Posts
BABEL
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 6
There had been a colony up at the
Hospital, the other side of Grafton Bridge. They had not come down to
the City, preferring to look for supplies heading to Newmarket and
Parnell Rise, where it was more open, there were less high rise
buildings and blind alleys caused by fires, falling debris and in
some cases falling buildings. At least in the inner suburbs the
containment of disaster made for safer scavenging. There were a
disproportionate number of speaking people inside the hospital, their
procedures for containment of viral outbreaks had been enacted when
the first global flu had hit. Around 50 of the staff were isolated to
work on the virus and avoid contamination. They had come out by the
time Babel had hit but the original sweep had already burned out. Hey
had been working with other similar containment units overseas,
working back for a trace of the infection, trying to find this
sickness that had not killed that many, but had certainly fit the
criteria of a global pandemic.
When the Babel infection went to the
secondary phase they were spared as they never caught the first
phase, and they had access to people unaffected, people affected, the
original virus isolated and examined and then the symptoms of the
Babel itself as the language centres of peoples brains shut down.
Scan after scan, MRI and X Ray and whatever they could do to find the
answers they sought.
For all the effort and everything they
learned, they achieved nothing. They found and antiviral, they could
cure the Babel if you were inoculated before you caught it. The
problem was that the language centre was being rewritten in a way, so
that the damage was reversible but only if you could crack the code
that scrambled it in the first place. You could stop the cause, but
not undo the damage without creating more. The first few experiments
showed that they could effectively rewrite or unwrite the Babel, but
all that did was scramble the language centre anew. It was like Babel
had taken all the words and made everyone dyslexic, disgraphic,
discalculic and a new word for the complete scrambling of auditory
receptors all at the same time.
The Babel was an efficient and
irreversible weapon. That’s what they believed, it was a weapon.
When networks and power began to fail they soon realised that they
were not so much cut off as Humanity was scattered and unable to
connect with each other. The fifty or so people took drugs an
supplies and broke up, heading out to help where they could. A number
of them died in the Mt Eden event, and the rest had been spread far
and wide. They had radios, but limited batteries and no power except
in a few isolated communities where they had managed with the help of
the Few that serviced them, or ruled them, to get limited services.
Some of those staff were killed, some found homes and some continued
on until they found what they were looking for, somewhere to belong
or people to help.
They had still been in the hospital
when Victor blew up Grafton Bridge and Symonds Street, that had been
the final straw that sent them on their way to get way from the
static nature of the barricaded for nature of Auckland Hospital and
get out and help people. They could not cure the disease, they could
not do any good staying where they were and it would only be a matter
of time before someone came for them, either one at a time or by some
angry voiceless mob wanting to get in.
The hospital still had uninterrupted
power. They and a number of buildings nearby had emergency circuits
that would continue in even the most vicious of scenarios, and they
could pare back that service inside the compounds of the hospital
buildings themselves until stable powered core was formed. Stragglers
made it to the parking lots and receptions in the early days and the
doctors who could still function did what they could to help what was
obviously wrong with the people already there or heading to them for
help. Just like many other places, globally the frustration, fear and
envy drove a lot of people mad and angry which lead to death,
destruction and senseless violence. Doctors who could not read or
speak could do little but guess at the drugs and treatments needed
and that frightened people who did not know what was going on any
more than they did.
From the isolation wards the viral
teams saw all this happen and despite begging from some of their
ranks, kept the protocols for containment for months, until the
outcome was clear and the options were lesser every day. When they
emerged there were some survivors who had managed to deal with their
new found chaos and carry on where they could, and with patience they
worked with the Few who had rejoined society.
The bombing of Grafton Bridge was a
wake up call. They felt it keenly reverberating through their whole
world, and the tearing of metal and screeching of concrete grinding
on tarmac was like a nightmare with an inescapable surround-sound
soundtrack. They started on a plan, to strip what they could and
convert the wards to hostel like arrangements to house people. But
most people had left and only the very sick and very old were left.
They were dying in larger numbers every day and the hard calls about
what was worth saving were heartbreaking and so commonplace that they
took a bitter toll on the men and women for whom “First Do No Harm”
was their whole life.
A handful remained to look after the
flotsam and jetsam from the inner suburbs who walked ragged and
damaged to the hospital, the only safe way in was through Nemarket,
but even there the roads needed constant clearing as accidents,
explosions and fires still took their toll as the infrastructure of
the country fell apart. They saw the signs and the icons left by the
mad man with a gun and explosives in the city, and they did their
best to keep people away from the downtown obstacle course of death.
When on the roof, at the heli-pad where the sat phone had best line
of sight reception, they had a good view of the city, they could
occassionally see the man, the only thing moving, patrolling tops of
buildings, every now and then shooting down and into the ground at
another person trying to survive and bracing the no man’s land with
a few pictures the only warnings they got.
They knew a little about what was
happening in other countries, the satellite phones they had for
emergencies were broken out and they contacted a handful of people
worldwide who had similar experiences to them. The directory of
numbers they could call on the sat phone network was in the high
hundreds, but the number of people who answered, or assumably could
answer was a paltry percentage. What they heard offered them little
in the way of answers or hope.
New Zealand was one of the luckier
countries, with not enough people to manage the seriously big cities,
the death tolls were horrendous. Not just from the fear and anxiety
but also from the massive dams, power stations and nuclear power
plants all left alone to their own devices. With no governance, or
worse with people who could not read dials and settings properly a
series of catastrophic events left some places uninhabitable
fire-storms and wastelands, Chernobyl with no one in a position to
clean up the mess. That left them with at least a chance to help
humanity find it's feet again and rebuild in one of the few places
with technology, less risk and the relative isolation of the island
nation working in their favour. The tyranny of distance, now a
massive benefit and potentially the saviour of the human race.
There were similar stories in
Wellington, Hamilton and Dundein, no contact was made with
Christchurch at all. A loose network formed, but all they could do
was plan on how to help the people they could as best they could.
There were simply not enough people left to organise, corral or herd
the masses, they had to work on a macro level. This was a virus that
was perfect for defeating humanity, divide and conquer was now a
symptom of a disease. It was brilliant and evil, and to a man they
all believed it was no accident.
The viral doctors were now part of the
Few and wandering the country. They had become missionary doctors,
performing in third world like conditions on the fly, risking life
and limb even to do the simplest of things with a majority of Babel
infected adults scared and angry, trapped at a level of communication
associated with infants.
When the ships appeared, it all made
sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave any comments about the project - but be aware I won't be taking suggestions, requests or feedback on the content or style of writing - I want to write what I want free of any one else's issues.