Desert Angels
Authors: George P. Saunders
DESERT ANGELS
By George P. Saunders
© 2012
Copyright © 2012 George P. Saunders.
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CONTENTS
THREE – RECONNAISSANCE, THE NEIGHBORS AND LIGHT CLOUDS
THIRTEEN – AND HE WHO INCREASETH KNOWLEDGE, INCREASETH HIS SORROW
FOURTEEN – SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Cocktails . . . and the Killer
The Cat Incident
PROLOGUE
JACK
Suffice to say, the end came not with a whimper, or with any sense of surprise, but at full-tilt boogie and loud as hell.
The nukes flew from everywhere, it seemed; new deployment methodologies utilized by Iran by Russian and Chinese proxy, not to mention Russia and China themselves, of course, and God knows where else from if you count an unnamed terrorist state or three. It all happened as my wife, who was no longer alive, had predicted, nearly 24 months ago.
I don’t know how Angela could have known to such an exact date when the world would die, but she did, and my dim belief in psychic capability had little cry of “ridiculous nonsense” to that sort of exactitude in prediction. I was a theoretical physicist and at one time (and now by necessity) a first class M.D. I did not tree-hug the notion of a sixth sense in human beings, but the reality of the End Day, as I non-affectionately refer to the immolation of planet Earth, precluded any line of defense against that kind of denial.
Angela had seen the end of the world coming, saw it to the date, December 23 of this year.
But that was all I was willing to accept. Angela had been gifted by a mysterious universe that clearly must have allowed her to be an observer to future events. Psychic history of such things were well-documented; as a scientist, I was not obtuse to evidentiary resource well researched and catalogued. Did I attempt to explain it? No. Not my field of study or interest. Again, I was a scientist dealing with sub-atomic anomalies and trying to reconcile string theory with a quantum mechanical universe. That’s why I got the sexy scholarship to MIT over fifteen years ago, and that’s why Angela loved me. I was a creature distinctly outside of any spiritual belief system. I was her “lovable pragmatist” as she would refer to me on more than one occasion.
And it was true.
I was a hard-facts kinda guy. Numbers, equations, all mathematical constants to a universe that functioned within a framework of unassailable logic. These were my gods, my religious icons. I was Mr. Spock without the ears and a starship.
Today, my business was staying alive, and saving lives.
Thanks to Angela and her father’s money, the above-mentioned priorities were for the time being going well. Or as well as could be expected one day after World War III.
Because she had seen the end coming, and because her father, being a multibillionaire philanthropist believed in her psychic gift unwaveringly, Angela had convinced her old man to finance a nine hundred million dollar project with myself at the helm as its architect and show-runner here in the Nevada desert, some ninety miles due east or so from Las Vegas. To wit, Daddy Wilkes had me construct a virtual titanium-strength arc into a mountainside that could house hundreds of souls on End Day, if necessary, and provide medical care for thousands more that flowed out of the radioactive cities. It was called simply Eden, a gigantic dome of radioactive prove steel and lead carved out of a small mountain. I made it clear to Thurmond Wilkes that the facility that was being envisioned would be utilized primarily for my continued and selfish research into quantum field mechanics and its application toward rocket research that would one day allow men to capture the stars at light speed, but at the behest of his daughter, I’d include all the other bells and whistles incumbent to apocalyptic survival.
As fate would have it, Angela would be proven right, and my primary focus of study would prove to be in finding new and resourceful ways to keep the remnants of the human race alive.
To that end, I would soon be laboring 24/7.
I look out over the nuclear sunset, a strange hue of green and purple, with occasional and inexplicable, twinkling lights fused into that murky shroud and await the inevitable arrival of survivors from all points on the compass.
It has been 24 hours since the Blast.
In that time – and out of the din of ash, dust and no doubt considerable background radiation – a new friend has graced my presence. A pure white pigeon that looked well fed and healthy – I am guessing someone’s lost pet from the only nearby town closest to my location, probably Ashwood – arrived this morning on my doorstep. So tame was the bird, it allowed me to pick it up without fear and bring it into my gazillion dollar titanium shelter fused into the mountainside. I could not discern the bird’s gender, so named it immediately, Walter. For no particular reason.
Since this morning, Walter follows me everywhere and has mimicked parrot-like behavior by acquiring the annoying habit of flying onto my shoulder and nibbling at my ear. I do not have the heart to raise my voice to Walter for this unwanted intimacy; perhaps in his way, Walter is just trying to reach out in friendship, sensing that something horrible has happened in the world and that contact with another sentient being is comforting – even if that being is distinctly non-avian in nature (meaning, myself) and from a bird-like point of view, probably repulsive as well.
As I have enough grain stores to last the facility for several years, I begin with this as a staple of food, and it is not an unwelcome offering. Walter gobbles up everything I give him, and even takes to sipping my beer, which I poured earlier this afternoon. This amuses me, as I think to myself that I will not have to drink alone in the near future. My new bar-fly friend is really a bar-bird. Literally.
The sun hovers over the western hills and I think back on two days ago, when I went into town for a few luxury items I do not presently have here at Eden – my christened name at Angela’s request on her deathbed – for my extravagantly expensive domed version of MIT here in the desert.
I think back to my brief conversation with Dr. Mathias, my irritation with the man having evaporated after recent global cataclysmic events. I also thought of old nutty Aunt Sheila, who ran her nostalgia shop in the middle of nowhere as if it was the novelty hub for the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.
I think back to two days ago and curse my arrogance. At the time, I was still of the belief that Angela’s prediction for the end of the world was as loony as that same conviction purported by Dr. Mathius and which he inculcated into his cult with mad enthusiasm. As it turned out, both he and my dead wife had been right. I, the rational scientist, whose life was dictated by facts and corroborative statistics, was dead wrong (no pun intended) as to Earth’s fate.
How much can happen in two days.
Hell, God was a third of the way done in creating the heavens and the Earth in two days. Man had taken less than 12 hours to vaporize God’s creation, or at least turn it into a pile of hot steaming radioactive shit.
Walter pecked at my ear suddenly.
“Ow, stop that!” I turned, and looked into the pigeon’s bright red eyes. “Do that again, and I’ll heat up a pot and eat you on Christmas Day!”
Walter then proceeded to coo, and do a little dance of sorts on my shoulder, the likes of what you see when pigeons court one another in the street. Pigeon romance, as I referred to it.
“No, we aren’t girlfriends, stop that, too,” I said, and thumped the birds chest, which made him flap to a nearby chair.
I returned my thoughts to that last day in town.
The last relatively normal day of my life.
WALTER
I peck Jack on the ear because it is the closest I can come to kissing him, at least during his waking hours.
This is new to me, as well – being a bird, that is. Being a bird with a substantial human intelligence and a human soul. I do not yet understand the magical elements attached to my existence – and though like Jack, when I was his wife as a human female before I “died” I was also a scientist – I can only refer to my present existence as magical ... simply because there is no scientific explanation for my presence in the here and now.
I remember only the date of my death, and then a period of seeming semi-consciousness, wherein it felt that I was passing through a myriad of delicate curtains, all pleasing to every sensation I seemed to retain as a human incarnation, yet difficult to describe with any specificity, the likes of which would trouble me not at all when I was involved in scientific research. I remember, also, my first day in this new body – this avatar host I moved about in (or flapped about, to be more accurate). And within my deepest awareness, I realize that I am not confined to this body on a continuous basis; but rather, once Jack is asleep, I will become human – or assume my original human form again – for that interim period when Jack is not awake. I do not curse this inner knowledge and de facto metamorphosis to come – but accept it with a calm I cannot explain.
For some reason – or according to some God’s plan (if it is even a God at all who has arranged all this) – I have been allowed to be reincarnated today, with my past memories fully intact, my past knowledge inviolate, my intellectual capacity undiminished … except now, I’m a damn Rock Dove (the ornithological reference to your basic street pigeon).
Aside from that, it’s all good. Right?
In literary circles, I would be categorized as a character in an artistic paradigm known as magical realism. I should not exist, but I do. This is how I will have to acknowledge myself to Jack, with what little information I will be allowed to give him, to preserve this delicate balancing act of what is real and what is seemingly non-real.
For instance, I know according to the unspoken rules of this particular game that I may not reveal to Jack through the written word that I am his wife of another lifetime. This would result in immediate insolvency of the magical parameters set in place. Again, don’t ask me how I know this, I just do. On the other hand, there are no limits in ways I may be of assistance to Jack in this strange new world.
The universe, Jack will learn in time, has changed. Some natural laws no longer apply; even the laws of physics are altered inexorably and forever. There has been a massive paradigm shift in the cosmic ethos, and I am but one result of that transition, or transmutation of cosmic order.
In my past life, I was a psychologist, trained to deal with virtually every kind of mental illness around. I had also been a genuine psychic, subjected to some of the most stringent scientific examination of the day, to either support that claim, or consign it to quackery forever. I died before all the results were in; an inoperable brain tumor that ended that part of me that was once known as Dr. Angela Calisto.
