Free Pox by P X Duke Page B

time.
     
     

 
     
    TWO
    Russell
     
    I wasn’t the first to make the connection, nor would
I be the last. I had been a little slow on the uptake, though. When
I finally pulled my head out and took a look around, I knew trouble
was definitely afoot. I was pretty sure I wasn’t alone with that
diagnosis, but since I had just moved to the city, I had no friends
to confer with or to ask for advice.
    I would have moved back to where I came from, but by
then it was impossible. Commercial flights and ground
transportation were closed down but for inbound international
flights. It had become impossible to go or move anywhere, ever
since the governments had gotten together and declared a state of
emergency. Last to that waltz were the federal leaders.
    It made for good television, and that meeting of the
so-called minds was broadcast live. I sat, transfixed, watching the
mindless politicians listen to the military chiefs-of-staffs
explain what needed to be done. When it was over, martial law had
been declared and all roads and interstates had been shut down and
travel restricted.
    Six months in, no one was permitted to go anywhere,
not even to visit dying relatives.
    Airports were next. Air travel anywhere was
terminated. Domestic air travel was limited to flights within each
state. All small, private aircraft were grounded. Attempts were
made by some to commandeer private aircraft, although it was never
determined where these people would go, since every airport in the
country was closed to all but government air traffic.
    Agents were dispatched to local airports and flying
schools to gather up the names and addresses of pilots.
    That made for good television, too, and news
conglomerates friendly to the government’s talking points were
embedded and dispatched to film the raids during which the
miscreants were rounded up.
    SWAT teams descended in haste from black vans.
Residences were surrounded. Doors were broken down. Pets that made
a sound were shot. Entire families were loaded into vans and hauled
away, in plain view, day and night.
    No one seemed to know where the people were being
taken.
    No one seemed to care.
    By then, television and radio spots were being
broadcast twenty-four hours a day. Stay inside. Don’t go out after
dark. If you’re caught, you’ll be shot on sight.
    Grocery stores turned into relief centers where one
family member was permitted to go and collect a daily ration, no
more than that. If the line was too long and you weren’t able to
get to the front, too bad. You turned around and went home
empty-handed.
    All while walking or riding a bicycle. Because by
then, there was no gasoline. What there was had to be reserved for
official business - and that was more like official funny business,
it seemed.
    At first, those same relief centers were good for
catching up on rumors and gossip. It was presented as fact that
certain parts of the city were first to be emptied. No one knew
why, or how or where the people had been relocated or shipped.
     
    Early on, I made the decision to move from my walk-up
apartment in the center of the city to the now empty outskirts. I
told myself these areas had been abandoned. I knew differently.
    Getting there involved dodging cars and trucks and
piles of empty pallets and tins. Some of the major routes had been
cleared by bulldozers that had pushed the abandoned vehicles off
the roads like so many children’s toys.
    It was more difficult to avoid the stench of garbage
stacked on lawns or left piled in the streets.
    In my travels I had acquired a battery-powered
motorcycle. I scrounged two solar panels to sling on either side of
the rear wheel, and a third to strap to my backpack. At the time,
my biggest problem was to keep the bike from being stolen when I
went to pick up my ration.
    I solved that one by moving again into one the
hundreds of houses close-by that had been deserted and left empty.
By then, the owners had been run off, or, more likely, rounded up
and