Good bye and God bless
If you are reading this, then I'm dead, and you probably know more than I do. Than any of us do. Or did. Course that's not saying much, we don't even know where it started, or how, or why. Maybe somewhere a suave British secret agent was fighting a bald super-villain in a climactic chess game of death. And if the secret agent beat the super-villain, the world would be saved. Only problem was, he lost, and the nerve gas that would turn everyone into monsters got released. Egypt went first. Maybe it was some sort of Nazi secret weapon that only got released sixty years later. Rommel was in Africa after all, people forget that. Only problem is that it infects Aryan and Jew and queer and black just the same. The televangelists, they all say it's the Rapture, that we should spend our final days in psalm. Spend our final days in peace and harmony for once in Earth's history. Be better than the stuff I saw. There's a period between hope and hopelessness. So long as there's hope, society is fine. The doctors will come up with a cure so what's there to worry about? If the doctors can't find the cure, then we got the military to protect us. The military will protect us, even when we see city after city fall on our big screen television in high definition. Hear the screams on surround sound speakers. Once you're hopeless, everything is fine. Hey, you're going to die? Why bother with anything. Just lie down, somewhere quiet and wait for the end. You don't even feel like looting, I mean, what's the point? It's that time between hope and hopeless, that's hell. When you're hopeless enough that you'll try anything, but still have that very lively greed. And lust. And you loot. And you rape. And you do some things that you shouldn't, that you thought you never would.
Like you don't know, it started in Egypt. Maybe a Pharos' curse. I don't know. I wish I had some answer. Maybe when the movie is made about this, it'll start with some German scientist examining a body. He'll be handsome, blonde hair and blue eyes. For some reason, he's got a perfect body, the kind you can't get from spending all your life in a lab. His hair will be neatly cut and his smile will be easy. He'll run a sample on some blood and he'll say to his colleague, "this is what causes it. It's a strand of rabies (or AIDS, or Swine-flu, or something)." Then the body, strapped down so tight there's no way it could ever get loose, gets loose. It kills the pretty boy, who the audience though would be the hero, in the opening moments. Just like in Scream or Psycho. But the movie won't be a slasher film, it'll be about survival. The next scene will be someone like me: an average Joe, but he'll somehow have a washboard stomach and perfect white teeth. Someone like Brad Pitt, that heartthrob who can still do the grungy stuff. It'll be him with his kids, he'll be divorced of course, and he'll casually walk through his house, missing every report on the television or the radio. And he'll wake up the next day in the midst of an apocalypse.
That's how it started with me. I was working nine to five and five to one, but things were starting to look good. Say what you like about the economy, but all those houses that are foreclosed, lets me snatch one up with the money that was left to me after the divorce. A nice house, ranch style. One I could have raised my kids in. Rudy and Jessica. I didn't have them when this started. They were gone with my Ex. Judge said I could see them when I proved myself as a fit parent. That's what he said. Fit parent. Twelve years of my life, I work in that grind so the bitch can have her fancy dinner parties. So the kids can have Furby and Blackberries and I-pods.
God, I would give anything to see them one last time.
I saw the news reports. It was a five second blip between a Hollywood tough guy who punched out paparazzi, and a commentary on how the economy is going to affect your Christmas shopping. A brief little blip that said (I remember it like it was yesterday mind you) "new form of rabies discovered in Africa". That was it. That was all it got. Seven words. 0:00:02:67. That was how much time.
That was all I thought of it. I was in bed, watching the morning news. I woke up Rudy and Jessica. We were going to Six Flags. My ex-wife, Rebecca, what we worked out was that I got the kids two weekends a month, so in the end I guess she wasn't a totally heartless bitch. If I could prove that I was a fit parent, the courts would take it back under consideration; maybe give me the whole summer. That's why I got the house. That's why I was pulling two jobs. Things were starting to look pretty good. Sure, some new virus had been discovered. Whoop-di-fucking –do. New shit is being discovered every day. This week, they say that tomatoes are poison so everyone eats carrots. The next, a problem in cows causes milk to sour immediately, and the stock of goat's milk goes through the roof. I spent that day with my kids, and you want to know something? If the world came to an end that day, I would have been fine.
But it didn't. I went back the grind, unloading trucks for Wal-mart and working a cash register at Target's graveyard shift. The next two days, the reports got more insistent. They were calling it rabies, and I can understand why. They were saying now, if you got bit, you suffered growing pain, fever, chills, coma, death, all in the span of about a week. Well, not quite death. You're heart stopped, but you kept right on tugging. All I could think was, is this a joke. Some idiot reads War of the Worlds on the radio and everyone thinks that it really happened. This had to be the same thing right? No one was using the "z-word" then, but it's all anyone could think. In retrospect, quarantine could have stopped it. Quarantine could have stopped AIDS. But no one ever thinks of it. And even if they do, there some liberal housewife bitch with too much time and not enough sense. They'll start protests, "Infected People are People Too." Government sends all them off to some island prison, and the shit storm whips up that will last for years. Course they do nothing and, well, this. People love liberty; they love freedom, so long as they are safe. And they may claim that they are willing to die for freedom, but when you've seen what I've seen. Well, you have seen what I saw, if you are reading this.
I can only imagine how it got across the sea, but it did. It started in Egypt. And it spread like a fire in a Texan draught. There were new reports. A lot of news reports in fact. In the span of a week it happened, the rule of seven. Day one: a five second plug. Day four: a half hour report, once everyone started looking past the berserker behavior of the victims. Once they started pronouncing people dead and a moment later they sat back up. Then breaking news! But no reason to worry yet. It was across the sea, the EU could take care of it. No reason to worry, when we got business of our own to take care of, the War on Terror, new president in the office. We saw the reports on the news, in glorious high definition and our surround sound speakers. Some brave reporter just inside a barricade, shouting and screaming over the sound of moans and gunshots. Screaming her head off, giving a detailed description about how it felt to get a chunk ripped right out of your hand, then holding the wound up to the camera so no one could say she was faking. She had to know she was going to die, but a posthumous award must be pretty appealing.
Like I said, like you know, it started in Egypt, and it crawled right up to the north and moved right on down to the south. And to the east and west and every direction in between. What do people do when there's a fire? They run away from it. What would you do if you saw a rabid dog? You would run away from it. And if there was a rabid dog roaming around in your home, you would go stay with your relatives until the dog left. And if you were bitten, you would go to the hospital, and they would send you off to some distant land. After all, this was an emergency, you get sent to the best hospitals in Bellevue. Or maybe you don't tell anyone. You hide the wound on your ankle, said you tripped, assure your friends and family it's nothing. You say it was a stray dog and not some stranger stumbling along the street. Or maybe it was a stray dog, who knows? So you, with your arm throbbing but you telling yourself that it couldn't possibly happen to you, you go to stay with your parents or your friend or your college buddy who you hadn't spoken to in years while this whole thing blows over. You wait until it's discovered that this isn't a new form of rabies. Turns out its nothing. Then before your fever gets too high to hide and your heart stops, you share a soda with someone without even thinking, because you're so sure that it can't happen to you.
Of course, that's just my theory. When the movie comes out, they will explain everything. They'll cast someone pathetic, yet sympathetic, as Patient Zero. Maybe Kevin Spacey, someone who looks sad and sick, someone you'll hate for what he caused, but you'll realize that he's feeling all the pain he's caused. He'll be an entrepreneur in Egypt, a businessman, an American since we love to see themselves on screen and everyone else loves to blame us for everything. Satisfy the domestic and the foreign market with one casting call. You'll see him get bitten by an ape or a bat or a rat, a little nick a bit above the wrist. Or he'll get cursed by a gypsy. You'll see him get worse and worse. His eyes will start to sink in. His skin will grow pale and slick with sweat. You'll see him start to look at a little girl like a Big Mac. And you'll feel his sense of horror. Maybe a suicide scene when he swallows the muzzle of a pistol, but can't pull the trigger. Make him more human, that little bit of weakness, or strength, depending on how you look at it. Then he'll tear apart a mall, biting and scratching. He'll be put down, but the infection will have already started its spread, before anyone knows what's happening.
It was a week after that a news report broke in during the Simpsons. A case of the infection had come in. Report in New York. I was living in White Plains. It's kind of like a mini-New York, about a half an hour from the city. Lot of new market, lot of the people who'd lived there all their life were leaving, getting pushed out. All the yuppies who work in the cities but don't want to live in the city, they live in White Plains. And they make White Plains into the city, and then they move farther. Like a plague.
The Infected. They're like cockroaches. When you see one, there's at least a dozen more. See, that's the problem, one guy comes running from the plague on a ship. By the time he touches down, he is bad, close to oblivion. He's the one that gets reported. He dies probably on the dock and takes a chunk out of a few people before someone grabs a plank and brains him. Those guys that got bit, they know what's going to happen; cause by now the government is starting to quarantine. Maybe a few of them understand that their life is over and they wait patiently, but at least one runs away. Understand, that's how easy it can spread. One person. One person bites one person, so you have two infected. Two infected bite one person each and you got four. Four to eight. Eight to sixteen. How long would it take for the whole world to get bit? Do the math, it's not as long as you might think.
I still can't believe just how fast it all came down. Like Troy, from the inside, it just all crumbled. I mean, you would think there would be something in place. I guess there is...was. I mean, sure, Katrina took us by surprise, but if everyone could get off that Bush hating band wagon, he did some good. People died, but people lived. Lot of people lived. And all those hippies who screamed he should have done more, I didn't see them volunteering for the Red Cross. I didn't see them offering up any plans or funds or time. But something like this, how do you prepare for this? A flood, not of water, but of people. Snarling, biting, and snapping their diseased teeth. They'll get through every barricade you set up, 'cause they have all the time and the patience in the world. They'll overpower every guard. How do you fight that? Well, if you're alive, you probably figured it out.
Like I said, it didn't start here, and it didn't end here. Last time I saw the news, some of the islands: Cuba, Australia, they were still fine. They had the right idea: closed their ports, closed their borders. Japan got hit hard. Not quick enough to lower the curtain, and the way that place is populated, the Infected had a buffet. I saw some of the videos from there. You can make your own conclusions. I'm putting a tape in the time capsule; hopefully you'll be able to watch it. I would love to include a VHS player too, but I couldn't find one working. I hope this tape makes it through.
The whole thing just fell apart, you know? Just, all of a sudden, one day everything is fine. Everyone is in a state of dumb bliss, we all think that it can't possibly be this bad, or if it is, we'll be fine. And if it's not, humanity will be fine. Humanity survives everything. We are the cockroaches. No matter what Mother Nature or the Almighty Father wants to throw at us on a whim, we'll survive. Overcome. Prosper. All I can think of is Rudy and Jessica, six more days and we can go to Burger King and see the new Tom Cruise movie.
Thing is, we're not surviving. We're not overcoming. We can't prosper in a world that can't support us. It's not just humans. It's anything, any meat. The grazing animals, they went first. Fucking cows are too stupid to run. And the fucking deer. Then the predators, too starved to run away. Then us. Top of the food chain doesn't do much good when you're the only thing on the food chain.
I think, if somehow humanity does make it through, the movie will end on a high note. Something magical that really leaves you with a certain "we can do this" attitude. Like Titanic. All those deaths, all those tragedies, but Winslet makes it through and is a better person for it. One of the survivors will be a pregnant woman. Or she'll be a virgin, the choir girl stock character, and the first half will be building a love with the tough guy, breaking through his armor to the soft, vulnerable little bitch inside. He'll die after that one, sweet night, defending her, blowing himself up to take out a horde. Then, nine months later, out pops Tough Guy Jr. And the movie closes with her, and her son, walking into the sun set. Satisfying, but leaves room for a sequel if box office is good enough.
Maybe the movie will be based on this. Someone will find it and read it and like it, and decide to make it. That would be nice. I'm dead you see, but I would really like to live forever. I feel like I should say something inspiring, loving that leaves you with a chipper tone even though I'm dead and that just sucks. You know it, but I want to give you something, since I can't do anything more. I can't play the father, or hold your hand through this dark time. But I can give you these words, all I have left:
You are special. You are a wonderful person, and you should not have live through this nightmare. You should not have to suffer in this world. No one should have to. Even the man who started this, if indeed it is a man and not a god or nature, I forgive him, and I just hope that he has peace. All I can hope is that what waits beyond is a merciful judge. I have done things, I will do things, but I do think that I've earned that much, for lasting this long. I've walked as far as I can in every direction, until my feet bleed, and all I've found were camps picked apart by raiders or crushed under a wave of death. I've seen hospitals full of assisted suicides. I've seen the last stands of humanity, shopping malls that must have boasted climactic battles, left to crumble. Or bodies that just collapsed. The people just gave up and lay down, waiting for something to come to finish them off. I've tried so long to find that fabled Fiddler's Green, where humanity has a foothold and is rebuilding. But I'm tired, and I just want it to end. I do think that I should be forgiven for this last selfish act, I really do. Haven't I? Haven't I earned a little peace? I'm going to die, and I really don't want to be eaten.
If you are reading this, I hope that you are stronger than I am. I hope that you can survive, that you can overcome, and that you can prosper, because I couldn't, and the world needs you now more than ever. I hope that somehow these little slips of paper can help you. Or if you are reading this as the new dominant species on the planet, if the threat of the dead has long past and you've never heard that moaning whisper over the horizon, I hope to god that you never do. Enjoy this time while you can, because you just aren't sure when everything will crumble to dust.
These are my last words, my final offering to you. Good bye and God bless.