ONE POX

Chapter 1 - A beginning from the end.

The people who worked at the JacksonWright laboratories were not bad people. They didn't mean to release the virus or even to create it really. They were trying to do something good for humanity, a cure for cancer I believe. The details of their project or its intended use were not released to the media in time. Not that it matters to anyone. Maybe the story will be rediscovered, somehow salvaged from the ruins by future archeologists and historians. It took the pox a total of 25 days to destroy all of human civilization, give or take a few. In the first five days after it became widely known that it had a near 100% death rate and it was spreading alarmingly fast, scenes of chaos and panic were a regular feature on the news. Five days after that, leaders across the globe started fighting skirmishes. It wasn't much longer before all-out war broke out. Nothing stemmed the infection though, and soldiers in their bio-suits died at exactly the same rate as the rest of the population; higher if you count combat casualties. To humanity's credit, once it became clear that this was a world wide calamity, most governments stopped their pointless conflicts and came together to try to find a cure. As far as I know, they failed and now I'm alone. I haven't met another human being in the nine months since.

It is the morning of November 10, exactly 25 days after the outbreak. I'm kneeling in my backyard scared for my life and crying for my little girl and my wife. There are two mounds of dirt surrounded by dead weeds where I buried them. It's not just the horrible pain of the disease that scares me, I also have this irrational fear of people coming by and killing me for no good reason. I have nightmares about it. My wife has been dead for two weeks. My baby fought it. She fought it like a trooper, God bless her. The syrupy grief to see her laughing and running even with the pox growing steadily on her back was too much for me; I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. My body had not been content to shed just tears then. She's dead now like the rest of the world. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thinking I'll go to Juarez to look for my family. I'm standing up and drying my tears with the back of my fingers; don't want to get my face dirty now do I? The silence is unnatural. There isn't even a little breeze to rattle the last of the dead leaves on the trees. "This is good," my cerebellum broadcasts "this way I can hear them coming." I'm thinking some in my family might have survived like me. I'm beginning to accept the fact that I am immune to the pox. Maybe some of them have the same genes. Every memeber of my family here in Austin is dead. I know that. I also know that some in Juarez died, but mass communications failed before I knew about all of them. My mind is made. I start to plan.

Top 10 things that I like worrying about.

Top 10 things that I like worrying about:

10. Aliens invading Earth.
9. Zombies attacking my neighborhood.
8. Democracy is a sham. The elites will forever control the masses.
7. Huge asteroid throwing civilization into chaos.
6. Three guys following me home after a road rage incident.
5. Astoundingly stealthy man creeping into the house and stealing Sammy into the night.
4. Global warming brings on a premature ice age. People are forced to immigrate to the tropics.
3. Having to defend my family from drug addicted robbers.
2. The Yellowstone super volcano erupts causing panic and looting at all the Wal Marts.
1. Superflu killing off 99.999% of Earth's human populations.

Lion

I am what is depressing about a lion. Do you really want me to spell it out? No, you don’t. Please focus on the lightly stuck out tongue, panting; on the brown scar down the bridge of the nose. This will get you closer to the analogy I am trying to convey. The shimmering, heated air masks the falseness of my bravery. Yet I pump my spirit with adrenaline out of sheer necessity. My pride is thin but beautiful. I would protect it against hyenas.

File this one under 'innuendo'.

Oh yeah; I'm going to write this text so hard you'll be able to smell it.
And then I'm going to post it; yeah baby, I'm going to post it like there's no tomorrow.
I'm going to post it so good that you'll wish I could post it over and over; that's right.

Revisando como se hace esto

tomemos vino, las conversaciones fluyen mejor lubricadas!
-Marques de Sade.

"Hay!!!....me duele el Coco y ya ni se donde ando"...volteaba Pedro hacia arriba viendo a una extraña creatura gritar al aire y tocar una telaraña ..."Si, ahi es donde rebote, que telaraña tan dura." la superficie donde reposaba Pedro era tersa y suave muy diferente que todas las plantas y insectos en donde antes habitaba. Pedro se sentia solo recordando a su primer casa donde vio por primera vez y sintio los calidos rayos del sol. "Como estoy harto de tanta agua, plantas verde y mohosas.....espero poder quedarme aqui un tiempo." recordaba aquel dia en que de repente le taparon el sol y fue apresado entre dos capas de hule y por muchos dias veia luz y no veia luz. Cuando no veia luz era lo peor al sentir como lo presionaba el hule contra el piso. Aire y dolor, aire y dolor...por muchos dias. "bueno, minimo ahora estoy bien....mmmm, que agusto"
De repente se escucho una voz gigante "Aaa, aqui esta la pinche piedra!"...le taparon la luz otra vez, lo apresaron entre algo calientito y "AAAHHHHHHHH....."

The rock that almost hit my head at an alrming velocity had lain peacefuly on the grass for days upon days and countless nights. It saw the sun ski across the sky brushed by speeding cirrus cluds many times over. And then the stars and sometimes the moon taking their quick peek at the highway, endless red streamers swimming across it like neon lights. The heavy duty city mower drove over it with the reckless abandon typical of the big machines used by scruff men eager for five. It missed the drivers side window by four inches. It smashed into the quarter window of my hatch back, two centimeters above the '4' on the 240 SX logo. The broken safety glass quietly but continuosly split and cracked the rest of the way home. It reminded me of the comfortable groaning of ice between your molars. I'm glad that rock didn't hit my head. The sound of it hiting the car was deafening.

Samantha & Tita

New at this.

Testing, testing. Ahem... Will the owner of a white Miata please move his/her car from the front of the building? A tour bus full of old people needs to park by the entrance. That is all.