Shalia's Diary (2 page)

He said, “If I dared to speak of this, I would die.  Officially, the cause would be a sudden heart attack.  They’d give me a state funeral, and the Holy Leader himself would preside over the service.  It would be the event of the year, and few would know I’d actually been murdered.”  Mike looked at me, fear making white show all around his eyes.  “You know how they do it?  How they kill one of us if we turn on the Holy Leader?  I’d be put in a grav-field, laid down on a table.  They’d place me in semi-stasis so I couldn’t bleed out too fast and so I would remain conscious for the whole thing.  Then they would ritually slice me open, my organs slowly removed until I was dead, right in front of the rest of the cabinet.  I’d be an example to them, to keep them in line.”

If an ‘untouchable’ was afraid to let billions of people know they were sitting on a pile of death, then how do you think I felt about my chances to stop Armageddon from happening?  But that doesn’t excuse me.  I knew and I’m still alive.  I didn’t tell and an unfathomable number of people are dead.  Hi guilt.  Sure, move right in.

It was an accident I wasn’t in Washington when it went up in a big mushroom cloud.  Mom’s condition was getting to the point where I couldn’t keep my job and watch over her too.  It was time to find an alternative to our living situation.

A media production position that wouldn’t have meant much of a pay cut had opened up at a government facility in Georgia.  It was close to where Mom had been born and grew up.  When she had her infrequent lucid spells, she wasn’t too thrilled about being put in assisted living.  Being able to go back to her hometown and still have me nearby made the bitter medicine a little easier to swallow though.  And getting out of Washington would get me away from Mike finally.  No more, “gimme what I want or I report you for lewdness”.  No more worrying about somebody seeing something they shouldn’t that would put me in a work camp.  I was actually looking forward to moving to the little southern town and away from the hectic pace of D.C.

I applied and got the job.  I was a month from transfer when I grabbed Mom on a bright June morning and we took a little jaunt down to Georgia to scout nursing homes.  Two days later, I was interviewing the administrator for St. John’s Adult Community while Mom sampled their arts and crafts class.  Suddenly, people started screaming.  We ran out of the administrator’s office (sorry, I forgot the guy’s name), and someone says, “We’ve been blown to smithereens and there are Kalquorian destroyers in our smoke-filled skies.”  And that was that.

So there you have it.  In the two months since the world most definitely ended with a bang (hundreds of bangs, if you must be accurate), everything about our society has disappeared.  Emergency services are gone.  Law enforcement is gone.  Gangs roam around at will, killing and looting and raping.  Kalquorians skulk about, no doubt looking for some surviving vaginas to impregnate.  Dantovonians fly through, inviting us to sign up for indentured work that will get us off our poisonous rock of a planet and put us back on our feet – no doubt after they’ve put us on our backs for awhile.  I’ve even heard rumors that Tragoom raiders have been seen, eating whatever they can find whether it be man or beast.

We are done.  Earth is dead.  I helped put us in this position.  With everything that’s happening now, I will probably be just another body on the pile before long.  You might think it’s just what I deserve.  You’d be right.

All I can say at this point is I am so very sorry.  I really, truly am.  It’s not much, certainly not enough to make up for what I allowed to happen.  Even if I had said something and they’d shut me up before it got to anyone’s ears, at least I could have claimed I tried.  But I didn’t.  To my eternal shame, I didn’t even try.

I am so sorry.

Shalia Monroe

August 21

Well, here I am again.  That old saw about ‘confession is good for the soul’ apparently does contain some truth.  The night I finished my letter, I slept better than I have since we all went ‘poof’.  I had a lot less nightmares.  So I’m back.

And I’m still alive.  Imagine that.  I’m hungry and scared, but alive.  How long that lasts, I can’t imagine.  But I thought as long as I’m still here I could report on what’s going on around me.  Maybe in the distant future Earth will become habitable again, and someone will find this.  I can give you future folks a glimpse into what happened here on the ground.

A little note here:  while I’m no scientist and haven’t heard a thing about how bad things truly are, I can only imagine massive parts of the Earth will die after all those detonations.  You don’t send up nearly 1000 cities in a nuclear holocaust and not do major damage to our environment, especially when there is no one left alive to contain it.  Surely the oceans, air, and land have been poisoned where the explosions happened and that poison will spread out. 

On that warm and fuzzy note, let’s now move to current events.  It’s still August and hot as hell here in Georgia.  Mom and I are hiding in the house I had planned to buy.  I hadn’t signed all the paperwork yet when Armageddon hit, but the rightful owners had already moved out.  They went to Los Angeles, which of course is just a big hole in our Swiss cheese planet now.  I figured I could go ahead and put my claim in on Casa Shalia.

We keep the blinds down and stay as quiet as mice during the day.  Okay, let me rephrase that.  I stay as quiet as a mouse.  Sometimes Mom has a spell and starts yelling for my father, who died seven years ago of a heart attack.  He left us even farther back then that, so she’s really reaching into the past to think he’s around.  When she starts that up, I go all crazy, trying to get her to shut up before the gangs or Kalquorians hear and come get us.  As awful as I know this sounds, there have been times when I have thought about shoving a pillow over her face and holding it there until she passes out.  I know it could kill her, but I am scared out of my wits here.  I don’t want to be raped by any man, whether he’s my species or not.  I sure as hell don’t want my mother raped either.  I might actually do her a favor if she did lose consciousness and never woke up.  She wouldn’t wake up crying about how hungry she is anymore or how hot and miserable things are.  I could release her from her misery, find a knife, and release myself too.

I’m a horrible person to think such things.  I would never hurt my mother.  I love her despite all that's happened in the past.  But how can I protect her from those who would hurt us?  This is so fucked up.

Anyway, enough of my mommy issues.  We’re in this house in a subdivision about five miles from the government training facility where I would have been working if the world hadn’t ended.  The facility was a law enforcement academy, simply known as the Academy to most locals.  From what I’ve seen of the flight patterns of alien shuttle traffic, the Academy is where a bunch of Kalquorians have camped out.  While this town is relatively small, it is located between Atlanta (in ruins), Athens, and Savannah.  It’s a good central location, and the training facility has plenty to offer an invading species:  dorms, gyms, weapons, vehicles, and even a movie theater.  Well, it would have had plenty to offer, but I have a feeling a lot of the weapons and vehicles were snagged by the gangs before the Kalquorians took it over last week.  Well, they still have the movie theater.  Maybe they’re all eating popcorn and watching a nice propaganda war flick that shows them how high and mighty we Earthers thought we were.  It would be a comedy farce now.  The Kalquorians are probably laughing in the aisles.

The Academy was like a tiny city in the middle of nowhere.  The trainees didn’t have to leave it for any reason, though they did on occasion for a change of view.  After Armageddon, they left to get back to the many places they’d all come from, hoping to find loved ones still alive.  Too bad.  They might have kept some semblance of order around here if they’d stayed.  Or maybe not.  Who the hell knows?

Being this close to Enemy Alien Central has had one good outcome.  Their presence has scared most of the gangs out of the immediate area … well, that and the fact most of the grocery stores have been emptied out of food.  I’ve concentrated my shopping efforts to the houses I knew were abandoned as everyone ran for higher ground.  Which makes me laugh.  Where the hell do you run to when the whole world collapses?  Where do you go when there’s no help to be found because the entire infrastructure has disappeared?  When every person you meet is just as likely to kill you for what few supplies you have as they are to help?

Yesterday, the Kalquorians took a page from Dantovon’s playbook and began broadcasting messages from their shuttles as they slowly flew overhead.  Their English wasn’t too shabby either.  “Attention, Earthers.  We have no intention of harming you.  The loss of your cities was a terrible, tragic accident, for which we accept full blame.  Let us help you.  Come to the area designated Law Enforcement Academy.  We have established a refugee center there with food and shelter.”

Well, they’re right in that it was an accident that they set off Armageddon.  But my faith in their truthfulness ceases to exist after that point.  Refugee center my big, fluffy ass. 

Unfortunately, Mom got all excited over the announcement.  “Food, Shalia,” she marveled.  Gray hair notwithstanding, she looked like a kid on Christmas morning.  “Water.  Maybe air conditioning too!”

“And all the alien cock you can eat,” I muttered, so she wouldn’t hear me.  She was having one of those moments when she’s really childlike and can’t seem to remember how ugly the world really is.  It beats when she’s crying, so I try not to snap her out of those spells.

I patiently explained, “Mom, we were at war with the Kalquorians.  They have no reason to be nice to us, except to get us to turn ourselves in so they can take us prisoner.”

She pouted.  “Maybe they are nice, though.  They said they didn’t mean to hurt us.”

I said, “Look, we have plenty of food for at least a month if we keep rationing it.  We have tons of canned stuff.  Potato chips.  Cereal.  I brought home Funcakes last night with chocolate icing, made with the finest of preservatives so you know they’ll last forever.  You love Funcakes.  Do you want me to get you one?”

She rolled her eyes at me.  “It’s so hot in this house, Shalia.  I’m tired of sweating and feeling icky.  I want a bath.  I want air conditioning.”

I sighed.  “I know.  I want it too, but it’s too dangerous.  After dark, if you’ve been good all day, we’ll open some windows and let the breeze in, okay?”

“Fine.”  She stomped to my purse and pawed through it in retaliation.  She smeared half-melted lipstick on her mouth.  I was too hot to argue with her, so I just made a face so she’d feel like she’d gotten to me.  That seemed to make her happy, as it always has.

So that’s life, post-Armageddon.  Tonight after Mom has gone to sleep, I’ll sneak out with a couple of pails to the river.  It’s beyond stupid of me to chance being caught just so she can bathe a little, but the poor thing is miserable.  If she's miserable, then I'm more miserable.  Besides, I owe her after all the horrible things I’ve thought.  I’m not about to waste the little bit of drinking water we have on primping, so I’m going to scare myself silly and go out.

Still August 21 I think.  So late, maybe it's the 22nd.  I can't find my watch, so I'm not sure.

I got the pails of water for Mom’s bath, and it was every bit as scary as I knew it would be.  More so even, because I think someone might have seen me.  I made it to the river okay, but while I was there I got the creepiest feeling.  I didn't hear anything strange.  I didn't see anything either.  But you know that feeling you get when someone is watching you?  I swear, while I was filling up my pails, every hair on my body stood straight up.  Like some part of me from primitive days knew something was up.  (Ha-ha, lost and unlamented Church.  I just entertained the idea of evolution.  And no one can punish me for it!)

Damn it, but someone could.  There aren't just rape gangs out there.  There are those who still hold to the religion despite the fact it's what killed us.  They’re out there, running around, passing judgment, killing ‘sinners’.  Of course, not many realize fanatical adherence to the old ways is to blame.  I'm one of the few who knows exactly what happened. 

I've seen the continuation of the old thought regime.  Early on after the blasts while we still had some semblance of a police force and I felt I could walk around without fear, a couple of women were found hanging from an oak tree.  Their sexual parts had been mutilated.  Signs were nailed to their chests that read 'Whore'.  So the old guard is still out there, still looking to keep us blasphemers in line.

Anyway (getting back to the subject after my seriously freaked-out brain has gone off on another tangent), it felt like someone was in the stand of trees that surrounds the river.  I’m almost positive there were eyes watching me.  Boy, I moved fast despite those damned pails being so heavy to carry.  I was ready to drop them in an instant if I saw anyone, and I took a circuitous route back to the house.  It took me a good twenty minutes to get back home even though the river is only a block away and separated from the housing development by a stand of trees the width of a football field.