Surviving a pandemic

It began with a simple virus, one that we thought had been accidentally created, or mutated from nature. The virus mutated 10 times in 3 years, outstripping our vaccines that we thought would defeat it.

By 2022, we discovered it was manufactured in a lab, intentionally created in order to destroy us, from a foreign adversary that we thought was our ally. It had slipped out through their doors by one of our spies and the vial of it broke out onto the street. Our ally became the first victims of a pandemic we had never seen before.

By 2024, four billion people had died. Stores, businesses, manufacturing, all had ground to a stand-still. People starved, froze, died of heat exhaustion.. Global warming took a huge bite out of us, and when Hurricanes and Earthquakes hit, there were even more deaths because the civil servants that used to be there to help were now dead or too afraid for their lives or their families to come to work and be around others.

By 2026, the population had only grown by 1,000, and the world-wide population was down to a mere billion. Compared to almost nine billion when we started? It was a catastrophe that none ever anticipated. The ones who were NOT infected were rounded up and taken underground. The virus mutated even more and began to affect plants and animals. The world was turning into a desert, nuclear winter began to set in because power plants exploded due to lack of maintenance.. We hid underground for our own protection.

It’s 2029, 10 years since the virus escaped, and the world is a virtual desert in the middle and a snowy glacier to the north and the south. Almost all the animals are dead, so too is the plant life, and we can’t even walk outside without wearing what used to be called a “Hazmat suit”.

I just nick named them space suits, like I used to see astronauts wearing when they left the Earth.

About 5 years before the virus struck the planet, my parents bought a missile silo out in a state called North Dakota in what was the United States. They were what was known as dooms day preppers, and believed that either by our own doing, or an invasion of some sort, that eventually society would come to an end. My father excavated tunnels and then entire caverns where he positioned solar inducing lights in the ceiling to emulate sunlight. I was told topside (on the ground) there were solar panels to help power these lights, and also the air filtration systems. I was born in 2015, 4 years before the virus got loose. I don’t remember what topside looked like, or smelled like, I only know and remember what is down here.

My father went topside in2025 when I was 10, his suit ripped and he was exposed to the virus. He refused to come back down to my mother and I because he was terrified we were going to become sick. My father had a huge extensive library, where he taught me math, science, history.. On the property there were 8 silo’s that had been decommissioned by the government, and one silo alone was dedicated to our home area. Sleeping quarters, library, kitchen, exercise, living room. A second silo was dedicated to agriculture. The silos were 8 stories tall, by my fathers’ measurements, and each story consisted of a different specialty. First level was cows, sheep and horses. The second level was chicken, and feed, the third was for seeds, the 4th was for bees to pollinate the flowers to make the foods. My father dug tunnels from the 4th level to the caverns where we rotated crops to animals and back one year to the next to keep the soil fertile and help keep the plants growing. This was essential for food, air, water purification.. The whole nine yards. My father was working on a 5th cavern before he died. My mom was a computer engineer, she didn’t have the same strength as my father did. Even though the silos were decommissioned, my mother still found some old computer and transmission equipment that had been left behind when the government evacuated, including a CB radio. She used it to contact the last 5 remaining colonies left on the northern continent.

It was 2030 when the first of the other colonies appeared at our doorstep, begging for food, fresh air, clean water. They had run out, and didn’t know how to manage their supplies properly. My mom welcomed them in, happy to get help from anyone who could assist us in completing the 5th cavern, but we were betrayed. My father had always been a scientist first, and he was working on experiments on DNA and viruses after the outbreak. The final colonies were sick and didn’t tell us. They worked on the cavern for several days, enjoying our food and hospitality, but then they became sick with a cough and fever. We were told the one who came in with them with a cough had asthma, but they lied. That is always how things like this happen, lying.

Slowly I watched all 6 people from the other colony burn up from the inside out, and drown in their own fluids in their lungs. My mother became sick treating the last of them a week later, and she succumbed a little less than 2 weeks later. I was 16 when my mother died. Before she passed, she hung a necklace about me, with a silvery heart shaped disk on it with a single red ruby. There were lines etched into the silver, I had no idea what it was for. The last thing my mother whispered to me was to listen to the radio, and I would know what to do when the time came.

I’m 25 now, the year is 2040. Every day, I take care of the animals in my care, eat, and read as much as I can of my father’s library, including languages for countries that are probably dead and dust, while listening to static on the CB. I’ve never attempted to go out, nor have I ever tried to contact anyone else, I have just maintained and listened, even when things began to fall apart.

Remember when I said there were 8 silos? I have access to 7 out of 8. I don’t know what is in the 8th one, my mother never told me, nor did she show me. There is a panel outside of the door, dust has already collected on it.

I am listening to the static one day, when faintly I heard a voice. I looked down at my cat Skippy and he looked back at me questioningly. I sat up straight and put on the falling apart headphones. I heard the voice again, speaking what sounded Russian, maybe German.

I responded back, asking if they spoke English. A faint Da could be heard over the headphones, which I knew meant yes. I was so excited and scared at the same time. For the first time in almost 9 years, I heard another human being’s voice!

“Vat is your location?” the question came over the CB in a very thick foreign accent.

“Northern American Continent, yours?” I responded.

“I am Russian Cosmonaut, The last colony from region of Russia has come here to our space station. We have tied in the American and European Space together with ours to make room and conserve resources. How many in your colony?”

“J-Just me.” I stammered.

“you are alone? How have you survived so long?”

“Long story.”

“Tell me little one, Was your father Dr. Jack Blankman?” I smiled a bit at the accent, I reminded me of an old cartoon movie that we watched as a family. It brought back a bitter sweet memory for me, until I heard my father’s name. I was shocked at this point.

“How do you say? Da. He was my father”

“We were all, how you say? Upset? At his death. He was making great advances in science of the virus.”

“I’m sorry, he died before I was able to comprehend what it was he was working on.. I wish I could help.”

“Do you have access to the 8th silo?”

“How do you know about it?”

“I spoke many times with your mother before she died, she told me what she was working on. We are in desperate need of her technology now. Within silo #8 is a rocket, which can carry several people up or back, depending on how much fuel it has and what is stored in it. Tell me, did your mother leave you anything specific?”

I clutched the heart around my neck.

“yes, she did..” I proceeded to describe the heart to him over the CB.

“Da, that would be the key to unlock her technology. Please, I beg of you, go to the silo and see if you can open it.”

“I have to leave the radio here, it is too heavy for me to lift and take with me. I will go there and report back.”

“Da, Danke”

“Earth out.” Waitaminute, did he just use 2 different languages??

I sighed and made my way to the confounding door. The panel was still there, mocking me. I moved to dust off the panel when it lit up and I jumped back. I moved back to it and proceeded to brush the panel off to reveal a hand outlined on it. I looked at my hand and placed it on the panel, and a red beam drifted over my palm. The doors that had never opened, slid aside quietly. It was pitch black in the room, until one after another, the lights above came on illuminating everything.

Within was a room, filled with computer equipment that was slowly coming online. As I walked into the room, the lights continued to turn on further and further within. This was the largest of the silos, and what I saw beyond the windows about 600 feet ahead of me made my jaw drop yet again.

Ahead of me, illuminated, was a rocket, just as the man on the radio said. The rocket stood 7 stories tall, and instead of heavy metal sealed doors above it, there was a hatch which looked quite capable of opening and closing.

“Litte one, are you there?” Hearing his voice caused me to jump. I looked around the room and saw speakers mounted on the walls, and head of me, a chair mounted to the floor and a control panel in front of it. Sitting on the control panel was a microphone, as I had seen pictures of in several of my Dad’s books.

I gingerly walked over to the control panel, leaving a trail of my foot prints in the dust. I moved the chair around, it swiveled on its base, and I sat down in it, and swiveled back to the control panel.

I touched the green button mounted to the microphone. “I am here, I am inside. I don’t know what to do.”

“your mother would have left you something, in order to activate the rocket.”

I pulled the heart up over my head an started at it, and then looked at the control panel. There was a heart shaped indent in the panel. Gently I kissed the heart, and placed it into the heart shaped slot.

“please evacuate the area. Lift off in T-minus 3 minutes” my mothers voice echoed through the room.

I heard the roar of the rocket, and as the doors slid closed, I turned and looked one last time, and saw the smoke. The roar of the rocket could be heard rumbling through the walls and making the earth under my feet shake.

I whispered a silent prayer that it gets to where it needed to go, and maybe one day, bring back hope…