Generation of vipers fir.., p.16
Generation of Vipers (First Contact), page 16
“Do you think she’d mind?”
Jimmy shakes his head. Okay, so he has a clear notion of his mother’s kindness. Whether he’s right or not is impossible to tell, but he thinks his Mom would give Kath some of her clothes. Most women would. Most of them would understand the embarrassment of being caught topless in public—not that men don’t do the same thing all the time without anyone second-guessing them. Even for those women that like to push the boundaries of modesty, being accidentally exposed is very different from making a deliberate statement.
Jimmy looks up at Kath, watching her every move. He needs a strong, confident adult. With his father lying dead behind him, he needs a surrogate to help him through the pain of the moment. Regardless of what may come, Kath is determined to be there for him.
Kath pulls one of the suitcases onto the bed and pops it open. She rummages around, using the light on the smartphone to sort between skirts and dresses.
“Ah,” she says, pulling out a t-shirt and shorts. “Mom likes going to the gym, doesn’t she?”
Jimmy nods.
Kath’s comment might have sounded casual, but it’s calculated. She’s going to talk about his mom a lot over the coming hours to help Jimmy keep his mind off his dead dad.
“Your mom is about my size. Perfect.”
Kath slips on some shorts. They’re baggy so she pulls the drawstring to tighten them. To slip on the white shirt with a red Nike symbol, she has to bite on her makeshift mask, keeping it in place. Kath holds her singlet with her teeth as she pulls the shirt over her head. Then she tightens her mask again. The chances are she hasn’t stirred up anything from within the bag, but the act of dumping the case on the bed probably caused an invisible dust plume of sorts. Hopefully, the pathogen isn’t airborne for hours. Given the air conditioning hasn’t been running since the power failed, this extraterrestrial bug or whatever it is probably didn’t make it this far within the room as the air is so still.
Kath checks the size of a pair of tennis shoes, holding them up against her feet.
“Your mom and I have the same size feet. I bet your mom is pretty cool.”
Again, Jimmy nods. Kath pulls on some socks and then the shoes, all the while working with her stubby fingers inside plastic bags.
“That’s better. Much better,” she says.
A pair of reading glasses have been tossed on the table. Kath tries them on. The prescription is stronger than hers, but they allow her to read small-print. She won’t be able to wear these for long without straining her eyes, but if she needs to read any fine print, they’ll be invaluable. She slips them into her pocket.
Kath opens a bag of toiletries, dumping them on the bed beside her. There are a pair of nail clippers. That’s the closest she’s going to get to scissors in the hotel. She slips them into her other pocket, knowing they’ll come useful at some point.
A bunch of pillboxes and elongated cardboard drug packets scatter on the duvet alongside a hairbrush. The Watsons must have been in the midst of packing as the toothbrushes and toothpaste are still in the bathroom. There’s a shaving mirror in the bag, though. One side is convex, giving her a rather intimate view of her eyebrows in the dull light. She turns it over and the other side is a regular mirror.
“This could come in handy for signaling a helicopter,” she says, putting it to one side.
Kath puts anything useful on the table beside the backpack.
“Looks like Mom enjoyed a bit of glam,” she says, picking up several different types of nail polish along with a plastic bottle of nail polish remover. “They’re not going to let these things on a plane. You guys must have driven here, huh? Where are you from? Texas? Oklahoma? New Mexico?”
Kath sorts through the pills, mumbling, “Ah, God bless America and our love of prescription drugs!”
She squints to make out the labels, using the glasses to read the instructions and ingredients. She sorts through the pills and picks out packets that are of interest to her.
Kath pops a couple of ibuprofen out of their blister packs and slips them under her mask. She crunches on the tablets rather than trying to swallow them without water. They taste horrible, but she’s aware she may get a placebo kick out of that—the worse a medicine tastes, the better it performs in trials, regardless of actual efficacy. She needs to get rid of her pounding hangover so she can think straight.
There’s glucophage and levothyroxine. According to the labels, they’re used to treat diabetes and thyroid disease, but there are no custom labels stuck on the bottles—no indication about who they’re for.
“These are some strong drugs,” Kath says, confused as to why Jimmy’s mom would leave these behind. Perhaps the family was downstairs when the evacuation was called. Maybe they were already packed, ready to leave the next day. The evacuation was announced and everyone crammed into the lobby. Dad headed back to the room for his medication. Mom took their daughter with her to the evac point. From there, things must have become chaotic for him to have died here, stranding Jimmy in the room. In typical fashion, some evac coordinator probably told her they were on the next bus or something.
“Do you take any of these?”
Jimmy shakes his head.
Kath keeps reading the labels. Something about these pills isn’t quite right. She turns them over in her hand and then it strikes her.
“Is your mom a doctor?”
Jimmy nods.
That explains the lack of personalized labels. Self-medicating is never advisable, but cutting corners to save a few bucks isn’t a crime. She must know someone in the dispensary.
There’s warfarin as well as a few other non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. Jimmy’s dad was overweight. Perhaps he had a heart condition.
Child-proof plastic medicine bottles are difficult for Kath to open with her mangled hands. She dumps the pills she doesn’t want on the duvet and keeps the empty plastic pill bottles. They’re small and could come in handy.
Kath pockets a packet of Tylenol and turns her attention to the backpack.
She finds an open packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She keeps them out of sight in the bag. She doesn’t want to ask Jimmy if his dad smoked. Finding them is confirmation enough. Jimmy needs to be thinking about his mom, not his dad. With some sleight of hand, she pockets the lighter. If dad smoked and had a heart condition, that might have contributed to his demise—along with whatever the hell is in the air.
It takes her a few seconds to poke around with the flashlight in one hand before she spots a wallet beneath a beach towel and a bottle of sun cream. So they weren’t here for the conference. It seems they spent their time down by the swimming pool. To be fair, the outdoor pool at The Fossil is impressive. The term ‘pool’ is an understatement. Although it’s on the roof of the entrance and sprawls out over the hotel’s shopping precinct, the pool area has been landscaped to look like an oasis. There are fake fossils of various dinosaurs placed around a vast, sandy beach leading down into the crystal clear waters of the pool. Palm trees provide shade. There are slides for the kids and lifeguards to let Mom and Dad relax—if only a little.
Kath rummages through the wallet. She finds a driver’s license for Arizona. There’s a date of birth.
“Yes,” she mutters. Kath writes it down on a pad of paper provided with the room. She swipes up on the phone, wanting to unlock it. The keypad comes up.
Enter Passcode
“Okay, Phil,” Kath says. “Come on. Don’t let me down.”
Six potential digits come up as blank spots on the phone. She enters his date of birth using month, day, and two digits for the year.
The phone opens.
“All right!” she says a little too loud and with too much enthusiasm for Jimmy. He shrinks back. “It’s okay. This is good. Well, it’s not good from a security best-practices perspective, but it’s good for us. Your Dad was predictable—in a good way. Hmm, we still don’t have any signal, but we can record things. We can show others what we’ve seen.”
Kath holds up a scrap of paper with the date of birth, showing it to Jimmy. “This is really good.”
It takes a bit of effort, but she tucks the paper into the back of the phone case, saying, “Regardless of what happens, anyone that picks up this phone will be able to learn about what happened here.”
The significance of unlocking the phone is lost on Jimmy, but for Kath, it’s a point of professional pride. She activates the video and pans around the room with the phone light on, catching Jimmy and returning to herself, speaking as she films.
“This is Dr. Kathleen Mackenzie. I found Jimmy Watson in the hallway and retrieved his father’s phone from room 2217. We’re going to collect supplies and make our way to the roof to signal for help. I’ll document what we find along the way.
“At this point, I have no idea what’s happening, but as you can see from my face covering, I’m concerned about airborne contaminants. I’ve observed what could be microbial mats or fungal growth around the face of dead creatures. This appears to be limited to the eyes, nose, and mouth. I have no way of knowing if there’s a causal morbidity link or if this is simply some kind of correlation post-mortem. I’ll continue making observations for as long as I can.”
Kath pushes the stop button. There’s a sense of resignation in the motion of her hand. The words ‘for as long as I can’ resonate in her mind. Someone’s going to find this phone. Eventually. They’re going to see the passcode. They’ll charge the battery, unlock the phone and watch the various videos she records over the next few hours. For them, the videos will be a record of what unfolded within the abandoned hotel. Hopefully, the contents of the video will help them piece together what has happened in Houston, but she’ll be dead. There’s an awful sense of contradiction in the act of pushing the phone into her pocket. That particular moment feels both bitter and triumphant. For now, she’s alive. She’s captured her reasoning and thinking for others to see, but she knows it’ll be watched in memoriam. Anyone that reviews her videos will do so with a tinge of regret. For her, though, this is a win. She’s made progress.
A few minutes ago, she was functionally helpless and naked. Now she has resources—possibilities. To those that inhabit the future, though, seeing her recording will be a tragic testimony of loss.
Generation of Vipers
Greenspoint is fifteen miles north of Houston. Several freeways converge there, forming a beltway on the outskirts of the city.
The streets around the freeway are blocked with traffic fleeing for the countryside, but there’s nowhere to go. The freeways are jammed. State police try diverting northbound traffic onto the southbound lanes, but that causes even more confusion with a crash further along the freeway. Emergency vehicles are brought to a standstill by the gridlock. Their blue and red lights are ignored by those fleeing the carnage in Houston.
Andy is on foot. The buses sent to evacuate the hotel have been caught like icebergs in pack ice. It only takes a handful of fender benders to bring the freeway to a grinding halt. Most of the passengers have stayed on or near the bus as it sits idling on the side of the freeway with its a/c running, burning through its diesel for nothing more than comfort. Fuck that shit. It’s the end of the goddamn world, but god forbid anyone should get sweaty.
Andy’s angry.
“Sheeple,” he mutters, hauling his backpack high on his shoulder as he walks along the edge of the freeway. As much as he may try to rationalize his behavior, he knows his efforts are futile. Walking is no substitute for driving. Even if the cars and trucks around him are only edging forward a few feet every couple of minutes, they’ll still outpace him once the accidents are cleared. He might walk a hundred yards for their ten, but they’ll race away when the road opens back up. Even so, he’s restless. He needs to walk. Watching one boot after another crunch on the loose gravel at the side of the road helps clear his mind.
“The apocalypse has come and all we care about is the dumb shit we bought online,” he mumbles, seeing an SUV with junk piled up in the back. Fishing rods and rolled-up yoga mats are visible through the windows. They’ve been shoved hard against the glass by sleeping bags and tents pushed in behind them.
Even when the camera isn’t rolling, Andy provides commentary. This footage isn’t going to be broadcast anywhere beyond his own skull, but he can’t help himself. Talking is thinking out loud.
“Look! Some genius has decided he can bug out with his camping gear and save his family that way. Oh, like no one else has thought of that! He’s in for a shock when everyone descends on whatever shit hole fishing spot he thinks is safe and secluded.
“Surviving off-grid is a fucking myth. Have you ever noticed how dependent those living off the grid are on all the shit we build on the grid? They’re idiots! The only people they’re fooling are themselves.”
He walks on, talking to himself, much to the amusement of those sitting in their cars. Andy kicks at the loose stones on the shoulder of the freeway. He might not be going anywhere fast, but he’s going somewhere. Those chumps in their cars are like lemmings lined up for the cliff.
“Anyone living in the suburbs is kidding themselves if they think they can just bug out and live off the land. Humans are too damn soft. We’ve domesticated ourselves. Hell, when the polar vortex hit Texas last year, it was those living off-grid that suffered the most. So much for survivalists. Me? I think there’s all our plans and preparation and training and tough talk—and then there’s the bitter fucking reality of screwing around in the woods.”
Andy leans forward, working his backpack higher.
“We’re all carrying too much shit,” he says, regretting not taking his own advice and traveling light. He’s carrying broadcast equipment, charged battery packs, cameras, and a portable data uplink router. He used this kit to perform a couple of YouTube shows on the drive down from DC.
He stumbles along the offramp, grabbing at the straps going over his shoulders.
“My Precious!”
As humorous as his mimicry of Gollum might be, it’s not as far from the truth as he’d like.
Andy’s resigned to being stuck in Houston.
“Hope is a disease. Hope blinds people to reality,” he mumbles as his mind rambles idly through various concepts. It’ll take everyone else far too long to realize they’re not going anywhere. And by then, it’ll be too late. They’ll be out of fuel and at the back of the line for whatever evacuation the military eventually organizes. Not Andy. He can see what’s coming. Any time people move en masse, it’s always a cluster fuck. Always. The trick is not getting fucked by the chaos.
Weeds brush against his jeans. The flattened, almost mummified remains of a dead raccoon lie beneath the guardrail. Its leathery skin and crushed skull are a somber reminder of the fleeting nature of life.
Army helicopters fly low overhead, ferrying in supplies from Houston’s George W. Bush International Airport. It’s a civilian airport. It’s just a few minutes away by car—if any of them could fucking move! Someone’s decided to set up a command center in Greenspoint. As it’s on the outskirts of Houston, it makes sense in terms of logistics.
Andy mumbles, “Bullets and bombs might win battles, but it’s logistics that wins wars.”
From the vantage point of the raised freeway, Andy saw several rows of khaki-colored tents set up in a mall parking lot. Helicopters land on the football field of a high school opposite the mall. The strip of road in between is clear of vehicles. That’s got to be the only road within fifty miles that’s not clogged with cars. It doesn’t take a genius to realize this place has become a military staging post. Civilians might be fleeing north. The army is about to head south.
Andy walks past a young couple in a convertible. They’ve got the top down, but not because of the unseasonably warm weather. Like everyone else, their backseat is packed with boxes and suitcases. They couldn’t close the roof if they tried.
“Hey,” the woman calls out. “Are you with the media?”
It’s the tripod strapped to the side of his pack that gives it away. He nods. Technically, Andy’s a YouTuber. He’s not with the news, but he’s media, in his mind at least.
“Have you seen them?”
Andy comes to a halt. He shouldn’t. He should keep going and make contact with the military. Andy’s got his eye on those empty helicopters returning to the airport for more goods. If he can weasel his way onboard one of those, he might be able to wrangle a flight out of Houston. Pride gets the better of him. Bragging will give him a dopamine hit and that’ll make the pack seem a little lighter.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “I’ve seen them.”
“So they’re real?” the guy says. “This isn’t some kind of dumb stunt? You know, like a conspiracy theory?”
The woman says, “I heard it was a joke.”
“And yet you’re here—sitting in traffic,” Andy says.
“I heard they could fly,” she says.
Andy sighs. Something he’s struggled to explain to the likes of Dr. Kathleen Mackenzie and Brigadier General Nolan Landis is the fine line between misinformation and disinformation. Oh, the definitions are simple enough. Misinformation is mistaken—it’s right there in the word itself. To his mind, disinformation is deliberate. It’s cause and effect. They’re both information, though, and that’s the problem. Humans are information processing machines. Garbage in, garbage out. Someone is targeted with disinformation and they enthusiastically disseminate misinformation. The real issue is intent. Disinformation is malicious. There’s a determined effort to mislead. Misinformation is inadvertent. It’s ill-informed but well-meaning, and that’s what makes it so damn hard to counter. If someone lies to his face, Andy has no problem calling them a fucking asshole. If someone’s sincere but misled, it’s almost impossible to convince them otherwise. Pride demands they latch on to their misinformation and they burrow into his skin like a tick on a hot summer’s day, refusing to relent. He’s got to deflect before these guys become entrenched in their position.
