Milk 2.0

This is the private journal of

Samuel Clemens

April 16/ 2032- continued.

Fifteen years have passed since the asteroid glanced off our atmosphere, causing the radiation fallout that decimated the male population. After three years of being a sperm slave to Carla and her followers, we're finally free.

Six days ago, twenty of us men were freed from the milking compound by our saviour, Lina Su, and twenty-five other women who held the same believes as her. The belief that men were not slaves or beasts of burden but equal and vital partners if we were to rebuild our world.

We’ve been running for our lives for six days, with Carla and her crazed followers on our tail, trying to get to the place we thought was a myth. The site was known by the biblical name Eden, and most people didn’t believe in its existence. But, Lina knew that Eden did exist as her family were founding members.

Our hunters caught up to us at daybreak today, intent on killing Lina and dragging the rest of us back to slavery, but were surprised by Lina's brother and his team of elite commandos. Carla and her followers were dead within seconds of each other as gunfire rained down on them from the surrounding forest. But before Carla was shot, she'd smashed her gun into Lina's face, cutting her badly and knocking her out.

Still in shock, I watched Lina’s brother, Michael, try to revive her as she lay face down covered in Carla’s blood. He ordered his team to check Carla’s followers for signs of life as he tried to wake his sister.

The fear on Michael’s face was palpable as he turned Lina over and saw her face was a mess and bleeding profusely from the impact of Carla’s gun. A large gash ran from her lips to her left eye, which was swollen shut.

As Lina regained consciousness, she started choking on her own blood, and Michael, looking panicked, called to one of his team, "Linda, help. She's choking."

Linda, who was obviously a medic, ran to Michael and pushed him out of the way as she rolled Lina on her side and cleared her airway.

As I was standing close to them, Linda looked at me while pointing at a large oak tree and said, “You. Go there, beside that tree and bring me the black bag with the green X on it.”

I didn’t move, staring at what was left of Lina’s face, until Linda screamed, “Now! Do it now. I need to stop the bleeding.”

I discovered rather quickly that Linda was much more than a medic; she was a surgeon in the old world. Within about fifteen minutes, she'd stopped the bleeding and stitched Lina's face back together.

Thirty minutes later, Lina, after an injection of a sedative, slept peacefully as we loaded her onto the makeshift stretcher/travois we’d built from tree branches and clothing. Michael and his team checked the rest of us for injuries and ordered us to stay close together as we started out of the forest and down into the valley.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when we exited the cover of the forest canopy at the top of a gently sloping hill and looked down into a beautiful green valley with a clear blue sky overhead. It looked to be about a hundred feet deep and a couple of miles across, covered in lush green foliage and every colour of wildflower you could imagine. There were small stands of trees scattered throughout, close to the banks of a slowly meandering river that ran down the centre of the valley. Looking left and right, I could see about a mile in each direction before the valley gently curved away from sight. Several small herds of grazing animals wandered in each direction as all manner of birds played their flying games while singing to us.

It was the most tranquil and idyllic scene I'd ever seen, and I couldn’t help but think, “This truly is Eden.”

We made our way down to the valley floor and started across the flatland to the river, where we would turn east and follow the river for about ten miles to the village. When we arrived at the river and stopped to rest, we were missing five people. Looking back in the direction we’d come, I could see them in the middle of the grassy area picking wildflowers and berries.

That’s when all hell broke loose. We could hear loud grunting as Michael and two of his team took off running towards our missing members. The grunting was coming from several large male moose that were charging towards the berry pickers.

Being a Canadian boy, I knew something was terribly wrong here. Moose did not travel in herds, especially bulls. They were the least social animals on earth.

But these moose were charging in a pack and were the largest I ever saw. They had to be seven feet tall and weigh close to two thousand pounds. Their antlers looked to be as wide as they were tall, and it sounded like a freight train as they barreled into our panicked friends.

I couldn't turn my eyes away from the carnage I was witnessing. Bodies were thrown into the air or impaled on antlers while others were jumped on and trampled by the herd that killed in a crazed frenzy.

I watched as Michael and his team fired into the herd, dropping four of the animals before the rest scattered up the hill and into the forest.

Then something even crazier happened. Linda, the doctor, and two of her mates ran to the scene carrying medical bags and went directly to the downed moose and injected them with something.

Several of us hurried to our friends, wondering why they weren't being treated for their wounds. When we arrived, it was obvious why, as there was nothing left of them to treat. They were all beaten to an unrecognizable pulp.

Michael took us aside and explained what was happening. They'd shot the moose with tranquillizer darts. He told us that since the bump fifteen years ago, the bull moose has been in constant Rut, or mating season, while the female has not. He was telling us that the human male was not the only male affected by the change. Other large mammals were experiencing changes in their makeup and behaviour.

The hormone level increase that the Bull Moose felt during the normal fall, rutting season was now doubled and never shut off. They were basically in a heightened state of Rut constantly and slowly killing off their own female population. What Linda was injecting was a drug that would reset that hormone clock to normal levels. They'd been doing it for over a year and were starting to see the moose population returning to normal. But there were several groups of these animals that were still rampaging.

****

April 17/ 2032

We decided to set up camp beside the river last night. By the time we’d cleaned up and buried our friends, the energy was sucked out of us. We were all on edge and in a sombre mood when we set out this morning.

Because of the rest stop, Lina improved a lot overnight and is walking on her own now. She called us all together this morning and ensured us that everything would be okay, we just had another four hours, and we would be at our new home.

Before breaking camp, the extra guns that Michael and his team were carrying were given to those who had military or hunting experience. There were now twelve of us, spread throughout the group carrying weapons, and because of what happened yesterday, nobody strayed more than a few feet from them.

Nobody wanted to stop for any more breaks, so we made it to where the village was supposed to be in a little over three hours. When we stopped, and Lina said, "Where here. Welcome to your new home," we looked at her, confused. There was nothing here but the river behind us and a forest so dense we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us.

Michael smiled at us before turning to face the forest, and that's when the magic happened. He cupped his hands to his mouth and made three loud sounds that sounded exactly like the call of the loon. He waited about a minute, and then the same call came back to us from the forest. Michael did the same thing again, except this time he did five calls.

He stepped back and held his sister close to his shoulder for several seconds before we heard several clacking sounds followed by a loud whirring sound.

We watched in astonishment as, about twenty feet in, a part of the forest pulled back away from us and slid to the left. The opening was about ten feet wide and ten feet tall, revealing a long tunnel that went uphill to a light that looked like sunlight. Following Lina and Michael, we climbed the hill as the opening closed behind us.

As we got close to the end of the tunnel, I could hear something that brought tears to my eyes; it was the sound of children playing and laughing.

The slope flattened out at the end of the tunnel, and we came out into a village teeming with life. It was an incredible sight. The forest had been cleared for several acres leaving the village completely hidden from the outside world. The only way it could be seen was from directly overhead, which was highly unlikely as the only form of air travel still used was hot air balloons that would never fly this far north.

The area seemed to hold somewhere between seventy to one hundred small log cabins, each with its own vegetable and livestock garden. As I looked around, I could see happy couples, male and female, working the gardens and tending to the livestock. To my right, several hundred feet away, I could see where the sound of the children was coming from. It was a school, and the children were playing in the playground beside it. There were at least fifty of them, and I smiled as I realized they were equally male and female, or at least very close to equal.

Several women approached and hugged Lina as we arrived. They were women from other compounds that had escaped and arrived here before us.

There were a lot of people around us, but they cleared a path when an elderly woman approached wearing a large heart-shaped locket around her neck. Lina smiled when she saw the woman but started to cry when she saw the locket. The old woman hugged Lina before removing the locket and putting it around her neck. She didn't know until that moment that her father had died and his ashes were in that locket.

Everybody started to wander around meeting people, but I felt drawn to the playing children and walked in their direction.

As I got to the building before the school, I started to feel uneasy. The sound coming from the building was too close to the sound that lived in my nightmares. I could see a door on the side of the building with a sign on it and a red light blinking above it. The sun was bright, and I couldn't see what the sign said, so I decided to get closer.

As I approached the door, it flung open, and a young boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen, came out holding his groin and crying in pain. The door was spring-loaded and closed behind him.

As the door closed, I could see the sign, and everything around me went black.

It read, “Keep door closed during Milking.”

This is part two of the story, Milk, Part three is linked here.

Part one is linked here.