I know, you're not sure. But we can work on that. But you need to be here for that!”
“Why don't you come down here? You know where to find me. Hell, you could do some work, we could use another pair of hands around here.”
“There's not going to be a CDC left! Don't you see, everything south of here is dead or dying! And we're speeding up the process. Do you really think they're going to evacuate anybody else? This is our only chance.”
Who were included in our ? She was, if she wanted to be. Us and the dead. Anna looked about the office. It did look like a wasteland. Where more than 300 people had worked there was only 4 left. Nobody could hear her. And she could not hear them.
“So how is it that I can get rescued?”
“I said you were my fiancée. And you could bring data from the retro-viral.”
“Well I'm not, and I transmit that anyway.”
“Be my fiancée, then.”
“Why should I love you?”
“I think I'm the best, most decent man left. That may not say much, but it's something. And I love you.”
Dickie's heavy nervous breathing, thick with anticipation and anxiety. Silence.
“It's not good enough,” she said at last. “It's not good enough, Dickie. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean not anymore?”
“If you ever realise you need somebody that you can rely on, someone who doesn't run to another continent whenever the going gets tough, you should look me up. You know where to find me.”
“Anna, I-“
“Good-bye Dickie. Until you come back, I will continue to think of you as dead.”
She hung up. Dickie wouldn't come back. Nobody in their right mind would leave Haven. And nobody in their right mind would stay down here.
After a few seconds, the whole thing dawned on her, but it was just too much. What about Dickie? Perhaps she had had a thing for him, but never admitted it? Now it was too late. Too late for love, but not too late for hate.
Why had she turned him down? Reasons slithered in her head, fall-of-manning the inevitable conclusion: They had done it. They had done it all, and everybody had fallen for it. Everybody had worked, everybody had done their share and for what? Nothing!
Who orchestrated this? Who were they, who held power, if anybody? Did somebody want everybody to die and what could possibly be gained from that? Domination through extermination? These were all questions much too complicated for Anna to answer. Even if she were to look for answers, she was sure there would not be any to find. It was, as she had said, too late. Just too late.
Was work its own reward? It had to be. That was all there ever had been for Anna, and now… Now it was everything that was ever to be. Alpha Omega. There was no other way.
She would die, they would all die, but until they did, they would work, doing what they could against hopeless odds. What did it matter who the new Herrenvolk would be? They had executed everything perfectly, an orchestrated apocalypse of highest quality.
“Christ! How long? How long do we need to do this? It's endless!” shouted Mori as loud and miserable as he could across the deserted office landscape, every word saturated with despair and a childish surrendering.
Anna dialled Mori, who answered. She looked across distance and desktops. Her reply was calm, comforting and quoting: “Until the end of the summer.”
“It's September! We were supposed to be evacuated. We were supposed to be safe!”
“I know. But we need to continue. We must push on.”
“For how long?”
“Until the end of the summer.”
“Then what?”
“Then we'll all be safe. Then it will all be over.”