Phantom of Apocalypse

PHANTOM of APOCALYPSE ( A Dystopian novel) Jon V. Kofas PHANTOMS of APOCALYPSE (A Dystopian novel) Jon V. Kofas Published by The Little French eBooks Art Cover by Freddy Flores Library of Congress of the United States of America: US COPYRIGHT Registration Number: TXu001583378/2008-08-10) Copyright 2019- Jon V Kofas All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. “Most people back in town will become sick if they eat berries, or anything natural directly from the earth?” Twenty-six years ago, New Heaven was preparing for the big celebrations. Of course, the city atmosphere was hardly celebratory for all of its citizens. The small well to do infected population lived in the plush neighborhoods. Naturally, they enjoyed the full protection of drones, and android police officers from those trying to release their aggression impulses on property and people. The majority of the population lived in high-rise apartment buildings built to accommodate the rising demand for housing units. Since the plague outbreak the housing demand has eased considerably but rent remains high. Segregated to the poorest section of town, the mutants live in the city’s ghetto known as the f*******n Zone. CHAPTER I: The Infected - Friday, 2 July 2176 Twilight in New Heaven Security was on high alert throughout the city. Everyone had heard the public service announcements about a rebel uprising. Just two days before Independence Day, the mood throughout the city was somber. Trouble in the electrically-fenced city could erupt at any moment. In the downtown area, people walked nervously and at a quicker pace than usual. Low-flying drones and android police officers in the streets were ready to shoot to kill anyone they suspected might pose a threat. The infected population had been on the edge of violent outbursts. The hot July sun beating down on New Heaven’s infected population only makes their aggression worse. It is especially brutal for Nelly, the beggar, standing just a few feet from the Town Hall -a middle aged bony dark-skinned woman in rags. Nelly is decorated with the most intricate honeycombed rainbow-colored hairstyle that makes the infected sick just to look at her. No one pays any attention to her fainting, bleeding from the mouth face down on the sidewalk. Drops of blood from her sore lips are common symptoms of the plague; as common as sneezing these days. Like frantic wild bees out of the hive with only an instinctive sense of direction, blank faces of passersby swarm past the disoriented beggar. Less noticeable than discarded objects on their path, Nelly refuses to let them pretend she does not exist. On his way to work at Joe’s Dream Diner , Roy the street boxer stops to stare at her. She reminds him of his wounded dog, but he tries to suppress any feeling of empathy. Instinctively, he pours a bottle of water on her face to cool her off and continues walking. He catches himself feeling sorry for the beggar. He raises his head toward the sky to look at the drones, and tries to suppress the feelings that make him sick. By the time that Nelly revives, Roy has melted into the crowd. She wipes the water from her face, and starts yelling at the apathetic crowd passing her by. Confused, she looks around trying to decipher cryptic messages the infected conceal deep inside their insensate minds. She is convinced they are conspiring against her; this much she has suspected ever since she began frequenting the center square. With disdain in her voice and facial expression, she keeps repeating a sermon that has become a daily prayer. “Countdown to deliverance has begun for all you sinners. The Blood Moon is upon us. Armageddon is just around the corner. Yes sir, the heavens will strike us down when we least expect it. Repent now or die a horrible death sinner! Mad lepers of the soul, miserable freaks of the plague our time is coming.” Blood moon and omens of Armageddon make up her daily sermons. As much as it helps her to cope with lingering pain, her scolding inadvertently helps to rejuvenate those infected souls agitatedly walking around her. Like a yogi in a trance, she sits cross-legged facing City Hall. Slowly raising her head toward the sun, she feels its burning rays registering 105 degrees on that humid July day. Inside her tormented mind, she expects the heavens to unlock the gates and swallow her. Wiping perspiration off her forehead, she murmurs inaudible prayers against the background noises from people and flying drones. Her hands shaking, she reaches into her left eye socket carefully taking out the glass eye. Rubbing it clean with saliva on her sleeve, she points the eye toward the painting behind her. After mumbling a few words, she falls into a trance. As though possessed by a demonic spirit, her whole body trembles. Only she can decipher the ethereal divine signal emanating from the painting. For a mad woman, it is not surprising she always carries the horrific painting of a ritualistic human sacrifice. Amid the plague, such morbid art is a mirror of calamities people have endured. Deriving inspiration from the painting, Nelly continues to hold the glass eye in a ritualistic manner muttering prayers. Maniacal facial expressions betray her desire to share mystifying emotions with dispassionate passersby. She knows that it is virtually impossible to make the infected feel compassion; in fact, that makes them sick. Nevertheless, she tries. “You cannot stand to look at me, can you? Well, here I stand in all my wretchedness. There was a time when I believed life was divine. I thought it would never end, just like many of you fools believe. But then came the first strike of the plague and we killed off love. There was a time when I swallowed heaven whole and I could do it over and over again. There was a time the stars were gleaming through my whole body. If only those stars returned to me, I could cure the infected with the energy in my soul.” Beneath the despair finding expression in her voice to strangers, layers of madness have tormented her since she watched her son die on stage while performing for the infected audience. Still able to project poignant confidence of a high priestess, a beggar is an enigma for the infected population. A self-proclaimed streetwise prophet who experienced a mystical epiphany after losing her boy, Nelly has been in search of fellow mourners to no avail. To find serenity, she needs to share her maddening experiences with the insidious plague-ridden world she blames. With nothing to lose after she lost her son and her mind, she refuses to capitulate like those passing her by fearing they may lose their place in line for the elusive dream of success in life. “Why should you feel my pain when yours is just as deep? Why should you feel anything that makes you sick to death and angry? The pain has killed us all. We’re already dead inside. Those electronic gadgets attached to your bodies snatched your soul and you didn’t even notice. There is no redemption, not for me not for any of you. Apocalypse without the Lord’s Second Coming is all that remains. Oh how I want my suffering to end. I’m afraid I’ll miss it if it ever ends.” ‘The street oracle’, as mutants in the f*******n Zone call Nelly, has been delivering doomsday predictions to cope not just with the plague but mostly with her son’s tragic death. Upon his passing, she surrendered to the spirits controlling her mind and driving her to the town square every day to preach. New Heaven’s shattered mirror slowly sinking in an ocean of indifference, Nelly attracts the attention of the police. They are concerned that rebels could be using her to instigate subversive messages right before Independence Day. They let her be once they realize she is too incoherent to be a messenger for anyone other than the doomsday voices inside her head. Amid the plague, neither the police nor anyone else really cares that she believes that the world is in the midst of cataclysmic annihilation. Inadvertently, the beggar makes the infected feel healthier to have their aggression stimulated. In the heart of the lunatic soothsayer swimming upstream in the town’s infected consciousness, they see the reflection of their minds as the only reality they dread: a terrible future or the courage to escape. A heartening illusion for those still harboring traces of optimism, some of the desperate still believe that Mars colonization is humanity’s future. Others have accepted their fate on earth as it is written by the stars. Astrologers do a brisk business with the infected hoping for a cure. Priests and politicians promise that all misfortune that has befallen humankind will evaporate. Along with the polluted clouds making breathing difficult during the hot summer months, salvation that never comes is just around the corner. On the wall of the county hospital rebel graffiti is another reminder of illusions the infected population harbors. “Wake up from the spell of your meek surrender! Rise above the clouds of pestilence hanging over your enslaved existence. Take charge of your life now and renounce the culture of the plague. Take charge of your mind and live as nature intended.” Behind graffiti-covered walls Dr. Jeff Stein works feverishly in his biogenetic laboratory at the gigantic county hospital. His prototype neo-genesis experiment holds the promise of a new start for humanity. Dr. Jeff admonishes his colleagues that they must emerge from behind the veneer of hypocrisy; they must face the painful reality that life under the plague’s curse cannot be improved by treating the symptoms. Everyone ignores the dissident scientist with the elongated face, bony features and bulging eyes. Nervous twitches make him appear like an alien from a distant planet stealthily preaching subversive messages to unsuspecting earthlings. To prevent chronic nose bleeding induced by empathy for patients, he bites down on his lower lip and presses on his nostrils as he tilts his head back. Dedication to his work and medication help him cope as he struggles with d**g addiction like so many others. Just a few miles from Dr. Jeff’s hospital, the largest corporation in America and the most enigmatic about its operations, the Inter-Planetary Export Warehouse employs mutant workers who are cheaper than robots and androids. To reinforce their separateness from the infected, the ‘altered’ prefer the stigmatizing label “mutant”. The infected who call them mutants see them no different than stray animals abandoned by their owners. More at ease under descending darkness, their ghostly silhouettes resemble scared animals against the background of intermittent fireworks explosions in New Heaven two days before the 400 th Independence Day anniversary. At the bottom of the bio-socioeconomic class, mutants are fated by the legally-codified role government has given them, segregating them from the infected population. Hoping their Independence Day will come soon enough, mutants dismiss the infected as savages who hide behind the layers of masks that the techno-scientific civilization affords them. Because they are free of psycho-neurotic illness, which the plague caused, mutants are the object of derision for the infected population. Instead of living inside the infected world of virtual reality, mutants find fulfillment in direct interaction with nature and people. Nevertheless, they live in the horrid present where the market assigns a collective Human Commodity Stock (HCS) value to them as a class, rather than as individuals. Most mutants fall into debt and work in the New Heaven warehouse, which they call “debtor’s prison”. The unemployed and semi-employed position themselves on street corners and on rooftops in the “f*******n Zone”; the town’s infamous ghetto that also serves as the underground rebel center. Ground zero of human hunts, the Zone is an illegal bazaar for everything from human organs to narcotics and killer robots. Discarded objects of all sorts along with unemployed mutants pile up in the Zone’s back alleys. “l**t dumps” cater to infected addicts who still crave pre-plague pleasures of the senses that induce severe illness. Just before twilight, mutants hide like frightened animals from infected hunters. With intent to disfigure and mutilate mutants as part of a ritual, hunters remain healthy while taking revenge against those that make them ill.