BREAK
i'll try to continue this emergency broadcast
as long as we have power here, uhh, the city
is almost completely deserted now with only a
few stragglers left on the streets and there
are fires
uhh fires
are fires that continue to burn out of control
this
during this
this, uhh,
incredible epidemic that has spawned desperate
acts as we realize that every hour more and
more people are becoming infected and being
uhh
the survivors
are being driven senseless.
And we've gotten reports
uhh
sketchy at best that
uhh
I can't make sense of this.
Mass power
uhh outages
began and we lost contact with Los Angeles
and the west coast so it's impossible to tell
how many uninfected people are actually left.
I don't know.
Uhh.
This
it's in every country in the civilized world
and if
if you uhh
if uhh
you can hear the sound of my voice and uhh
you are uhh still alive.
BREAK
"Hey. What is that thing?" The first man says, ignorant hatred of the unknown creeping into his voice. He is huddled in the corner of the cave formed by the members of a collapsed structure near the bay inlet. The two upper floors were at one point, a restaurant. That is they were until a misplaced thermobaric warhead had smashed the place into a myriad of opposing angles. "Hey doc. See that thing, it's back."
"Ha-haaa. I knew I wasn't seein' shit again." The owner of this voice is named Walt.
Walt was a Heroin addict. A lifestyle change in the form of two pounds of bug culled from an illegal Soviet Bloc biological weapons program forced this quite unwelcome makeover on Wally. The retrovirus was not enough alone to put Walt off junk. Someone very carefully refined the material, molded it into a sphere, and set this sphere napping just shy of full waking life inside a cradle of high explosives. The parents were very proud of their children, sleeping there so soundly in the hold of a chartered commercial cargo vessel.
The retrovirus, more accurately ERP-5567-E has some fairly interesting characteristics. One, it seeks out and thrives on the compromised immune systems of the truly hard-core drug addict. Two, it facilitates infection and destruction of the cardiac muscles by a variety of common bugs that the body can normally ward off without help. It is passed on to other people or drug addicts through blood or saliva.
If ERP-5567-E were a man it would be Clint Eastwood. If it were allowed to describe itself it would have told you all of the above a-la Dirty Harry. Then it would have said, "but a man's just gotta know his limitations." ERP-5567-E (`Wyatt' to several Soviet scientists with a warped sense of humor,) cannot survive past a single generation in open atmosphere.
BREAK
If there is anywhere you can uhh go and
go now
where you are
are uhh
safe.
BREAK
Meaning that when the bomb exploded, Wyatt infected and then quickly killed a very large number of hard-core drug addicts. Without infecting the rest of the population of the western world to facilitate invasion by a now non-existent Soviet Army. Wyatt didn't kill the Soviet Army off either. Ronald Reagan did that while Walt and Brigitte were still transfixed by cartoon spoons of Malt-O-Meal and not another sort filled with Heroin.
Therefore, it was not so much Wyatt or all of the care that had gone into the making of the cradle that forced Walt to radically alter his junk-enriched paradigm. No, this decision had much more to do with the fairly energetic implosion of society that in turn forced him to temporarily suspend the use of intravenously injected illicit narcotics.
The key word here being: temporarily. Just until someone replaces the two billion or so additional non-junk oriented people that Wyatt killed "accidentally" can come back and start making junk again.
"It's been...over there for two days." Truth be made plain, Walt would like very much to go back to being a Heroin addict. "Fuck. Maybe they're dropping shit."
"I don't know." The male second voice, this one weaker and from farther back in cave seems to suggest frustration with the question. "I doubt it very much."
"I doubt it very much. I don't know. I'm a fucking moron. Blah, blah, blah." A female voice from the shadows behind Walt, somewhere near a totaled vehicle bearing two point five mummified occupants strapped securely into their seats. Totally oblivious to the warhead that had sucked all of the air out of the surrounding space and subsequent, but very brief fire, that had left them as desiccated corpses. "For a smart guy, you're pretty dumb."
"Brig, just shut your face and c'mere." Walt waves at Brigitte. "Leave him alone, got's enough problems on his own."
Walt is right about the number of problems in the possession of one Lawrence Sanders, Emergency Medical Technician. Larry's legs do not work, and they have not worked since Brigitte and Walt had managed to cause a small car accident several days previous.
In their continuing quest for any form of junk to tackle the definite sheen of shit coating life these days, Walt and Brigitte accompanied by John Fogel formerly of Ocean City, Maryland had set out looking to score. What they eventually came across was immediately and incorrectly believed to be a boon to their quest. This was namely an ambulance that appeared as if from nowhere.
John then proceeded to deliver a rousing speech concerning the theoretical contents of said emergency services vehicle. He eventually succeeded by instilling in Walt and Brigitte a sense of duty to arrest the further movements of the ambulance. Kindling what would become a flaming inferno of ardent desire to examine the ambulance and all of its inner mysteries.
Upon finding the ambulance returning the next day and not wanting to miss a golden opportunity to score, Mr. Fogel then proceeded to use the last of his own personal stash to steel his nerves for what lay ahead. He then climbed behind the wheel of a maroon 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier.
It should be noted that the Chevrolet Cavalier is not an appropriate weapon in this course of action. Mr. Fogel would have been well advised that a TOW, Dragon or other Guided Missile System, Disposable Infantry would have probably been a much better bet. That is since the stated end objective of The PlanTM was to "blow that motherfucker up and pick out what we want later. Like shopping and shit."
Mr. Fogel would also have been well advised that the word `Cavalier,' in addition to being the name of his conveyance, served double duty as a swell synonym describing the construction of said vehicle.
Perhaps it is most tragic that the former John Fogel forgot to buckle up.
This failure to pay attention to the most basic of motor vehicle safety items would haunt Mr. Fogel for the remaining six point three eight minutes of his life. The summary of his actions, distilled into a list of their most basic components went something like this:
-Locate ambulance.
-Accelerate.
-Set cassette tape player at maximum volume.
-Shriek at maximum volume.
-Impact ambulance at approximately 88 miles per hour.
-Exit vehicle via windshield.
-Fly, fly like a little bird John Fogel. Neat-o, baby!
-Impact stellar body, in this case, Earth.
-Slide seventy-five feet on face. skull. neck and shoulders. remnants of upper torso.
-Expire.
It was in the leftovers that Walt and Brigitte met Larry. Due in large part to their lack of medical and extrication training, the simple spinal injury that Larry experienced in the engineered accident was immediately turned into permanent paralysis. Paralysis has turned into infection. This has turned into what Larry suspects may be some form of sepsis or other serious problem relating to his injury.
Larry is right and wrong. Larry does not have sepsis. On the other hand, he does have a minor inflammation of the spinal tissue that was caused by an infection of his injured tissue. In two or three days this infection will eventually mature into a very fatal case of spinal meningitis, which will be a very definite bummer for Larry. In the mean time he has made the very philanthropic gesture of instructing Wally and Brigitte on the proper care of their wounds. This accompanied by a few very choice pieces of advice concerning addiction and the consequences thereof.
Larry knows he is dying and that Walt and Brigitte are going to survive. That is they will if they learn not to be so stupid and make themselves seen by the search and rescue helicopter that is combing the dead town for him and his partner.
What Larry does not know is that in twenty years their tribe of junk-free children will tell whispered tales of an ambulance driver who saved the whole fucking world.
BREAK
Who?
How'd you get in here?
You
uhh
I see.
If anyone out there now
err
can see helicopters
do not be alarmed as
as uhh
they come in peace.
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