A Dark Evolution (Book 2): Deranged (8 page)

Jason glanced at the older man, who continued to ignore them in favor of the night sky. He took the paper and was surprised to see not even half of a printed page. In the upper right corner was a black and white thumbnail of the man from the chest up, wearing a lab coat and spectacles. His name was Dr. Hubert Schwarz, Ph.D.

“Well, that's a little enigmatic, isn’t it?” Jason wondered out loud.

Nolan nodded. “I have a feeling…that this guy could fill more pages than the both of us put together.”

“So we have an entomologist, the ecologist and media extraordinaire,” Jason said with a grin and a flourish toward Nolan, “and a scientist of undisclosed nature.”

“It’s like revenge of the nerds; the world is in their hands!”

Jason laughed. He remembered being teased, sometimes tormented, as a young person for his studious nature. Funny how perceptions changed as an adult. Really, someday, everyone ends up working for the nerds. And maybe that's why they were such tough business people, they had to drag themselves through life amid the bullying of the strong. “And so the weak shall rise,” he murmured.

Nolan, whose hearing was phenomenal, leaned over and responded sharply. “We were never weak, Jason. The strong of mind are always the strong.” It was like he could read his mind. Jason nodded.

Nolan cleared his throat. “So, my estimates are for a worldwide societal collapse within the next six months. Within a year, I predict the last Great War will begin. What are your thoughts?”

“My calendar is more like ten months. Some of it varies based on political response, but yes, within the year, the collapse of our civilization will be well under way.”

“All because of some damn mosquitoes,” Nolan said with a cruel chuckle.

Jason snorted, “That's an interesting way to look at it. If we want to be that simple, we could say it was the spiders those idiots brought back to Florida.”

“Or the ship that carried them,” Nolan continued. “It doesn’t really matter. The ecological collapse has already started.”

“Indeed it has. When the Florida crop dusters association took up the flag for the FBI to try to stop the spread of the infection, they sent hundreds of planes into the air. They were loaded with DDT, imidacloprid, and various out-of-date organophosphates. While the monsters were still just tearing apart the streets and homes of lower Florida, these dusters blanketed everything with pesticides, and I don't believe for a minute that they even tried to reach the proper dilution rate. From the Everglades all the way up into the orange groves, they fogged everything, all to try to eliminate the mosquito population.”

Jason took a breather and sighed. “Spraying for airborne pests is just so -”

“Retarded?” Nolan suggested.

“Don’t say that, that's not cool. It’s stupid. The chances of a liquid particle dispersed into the air hitting a flying insect is one in a billion. The chances of that same droplet hitting the ground, a plant, a tree, guaranteed. It's going to land somewhere, and where it lands it will make an impact. Don’t get me wrong, they knocked down the Florida mosquito population by eighty-seven percent, an incredible feat. But that came at a steep price. Before anyone could react and before any of us could object, the southern states all began this same aerial bombardment of their waterways and swamps, and anywhere with a little bit of humidity.”

“And then it was too late to stop,” Noland said. “People were panicking, several cases popped up in Albuquerque, near the airport, eighteen hundred miles from where it started. I think that's about when Great Britain took notice. I gave a press conference urging them to stop, that the consequences were going to be ghastly, far worse than the disease.”

“I saw it; it was on CNN.”

“But that didn’t stop the panic. People were dumping their old pesticides: chlordane, DDT, aldrin, sodium arsenite, anything that looked and smelled strong, into their ponds and small rivers. I read an article that authorities caught a tanker purposefully purging fuel oil into a lake, all in an attempt to kill off mosquitoes and their larvae.”

“So now the mosquito has survived, though admirably depleted,” Jason said, picking up where Noland stopped. “They will regenerate quickly, as long as there is an avian or mammalian food source. The mosquito is about all that survived though. Almost all ground-dwelling insects have been wiped out in the southern United States, close to ninety percent, and that number will rise and hit one hundred percent by the end of the year. The northern states are still spraying too, but the panic isn't as strong, and we estimate a sixty percent loss of all ground-dwelling insects. No one realizes that it is these insects, bacteria, and earthworms that create the rich soil we need to grow food. No one understands that soil is an endangered resource, that we already do not have enough to feed the planet! Eclipsing the momentous genocide of the land-dwelling insects is the decimation of the pollinators.”

Jason and Nolan both shook their heads.

“Through all the honey bee drama in the early 2000s, I never actually thought it would go down like this. I mean, honey bees are protected creatures, protected and cultivated commercially; there should be no way they could ever slip their mortal coil.”

"Well, they have. The apiaries did everything they could to protect their hives when the spraying started, but they couldn’t change the environment itself. The honey bee is very sensitive to chemicals in their environment, more so than other insects, and that's because they are such social creatures, and they rely on a complex system of communication to survive. One bee tells many others where to find food, how to spot danger, and how to keep the hive safe. That's all stuff many people have heard. What most people don't know is that when pesticides are sprayed on a field, those chemicals are then absorbed through a plant’s roots, which take in moisture from the earth and become a part of the plant itself, staying in its chemical makeup for weeks. Then, our honey bee comes along, lands on the plant, harvests its nectar and pollen and distributes it to the colony. Soon, the chemicals are eating into the brains of the thousands of bees and larvae that shared that meal. They forget their duties, forget where the hive is, forget how to communicate, or just plain die. What it translates to is entire hives just absconding, abandoning their posts, leaving their queen and young behind to starve.”

Nolan nodded. “That’s just with the normal amounts of pesticides, that's what happened in ‘97, and they called it colony collapse disorder, CCD. That’s nothing compared to the wide-scale pesticide bombing the United States saw in just the first month of this zombie outbreak. Now, they’re almost all gone. I heard just yesterday that with the current rate of die-off, the honey bee will be completely obliterated from the United States within a week.”

“And there’s no way to track the wild bees.”

“No. I wish I had hope for our natural pollinators. In nature, field bees and bumble bees provide seventy percent of pollination, far more than the honey bee, and because of their biodiversity which is lacking in the honey bee population, these wild bees should live slightly longer, but I predict that they will only last another month.”

“Then the real fun begins. Then humanity will learn what it is like to live without the bugs that make the soil, and the pollinators that make the plants.”

“The birds are already disappearing. Florida is a wasteland and all over the southern half of the country, the birds are just falling dead from the skies, either poisoned or starving. No bugs, no food for them. Same with the small mammals. They have no seeds or insects to eat, and what they do find is laced with pesticides.”

Nolan made a rolling gesture with his hands, “And for those of us who went to grade school, we now see the food chain effect, or, the circle of life, if you will.”

Jason nodded. “Yep. The ground makes the grass, the animals eat the grass, bigger animals eat those animals, and we humans eat all of it. So, we start poisoning at the very bottom and eliminate the plants and small animals with our pesticides. All that's left are the grains, which are wind pollinated, the large herbivores, which will starve as soon as the clover and grass fields disappear, and the humans.”

“We were already on the brink of a worldwide food crisis, even before this began. We cannot produce enough food to feed our human population. Now this.”

“The collapse will be absolute.”

“We will run out of food.”

“Then the civil war will begin.”

“And then the global war will ensue.”

“Armageddon.”

Nolan sighed, “If the zombies don’t kill us first.”

Robert Copenhaver fired off round after round out of the big pump-action shotgun, pumping the forestock with every fire. Heavy slugs the size of .50 caliber rounds tore through the California air. Still, the plane went on flying, went on dumping its toxic payload into the wind. Robert stood next to his thousands of dead bee colonies, firing into space. His family was there with him, somberly gathering all the honey they could into oversized Mason jars. It was all they had left to do. The bees were all dead, his business was ruined.

“Because of them,” he cried into the air, unleashing a new volley, until the shotgun was finally expended.

“Grandpa, come on. You’re gonna get the cops down here,” his twenty-five-year-old granddaughter said to him with frustration. She was gingerly scraping honey from a comb. Robert let the shotgun drop down to his side and turned away from the plane, which continued its course, uncaring and unaware. He was frustrated with his futility.

“There are no cops, honey. They’re all in the city, trying to clean up the mess those ... zombies are making.” He shook his head in defeat. He was a survivor, he was a provider. He had made it through some of this country’s toughest times - and its best. He always took care of his family though. Always. And now he couldn’t. The planes would continue to spray, despite the EPA and the CDC’s objections, despite the news reports every night warning of the destruction of the nation's ecosystems.

The problem is
, he thought, as he shuffled back to the mass grave that marked his own honey bee holocaust,
that nature just isn’t sexy enough for Americans.
There were zombies, actual zombies, attacking in the streets of L.A. and the Hollywood execs were being torn of out their Maseratis by rioting looters. It was crumbling, this great tower of Babylon, this pyramid of human superiority and civilization. It was bad out there, he knew, and people were scared.

The one thing that separates people from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to think we are more important than the rest of the planet,
Robert mused glumly. Robert pulled the lid off another box of honeycombs and looked sullenly down at the contents. The honey was good, it was perfect, and one hundred years ago, this would be a fortune for his family, but the world has moved on from natural sweeteners, away from honey, away from sugar cane, and onto the chemically engineered no-calorie sweeteners that taste just like the real thing. No one cared about the bees. Even the ones who did care, the ones who paid attention to the ravages of Colony Collapse Disorder in the late nineties, put their own well-being over that of the ecosystem.

It’s simple - human nature is greedy, it’s self-preservation at any and all cost.
In their terror, and their desperation to kill off the animals spreading this disease, people were killing everything else. Robert set down the comb and slowly lowered himself to the ground until he was in a sitting position.

“Dad?” his daughter’s voice asked. She was fifty, and eyed him with the concern of a physician, which she had been for many years. Robert waved her off.

“I’m not having a heart attack, or a stroke. Just give me a minute, hon.” His daughter nodded to him, but continued to watch him suspiciously. Every generation wants the best for its children, without exception. There's never been a generation that has said,
I hope there won't be anything left when we’re gone, I hope it all ends.
Robert was no different. He wanted the very best for his daughter and his grandchildren. Robert didn't have a fancy degree in biological diversity or ecology. However, for six decades he had worked closely with plants, trees, and the insects that pollinated them, and he knew that this was a truly atrocious disaster.
There may not be an agricultural industry left after this,
he thought.
But what would happen without agriculture? The Dark Ages? Medieval times?
What would people do when they started to realize that it is more than the huge almond groves here in California, it's not just oranges in Florida, it will be everything. Every single thing.

Insects are absolutely vital to life on planet earth, and even so, that's not what will make the news. It won't be the annihilation of the biggest group of living creatures of the planet, it will be Walmart and Meijer running out of food. It will be billions around the globe starving to death as the crops die and food disappears. It will be the total breakdown of humanity when they realize that they are all going to die, that our time on this planet is running out.

Robert didn't want to see it. He didn't want to see the world die before his grandchildren and great-grandchildren could grow into adults and experience more of life and love. It was just too damn tragic to think about. Then a glass was held out in front of him. He looked up and saw his daughter holding out a blue ceramic glass to him.

He shook his head, “I'm not thirsty.”

She lowered herself down next to him. “Well I am, and I’m not drinking alone.” She handed him the glass, which held an amber liquid. She had one as well. He sniffed the glass. It smelled like cinnamon and alcohol. He raised a white eyebrow at her.

“Fireball.”

He nodded and sipped the drink, letting the bite of the cinnamon whisky burn in his mouth before swallowing. It was good. “It’s tough for the kids to see you like this, Dad.”

Robert glanced back at his grandkids and their kids trying their best to help. “Sorry. This is just -”

“Overwhelming, I know. And I know Mom always used to be here for you, to take care of you. But we’re here now, you aren’t alone.”

“It’s more than this,” he said, motioning to the hives. “Well, I guess it isn’t. It's all about this. The kids -”

“Dad, I spent ten years between college, grad school and med school classes.”

“I know, I paid for it,” he said gruffly.

His daughter smiled. “I know you did, Dad. Even after I was an adult, you kept taking care of me. You’re a good man.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’m not stupid, Dad. I may not know just how bad this is all going to be when it shakes out, but I know that the world is going to change. That we’re going to have to change with it.”

She looked over and saw that her father's eyes were developing red rims, and tears were forming in them.

“Is it going to be so bad? You’re the one who knows about the bugs.”

Robert took several great, deep breaths, trying to get his emotions in check before speaking. “I don’t know what the end is going to look like, honey, but I know that this is the beginning of it. It's going to be Armageddon. If this kind of die-off is happening around the world, then this is the start of the apocalypse.”

She let out a long sigh. “Don’t tell the little ones.”

“I didn’t even want to say anything to you about it. You have all of your things? To stay?”

“We do,” Mary said. “It was a pain trying to convince all the kids we had to come out here, though. Jane and Elizabeth's husbands had insisted on going into work, said the world would keep turning. They're convinced the army will contain this, that it will blow over.”

Robert let out a discouraged sigh. “I know they believe that. I know they think I’m crazy.”

“The girls don’t though, Dad. They know that you’ve always known best. We won't go home, not to our homes anyway. We’ll hole up here on the farm.”

“There’s plenty of room between the ranch and the bunkhouses. Manuel and his family are staying here as well.”

“I saw them digging postholes.”

“Installing an electric fence. Manuel’s son has a degree in electrical engineering, he said he can juice it up to a near fatal charge, enough to stop the zombies in their tracks.”

“They're not actually zombies you know.”

“I know. They have hearts that beat, and that's why the fence will work. Otherwise, there's just too much land here to defend. It's going to be a compound. We will survive as long as we can out here.”

“Do you think the plague will make it this far, out in the country?”

“Definitely. They cannot contain it. No matter how much they spray, no matter how much fresh water is poisoned, the mosquito will persevere. It’s prehistoric, hon. It was sucking the blood of dinosaurs, it survived the damn ice age, we can't eradicate it. Mosquitoes don't need to be smart, they don't need to communicate, they don't need to build hives to pollinate plants. All they do is suck blood and lay eggs. This genocide of insects will kill everything except the ones they intend too.”

“So how do we stay safe?”

“We’re going to mosquito-net the house and bunkhouse, and anytime you shower, you coat yourself with Deet afterwards. It's not great for your skin, but, well, the alternative isn't great for your life.”

“It will not be easy to keep the kids sequestered.”

“Nothing will be easy anymore.” Robert was starting to calm, his determined, driven nature rising back to the surface again. He still had a job to do, he still had a family to protect.

“And what if the fence isn’t enough to keep them out?”

“You know I have a gun safe in the basement. Besides my shotgun there,” he motioned to the firearm he irresponsibly left in the dirt, “there are another half dozen rifles and shotguns. There’s a muzzleloader and an old .44 revolver too. At least one box of ammo for each.”

"How long will we have to hole up here?”

“Daughter, you just arrived this morning. Don’t start asking if we’re there yet.”

Mary chuckled. “You’re right, I know. And they’re going to come up with a better cure, better than the antiparasitics, I know it.”

“I hope so, because there’s an awful lot on our plates right now. If we can get through the zombie part, we’ll be able to focus on the upcoming food drought.”

“Jackson has a friend in the health department over at Orange County. He’s calling in some favors, and a lot of our savings, to get enough of the ivermectin packs to treat us with.”

Robert nodded, “That's good. Send your son-in-law a message though, we can't neglect Manuel’s family.” Robert knew most whites thought of Mexican laborers as an afterthought, even if they weren't overtly racist.

“Of course, Dad, he already knows.” Mary looked out and watched Manuel’s progress. He and his boys, even his wife and daughter, were working hard, with real determination to get the fence dug.

“We’ll ask the men to go and help when they get back tonight,” his granddaughter Jane said as she walked up to them.

“That’s good, Jane. And Jane, you have to convince your husband to stay when he gets back tonight. Maybe he can convince Mark too.”

Jane was shaking her head sadly. “Jackson is type-A Dad, and his family was dirt poor when he grew up. He isn't just motivated, he’s obsessed. I can't change it, he’s doing it for us.”

Robert turned away, thinking but not saying that if Jackson were killed out there, he wouldn't be doing anything for his family at all.

“Please try honey, please. I want to keep you all here, at Camp Copenhaver.”

Jane chuckled. “Okay Papa, I’ll do my best. Do you think that everything's going to be all right? I mean, when this part is over?”

Robert took her hand. His granddaughter was twenty-five years old, but her hands were smooth, soft, and gentle. They looked so tender and beautiful in contrast to his gnarled old fingers. His knuckles were like walnuts, and the skin that covered his deeply tanned hands was thin and wrinkled like tissue paper stuffed into a bag. Hers were hands that might still hold hope, his were hands that had seen hope come and go.

“Of course, Janey, everything is going to get back to normal soon, I’m sure. We just need to keep everyone safe here in the meantime.”

Jane’s mother, his daughter, kicked back the rest of her drink and fixed her father in her gaze. “All right Dad, enough sitting around, let's get through this honey. Never know when the boys might get home.”

Robert nodded after a hesitation, then pulled himself off the ground. He walked over and retrieved his spent shotgun. He took the handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped down the gun, which was now dusty and gritty. He dusted every surface he could get to with the cloth. “I’ll clean it later,” he said to himself, and set the shotgun on top of his truck’s hood.

*****

Six very long hours passed outside the window before Kala finally relented. The gas was gone and she could not hold her eyes open any longer. They had made it as far as Lake City, and Kala pulled off I-75 cautiously. She was still outside of town and saw immediately that the streetlights were out here as well. “I guess the outages are not limited to southern Florida,” she murmured.

She turned left off the highway and was greeted by a large empty truck stop and a huge brick building.
Perfect,
she thought, it's the county bus garage.
Looks like that will be home for now,
she said again to herself. Dylan was awake next to her.

“Is that a bus garage?”

“Yep. We’re out of fuel and I can’t keep my eyes open. We’re gonna check it out.”

The building was dark. Kala circled carefully, keeping a wary eye out for anything unusual. There was an open garage bay door. She angled the car in, saw no one, and drove into the building. Her heart raced as she eased the door open. Her headlights still shone into the garage, illuminating the four giant bus service stalls. There was a single bus in the garage, but other than that it was empty and quiet. Kala immediately saw the huge gas drums, tapped with hoses. One was dark green, diesel, the other was red. There wouldn't be power of course, but she thought she could figure a way to siphon gas out of the big tank. Perfect. And in the nick of time. Behind her, the car chugged violently, jerked against its suspension, and died. Out of fuel.