Sabine

 Alan Stokes worked as an police investigator for Wing Corona, a company that leased ships to firms operating in everything from transport to hauling krag ore. The job wasn’t too bad as long as you didn’t mind traveling to investigate an accident, lost cargo or the rare stowaway. You never knew what you were going to run into when you went out to file a report. Typically it was the case of a pilot or cargo master misjudging some angle or height damaging freight or the ship. Alan couldn’t count the number of times he had filed reports on those jobs. He was about to head to a bar when he got a message on his file plate that a company ship had docked and there was some kind of problem.
    No worries he thought, go down see what the problem was send in an over eager assistant to complete and file the report while he went off to drink a couple of whiskey sours and smoke a few splits.
His eager compatriot was a fresh faced bean counter named Ted Corin. The way Ted always bounced around the office Alan swore the kid was on juice. He was constantly after a new report to file. Fine here’s a real lulu kid, an old skimmer has a problem now go out and file a nice dry 25 pages of statistics on why the port burner can has a dent in it. What fun eh?
    Alan got his info plates together put them in his case and was out the door of the main office. He had intentionally forgotten to ask his yappie pal dog Ted to come along considering he’d run after him before he walked 50 feet down the concourse. Sure enough Ted came stumbling out putting on his company hat, straightening his thin tie, and snapping shut his spiffy brand new Wing Corona attaché case. Way to go kid, in a year you hopefully lose the hat and the frigging tie.
    They both walked through the main terminal building which Alan thought was too damned white, clean, and boring as hell. A designer usually wanted such a place to be warm and inviting. Hell whomever the designer was here he/she had the opposite effect. You wanted to get out of the damn place, get to your ship and get the hell out of Dodge. Dodge in this case being Girse the largest dock port within a few hundred millions miles give or take.
    Girse was a hub, a connector where ships from all over went through to go well anywhere. If you went to Hell you had to go through Girse was the saying. The dock was huge and contained a myriad of concourses, each one housing dozens of gates where a ship might dock. The place got ships of all sizes from the wee little “Kazoos” flying a few people to an planetary excursion to the Beluga luxury liners carrying eight to ten thousand passengers.
    Wing Corona’s fleet was leased out and nearly 90% of the fleet were small to medium sized ships. Alan loved the classic Krest vessels, ageless beautifully designed ships that traveled super fast or the Lotus dedicated freighters which always made people stop and take notice for their long graceful shape. Wing also had the smaller job like the one he and Ted were going out to see, the Coronado. These ships were old, versatile and built like a tank. The pilots raved about them still 25 years after being introduced. It was said that if you couldn’t fly one you didn’t deserve to sitting in the Captain’s seat.
    Their Coronado was docked at Purple 19. As they approached the gate they could see her through the large windows. Alan stood their for a moment and smiled. God that was one mother beautiful ship. Give me one of these instead of the new Spanstars. A Coronado was sexy, excruciatingly loud when in atmosphere and left ion soot trails thousands of miles long.
“Hey kid. You see that?”, Alan motioned.
“Yeah?”, Ted replied .
“That’s what a real ship looks like. Not that tinny Spanstar crap. Consider yourself lucky to be still able to go on one of these.”, Alan said.
“Eh the Spanstars are more efficient and region friendly. Don’t you think sir?”, Ted replied.
“Jesus fucking Christ…..”, Alan muttered.
    They met an agent for Colgan the line leasing this particular Coronado. He apologized for being late and handed Alan the preliminary papers in triplicate.
“Sorry Mr. Stokes. Colgan has me working several gates on two different concourses this week. I just wished they’d hire a few more people to help out.”, the agent said adjusting his orange blazer jacket.
“Yeah nothing new there Brett, everyone is making cutbacks. So what do we have here with this ship?”, Alan said. “Hey kid get the green forms ready to go.”
“Ah, Colgan 8223 was to have arrived three days ago but was diverted to Algos for a repair on engine #2. Flight crew Captain Hicks and First Officer Morne then made a position report as they passed Nis then silence. The next thing we knew was that it had docked at 3:44 a.m. on auto.”, Brett read out.
“I’ll be damned a Flying Dutchman.”, Alan replied.
“A Flying what-man?”, Ted asked.
“Never mind kid. Okay Brett so it docks at 3:44 a.m. when did the main doors open?”, he asked.
“Well according to this file it reads that the main door opened once…..hmmmm….for only one minute before shutting again. Open at 3:52a.m. and shuts 3:53.”
“What the hell. Where’s the crew? Didn’t they disembark? That’s not enough time for all of them to disembark. Christ did anyone check the live feed to see if the crew left or are they still inside the damn thing.”
“I’ll have the company pull down the feed. Here on the blue form it says the air sample check is fine so no possible infection inside the vessel to worry about.”, Brett replied.
“Hell with it, let’s go aboard and see what the problem is. Kid open the jet way door, will you?”
    The jet way door swung open followed by the ship’s main passenger door. Even before they stepped aboard there was the smell of plastic, coffee, food, jack smoke and something else. Alan entered the main cabin, to his far left was the cockpit, and to the right were pallets, seats, and more pallets far beyond. There were stairs in front of him that lead upstairs to more seating and crew compartments.
“What’s that smell?”, Ted asked.
“Oh man. Mr. Stokes that’s decay for crying out loud.”, Brett said holding a handkerchief over his nose.
“Oh Christ.”, Alan said as he saw what was making the stink.
    In the second compartment to their right was an empty area that once held rows of seats now only  bare pallet tracks could be found. There had been pallets in this spot but they had been offloaded at some earlier point. In their place were human remains, parts of bodies, arms, legs, trunks piled neatly on top of one another, with two disembodied heads side by side.
“Oh Jesus!”, Ted exclaimed heading for the on board WC nearby.
    The walls were caked in smeared blood, intestines and who knows what else. Whatever happened it methodical and incredibly violent. Someone or something had been really pissed.
“Brett, call Colgan tell them we have a crime scene. Hey kid! Get Girse CIC and tell them the same thing and to block off Purple concourse! I’m going forward.”
    Alan entered the cockpit, dark save for an orange enunciation panel and the glow of a few blue and green lights. He turned on his torch and could detect blood smears all over the control columns and instrument consoles. There was a nasty blood spray to the rear right cockpit window. The place reeked of blood and rot. He could only imagine what had happened to the pilots. An attack was certain but by whom and how many assailants and more importantly why?
“Mr. Stokes there’s a man in the gate area who’s asking for you.”, Brett said popping his head into the cockpit.
“Who the hell is it?”, he grumbled.
“A Mr. Foote sir.”
“Dammit. Idiot politician. Shit!”, Alan seethed. “Governor Foote wants his mug on the wire.”
    He disliked Hiram Foote, he had for years. Hiram was a politician and a former lawyer which to Alan and about 88 billion others made him slime. Add an divisive Presidential election into the mix and you get insanity. Hiram Foote was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and achieved his current position in life because of his father Phineas Foote who had been President over thirty years ago. Old “Finny” as he was called by his many admirers had been quite incredibly popular, jovial, and raised the Republic up from the doldrums created by his former predecessors. He was so popular that his face was ultimately used on the 5 Stirren coin. Not bad considering all the other faces were of Presidents passed for over 175 years.
    Alan had no doubt that if Phineas’ son won this coming election that he’d be an absolute loser and nothing close to his father. There were plenty of others who thought different and would no doubt cast their vote for this idiot. Now here he was, no doubt passing through the dock port on his way home about to smile it up for the wire and give everyone advice. Sorry Hy no babies to kiss on this one Alan thought as he went back to the gate.
    Sure enough there was the candidate, his own media and advisers clustered together talking with a Security chief officer on Girse, Cy Cager. If the media womps knew about what he had just seen on the Coronado they’d go ape. He motioned for Ted to come over.
“Get a security detail and place them at the end of the jet-way. Only ones to go in are the investigators, and police.”, Alan said.
“I already notified them, as a matter of fact here they are right now.”, he nodded to the two security police passing by.
“Damn good Ted. Thinking ahead, nice job.”, Alan replied.
“Ah, thank you sir,……..and thanks for calling me you know by my first name, sir.”, Ted smiled.
    Alan was about to reply when he saw Hiram walking over his entourage close behind. God what a bunch he thought.
“Mr. Stokes or is it Officer Stokes. I’m……”, the candidate smiled extending a hand.
“Uh yeah I know. Could you hold that handshake for one second Mr. Foote?”, Alan said walking over to Cy.
“Alan, how are you?”, Cy said.
“Cy, what do you say? You’re aware of what’s inside the ship.”, Alan nodded.
“Yeah, saw the pics on my plate. Hell I though the crew left on another flight. I didn’t think there was a problem until I was notified. Christ, to think I’ve been in my office this whole time while their bodies were just lying there. The wire‘s going to think I purposely sat on my ass while this was happening.”
“Hey, don’t knock yourself.  Before this is all over they’re going blame everyone.“, Alan quietly said as he could see Howard Griffin Colgan’s station representative hurry past down the jet-way.
“I’ll go handle Howard you talk to the politician.”, Cy said.
    Hiram’s media people were capturing the growing excitement in the gate area, people hurrying about, additional security personnel arriving while their candidate spoke with a junior Colgan executive. Alan decided it was time to finally shake the man’s hand.
“Governor? Sorry about the interruption as you can see it’s getting hectic.”, Alan said.
“Mr. Stokes of course.”, Hiram replied as the media cams began shooting live feed of the two of them talking and shaking hands. “I hear this episode may have been a smuggling operation gone horribly awry.”
“Huh well the facts are being gathered…..”
“Wings Corona had a vessel impounded two years ago for weapons and drug smuggling wasn’t it?”, Hiram interrupted.
“Yes that’s true but the company that operated that vessel went out of business so they’re the ones responsible.”, Alan replied.
“A member on that crew was working for Wings am I right? You know I had quite the conviction rate for smugglers when I was a lawyer. Nast business smuggling. That Wings crew-member was a convicted rapist as well. Had I that event occurred in my territory I can assure you justice would’ve been swift.”, Hiram said as the cams showed the fake sincerity on hi face.
“Governor that incident did not in any way represent our company or the employees and I do take offense to your assertions sir.”, Alan said his anger growing.
“Yes yes of course. However, that man and the ship involved were from Wings, and now this incident. From what I’ve heard there are fatalities involved and the pictures are shocking. That‘s why if I become President my first task is to make the crimes of smuggling and piracy, punishable by death”, he remarked.
“Oh for the love of….”, Alan muttered.
     Snipers had already hacked into someone’s cam putting the pics of the murder scene on the Stream. The public craved for information, the scoop, the juicy stuff, the need to know right now.  The Governor was already speculating, steering public opinion all thanks to an aide who showed him a hacked pic. Alan was doing his best not to blow up on cam and deliver a tirade against Hiram Foote for his ignorance.
“Well Investigator Stokes as Governor you have my complete support into this matter and please do not hesitate to contact my office should you require any information or additional help.”, he smiled shaking Alan’s hand, cams shooting the whole pathetic scene.
    Foote and his lackey pack sauntered off no doubt proud of an unexpected opportunity to collect support for his political campaign. Alan muttered a few obscenities under his breath and wanted to wash his hands from the stink that emanated from men like Hiram.
    Alan spotted Cy walking back up the jet way holding his nose with a handkerchief and talking  with someone on his phone. He looked worried even more so than before.
“Hey Cy, what do you think?”, Alan nodded towards the Coronado.
“Disgusting to be honest one of the worst scenes I’ve seen in a long time. No signs of forced entry into the vessel, no damage on the outside. Something the ship was transporting went ballistic. No pallets were forced open. Howard showed me the freight manifest, nothing organic or synthetic on board either so that rules out a mech or synthetic flipping out killing the entire crew.”
“What about the on board tapes?”, Alan asked referring to on board cams capturing every cabin area.
“Erased apparently. Howard sent it to a analyst to check for any ghost data maybe something escaped being erased by whomever or whatever attacked these guys.”, Howard shrugged.
“Anything else?”, Alan asked.
“Yeah……..got a dead one in the hotel. You want to come along?”, Howard asked.
“Yeah let me tell the kid to send the reports.”
    The hotel Howard was speaking about was the Conrad, a convenient place to stay for passengers, flight and cabin crew during layovers. The hotel had over 420 rooms, restaurants, conference rooms, and it’s own gates for dedicated business clientele.
    The hotel manager, Mr. Scrimm met both men in the lobby. He gave them the pass key and brought along the hotel detective up to room 412 a suite reserved for clients with hefty business accounts.
“This is the first serious incident we’ve ever had, and I mean ever.”, the manager said to Alan and Cy in the elevator.
“When did you receive the call that something was wrong in 412?”, Cy asked.
“When the chambermaid went in around 8:45 this morning.”, answered Mr. Coate the hotel detective. “Officially 8:49 am that is.”
“We’ve secured the tapes so no worries about snipers gentlemen. As you can imagine we at Conrad want to keep this very silent.”, Scrimm said as the elevators doors opened.
    As they walked down the hallway they could see only one guard and one investigator outside 412. They were acting low key as to not be conspicuous to any other guests.
“What about these adjoining rooms on this floor?”, Cy motioned.
“Either checked out or moved to other rooms. This entire section is quite clear I can assure you.”, Scrimm nodded.
“That’s not entirely what I meant. Any witnesses, anyone see or hear anything?”, Cy rubbed his temple.
“Uh no nothing at all.”, Scrimm answered opening the room door. ”Gentleman.”
    The suite looked fairly neat. Nothing out of the ordinary in the living room, dining room, or bedroom. For a second Cy though they had gotten the wrong room.
“Uh in the bathroom gentleman.”, Scrimm motioned.
    The bathroom made up for the neatness in the rest of the suite. It was a vile mess, a biohazard. Blood coated the walls, floor, ceiling, everything. The bathtub was filled blood soaked water as was the toilet.
“Where the hell is the body?”, Cy asked.
“Over there…..Jesus what the hell.”, Alan remarked.
    Each bathroom in the hotel room had a trash chute, a roughly 12x12” chute where one could dispose of garbage. Each chute led to a large incinerator at the bottom of the dock port. Something had tried to shove the guest of 412 into the chute not in pieces but whole distending and warping the opening. You couldn’t even tell the remains were human save for the two feet sticking out.
“How in the hell did……”, Alan said.
“No shit. Maybe someone tried to cut the body up then shove the remains in.”, Cy guessed looking at the gruesome scene.
“I don’t know Cy something tried to shove the entire body down the damn thing.”, Alan replied.
“Who is he……it’s a he right?”, Cy asked Scrimm.
“Yes male. His name is Meno Barani.”, Scrimm read from his info plate.
“Name’s familiar.”, Cy remarked.
“Got it.”, Alan said looking at his plate. “Meno Barani……you got to be kidding me….Christ. Meno Barani age 60, CEO and owner of Active Logistics, an arms company. Wonderful, tie this in with Wings, Foote and the wire and the media penguins are going to have a frenzy.”
“You said you have the tapes?”, Cy asked Scrimm as he walked over to the screen room. “Put them up.”
    The hotel manager touched a few slides on his plate and in an instant the recorded material from multiple cams appeared on the suite’s large screen.
“Sir we’re going to cam the bathroom and uh the coroners are here.”, an investigator said to Cy. “Fine okay. Mr. Scrimm take us to the hallway and 412. Focus on that please.”
 “We’re going to find out just what in the hell happened. Hey got someone coming down the hall on screen two. Focus in on that person.”, Alan said.
    A figure walked down the hallway and stopped outside the door to 412. It was a woman wearing some kind of camouflage uniform. She waved her hand in front of the doorbell and was let in by Barani. The cams followed the two walking into the living room. She was tall, had short red brown hair and was had a fit muscular build.
“What about audio?”, Cy asked.
“I’m sorry only visual.”, Scrimm responded.
“Dammit.”, Cy grumbled.
    The whole suite was deadly quiet as everyone watched silent footage of the young woman who appeared to be in her 20s and asking Barani questions to which he would shake his head and shrug. He seemed to get a bit angry and waved his hand near her face to which she grabbed his wrist causing him pain. She then pulled him into the bathroom. He was shaking his head furiously and yelling out. She seemed to smirk before her face contorted to absolute hatred. Barani appeared to be begging for his life before she hoisted him over her head. She then proceeded to fold the man in half one hand holding his ankles the other his throat.  Blood burst everywhere.
“Fucking Christ Almighty.”, Alan said turning away.
“Jesus look at that. Fucking folding him up like he was made out of paper.”, Cy grimaced. “Christ look at this!”
    She held the glob of remains of what was once Meno Barani in one hand while opening the chute with the other. She then thrust the body into the chute as someone would forcibly stuff an oversized bag of trash. The young woman then removed her clothing and deposited them in the WDP (wash/dry/press) cubicle along with her socks and boots. After drying off she collected her clean clothes, got dressed and left.
“Just like that. Can you believe it? Fucking bitch murders a man, takes a shower, and does her freaking laundry. All in a night’s work eh sweetheart?”, Cy grumbled.
“Sir, tech has the ghost data from the Coronado. You want it on the screen?”, an assistant asked.
“Yeah.”, Cy said.
    The footage was quick but long enough to get a shot of the back of a woman wearing the same camo uniform with short dark hair before the tape blanked out. Cy raised his eyebrows.
“That’s got to be synthetic or a mech Cy. No human is that strong. I say someone’s synthetic went off the rails.”, Alan reasoned.
“Sir, the shoulder patch is from the 1st Airborne Regiment I just checked.”, Cy’s junior officer said. “This woman is human.”
“I’ll be damned.”, Cy said.
“She served as a trooper in B Company, 2nd Battalion since 3301. I’ll put her record up on screen.”, the junior added.
    An army record appeared complete with a picture of the alleged killer. It read:


Name: Secu, Sabine D.

Date of Birth: 11-2-3279          
    Place of Birth: Closterthe        
    State: Wexxe     
    Nationality: Cahirdonian

Height: 70

Weight: 195

Hair: Auburn

Eyes: Brown



    Alan took a close look at the identification photo, it was a match. The subject’s eyes were piercing, alluring even sensual he thought, but he saw those same eyes turn to absolute hate right before snapping Meno Barani in half.


“Get her picture to every station and law enforcement agency out there. She is to be described as extremely dangerous, mentally unstable, and homicidal. Advise that suspect should be contained but not confronted.”, Cy said to his junior. “Well Alan you have any recommendations?”
“This Sabine, kills a flight crew and well known arms dealer. There’s an obvious connection somewhere.”, Alan said lighting up a jack.
“You think she’s still on this port?”, Cy asked.
“Cross check her picture with everyone who has left within 12 hours.”, Alan said to an investigator. “How’s that Cy?”
“Good start. Also check for any other Colgan flights arriving and departing in the next 12 hours as well.”, Cy motioned to his junior who was frantically busy sending out the orders on his plate.
“If she’s still here we can nip this before it gets worse.”, Alan said. “How much security do you have on hand?”
“Not much but we can pack some firepower if we have to. If need be we’ll vaporize the loon.”, Cy grumbled.
“I’m going to back to my office, see if the kid’s filed everything. Also I’ll do some checking on my own. I’m curious what vessels the Colgan crew had flown for the past couple of years, see if they did anything strange or out of the ordinary.”, Alan said.
“Yes, thanks if you come up with anything let me know.”, Cy nodded.

    It was a long walk from the Conrad to his office near the Gold concourse. He thought of a long list of questions concerning the murders. Perhaps Hiram Foote with all his political bombast was on to something concerning Colgan, the flight crew, and Wings Corona. Alan knew every carrier, every leasing company dealt with smuggling but it was always from a standpoint of prevention not one in promotion. 
    He got in an elevator to take him up to the Wings offices and looked at his reflection in the polished metal. He was dragging for certain, the dark circles under his gray eyes proved that much. Alan turned to his side and did his best to suck in his gut,…..not too bad he thought. His dark hair was graying, mostly at the temples and that made him feel a lot older than 44.
    The elevator door opened and he entered what employees nicknamed the Wings “Fortress”, all of it’s vast operations, offices, communications under one roof. Alan headed down the corridor leading to “Investigations/Insurance” his territory and saw the sectional secretary wave to him as he walked by her.
“Hey, your client in your office waiting.”, she said.
“What client?”, he asked but the secretary was already out of earshot on her way to a meeting. “What damn client.”, he muttered.
    He entered his office threw his jacket on the floor and caught movement to his right. His heart seemed to skip a beat. It was her, Sabine. For a split second he thought of running back out and hitting the Security alarm. But he hesitated, perhaps out of curiosity. Her dark eyes seemed to stare right through him. Her camo uniform emblazoned with rank and unit patches made her look that much more serious. Crammed in a chute he thought to himself.
“You can relax.”, Sabine said.
“Can I?”, he asked. “You’re not going to kill me are you? Or have you not decided on that?”
“If I wished for that, you wouldn’t be talking right now.”, Sabine replied.
“You know a report with your face has already been sent out to every system. Your options are a bit limited at this moment. I don’t have arrest powers nevertheless I suggest you offer yourself to me and be taken to Security. If you don’t want me to take you then I can summon them up here.”, Alan said clearing his throat.
    She simply sat in the chair not saying a word her head resting against two fingers. He wasn’t sure if she realized the gravity of the situation. She finally stirred.
“First, that flash report hasn’t gone out because the comm antenna is offline. Second, the only place you’ll be taking me is to your home. Third if you call Security up here you’ll be responsible for their deaths. How’s that?”, Sabine finally said.
“What do you mean the antenna is offline?”, he asked.
“I took it offline as well as the back-up coupling. If you don’t believe go ahead and call your network division. I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing.”, she said.
    Alan did just that. Sure enough communication from the station was out but repair crews were on it and would have it back online within two hours.
“You have less than two hours.”, Alan smiled.
“I never said they’d be out permanently, but more than enough to get to Cahirdon. So, if you please Mr. Stokes.”, she stood up.
    She was an inch taller than he and her physique was very impressive. He wasn’t feeling heroic or dumb enough to try and escape. However, the walk all the way to a flight was inevitably going to take them past Security squads and they had her picture on their plates looking for her.
“I take you’ve already got a flight picked out? Which gate?”, he asked.
“Red 9, Intrepid 1103 and it’s on time for once.”, she said.
“What happens if Security sees you? What then?”, Alan said putting on his jacket.
“It won’t be pretty. There’s a lot of innocent passengers, they’re most likely to get jittery and start shooting.  Security troops are the bottom of the barrel.”, Sabine remarked. “If any of them want to play hero I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”
“Yeah I’m sure you will.”, Alan said.
    Thankfully no one in the lobby of Wings took notice of Alan and his companion as they headed out. As they got into the elevator an Operation’s employee hopped in at the last minute joining them. Alan winced hoping that wouldn’t set her off.
“Hey Alan how are things?”, he asked.
“Not too bad Soros. How about you?”, Alan forced a smile.
“Oh you know so-so. Hey how about the Colgan bird. Damn Joffe showed me pics from the crime scene. Whomever did that, ….I mean it’s beyond savage. Just give me a gun and a few minutes alone with that beast. Oh, man I show them.”, he mimicked holding a pistol.
    Alan cringed. He honestly thought he would hear a muffled scream from his co-worker then a snapping sound. He could see her from the corner of his eye and she hadn’t moved. Please don’t kill him he thought.  His mouth had suddenly become very dry as he tried to think of something to say to change the subject.
“Hey you’re in the Airborne. You guys are pretty tough. You know, I thought of joining the Paras but I suffer from vertigo. A friend of mine says Marines are tougher but I said hogwash Airborne is where the action is. By the way what you guys did in Korto was amazing! You guys kicked serious ass. Hey Alan you saw the action on the wire a couple of months ago didn’t you? Hey uh, Sergeant Sabine is it…interesting name,…were you there?”, he smiled.
“Yeah.”, she said staring straight ahead.
“Yes! Oh, man what kind of gun did you use huh?”,
“Standard issue ZP122.”, her patience was growing thin.
“Say how many of those guys did you kill? I bet that’s got to change your….”
“Soros enough ok? I don’t think she wants to relive that event just for you. She and her mates have been through enough.”, Alan said.
“Oh yeah….yeah hey Sergeant Sabine I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to you know bring up any bad thoughts. No hard feelings?”, Soros replied extending a hand smiling.
    The elevator stopped on the departures floor and Sabine looked at Soros straight in the eye. Alan turned and expected the worst as she shook his hand. He noticed Soros wince from her squeeze.
“Well Sergeant we have to be going right now okay? Soros I’ll see you later, perhaps next week sometime alrighty?”, Alan gestured as she let go of Soros’ hand.
“Uh yeah sure. Great grip you have Sergeant. Go Paras!”, he grimaced rubbing his hand.
    As they walked to Red Concourse he glanced at her checking to see if the little vein on her forehead had gone down. He thanked the Creator she didn’t lose it.
“I appreciate you being patient with Soros, I know he’s a bit of a handful.”, Alan remarked.
“You think?”, she said.
“What did you do to take him off your radar? Think of someone or someplace or focus on a little detail on the elevator?”, Alan smirked.
“The idea of us both bathed in his guts might be a wee bit off putting to the passengers.”, Sabine replied.
“Yeah, that too.”, he remarked.
    The concourse was full of travelers, both business and tourist traffic. Their gate Red 9 was almost near the end which meant a very long walk. Alan kept scanning ahead looking for any Security agents hoping they would never materialize for fear of violence. That hope was dashed near Gate 12 as two armed agents saw her and began to walk in their direction. Alan cursed under his breath as the report stated not to confront Sabine but only to monitor. These two jokers wanted to play hero.
“Two agents straight ahead looks like they want to stop you.”, Alan said.
“You might want to tell them to get out of my way then.”, she replied.
    He walked ahead of her and approached the two agents hoping to head off an incident.
“Hello gentleman. My name is Alan Stokes, I know your boss Cy Cager. I believe your orders are not to confront the suspect who is with me by the way. Do me a favor and stand aside guys.”, he said taking out his identification tab.
“Sir could you move away. We have new orders to apprehend the suspect.”, said one of them.
“Listen both of you if you do this a lot of people are going to get hurt including yourselves.”, Alan remarked.
“Mr. Stokes please move aside we have a job to do.”, the other said.
“Now look neither of you has any idea of whom you’re dealing with. Think for a minute dammit.”, Alan was almost pleading.
“Mr. Stokes we will arrest you for interfering with a security matter if you do not desist.”
“Fine have it your way.”, Alan grumbled.
    He turned and confronted Sabine who was approaching. This would be his last chance.
“They won’t move they want to take you in. If they start shooting a lot of people are going to get hurt.”, he said.
“I’ll handle it so nothing happens.”, she answered.
    The agents hands on rifles stood blocking her path. One of them took out a plate and double checked their orders to see if they had been updated once more. They hadn’t, so they proceeded with the arrest. A number of travelers began to look at the developing scene a few took out recording devices getting ready to capture any possible excitement.
“Sergeant Sabine Secu, you are hereby under arrest by the Department for Public Safety. Your cooperation is necessary in ensuring your well being. Do you understand?”, one said in a monotone voice.
“Guess you got me.”, she smiled holding up her wrists.
    The second agent placed the cuffs and locked them around her wrists. Alan had no idea what she was thinking but went along, she just looked at him and winked.
“I’ll go with you Sergeant.”, Alan spoke up. “Whether these guys like it or not.”
“Are the both of you taking me in?”, she played scared.
“Yes Sergeant we are.”, one said holding her elbow.
“I don’t suppose you’d allow me to use the bathroom would you?”, she asked.
“Sorry Sergeant, since we don’t have a female agent here who could escort you into a bathroom you’ll have to hold it until we get to where we are going.”
“Hey I don’t mind either of you watching while I go. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone with guys all around.”, she said.
“Being in the army Sergeant I’m sure that’s true but we aren’t out in the field ma’am this is civilization.”
“Then wouldn’t it be civilized to allow me to use the can? Hmmm?”, she smiled.
“You really have to go that bad?”, her escort asked.
“I wouldn’t make such a fuss if I didn’t have to. I mean come on, how can I possibly escape?”, she asked.
    They stopped. Her handler told the other agent to go to the Women’s washroom and clear anyone out first before escorting her inside. Sabine just glanced over at Alan and smiled. He hoped that smile meant she would disarm them not kill them.
“It’s clear come on.”, the one Security agent said.
    All three went into the washroom, one stood guard facing the door the other escorted her to a stall.
“You want to pull my trousers down?”, she asked her agent handler. “I don’t mind.”
“I can uh take the cuffs off. Be better that way.”, he gulped.
“Why don’t you watch guy? I’ve got thick pink meat down there.”, she cooed. “Why not get a feel?”
    He fumbled with the key and undid her restraints as she flicked out her long tongue near his ear. She could hear his breathing becoming harder.
“Hey Joffe what’s taking so long, tell the bitch to hurry up for crying out loud!”, yelled the other.
    In an instant she went from temptress to soldier. She took two fingers curled them under his belt and lifted him several feet into the air.
“What the hey hey hey!!!”, he yelled.
    His partner turned to his left to see what was happening and when he did he just stood there incredulous. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“You shorty, drop the rifle and your pants now.”, she pointed to the incredulous agent. “As for you when I put you down you do the same. Either of you get’s the sudden urge to be a hero and it will be the last thing you ever think of. Understand?”
    They muttered a response and as ordered unbuckled their belts allowing their trousers to fall. She removed their stunners, and shackled them together around a toilet. Sabine took their rifles and broke them in half. Both agents were shocked at how easily she accomplished that feat with no more effort than snapping a dry twig. When she was finished disposing their gear in the trash chute she walked up to both smiling.
“Aww you two look so good together. Maybe I should take a picture and send it out on the wire, what do you think?” she asked. “Nah better not. Anyhow I’m afraid it’s night night for you two.”
    She took out a stunner gun and rendered both unconscious with a small burst. They’d be asleep for at least an hour. Sabine then closed the stall door and left the washroom. Alan was nearby seated in the concourse and stood up when he saw her come out. It had seemed forever since they all three went inside.
“What happened?”, he asked.
“They’re both taking a nap. Now let’s get going before another bunch of monkey agents come by.”, she replied.


    The flight back to terra firma was a short 30 minutes followed by a short hop via magnetic rail to the final stop. Alan never got used to the strange feeling that within an hour and a half he could go from port dock orbit to his front door, from lifeless space to green hills and trees.  His house was small as he lived alone, and it was located in a very quiet wooded neighborhood that was largely populated by engineers, pilots, and port dock employees.
    The commute was uneventful and neither spoke very much until they were inside his home. He took off his jacket and switched on the wall screen.  Sabine looked a bit out of place wearing an camouflaged army uniform as she investigated his place.
“Want something to drink?”, he asked.
“Whatever you’re having.”
“How long has it been since you’ve been in a house.”, Alan asked handing her a glass of wine.
“Quite a while. Smells different, it’s too quiet and everything looks strange.”, she said sipping her drink.
“No sound of boots, no shouting, and no dull green.”, he replied.
“How come you’re not married?”, Sabine asked.
“Oh we’re going there already huh?”
“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”, she said looking at his framed photographs.
“I was married fifteen years ago but it didn’t work out. Both of us spent to much time away from each other doing our jobs. One day she came home and said she had met someone else. I knew the marriage was over long before that. We both got married because everyone else was, I think we saw marriage as a some sort of badge that you were maturing growing up. We gave into peer pressure I guess. Whatever, it didn’t work out.”, he answered.
“What was her name?”
“Eileen. I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing or how many kids she has if that’s your next question.”, Alan replied.
“No, I wasn’t going to ask you that. Why aren’t you seeing anyone now?”, she asked.
“What is this standard interrogation? How do you know I’m not seeing anyone?”, he asked.
“The place doesn’t look like it.”
“For all you know I could have two girlfriends and perhaps I tell them not to touch my things because that’s the way I like it.”, Alan grumbled. “And I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with someone who less than 12 hours ago brutally murdered a man in a manner than defies description.”
“You don’t have act that way. I’m just trying to be friendly.”, Sabine sat down.
“How about it’s time I asked the questions and believe me I’ve got quite a few.”, he sat up saying.
“Of course, but before you do can I bum a jack and may I borrow your plate?”, she asked.
“What?”, he said tossing her a pack of jacks and his plate. “Happy? First off whom do you work for?”
“The government.”, she replied lighting up and tapping his plate.
“For the government in the armed forces. What are you doing on my plate?”
“For the state, the constitution, the people, the government, the army, and my para regiment. As for what I’m doing on your plate, I’m ordering clothes which will be here in an hour.”, she replied tossing the plate back to Alan.
“No I mean whom do you really work for Sabine? In the past two days you’ve killed five people. For what purpose, and who gave you the orders?”, he raised his voice.
“I can’t tell you who silly. You were in the military that’s forbidden information.”
“The five people, they were all connected right I mean to your mission right?”, he said lighting up a jack.
“Most, actually three were related the other two got in my way. Aren’t you curious as to why I picked you?”
“The two got in your way and you just killed them?”, Alan asked.
“We’re in a ship a long way from nowhere I go to do my job and they tried to stop me from accomplishing that task. They were interfering, they attacked me, so I removed them permanently.”
“By tearing them to pieces? Which leads to me to another question…..”
“How is it that I have superhuman strength? Well that is a bit of a secret but it has nothing to do with the military or the government. It has everything to do with my Bratian heritage.”, she replied putting out her jack.
“You have Bratian heritage?”
“Yes I do. Now back to my question earlier, do you know why I picked you?”, she smiled.
“I knew a man during flight school who was Bratian. Your last name sounds a bit familiar, did your father ever fly or was he ever a pilot in the armed forces?”, Alan asked.
“Yes. He flew OA-7s in Berkoz.”, she replied.
“No impossible……was your father’s name Georg?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my, incredible! You’re Georg Mitea’s daughter. Unbelievable, I can’t believe it! Your father and I were great friends. I held you in my arms when you were little. Your last name Secu who’s…”, he asked.
“My grandmother’s maiden name.”
“My God, you’re little Sabine, now not so little…”, a tear welled up in Alan’s eye. “You’re mother is she…?”
“Passed away several years ago.”
“No brothers or sisters either.”, Alan muttered. “Your father and I were very good friends. The times we shared.”
“I know. I actually remember you once in our old home. I recall looking up and seeing you and all of us at one point being outside in the sun, no doubt Papi having a barbecue.”, she said.
“Papi yes, I almost forgotten that name! Your father loved having those gatherings, he’d invite a bunch of fellow pilots and we’d talk shop. Your mother and the fellow’s wives would be at another table talking and laughing. That was quite a time, quite a time.”, Alan said. “Your father and I, yes indeed we served in the Bergoz War together. We had the time of our lives flying the old OA-7s.”
“Yeah nicknamed the Pig. Wish we had them last year in Korto giving us support.”, she said.
“Your father would’ve been proud of you being in the Paras. As for the recent events, Sabine tell me what is going on. I’ll help you in every way possible.”, Alan said hugging Sabine.

East/West Japan

Japan is split into two entities after the end of the Second World War in December 1945. East Japan or the People's Republic of Japan created by the Soviets, and West Japan a state formed by the United States, Great Britain and the Commonwealth of Australia.

Within five years following Operation Olympic and the Soviet invasion, the Japanese people are thrust into the center of a new war between Communist and Non Communist entities.

-August 5th, 1945, The "Enola Gay" drops A-bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

-August 8th, The Soviet Union declares war on the Empire of Japan.

-August 9th, The Soviet Union invades Manchuria.

-August 9th, Second A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

-August 9th, The "Big Six" i.e. The Supreme War Council of the Japanese Government enter debate on whether to accept conditions of the Potsdam Declaration.

- August 11th, 3:54 a.m. Japanese Minister of the Navy, Mitsumasa Yonai, member of the Six and supporter of surrender and acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration collapses after lengthy debate with opponents. Yonai enters coma from presumed brain aneurism and dies 7:19 a.m.

-August 12th, the Council advises Emperoro Hirohito that surrender is unacceptable and that too many lives have been sacrificed thus far for such an outcome. The fate of Japan must be decided on home soil. Hirohito quietly acquiesces to decision.

-August 14th, "Helluva Time" a B-29 from the 393rd Bomb Squadron B-29-36-MO 44-27306 on it's way to strike Nagoya, suffers from inflight fire and or damage crashing two miles offshore from seaside town of Kumano. The seven ship formation of B-29s is attacked by three Japanese J2M5 "Raiden" interceptors. "Helluva Time" was believed to have been hit by cannon fire causing control cable damage and setting onboard flares alight. Only two crew bailout and are picked up by U.S. submarine U.S.S. Sea Owl. The "Fat Man" type A-Bomb is lost in crash and does not detonate.

-August 18th, Soviets invade Sakhalin and Kuril Islands.

-August 19th, Soviet invasion force meets heavy resistance from Japanese defenders on Sakhalin.

-August 19th, US military planners have preliminary date for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu for first week in October, 1945.

-August 20th, Japanese submarine I-204 on war patrol off of Kuril Island of Shumshu torpedos and sinks Soviet transport vessel carrying elements of the 87th Rifle Corps.

- August 18th Soviets invade Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

"Justine", 1972, Photographer; George Picton.

The primary character from the story "Sunflower".

Sunflower Part II

May 10, 1973

She drove her black 1972 Ferrari Spyder on West Olive Avenue to Studio City in Burbank from her home in Hollywood Hills. She was due on the set of the T.V. series “Barnaby Jones” for a few scenes. Her name was Justine Ulla Torjussen, age 27, and very much a California blonde to anyone who saw her. A native of Norway and Sweden she had moved to California to live with relatives. She never knew her parents who died or simply disappeared in the final months of WWII. As long as she could remember she lived her whole life in the United States, educated and brought up in the home of the free and the brave.

Justine came into wealth by inheriting the Atlantis Tools Corporation which provided both civilian and military it’s products worldwide. Despite being wealthy she did get a proper education all the way up through receiving a PhD from the University of Chicago in June 1969. She thought the money and the company which she owned 51% of, could always disappear and be taken, but no one could ever take her degree away. That she owned and was very proud in getting. It was hard work, stressful, but in the end she could always look up and see that piece of paper saying “…PhD awarded to Justine U. Torjussen on this date Thirteenth of June, Nineteen Hundred and Sixty Nine“.

Her biggest struggle was being taken seriously. Yes, she had majority ownership in a large company. Yes, she was wealthy and intelligent. However, to anyone who didn’t know her and who had just met her, she was the epitome of the cartoonish blonde bimbo. Her main problem was her looks. Justine wasn’t just pretty or attractive, she was stunning. She was also very tall at 6 feet. Lastly her physique is what made men and even women take her as something of a joke.

Picture if you will a body that was created by a pool of the greatest pin up artists of all time, Vargas, Petty, Elvgren, Buell, Driben, Ward, and Frahm for example. Now add even more curves plus blonde hair and blue eyes. The result was a 5 alarm fire, a brick house that no wolf could ever , ever think of blowing down. She was gawked at wherever she walked, she was that mythical woman of men’s fantasies who could cause a traffic accident crossing a street. However, this physical beauty made most view her more as a thing instead of a real person. Once people got to know her they usually thought different, or they couldn’t get past the idea that the body simply didn’t go with the mind.

Sometimes she let her intelligence speak for itself, other times she let her chest do the talking. She had been dubbed “The Bosom” or “The Body” in high school. She found it unbelievably easy to get men to do anything she wanted simply by showing a bit of cleavage or by wearing a tight top. Of course that didn’t help her case to be taken as more than a sexual object. Nevertheless she did it at times. Her figure landed her a TV deal in a place where it was just luck if someone important working for the entertainment industry saw you , and gave you a card while telling you to call their office in the morning.

One CBS producer in 1970 for the TV series Mission Impossible saw Justine at a small eatery near Beverly Hills and was so taken by her, he gave her his card and went through the whole “you ought to be showbiz” routine. She had already been approached time and time again by sleazebags who worked for skin magazines and porno films to get her involved. Justine just told them all to take a hike. She suspected this so called “CBS” producer was another creep. When she did actually call a week later (out of curiosity) she was surprised it wasn’t a joke. She drove down to Burbank to try out for a small bit part in one episode of M.I. Several days later she got a call telling her she got the part.

That little exposure got her small roles in other shows from Cannon, Ironside, Sarge, and The Man and the City. Naturally she was type cast as the sexy blonde who just happened to wear low cut or very tight tops along with snug slacks. She didn’t mind, she was used to being ogled anyhow, and it wasn’t like the acting was any part of a serious future career. If anything it was just something new to try out.

What she did take seriously was flying. She loved it ever since she was a kid. Her uncle and aunt whom she lived with in San Diego worked for the airline industry at one time or another in their lives. The uncle was a pilot for Pan American and he had a private orange and black 1949 Aeronca “Super Chief” high wing tail dragger he’d fly on his day’s off. He took her up when she was 6 and by the time she was 10, let her try the controls and it sparked an interest that endured. Justine managed to solo by 14 and since that time she had logged a few thousand hours. Whenever she got the chance she would rent a plane and fly. Only during graduate school at Chicago did her piloting take a backseat.

After graduate school she restarted her flying and going on tours her uncle would giver her of his office. That being the left hand seat of a 707 then 747 in 1970. She could only watch from the observer seat behind him as they flew to different destinations, all the while her mind soaked in every last detail of commercial aviation. She’d never be allowed to fly for an airline since a woman’s only job was a stewardess which her aunt did very well in the early 1950s for United. She remembered looking at her aunt’s pictures as a child, holding her gold wings, and touching the powder blue uniform. It was a glamorous job and a bit enticing but Justine wanted to be up front, piloting the plane. So she did the next best thing the first chance she got which was to do it recreationally, and since she had the funds she could now afford to take it further. By the fall of 1969 instead of single or twin prop jobs she zeroed in for the Lear jets, and Gulfstream II’s, the business worlds answer to the big jets of the airlines.

By October ‘69 she had moved to the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles and started training on Lear jets at Burbank Airport at a place called O’Hara’s Flying Service. The first time she walked through the glass doors at O’Hara’s the receptionist thought she wanted to apply for the secretary job that was open. She sat in silence for a moment as Justine replied no and wanted to start flying jets. The receptionist introduced her to the owner Henry O’Hara who was stunned by the request.

First it was very expensive, and second why would a woman want to do such a thing he thought. He didn’t have time for jokes so he tried at first to blow Justine off. She showed him her log book and if that wasn’t enough she could start paying immediately the full amount for a jet turbine license with emphasis on Lear jets specifically the one sitting pretty in Mr. O’ Hara’s hangar.

Just to be sure he wanted to see what she could do first hand so he pointed to the yellow and white Cessna 310 the company owned on the ramp and told her to do a pre-flight walk around and prepare for a flight with him as check airman. Justine did a proper pre-flight by the proverbial book, and within half an hour they were winging their way out towards the desert over Palmdale.

O’Hara was impressed to say the least. Her skills at handling communications, watching for other traffic, and flying was admirable especially in the high density air pattern in the L.A. basin. She did the prerequisite, stalls, spins, and a few touch and go’s at Quartz Hill’s small field. After a two hour check ride he was inclined to have her fly whatever she wanted.

The sun was getting low on the horizon as they followed a PSA 737 on their final to Burbank airport. Justine nicely squeaked the tires on the runway, and taxied up to the ramp in front of the flight school. She paid for her flight and got her slot to start jet/turbine training the following week.

She never failed to impress and despite the many doubts and sexual innuendos thrown her way by fellow pilots, air controllers and male ground crews she passed. Now over three years later she had amassed a number of hours on “biz-jet” aircraft.

As she entered the parking lot at Studio City she waved to the gate guard and found a parking spot. She rehearsed the few lines she had for her three scenes which were to be filmed today for “Barnaby Jones”. She was playing the role of a girl named “Aubrey” who was a witness to a crime. When she got to the set she got to wardrobe where she had to wear a tight top and slacks. She felt the outfit was a bit too tight all over but she knew someone higher up wanted the “chesty” blonde in something eye catching.

Instead of three scenes Justine would be shooting two, as the show’s co-star Lee Meriwether wasn’t feeling too well and for that matter neither was one of the guest stars Geraldine Brooks who was in the hospital with some form of pneumonia or flu. The star of the show Buddy Ibsen was okay to do his scene with Justine and the crew went ahead and shot that first. The shoot was slow, it was just one of those days where things don’t work like clockwork but neither she or Buddy Ibsen seemed to mind. She talked with him during breaks and asked him a lot of questions and found out he loved sailing and playing music. Justine asked him about his days in the U.S. Coast Guard and asked how he found it.

Thousands of miles away while the two were chatting a place known as the Jungarrian Gates, a valley separating China and the Soviet Union the sound of hundreds of Soviet tanks and armor thundered towards into the faraway Chinese Xinjiang province. On the Chinese Mongolian border more than 35 Soviet divisions broke through Chinese border posts and moved south.

Overhead short range Soviet missiles tipped with tactical nuclear warheads streaked over thousands of invading troops hell bent for their objectives. Within 25 minutes of crossing the border the detonations of nearly 60 tactical nukes in the low kiloton range and 8 large intercontinental warheads at nearly 10 megatons apiece slammed into their targets. The night sky was pierced by the rising of so many man made suns. Within an hour the number of dead and wounded Chinese soldiers and civilians numbered into the millions adding to the millions already infected by Sunflower and the countless more killed by it. Beijing was hammered by two of the 10 megaton tipped missiles. The results were predictable, the huge city vanished along with countless people.

The Chinese response was unorganized. They had number, soldiers both sick from Sunflower and those still healthy fought back buying time for any reinforcements. Communications were out, they had started to go on the fritz over a week ago as more soldiers reported in sick and needed repairs were left undone. Command and control centers were far and few and those that managed to survive the Soviet first strike ordered reinforcements into the fray whether they were battle ready or not. Some units were driven into combat without many officers or ammunition or even guns. They were told to take weapons from the dead. Many more troops entered “hot zones” of radioactivity without protective clothing, not that there was any to be handed out anyway.

The Chinese air force had thousands of planes, most of them antiques compared to the Soviet aircraft. Hundreds of aircraft and pilots had been incinerated by the nukes, however those airfields deeper south that survived sent their planes aloft even though none were equipped to fight at night.

The most numerous types of Chinese aircraft were copies of the Soviet MiG-19 and MiG-21s. These aircraft took to the skies aided by the few radar systems that operated guiding them to their aerial targets. In a few instances Chinese interceptors blind without onboard radar and the pilot relying on his own eyes nearly collided with Soviet bombers streaming south and east.

Despite the mass confusion and horror a few Chinese H-6 twin engine jet bombers, copies of the Soviet TU-16s, took off with free fall nuclear bombs. The task was essentially suicidal as the Russian air defense net would down most if not all. But as luck would have it only one bomber was downed, by engine failure. The Soviet radar system crashed at two points and a dozen bombers made it through flying at tree top level. The retaliatory strike was successful but only part so. Out of the 13 bombers that took off, one crashed from the aforementioned mechanical fault, and three other bombers couldn’t find their targets, but 9 did. The bombs were in the high kiloton range, crude but effective. They essentially were upgraded types like the one’s the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Soviet cities of Frunze, Almaty, Irkutsk, and Khabarovsk went up in nuclear fire and ash. Five Soviet military installations including a bomber base that had sent aircraft over China were hit. Only one H-6 bomber made it to safety, in the Sea of Japan when it ditched in the pre dawn gray blue light. The crew were amazingly picked up by a Japanese fishing trawler. By that time the Sino Soviet War of 1973 was 6.5 hours old and close to a hundred million dead, many more injured, and countless others trapped in the rubble of houses, apartment buildings, and bunkers. Meanwhile Sunflower continued it’s efficient killing spree unabated by the noisy war.

This night of the 11th of May was a simply a meat grinder for soldiers, mostly Chinese, and machine alike. Their navy faired best of all in the first 24 hours. The Soviet Pacific Fleet was streaming out of Vladivostok, evacuating in case a nuke had it’s name written on it. The Chinese surface fleet was no match for the Soviet ships and submarines setting out, but the creaky diesel subs of the Red Chinese Navy came out of their coastal lairs and began to head from the Yellow Sea and East China Sea northeast towards the Soviet ships.

For an unknown reason the Soviet fleet didn’t bother much in the way of looking out for Chinese submarines. Maybe they believed most had been destroyed, but if so they were wrong. Some 21 subs went hunting and found their targets.

Several South Korean and Japanese fishing trawlers saw the naval action from several miles away. The scene was amazing. The sky was a bit overcast, daylight had come, and there were only light to occasional moderate seas. They saw the Soviet ships spread from horizon to horizon. Then without warning flashes of light, explosions, massive columns of water, and black smoke came forth. The Chinese torpedoes had hit their mark. The Soviets retaliated accurate anti-sub torpedoes. The scene was chaotic. A trawler captain radioed his home port of Pusan South Korea of what was unfolding. As he spoke he saw the Soviet cruiser Alexander Suvorov explode, a ball of fire and chunks of debris flying hundreds of feet into the air. The reverberations from underwater explosions rattled the tiny trawlers, the gray skies pierced by orange, red, and yellow flame. An anti ship missile zoomed by the fishing vessels, it had been fired by a rattled Soviet officer. The missile flew on at nearly supersonic speed northeastward it’s guidance computer failing to lock on the tiny ships.

A bright explosion to the south caught everyone’s attention. It was far on the horizon but there was no mistake as to it’s makeup. Several crewmembers became blind, a thundering rolling roar barreled far overhead like the sound of a thousand chariots. A beautiful mushroom cloud so distant yet so detailed rose from the horizon. It’s yellow, coral, purple, orange hues mixed, intertwined and boiled upwards. Either a Soviet ship and it’s nuclear arsenal or a Chinese nuclear torpedo had caused the explosion. Whatever the origin, the damage to the Soviet fleet must’ve been costly. As for the Chinese subs they were sacrificed the moment they launched a torpedo, all were sunk with crew.

A South Korean Navy P-3 Orion flew overhead the trawlers and orbited the area staying a safe distance from the action now ebbing away farther south. The news was out for certain. China and the Soviet Union were locked in a war that threatened to spread like Sunflower.

China had one ace card up it’s sleeve. It was a relatively new (5 year old) ex Soviet Golf class submarine. Sold to the Chinese in 1967 it had three missile tubes in the rear of the conning tower. Inside were three long range ballistic missiles carrying one megaton warhead each. The Soviets didn’t know this particular fact. They believed the tubes would carry short to medium range missiles with warheads in the kiloton range. The missiles technology had been given to the Israelis by the U.S. and then passed on to the Chinese in 1971 along with the warheads.

Submarine 322 quickly surfaced in the East China Seas and during a downpour of rain which helped shield the sub from Soviet radar, launch it’s missiles one by one. The stubby rockets quickly disappeared in the over cast their crackling roar diminishing as each raced upwards towards Earth’s upper atmosphere and ultimately to their designated targets.

By now the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado and their Soviet counterpart deep within Yamantau Mountain in the Urals watched with continued awe as the fighting grew even more precarious and fierce. Now they all watched three ballistic missiles split off, one heading north the other two heading northwest.

The Soviet commander of the facility, 4 star General Yuri Titovnin of the Rocket Forces coughed and blew his nose, cursing the cold he had come down with over a day ago as the Chinese missiles zeroed in on their target.

“Where are those missiles headed dammit!”, he shouted.

“The data is coming in now Comrade General……….one moment.”, an lieutenant nodded as he stared at his control screen.

“We have target probability 90%. Magadan, Kirov, and Semipalatinsk!”, a major reported.

“Fucking yellow bastards! Issue action word to silos 369-376 immediately.”, the General commanded as he wiped sweat from his forehead.

He didn’t feel all that well. He wasn’t entirely alone. Several other servicemen and women were sick too. He knew of the supposed accident in Omsk weeks ago. He himself watched as one of their bombers dropped a hell of a large bomb somewhere in the region of 10 megatons on the city. Moscow was trying to cover something up, and whatever it was they had failed. Yuri knew he had some bug and so did the others and for all he knew all the idiots in the Politburo were sick. Someone there had issued a secret command authority signal to attack the Chinese. He had no idea why and really didn’t care. He was more interested in his own health and that of his wife and four children whom he hadn’t seen in 10 days. By word of mouth the “Omsk bug” had wiped out villages and caused havoc in towns and cities. Law and order, a massive unshakeable pillar of the Soviet system was cracking. Yuri had heard of some desertions from a few units and the harsh counter measures by KGB units to counter it. He looked around at this vast underground command center and knew it would most likely be their tomb. Nobody would get out, not yet. Yuri had thought about it, about deserting, telling everyone to pack up and go home but he had a duty to fulfill. Besides there was a KGB battalion attached to this facility and they’d shoot anyone leaving. General Titovnin heard some groans and shouts from the specialists manning the dark rows of computers down in front of him. He saw what they did on the huge map display on the wall. Magadan, Semipalatinsk, and Kirov were hit and destroyed. Yuri blew his nose again as the wall monitor showed seven Soviet missiles heading for the Chinese interior. He looked at his watch and thought about his family.

Justine turned on the television set at home when her phone rang. She threw her purse down on the couch and picked up, it was her “boyfriend”. Boyfriend wasn’t quite how she felt about Kyle Tanner who was a pilot for United Airlines. He was more of a good friend and sometimes part lover. Justine had a hard time committing to any relationship which is one reason why so many of them failed. This one was probably destined for that in the future.

“Where the hell have you been?”, Kyle demanded.

“Wha? What do you mean, where have I been?!”, she replied.

“I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon Justine.”, he stated.

“I was doing some scenes in Burbank. What the hell is the problem?”

“Haven’t you been watching TV? Shit it’s only on every network and AM.”, he said.

“What is? What happened? Where are you anyway, you sound like you’re a million miles away?”, Justine asked looking at Walter Cronkite on TV and some graphic showing Russia and China and a conflict cartoon like symbol superimposed.

“The Russians and Chinese are fucking nuking each other!”, Kyle shouted.

“What?! Bullshit!”, she exclaimed grabbing the remote to turn up the volume to the TV.

She was trying to listen to Kyle and Cronkite at the same time. From the look on Conkite’s face while he darted back and forth to pieces of paper handed to him by an off camera assistant the situation was grave and very serious.

“Have you been listening?”, she heard Kyle ask.

“I’m trying to hear the news. When did this happen!?”, she shouted.

“I don’t know………..hours ago probably.”, he answered.

“Where are you anyway?”, she asked.

“I’m in Denver. I have a flight to Chicago then New York. I’m on duty until Monday and then I’m off for a few weeks. You’re not thinking about still going to Europe are you? Not after what’s just been happening?”, he inquired.

“Yeah I have the tickets. I’m going day after tomorrow.”, she replied.

“Justine………………………………...................are you insane?! Seriously are you? All civilian traffic has been grounded to the Pacific except Hawaii and I don’t know how long that’ll be running. We’re still flying it but a memo in the pilot’s lounge here said to be ready for a complete grounding. Did you hear me……………a …….complete………grounding. No flights except for military. No civilian flights anywhere in the world. If you go I guarantee you won’t be able to get back……………..at all.”, Kyle reasoned.

“They can ground flights after I’m there. Besides the authorities’ll reinstate flights when this is all over.”, she said lighting up a cigarette.

“Are you kidding? There might not be a “when it’s over” do you understand? Justine, I might be called up. Julie gave me a message telling me she got a phone call from the March Air Force Base. If they call her again it’s to tell me to get my ass back to L.A. and off to active duty. This is serious. Look……L.A…………you gotta just get out of L.A. Do you hear me?”, Kyle said.

“Kyle, I’m leaving Friday and I’ll be back that following Tuesday. I have to go, there’s something I have to do that I can’t get into right now, you’ll just have to trust me.”, she said.

“Alright but you better have an idea of how to get back if the shit hit’s the fan. Things are getting’ crazy. Look ah, I have to go …………I love ya…………Justine seriously……..take care of yourself and I’ll see you when you get back.”, Kyle said.

“Love you too Kyle. Be safe. Bye.”

Justine thought about what he had said. There was a commercial for Alka-Seltzer on TV as she went into the adjacent room and rolled up the carpet unveiling a floor safe. She opened it, and put the amount of two million dollars in a suitcase. She started to get a headache thinking about what she had to do in West Berlin, Kyle, the news on TV. Justine wanted it all to be over with. She reasoned with herself it would be by Tuesday. The money would be given to the men who were blackmailing her.

The threat of blackmail started two months ago, from a small group of individuals who threatened to expose Justine’s past and who her real parents were. If she failed to comply with their demands, her career, the company she had inherited, her life would be ruined. For weeks Justine’s lawyers negotiated with the blackmailers to no avail. At one point the suggestion of hiring a hitman to get rid of the individuals was courted but put on the backburner as a last resort.

Justine and her lawyers knew what only her closest relatives had known. That her father and mother had been Nazis during the Second World War. Her father, a German, had risen to the rank of Colonel in the Waffen SS by the end of the war, and ultimately disappeared. Her mother, a Norwegian, was an ardent Nazi sympathizer, she too went missing after May of 1945. As for Justine she was born into what was an experimental genetic program known as Lebensborn.

Lebensborn was a system whereby Waffen SS officers could father children with mothers who were supposedly 100% Aryan. There were dozens of Lebensborn clinics in Germany, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway. Justine was born in a clinic near Hamar, Norway. However, this potentially damaging information was only the tip of the iceberg.

Her father Karl Florian Staubli was on the list of wanted war criminals. He had been an officer when the war began and made a name for himself on the Eastern Front. That is where he rose through the ranks, was awarded medals for bravery including the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, the Close Combat Clasp in Gold which was presented to him personally by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. Justine’s father was awarded the notorious and rare Anti Partisan badge in gold which was given to him for his success in rooting out partisans, communists, Jews, and other so called undesirables in Belorussia. Colonel Karl Staubli was a battlefield and anti partisan hero to the Nazi war machine and of course a huge blight on his one daughter, Ulla.

After the war a male relative took baby Ulla to Sweden, renamed her Agda and gave her his last name Torjussen. Little Agda Ulla Torjussen then moved to Minnesota in 1947 to live with other relatives where she had her first name changed to Justine. An uncle and aunt from her mother’s side who had lived in the U.S. practically all their lives and unable to have children accepted Justine to their Southern California home of San Diego. Quite an adventure, and now a small group of people wanted to expose her past and her biological parents to anyone, everyone. Pay up or else.

The suitcase holding 2 million was shut and locked. Justine simply hoped it would go through the airport no questions asked. Looking at the news she didn’t think anyone would care anyway considering a small nuclear conflict sprouted up half a world away as well as a prickly pandemic circling the globe. She started to pack as Erik Sevareid made his usual commentary on what was making news, in this case the pandemic and the Sino Soviet War. Justine for the first time began to think that things overseas really did look bad and put her trip into question. She shrugged off the notion of cancelling the trip in the end as she looked at the TV local news replay shakey footage of riots in Rio de Janiero, Capetown, Nairobi, Milan, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw. Back in her mind Justine hoped the blackmailers had gotten caught up in the riots or better yet sick with the Russian Flu.

“Bastards”, she muttered aloud.

-------------------------------------------

May 12, 1973

It was a bright sunny day as Justine pulled into the Crowne Shopping Plaza on her way to LAX. She had to pick up a prescription at Cutler’s Pharmacy before heading to the airport, the first stop on her trip to West Berlin.

She entered the pharmacy causing the little bell above the door to ring. She could see old Dr. Larry Cutler behind the counter helping a guy who was coughing and looked pale. Dr. Cutler looked up when the bell rang and smiled recognizing Justine as one of his usual customers. He finished with the sick customer who mumbled his thanks and walked out slowly. Justine just watched him, poor guy she thought.

“Ms. Torjussen how can I help you?”, Dr. Cutler smiled.

“Oh just here to pick up my prescription. That guy looked under the weather.”, she said.

“Yeah flu season came back I suppose. People on the radio are calling it the Russian Flu.”

“I heard. A lot of people getting it here?”

“Eh, yeah it’s a real kicker. He’s the third guy I’ve seen with it this today. Your prescription comes out to $6.95 Ms. Torjussen.”

“I’ve been watching it on the news for the past few days. It’s getting worse they say. I heard there were riots in Newark, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, and down here in Watts.”

“Wait till the people go crazy up in Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, which I imagine won’t be long. Hittin’ East Europe and the Northeast U.S. hard right now. Even down in Australia too. Someone got stir crazy in Russia I guess. I always knew somethin’ bad was going to come outta those Communists. Now they and the Reds in China goin’ at each other like two street toughs, winner take all. It’s crazy I tell ya.”, he nodded.

“Yeah I know. and I’m off to West Germany this afternoon.”

“Better be careful. Stay out of crowded places when you get there.”

“Maybe I oughtta get a gask mask.”, she smiled.

“Yeah that do the trick. Might look kinda funny though.”

“I’ll see you Dr. Cutler.”

“Have a safe trip.”, he waved.

A few hours later and she had checked in, and waited in the gate area reading a paperback to board her Pan Am flight to London. From there she’d take a connecting BEA flight right into West Berlin’s Templehof Airport and check in at the Hilton Hotel.

The flight to London’s Heathrow was routine and only a third full. She and five other passengers occupied First Class. She got up a few times to stretch her legs, walk the length of the aircraft all the way through Economy class to the bathrooms and back up to First. One thing she noticed on her little walks were the number of passengers coughing. Even in First two other gentleman had been coughing a bit ever since they boarded. She wondered if it was just the air which was always too dry in these planes making their throats dry.

Justine walked up to the lounge where a cute redheaded stewardess was stationed looking after one old businessman with thick black rimmed glasses. Poor girl appeared to be a bit under the weather.

“Hi, feeling okay?”, Justine asked with a smile.

“Mmmm? Oh yeah. I woke up with a scratchy throat this morning. It’s nothing. I am drinking orange juice for Vitamin C.”, she smiled. “What can I get you?”

“Oh how ‘bout a little port.”, Justine asked sitting down in one of the big lounge seats.

“Sure thing.”, the Pan Am, stewardess said.

The pert redhead’s name was Carol and she was based in San Francisco. Justine chatted with her concerning her schedule and job benefits. The subject matter changed when Carol started discussing how a few of her stewardess friends based in London and New York came down with flu like symptoms in the last few days. One friend whom she hadn’t heard from since last week talked of how she had worked on a flight from Warsaw to London and most everyone onboard seemed sick. This friend was told by one passenger on that flight that the flu had come from the Soviet Union the city of Omsk to be precise, or at least that’s what he had been told by a very sick acquaintance over two weeks ago.

“I hope I don’t have what they have. I can’t take time off.”, she said.

“Ah I doubt it. The air on these planes is so dry, it often makes my throat scratchy.”, Justine answered with a lie.

The Pan Am 747 gracefully touched down a few minutes early on a rare comfortably warm partly cloudy day for London and taxied slowly to it’s gate at Terminal 3. Justine looked out as they passed other aircraft docked at T3, a National 747 from Miami, an Air India 747 from Bombay, an Iran Air 707 from Tehran, a JAL 747 from Tokyo, an Air Canada DC-8 and 747 from Montreal and Toronto, a bevy of 747s and 707s from TWA and Pan Am from many U.S. gateways.

After docking she and her fellow passengers made the same trip through passport control and baggage claim. The number of coughing and sneezing passengers was very noticeable while waiting for her bags. It made her a bit worried. Indeed the disease was spreading much faster than she thought. It looked like everyone needed a tissue, whether you were Asian, African, Arab, or European.

She impatiently looked at her watch, for Justine she had to hurry a bit because her BEA flight was in an entirely different terminal, Terminal 1. Walking there was out of the question because she had several bags and it was too far. So her only option was to take the inter terminal shuttle bus. Finally her bags made it and she loaded them onto a trolley and quickly made her way through the transit doors. Making her way outside the terminal to wait curbside for the bus was a relief. A reprieve from the crowds and their germs. She breathed in a deep breath and noticed a few men looking her over. Justine was used to the attention that came from being a shapely 6 foot blonde. Justine minded her own business and put on her Rodenstock sunglasses. The shuttle bus arrived and took her to the BEA terminal with time to spare for her flight. She had time for a quick coffee and smoke before boarding the BAC 1-11 and witnessed quite a few travelers with sniffles, hacking and coughing. Some didn’t look to good. Boarding for her flight was announced as she headed for the gate and in no time was aboard along with what appeared to be a full flight. She settled in her seat and got a little notebook out of her carry on bag.

Inside the notebook was the address of where and when she was to deposit the money. Thankfully it was on the Western side of Berlin. She was to come alone, look for a trashcan with an “X” made from tape placed on it’s side. Simply place the suitcase there and walk away. The meeting was set for tomorrow at 5 p.m. She’d be glad when it was over.

Two hours later the flight descended into West Berlin’s Templehof. She looked out of the window as the aircraft seemed to skim right over red tiled rooftops as it landed in an airport practically located amidst Berlin’s many apartment buildings. The aircraft taxied from the runway and made it’s way to it’s assigned parking spot next to a Pan Am 727 boarding passengers. Within half an hour she was through customs and on a cab to her Hotel.

The taxi driver was quite talkative and he was occasionally spying on her bosom with his rear view mirror. Justine asked about what Dr. Cutler and the U.S. news called the Russian Flu.

“Jaj, ja! There are protests people rioting in Warsaw and Gdansk. Many Poles trying to come into the DDR. I heard this morning of riots in Cottbus, that is in eastern part of DDR. It is crazy I tell you. A lot of people are sick with this flu. There is a rumor many have died in Soviet Union and Poland.”, he gestured.

“ How bad is it here in West Berlin?”, Justine frowned.

“No not bad here. But DDR is getting many cases of sick so has Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This flu is not typical flu I tell you.”, he said pulling into the Hilton.

She tipped him well and the porter took her bags inside. The hotel lobby was classy and spotless as the porter made his way up to the concierge. She took out her passport and got checked in. The head concierge took one look at Justine’s incredible face and body he seemed to stammer at first.

“W-w-w-wilkommen.”, he said eyeing her capacious chest.

“Hi. My name is Justine Torjussen, I have a reservation for a suite.”

“Of course. I need your passport and sign here please.”, he said with a smile.

She completed the necessary paperwork and was given her room key. The porter had her bags on the trolley and held the elevator door open for her and pressed the top floor button. She smiled and said thank you in German. Out of the corner of her eye she could sense he was checking her figure out. Justine rolled her eyes. They got to the top floor and he led the way down the hallway to her room, opening the door and turning on the suite lights and drawing open the curtains. She gave him a tip and he left. Justine let out a big sigh, took of her jacket and sat on the bed. It had been a long trip but here she was finally in Berlin. She flipped on the TV, opened her bags, and washed her face in the bathroom to freshen up. Jetlag was creeping up on her and she decided to take a nap. After she’d head out for dinner and maybe a club.

She slept for a good two hours awoke, and laid there in bed for a minute listening to the busy traffic outside before finally getting up to go to dinner. She headed out in the cool evening air, the sky was clear and she went to her favorite restaurant a few minutes walk away. She loved the hustle and bustle of West Berlin, a virtual oasis of capitalism amidst the dreary, drab, Socialist society that surrounded the enclave of hedonism.

The restaurant was full of people, talking, laughing………as well as sneezing and coughing. She got a table fairly quick most likely owing to her looks. She sat near a table of businessmen who stopped talking to gawk at her as she was seated, then quickly resumed their animated discussion. From what she could hear, they were talking about how bad things were in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, as well as East Germany. She eavesdropped as they even contemplated moving West until things calmed down. One of them mentioned hearing about the Communist governments covering up the number of deaths from this flu. Another at the table disputed that, then started hacking and coughing.

From what else she could see around her it appeared a lot of people took no notice of the flu, or the growing danger growing around them in the DDR. They looked to be having a good time. She sensed no fatalism amongst the crowd or on the streets, only from those guys seated near her.

After dinner she walked to a popular disco club to have a nightcap and hear some live band play. The club was called Cherry Tree and the band playing was Euro sensation Bonnie St. Claire and Unit Gloria. The place was teeming with people and she ordered a drink from a cute waitress who ended up hitting on her. She and the hostess chatted while Bonnie St. Claire sang “Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet” which the crowd loved. Justine dug the whole scene and hadn’t even noticed the number of times she had to clear her throat for some reason.

She finally noticed two hours later as she walked back to the hotel. She felt a tickle at the back of her throat and coughed for the very first time at 1:14 a.m. Justine stopped for a second, cleared her throat one more time hoping what she currently felt was just an aberration and not what she feared. The tickle was still there. Oh shit she thought.

She got back up to her room and took a shower. While brushing her teeth her throat was now definitely sore. Justine could no longer deny that she had what was now sweeping Europe, the U.S. and for all she knew, the whole damn world. Justine just hoped that her symptoms would be over soon and all the talk of deaths from this flu was just rumor.

Hour by hour the symptoms got worse. Her throat felt hot and swallowing became extremely painful. She developed a whopper of a headache that made it seem that a vice was crushing her skull. Justine was now in bed, covered up. Soon she began to get a hell of a fever too. With her bedroom lights turned off and only the outside street lamps shining in, Justine’s flu grew worse and with an ever increasing fever, her perception of what was real and not, became blurred. The bedroom was now a bizarre oversized box from which she hallucinated within. She had no real sense of time or place or even her own physical movements. Justine saw things or perceived them existing, co-existing in her bedroom. A shape here a shape there, a voice called out, a man started talking but her brain couldn’t comprehend the psychobabble. She too uttered or babbled calling out for people who in reality weren’t there. At one point she did see a man sitting in a chair upside down on the ceiling. He was talking to her. She couldn’t understand his language. He just rambled on and on. She felt she had to climb up the wall and crawl along the ceiling to sit next to him in order to communicate with him. She babbled incoherently, calling out to him. The fever grew, the heat, sweat, then chills, then broiling heat. The room now disappeared and Justine perceived she was staring into the mouth of madness. Madness in pure absolute indisputable perfection beckoned her, welcomed her, with outstretched limb like things waiting for her casual embrace, inviting her into the eternal forever darkness that enveloped her entire being.

“My world IS beauty. Lie with me.”, it whispered to her.

For a while she did. It’s embrace was cold and it told her things, terrible things. It showed her it’s face but only briefly as a reward. It showed her man’s true nature. It told Justine it created man in it’s image.

“Sleep with me and I will show you even more.”, it promised.

Before she could respond, if that is indeed what she was about to do, the fever broke. Like a cool rain shower cascading on a parched desert basin it brought relief and calm. The storm had passed.

She slept………and slept, slowly recovering from the microscopic onslaught that had brought her so close to death. Finally Justine opened her eyes, which in itself was difficult. Almost as difficult as prying open a rusty vault door that hasn’t been moved in a century. She focused on the wallpaper pattern, stared at it intently then took in a deep breath. She felt a cool breeze upon her back which she suddenly thought as strange. Justine tried to recall if she had left the bedroom window open. She couldn’t remember. Justine rolled over to her left and saw the window had been shattered. She also became aware that her bed sheets were incredibly soiled. Poor thing urinated and defecated on the rumpled sheets.

Justine forced herself to sit up. She felt incredibly week. How long had I been sick she wondered, how long had she slept? Everything was still a blur. She looked over herself to be smeared with her waste. Justine rose up, her legs buckled slightly. Taking a step to the bathroom was a Herculean effort. The bottom of her feet felt sore. She felt her joints pop as she wobbled nude towards the bathroom to try and take a shower. Justine turned on the faucet of the sink and saw that there wasn’t too much water pressure and apparently no hot water either. Also the lights didn’t work. To hell with it. She turned on the shower which produced a half decent stream of frigid water, but it was better than nothing. Justine retrieved her shampoo and soap stepped in the shower and began to rinse off the remains of the sickness. From head to toe she washed the disease, the grime, the filth of temporary decay.

Despite it being a cold shower she washed off for at least half an hour, the water woke her up, it also woke her body’s need for food. She was starving. Justine finished and toweled off, stepping out from the bathroom into the bedroom. There she had a good look at the mess she had left on the bed, wall, and carpet. How was she going to explain this to the Hotel staff. She felt another good breeze from the shattered window which suddenly brought to her attention the fact that it was very quiet outside the hotel. She listened. There was no car traffic, no motorcycles, no nothing. She began to get dressed. She put on a jersey blouse, corduroys, her old travelin’ boots, and a sage green flight jacket. Justine took her money belt, and passport with her as he left her room.

The hallway was dark and silent. She seemed to tiptoe towards the end of the corridor to where the elevators were, but since their was no electricity she used the stairs. The stairs were lit in the daytime by a window on each landing so it was easy to navigate. Justine got between the third and second floor and froze. A middle aged bearded man dressed in blue overalls lay in a fetal position facing the wall. He was dead. Justine wasn’t sure what to do. She slowly walked by him, keeping an eye on his body for any movement as she moved on to the next flight of stairs. When she was clear of him she picked up the pace almost running down to the lobby.

As Justine left the stairs and walked into the spacious lobby she was confronted by the site of a green Opel sedan laying on it’s side obviously having smashed through the large glass entrance. The front bumper lay only a foot from the concierge desk. She saw the driver bloodied and slumped almost under the steering wheel dead. Her boots crunched over broken glass as she turned to go down a hallway which led to the kitchens. The whole place looked vacuous, windows broken, curtains flapping in the breeze, paper and litter covered the floor.

Justine was met with the smell of rotting food in the kitchen. She was looking for canned goods, fruit and something to drink, something to satiate her incredible thirst. Justine rifled through pantries, grabbing this and that, throwing items on a cutting table. She tore open boxes ripped open wrappers gorging on foodstuffs. She found a warm pack of an orange drink that she drank in it’s entirety. Never ever had she been this hungry or thirsty. She ate and drank till she could do no more. Justine looked at her watch which read 9:47 a.m. and finished off her last gulp of Coke. All while she stuffed herself, she wondered where everyone went. Now that she was done stuffing herself she was eager to go outside, the first time in what seemed like an eternity.

Since becoming sick everything had been a blur, time meant nothing so something catastrophic had occurred while she had been ill. Something that clearly had brought some breakdown of essential service and law. Justine walked passed the smashed Opel and out onto the cool morning air. The sky was overcast with a good little breeze. The side street had a few cars parked on the side, however when she rounded the corner onto Freidrrichstrasse which was a main drag in West Berlin, the impact of what had occurred during her sickness became a bit more plain. Shops fronts were smashed and looted, several cars were wrecked, a few burned and blackened from being torched, litter blew around in the breeze and palls of grayish smoke from some far off fires filled the sky. It looked apocalyptic, and what was really unnerving were the total absence of people. Nobody. Where did everyone go?

“Jesus.”, she quietly muttered aloud.

Her boots crunched on broken glass as she made her way down a sidewalk and stopped in front of a small store that was looted. Broken beer bottles, candy bars, glass, and cigarette cartons littered the sidewalk. She cautiously stepped inside to grab a few packs of Rothmanns.

“H-Hello?”, she called out into the dark store.

No response. She saw some of her choice smokes still on a rack behind the counter and as she reached out to get them she saw a man laying on the ground out of the corner of her eye. She tuned her head ever so slowly to see what may have been the owner with his head bashed in, killed by looters. She saw a German newspaper dated 6 days ago that headlined the growing death toll from the Russian Flu. It went on about the enormous loss of life that made the Black Death seem paltry by comparison and that health organizations were trying to find a vaccine. The Soviet Union it read was completely crippled by the sickness and war with China. It also mentioned a total halt to commercial airline traffic of any kind to help stop the spread of the flu which as she figured was a measure too little too late. Justine got a shiver down her spine, put down the paper, grabbed her smokes, stuffed in her jacket pocket and rushed out back into the light of day. Jesus this flu was looking more like “The Omega Man” movie she thought.

What she needed was a car. If she could get one her tour of West Berlin would be quicker. Justine thought of going all the way back to her hotel because there was an Avis counter in the lobby. She could get some keys go to the parking lot and try the rentals. Justine walked a bit north and saw an West German Audi Police car or at least what remained of it. It looked as if it had been run over by a bulldozer. A Polizei car was just the ticket she thought, if she could find one with keys in it. They also had radio telephones installed so maybe she could call someone. Call she thought. Find a phone booth dummy! She stopped and saw a telephone booth and ran towards it, maybe the phones still worked. Why sure she could ring up anyone and ……it was dead, no buzzer , no ringtone, nothing. She hung up the receiver. Justine decided where to go next, and thought to head east and go to Checkpoint Charlie. Americans, fellow Americans would be there as always.

As her journey to her closer to Charlie, she saw smoke billowing up from behind some buildings to her left. She got on Friedrichstrasse where Charlie was located and saw immediately what looked like a war zone as far she could see. Every building looked to have been hit by every calibre weapon known. Huge holes done by tank rounds marred many building facades and other structures were still burning. This looked like a scene from Berlin in April ‘45 not May 1973. Rubble piled up here and there, smoke and ash swirled with the wind. Justine made her way further down the street careful to avoid being hit by any falling debris.

Checkpoint Charlie besides being the famous locale of spy thrillers, is a large open area the size of two football fields surrounded by old tenement buildings. The open space which exists as a sort of neutral zone, is divided by concrete barriers with car parking and a few squat buildings on both sides with excellent lighting at night. Booths exist on both ends, one for the U.S. sector manned by the U.S. Army, the other by the East German Border Guards. The whole layout is constructed to prevent anyone from barging through the checkpoint either on foot or vehicle.

Justine was faced with a war zone. Back in 1961 Soviet and US tanks faced of here, now a confrontation had occurred between the US Army, and the East German military. The neutral zone was one massive car and truck dump of burnt, twisted, crushed East German civilian vehicles. There were dead civilians everywhere, women, children, the young and the old. Justine guessed when the flu got to critical in East Germany, East Berliners who were well enough to move did so. The Border Guards as usual, tried to stop their own from “defecting” even in the midst of a biblical plague. The Americans obviously tried to help the civilians cross but were fired upon by the Border troops, naturally someone on the US side fired back and all hell broke loose with thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire.

She stood next to what remained of the US watchtower flanked by two US M60 tanks and over a dozen U.S. Army personnel killed in the exchange of gunfire with their counterparts hundreds of yards away. The watchtower itself was now just a pile of blasted concrete. She stared down into the half closed eyes of a dead US Army corporal whose left leg had been blown off. He wore a gasmask as all the soldiers did including the East German troops. As she made her way into the neutral zone it was almost impossible to walk, Justine had to climb over smashed vehicles many with their occupants slumped inside. She was careful not to step on the bodies, she saw a mother and her young daughter cut in half holding hands. Justine quickly looked away. She climbed over several cars and saw a East German armored personnel carrier, or BMP, burnt out from a US anti tank round. The vehicle had run over dozens of civilians, it’s tracks colored brownish red from congealed blood and chunks of flesh. Now she could see a few bodies of the East German Border guards, some curiously shot in the back. Perhaps they too wanted out. Past the piles of bodies, the smashed German checkpoint booth run through by a civilian truck, the wanton carnage, destroyed vehicles, knocked out and abandoned tanks on the east part of the neutral zone, Justine crossed into East Berlin. As far as she could see there were busses, trucks, cars bumper to bumper abandoned by their occupants who fled on foot only to be massacred in the crossfire. There were scores of civilian dead here as well machine gunned down by not the Border Guards, but by the Stasi.

The Stasi were the Praetorian Guard of the East German state, it’s members picked because of their loyalty and party fanaticism. The Stasi was feared and admired for their efficiency, and were well equipped to handle any situation. They had their own little army of armored vehicles, helicopters, boats and special troops such as paratroopers.

Justine walked up to a BMP with one dead crewmember slumped half out of the turret that had mowed down dozens of civilians some 30 yards away on a side street. Flanked on both sides of the vehicle were other Stasi troops who used their AK-47’s. All were shot dead in a gunfight with Border Guardsmen who must’ve seen enough to shoot their Stasi overlords. Justine picked up a green ID card laying nearby one headless soldier that proved the identity of these murderers. Other “special troops” must’ve opened up on their own civilians to stop them fleeing. Utter madness.

There was one other item that was unsettling; the smell. She had gotten a hint of it back in that little store who’s former owner had been brained by looters. Death and decay have a particular aroma that is unique. She likened it to a rich, sweet, buttery odor. Justine was smelling it now. It wasn’t too bad at present but within a day maybe two, Berlin and all it’s rotting former inhabitants would kick up a stench unlike any other.

She saw a fluttering East German banner blowing in the breeze and knew it’s colors and symbols meant nothing now. All the Party slogans, 5 year plans, and Communist dogma came to an end here. No doubt all across East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria at every border crossing leading out there were similar scenes of carnage as it’s fleeing sick citizenry was gunned down by Communist dictatorships trying desperately to stem the inevitable crash as law and order completely broke down.

Justine was coming around to the idea that the whole world was going to look a lot like Berlin. “Omega Man” indeed. While she was sick everything fell apart. What she didn’t know was how many died from the flu or where this damn bug came from. All she had concerning that was what that Pan Am stewardess said about that man claiming it most likely came from the Soviet city of Omsk. Regardless, she needed to get a car and drive west, search as many places as possible and find people like herself that pulled through the sickness. She needed one that had keys in it, other than that she had all of West Berlin in which to search for a car. Justine lit up a smoke and moved on.

She got to a bust stop bench and sat down. Justine looked as if she was waiting for #42 bus, a bus that would never arrive. Ten days ago this street, and this very bus stop were teaming with activity. Never again.

It was so unbelievably quiet except for the birds chirping. Here and there a stray dog or cat could be seen. Justine heard the Spring leaves rustle in the breeze.

Was all this real? It couldn’t be. Yet here in front of her very eyes was a dead city filled with dead people. No actors. This wasn’t the set of The Omega Man, or The Andromeda Strain. Around the corner you wouldn’t see Vincent Price driving his car around looking for vampires as in his film, The Last Man on Earth. Those were just movies, entertainment for the crowds. The audience was playing a real role now, that of the rotting corpse, victim of some flu from the Soviet Union. This WAS real. Something did happen. She couldn’t believe it. Everyone she knew was dead. Kyle, Dr. Cutler, her Swiss friend Paul and his brothers, Anje from Amsterdam, Lon the owner of her favorite bakery in Beverly Hills, the Mossad people she had met in 1970 on a trip to Athens, every man and woman she ever gone to bed with. Nasir the sleazy rich Arab sheikl and all his entourage probably fled to sea from the onslaught of the flu with his monstrous yacht and died anyway. She could just imagine him decomposing, lying down on the round bed in his hideously ornate bedroom. His yacht taking on the role of the Flying Dutchman, never to make port, all hands dead. Everyone she knew, gone along with all those good times. She began to feel the tears well up and could no longer hold back. She put her head in her hands and wept. Civilization as she knew it had come to a screeching halt, not from nukes, but from something microscopic. This “thing” beat every army on Earth, it beat both superpowers single handed. God knows the virologists, the micro biologists of the world tried to fight back, to save humanity from the worst, but to no avail, in the end it took them too. Swept human kind into the trash forever.

So why was she alive? Why the hell did she make it? Yeah she got sick, really sick, but her body fought the virus and ultimately won. She imagined how a virologist looking for the cure, working against the clock to save humanity would’ve reacted to her words, “I got sick, but I beat it.” He would’ve looked at her with eyes wide, mouth agape, then a smile, a cry of joy. For in her veins lay the cure. Her system found the combination to unlocking the virus’ once impenetrable safe. It took days but her body found it.

She was brought out of her hopeful daydream by a part of newspaper blown by the wind flutter past. Yeah just a daydream, wake up to your nightmare Justine. They all died, you didn’t. Move on. She shook her head in disbelief and part disgust for doing what so many others couldn‘t, she remained alive. She still held out hope that there were other survivors. There MUST be. Justine wiped a tear from her cheek and got up making her way to find a ride.

Every car that she came to in West Berlin were without keys. She’d seen people hotwire cars in the movies but she had no idea herself on how to do that. It was getting close to 6 p.m. according to her watch when she found one; a brand new silver ‘73 BMW 2002 pulled off to the side of a side street. Problem was it was occupied by a very dead gentleman, impeccably dressed with a bullet hole in his temple. He had committed suicide. His pistol clattered to the asphalt when Justine opened the driver’s door. The smell from inside the vehicle upon opening the door, was sweet and raunchy. His congealed blood, bits of brain, and skull, splattered on the passenger seat and window didn’t help matters but the key was in the ignition. She pulled him out, rigor mortis having set in made his body act more mannequin like when she lay him on the street.

Justine crossed her fingers hoping the car would start, it did but it was very low on gas. She took a newspaper in his back seat and wiped as much as she could of the mess he left behind before going to look for a gas station. She passed a hospital which she could see from the elevated highway road she was taking which appeared to have had over a hundred cars parked every which way around it, some up to the front entrance. She was curious to go inside but had to refuel, besides from what she could see just driving by all the patients had checked out permanently.

Justine drove up to an Aral station just off the highway and stopped by one of the big manhole covers that sits over the stations storage tanks. She walked in the garage itself and through the station looking for a hand pump which she found. Justine would have to hand crank the fuel which she did upon prying open the iron cover. She gathered a couple of red gas containers to fill up as well which she put in the trunk. As she filled up Justine looked around she found it incredible that there wasn’t even a sound except for a bird chirping. Silence is truly deafening she thought. After gassing up she got two Cokes from the station’s machine by paying for them, her brain still tuned to the idea of paying when clearly money had no meaning anymore and no one around to stop you from taking anything your heart desired.

She’d drive to RAF Gatow, a small military airport run by the Royal Air Force situated west southwest of Berlin to stay for the night before heading out tomorrow to continue her journey to West Germany.

Justine arrived at the open gates of Gatow and drove past the empty security booths. She parked the car in front of a squat three story structure which looked like the administration building. The sun was just setting as she went inside. The halls were littered with papers, offices were vacant, there was no smell of death here. What was evident after visiting the Commanding Officer’s room was that they left in a hurry. Justine found a flashlight and began checking the other buildings. All the furnishings of a military base were present except for the personnel.

She reached the infirmary and even before entering she could smell decay. She covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief and went in pushing two double doors open. The place was a mess, mattresses, sheets, syringes, blood, and dried vomit. Paperwork littered several offices. There were three large wardrooms, one for each floor. Some beds were unoccupied but there were signs they once had been, and there were beds that had dead RAF personnel still laying on them. Each body had been put in a body bag but that did little to hide the smell. She counted 128 dead, left here when the final evacuation took place. Justine surmised those sick but able to walk were evacuated where they too died days later along with all those who were not yet infected.

She left the infirmary and walked to one of the open hangars. She collected wood to build a fire and decided to sleep outside. It was simply to creepy to sleep indoors.

The airfield Was devoid of any aircraft, save one, a lonely deHavilland Chipmunk pilot trainer sitting in one hangar. Her fire was getting started now. She wanted to make it as big as possible so that IF there were any other survivors they’d see it. She found a generator, gassed it up and hooked into the hangars electrical system. Within a few minutes the stark white lights shone brightly. She wanted to check out the trainer. Justine undid the latches and opened the engine cowling, jumped in the cockpit and familiarized herself with this little crate. Justine checked the wing tanks and they had fuel. She was overjoyed when the engine turned over, sputtered and roared to life. Justine advanced the throttle a bit, then let it idle for a few minutes before shutting it down. There was enough fuel for a short spin, so tomorrow she’d have to get the gas truck and put in as much as the Chipmunk’s tanks would take.

The only reason to fly was to avoid the traffic jam she knew she would encounter at the border between East and West Germany. If she went by car it would be a big mistake. Justine took her flashlight and found her way into the mess hall to get something to eat and drink. There were some food stuff available, all canned but she was hungry and could care less. She also found a carton of Piccadilly cigarettes and took those with her back to her camp. Justine had two tins of crackers, a few tins of sardines, a can of peaches, and a bottle of mineral water and an unopened bottle of Killbeggan Irish whiskey. Not bad.

She ate, got a bit drunk and took the flashlight and walked across the two parallel runways to the far side of the field. She found it interesting that here at Gatow there was no imposing concrete wall separating the two Berlin’s, only a wire fence. Justine shined the flashlight ahead of her towards the darkness of what lay beyond the wire. There was a strip of no man’s land, an empty watchtower, and what appeared to be East German army trucks on the far side. She headed back to her campfire which along with the hangar lights was a welcome site now that everything was getting dark.

She did notice that in the distance there were some city lights still operating. They would continue to do so she surmised until the generators burned out. West Berlin was always a snazzy happening place at night, with it’s bars, nightclubs, and discos, neon lights flashing, traffic buzzing. It was different in East Berlin, where everything was relatively mundane, dark and boring. Now both sides were equally quiet thanks to a flu bug.

Justine slept fairly well wrapped in a few blankets. She hooked up an electric coffee maker in the hangar and made some hot coffee. It tasted so good. The last time she had any was the night she became ill. After a morning cup and cigarette she pushed the Chipmunk out from the hangar and gave it a proper pre-flight check. Justine had a British RAF aerial map and decided after takeoff to head over Templehof Airport, turn south over East Berlin to fly over Schoenfeld then head back west and buzz West Berlin over the Tiergarden before departing to make the 100 mile flight to West Germany in a town called Braunschweig where she would land and gas up. She’d use simple dead reckoning over East Germany and stay within visual sight of the main east west axis highway. The weather looked good with only partly cloudy skies.

After gassing up she piled a few items from the base store room in the rear observer seat, then sat down in the cockpit, checked her gauges, checked the flight controls and finished with the preflight checklist. Justine turned over the engine and it roared to life. By instinct she donned on a pair of headphones with a boom mike attached and turned on the radios. She thought about the purpose of the headphones and radios for a moment. Who would she talk to in the air? Everyone was either dead or dying. Nobody would give a damn what airspace or route she took now. Right? She kept it on just in case.

Brakes off, she looked at the windsock and chose her runway. As she taxied, she looked on either side for any debris left on the runway. It was all clear. She closed the canopy. Justine breathed in, held it, and exhaled before pushing forward on the throttle. She figured this trainer had the same rotation speed as a Cessna 172, around 70kts. The Chipmunk picked up speed and surprisingly got airborne just shy of 65kts. As she climbed she turned east over a very still city. It looked so different from up here. Boulevards and streets without cars or people. Within a short time she flew over Templehof, the airport she had flown into from London.

Justine kept her altitude at 200 feet and dipped her wings left or right trying to get a good view. The place was empty, no aircraft on the tarmac, taxiways or runway, only a few cars left in the parking lot. She turned the nose of the trainer southeast over the once forbidden East Berlin airspace. She descended to 150 feet and made her way over the main international airport at Schoenfeld serving the GDR and home to the country’s airline, Interflug. Here practically the entire fleet of their aircraft were parked on the tarmac wing tip to wingtip. The East German government officials agreed with IATA and ICAO’s recommendation to ground civilian air traffic worldwide to slow the progress of the flu. The grounding would last until the emergency was over, then all would resume normal operations. Only that day never came.

There were no signs of anyone at Schoenfeld or in the vast green Tiergarden which she buzzed at 100 feet. Justine pulled the nose up and leveled off at 800 ft. using the main highway headed west as a marker.

She flew parallel to it flying north of the roadway seeing not one truck or car on it’s four lanes. She drifted a bit farther to the north still keeping the highway in sight when she spotted something off her right about 2 o’ clock. It was a clearing of a sort so she turned towards it to investigate. It was something. The clearing turned out to be an airport. As she flew closer she saw it had one concrete runway with parallel taxiway and a large concrete tarmac. Then she dipped left wing and saw what put a lump in her throat. On the south side of the field there were military revetments. Revetments were dirt walls built up around a parked aircraft to protect it from blast or bomb fragments.

Justine was buzzing an East German or Soviet fighter bomber base! She got a cold sweat and thought about pushing the nose down to treetop level and getting out as fast as possible. She looked back over her shoulder and didn’t see anyone on the airfield. Justine banked to the left hard and made another pass, this time right over the control tower. She must’ve cleared it by 30 feet. This Chipmunk could turn on a dime as she banked right and saw the buildings which housed security, barracks, hospital, and administration. She could see the hangars were a few aircraft were under repair. The planes in their parking spots, were silver or natural metal and had red stars on the wings. This was one of the Soviet Union’s many military bases in East Germany.

She’d made several low passes from many directions and decided to land. The main wheels chirped as she touched down and quickly taxied practically in front of the control tower. As Justine climbed out of the plane she thought how weird it was to see her unarmed trainer with Royal Air Force markings land unopposed on a Soviet fighter bomber base. She grabbed a pair of chocks laying nearby in front of the wheels and started to case the place out. She noticed a Soviet and GDR flag fluttering side by side at the edge of the parade ground.

“Brothers in arms, brothers in death.”, she muttered aloud.

Justine walked up to one of the fighters being serviced in a hangar. It was a Sukhoi SU-17, like all the other aircraft, numbering 40 planes in all. It appeared to be under going an engine overhaul. Fearsome looking aircraft with the red star and the red painted number 67 near the nose. Now it was just a tame aluminum sculpture.

She walked past the parade ground and looked into the window of a barracks. The beds were occupied. Justine looked around and saw three other such buildings. She found all of them full of servicemen dead lying in their beds. Justine wasn’t about to go inside, there was no reason to, besides the smell would be awful. She passed the hospital and got a good whiff of decay coming from there. The open windows didn’t help. She heard the buzzing of flies everywhere.

Justine came to a green building that appeared to be administration. The odor of death was present here as well. Papers, books, broken glass lay everywhere. A door to one office was cracked open and she read the name written beside the entrance as “Lt. Col. Leonid Telpukhovskiy”. She gently pushed it open and saw the Lt. Col. laying on the floor, on his side in a fetal position, in the far corner of the room. His uniform was soiled and rumpled, as were the sheets and blanket that surrounded and partially covered him. She knelt down next to him holding a handkerchief to her nose and mouth. He was very dead. She notice something else. There were scratch marks, bloody scratch marks made on the wall apparently by him. Justine envisioned him, half out of his mind, sick, scratching at the wall. Why? She knew. She understood why because she was once in his world, one of different perception and thought brought on by fever. He scratched to make a hole in the wall, to climb in, to be safe, to escape madness and death. Yeah, she knew. Madness had paid her a visit during her sickness. She got up and began to walk out of his office when she heard what faintly sounded like a helicopter.

The sound definitely came from a helicopter as she left the administration building and headed for the control tower. By the time she got to the glass birdcage, where the view gave her a 360 degree view of the airfield, she made out the chopper through a pair of binoculars. Sure enough it was headed for the field. But there was something screwy with the helicopter. The way it flew, either it was being flown by an amateur or someone seriously drunk. Justine suddenly realized where she had parked the Chipmunk. Whoever was in the chopper would see it. She cursed herself for leaving in the open like that. Well it was too late to move it now. The helicopter barely cleared the tree line on the northern edge of the base and descended rapidly making a touchdown that made her wince. It went airborne then bounce once more coming to a stop in the grass median separating the runway from the taxiway. A hell of a landing, not one to let your friends know about. She heard the whine of it’s engine die down. From the binoculars she could see the pilot wearing a white helmet just sit in his seat, his head occasionally lolled about. The rotor blades stopped spinning and Justine held her breath waiting for a squad of Stasi troops to jump out of the brown and green camouflaged helicopter. There she waited for 20 minutes spying on the chopper. The pilot stopped moving, and no Stasi commandos barged out coming for her, in fact nobody came out of the helicopter period. To hell with it she thought, she’d go down to them whomever they were.

Justine walked out past her little trainer across the big tarmac and up to the chopper. It was East German from the insignia painted on the sides of the fuselage. The pilot sat perfectly still, his head buried in his chest. She walked around to the right of the helicopter and could make out some people inside through the square windows.

Justine quickly slid open the main door. What she saw weren’t fanatical Stasi troopers, but a family of four. A mother, her two children resting their heads in her lap, and the husband. The father wore the uniform of an East German Army general, his head resting up against the far wall of the interior cabin obviously dead. Justine turned to the mother who looked pale, her skin oily and a blotchy yellow, her lips chapped, her eyes closed. She wasn’t moving. Neither were her two girls.

Justine shook her head and turned away to leave when she heard a loud moan. She turned to see the mother each hand holding her little girls’ head kick her legs and thrash her head about. The poor mother whimpered. Justine walked up to her and spoke to her in German.

“Madame, can you hear me?”, Justine almost pleaded with her.

The mother thrashed her legs about and moaned louder.

“Madame! Can you hear me! Where are you from? Is there anyone else alive? Please madame!”

“P-p-please make it stop…………….Ilsa…….Bianca………….Mommy …is here………..please……stop…”, she trailed off.

“What is your name?”

“Mmmm-m-my name…………..Karl where……are we safe……..now…….Karl.”

Justine looked at the husband, he must be Karl but he was long gone.

“Girls………….Mommy….and Poppi…….we’ll …..better………safe…… you’ll…..see.”

“Please what is your name. I’m Justine.”

Suddenly the mother looked right at her as if there was a brief moment of lucidity.

“Ingrid Bake. Please make it stop. I have to find help for my girls.”, she pleaded.

“You will Ingrid. Where did you come from. Is there anyone else alive.”

“Alive?”, she stared straight ahead as if her mind was replaying the horrors she had been witness too.

“Dead…………..sick……………all………….friends…………nobody.”, the look in her eyes was one of absolute terror.

“Where were you? Where did you come from Ingrid? Ingrid?”

“C-Calau. We went with others to bunker. Hundreds of us. Escape. We thought it was safe. Everyone got sick………………………..my girls Ilsa…Bianca….they died.”, she began to cry.

“Everyone dead? Where did the sickness come from.”, Justine pleaded.

“Came from………hell……Russkies have portal to hell in Omsk,…………41.…….Omsk 41….they opened door……it came out…..all Russkies…..die….Karl told us so………Karl died did you know?”

“I’m sorry Ingrid. Truly.”

“Justine…………shoot me……please…….for the love of God……..I beg you…….I want to join my family…….they are waiting…………for me…”

“What? Uh no……”, Justine couldn’t.

Justine saw the look of utter despair in that woman’s eyes. The absolute need for something or someone to end her pain and discomfort NOW. Justine saw the husband’s service pistol and pulled it out from the leather holster. The mother’s eyes never looked away, watching Justine.

She couldn’t believe what she was being asked to do. She could say no, run, fly away and leave the woman to suffer for a few more hours before her ultimate death or she could grant her, her request. She racked the slide putting a bullet in the chamber and flicked off the safety. God, why do I have to do this she wondered. Justine looked into the woman’s eyes and she knew why. The mother looked away tears streaming down both her cheeks. Her hand trembling as she leveled the pistol towards Ingrid’s temple.

“Forgive me.”, Justine said.

The mother nodded and stifled the tears stroking her two dead girl’s hair.

“CRACK!!”, the pistol jerked as she ended Ingrid Bake’s torture.

Justine backed away, dropped the pistol and walked away to her plane.

“Forgive me………….oh God…..forgive me.”, she said tears streaming down her cheek.

She fumbled for a cigarette, and lit one taking in a big drag. She walked to her plane and took the whiskey bottle from the rear seat and gulped down a double. Justine then sat on the tarmac and began to cry, she couldn’t bear to look at the helicopter nearby. She wanted to get out of here now, get as far and fast as the Chipmunk would fly.

Justine felt a bit lightheaded from the whiskey as she climbed in the cockpit started the engine and taxied out to take off. Even as she sped past the helicopter holding the bodies of the Bake family she didn’t dare look. Who could blame her.

Half an hour later the trainer was flying steady at 900 feet headed west, Justine opened the canopy a bit to breath in fresh air and clear her head, she was 50 miles from the West German border. She rubbed her eyes looked ahead and saw traffic on the highway below. Cars, buses, trucks, jeeps, even military vehicles. The problem was that the traffic wasn’t moving, and it was all headed for the border. Along the highway were what looked like discarded luggage and personal belongings as people had apparently walked instead of being stuck in this jam. The were the inevitable smash ups from vehicles that tried to cut in line or find an alternate path around the traffic but to no avail. This pile up made anything in L.A. look like Sunday traffic. Every mile she made she dipped her wings to look for any movement from below, but there was none.

Finally the border crossing, and it looked like Checkpoint Charlie. Imagine the world’s largest smash-up derby coupled with a battle zone, throw in thousands of pedestrians, many of whom are ill and willing to do everything to survive and you just might get an idea what Justine witnessed 900 feet below her plane. She had no intention of circling for a better look at that carnage. One look was quite enough. It was all just a pitiful reminder of the complete collapse of law and order in the apparent last days of civilization.

The Chipmunk was now over Braunschweig in West Germany and Justine looked at her fuel gauge. There was more than enough to press on, so she turned west by northwest and flew to her destination for the day, the city of Hanover.

She could see the city up ahead and pressed forward on the control stick descending the plane down to 350 feet. Justine wanted to do a few passes over the city center. As she did so, the scene below wasn’t any different than Berlin. There were cars parked here and there but absolutely no movement or any sign there had been human activity for a while. She glanced down at her road map and banked the Chipmunk to the right towards the airport.

A front was moving in as storm clouds were gathering to the northwest. She touched down and taxied the trainer onto the big tarmac and towards what looked like a general aviation section. The plane sputtered past three Lufthansa 737s parked at their gates and buttoned up tight. They weren’t going anywhere soon.

Justine found a parking spot, and shut down the engine. She hopped down from the plane and looked skyward which by know was completely overcast. It was her intention to spend the night here, rest, and get a new plane.

The main office/terminal of the general aviation building was quiet. She looked for a room where the aviation charts were kept to replace the Aral road map she had been using. Justine found the room but a lot of charts were gone. The place looked like it had been rifled through. Perhaps by some guys desperately trying to escape the sickness by flying out themselves, they simply grabbed maps left and right.

“Shit.”, she said aloud looking at the huge mess.

“Screw it, I’ll just use this road map.”

Justine wanted to go to Frankfurt tomorrow, where there was a large US air base. But she wanted a new plane, preferably a small jet which could fly farther and faster than the little Chipmunk.

As she left the chart room she spotted a newspaper in a wastebasket. It was the local Hanover Zeitung dated May 24th. The whole paper was mostly devoted to the sickness. It told of the incredible death toll worldwide, imposition of Martial Law, and evacuation of the Bonn government to a secret location. The paper also gave notice that NATO forces in West Germany were on a high state of alert. A few medical experts in a long article explained that this sickness was definitely man made, and was unbelievably lethal but all measures to find a vaccine were ongoing. Another headline screamed about a clash between NATO and the Soviets on the Mediterranean Sea as well as continued fighting in China and a new war between India and Pakistan. According to the Zeitung, nukes had been used in the Mediterranean naval clash. There was more, a conflict was brewing between Syria, Egypt, and Israel and all out war appeared certain.

Justine dropped the paper. War, fighting, killing, wasn’t it enough that civilization was being ravaged by some killer germ? Friggin’ idiots she thought, the whole lot of them. She could envision some general, sick half out of his mind thinking the pandemic was some sort of attack, and in response ordering “his” private army to launch an offensive in his state of fever fed crazed paranoia. Mankind’s last hiccup of violence before eternal quiet returned once again to earth, just like it had been before mankind evolved.

She ate some canned food and searched the tarmac outside for a small private jet. She found it soon enough. It was perfect. Painted in two tones of blue the sleek Jet Commander appeared as if it had been readied some time ago for it’s owner who never arrived. Justine gave it a look over, found a portable generator and pulled it close to the aircraft. She’d need this unit to help start the engines tomorrow. She found the plane’s manual and headed back to the small general aviation terminal when she was hit by a fresh breeze from behind. A rumble of thunder to the west soon followed.

She laid down on a couch reading the manual by flashlight, occasionally stopping to see the flashes of cloud to cloud lightning which was quite spectacular. It was raining hard, probably the first time since this whole nightmare started. Mother nature beginning it’s natural cleansing.

Justine switched off her flashlight and fell asleep. She awoke to a morning that promised clear weather as the clouds had already begun to break before 8 am. She walked out across the tarmac to get some food from the terminal. The rain had done some good. The air seemed more fresh, new, unspoiled.

She had done enough reading on the Jet Commander’s manual to get started. Her previous experience on Lear jets was precious and would come in handy no doubt. By 11 am she had completely topped off the jet’s tanks, done a pre flight check, and had already plotted a course. Justine decided to fly north to Hamburg, land explore by car and foot then fly south to Frankfurt. She loved Hamburg and had a friends who lived there. One of them had a shortwave radio, exactly what she needed to try and communicate with somebody, anybody. As for her friends there in the city, she hoped they were still alive somewhere. She kept out the notion that they were most likely dead, gone.

She started the engines. A metallic whine rising to a high pitched shriek. She let the engines sit a idle for a few minutes. Justine left the aircraft, removed the chocks, did one last walk around before getting back inside the Jet Commander settling herself in the left hand seat. She advanced the throttles slowly a quarter of an inch and turned the wheel tiller to the left taxiing past the little Chipmunk. She gave it a wave as if to say thanks to the little trainer. Justine moved the control column forward and backward, left and right ensuring the flight controls were in order. She set minimal flap for her takeoff which would be to the north. The sun was shining brightly now and the sky was only ¼ obscured by cloud. Justine could only fly in good weather and in daylight. With no beacons, airport aids, or human controllers around to help flying in bad weather or night was tantamount to suicide.

She lined up the jet on the runway, pushed forward on the throttles ½ way forward allowing the turbojets to stabilize then pushed them all the way to their forward stop on the throttle console. The quiet outside was broken by a sound that hadn’t been heard for weeks. The crackle thunderous roar of a jet.

Justine’s aircraft climbed quickly past 1,000 feet. She found it weird she was using a road map to navigate by but she nothing else to use. She climbed to 4,000 feet and engaged the autopilot. The sky now was clear and blue. Looking out the cockpit window to the passing world below she found it hard to believe there was no movement. No cars racing along the autobahns, no trucks, no commuter trains.

She looked at her watch and knew she was closing on Hamburg. Up ahead she saw a large bank of gray clouds drifting to the south and west. She throttled back a bit on the airspeed. Justine calculated she was at least 40 miles from Hamburg’s Fuhlsbuttel airport. There was something about these clouds that didn’t look right.

They were all shades of gray, some black, and their edges at this altitude took on a copper hue. As the aircraft got closer it became apparent these clouds weren’t associated with the weather front. Justine got a chill down her spine. Even now as the jet closed in on the city from the south the sun became obscured by the huge mask which now filled the sky. It was smoke. Smoke from fires. Thousands of fires. Fires from Hamburg.

“Oh Jesus……………no.”, she gasped rolling the plane to the left to get a better view below.

What she witnessed was a conflagration larger and more violent than she had ever seen. A modern day Gomorrah. The British had bombed Hamburg in July 1943 using that biblical reference as the codename for the mission. Hamburg had been fire bombed. This was similar but much worse by a thousand fold. Justine saw the fires here stretched as far north as the suburb of Ohlsdorf all the way south across the Elbe river to Harburg near the docks. With no one alive to put out the fires, they would simply grow, feed on everything flammable, then eventually burn themselves out. The fact that the weather front that passed through Hannover the night before with so much rain obviously had little impact dousing the conflagration going on to the north in Hamburg.

The turbojet engines which supplied oxygen inside the cabin began pumping in smoke. Justine was so captivated by the horror below she hadn’t even noticed. Once she had however, she cursed herself and immediately banked the jet left. It bounced from the enormous thermal drafts thrown up from the fires finally popping clear of the smoke over the extreme west suburbs of the city as yet untouched by fire. Justine had seen enough. She set course south for Frankfurt.

The whole flight there she kept thinking about what she had witnessed. How long had Hamburg been on fire? When did the fire start? How did it start?

None of that mattered now she thought as Justine began her descent into Frankfurt. She flew low about 1,000 feet and slow.

Frankfurt was a big city and financial centre for West Germany. The autobahns had a few cars dotted here and there but they appeared to be abandoned. Likewise the streets in the centre of the city were relatively clear accept for a few vehicle accidents. Even from 1,000 feet she could see that department stores had been looted, from the windblown debris littered across the district.

The rows of apartment, industrial and business buildings were devoid of movement or noticeable damage. All in all the city was in stark contrast to Hamburg and Berlin. However the sickness had done it’s work here too as efficiently as any other place on the planet. She did a low flyby of Frankfurt’s airport to check if the runways were clear. Justine saw all the gates of the concourses occupied by mostly Lufthansa aircraft parked, closed up, like the ones at Hannover.

The runways looked clear she made her final approach and made a surprisingly soft touchdown for her first time in this type jet. Just pure luck she gathered. The reverse thrust slowed her aircraft down enough and she taxied clear of the runway. As she taxied to the main ramp, she took a look at the control tower which stood empty. She parked her Jet Commander near the wing of a Lufthansa 747 and shut down the engines. Justine secured the aircraft and closed the main door.

She looked up at the giant behemoth she had parked next to and thought just over a month ago it was flying passengers to the Far East and the U.S. Now, like those Soviet SU-17 fighter bombers it was a massive sculpture permanently grounded by a little ol’ pandemic.

Justine breathed in the warm summer air and walked across the massive ramp to check out some car transport. She wanted to investigate the southern portion of the airport where the USAF Transport Command had a base. As she walked halfway across the field of concrete she glanced towards the American section. Shielding her eyes from the midday sun she could see no aircraft parked. Justine looked for transport and found a VW Flughafen Frankfurt yellow van with green and blue stripe parked near a row of cargo containers. No keys in it. As a matter of fact most every vehicle she looked into had no keys.

After a frustrating hour and a half searching she found a dark blue Opel Kadett. It looked like a tinker toy but it was transport. The battery was almost dead but she got it cranked up and made her way through the cargo facility, and onto the main ramp.

She sped across the runways and taxiways never looking to see if any aircraft were taking off or landing. There was no need to. She drove onto the USAF base ramp and found it empty except for a burnt out wreck of a large transport aircraft. Justine made the whole circuit up and down the massive apron large enough for several C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft to fit with room to spare. She found one lone green suitcase either forgotten or left behind by it’s owner sitting in the middle of the huge expanse of concrete. Justine parked the car and went into the military terminal. It was empty, dark and devoid of any casualties of the sickness. There were papers, magazines, newspapers scattered about as well as cups, beds with dirty bed sheets, used IVs, syringes and other medical gear strewn about.

Justine walked everywhere looked in most every room and found no dead. It was as if every person dead or alive had been taken away in a hurry. She noticed a NYT newspaper on a chair. It was quite old, the day after she became sick. One of the front page stories read how the Watergate investigations were being put on hold because of the deepening crisis unfolding in East Europe and Asia from the influenza scare. Another read how Americans were being advised to hold off travel abroad unless absolutely necessary. She dropped the paper. Some good that advisory did. The pandemic had already reached US shores probably days even weeks before.

Justine ambled back onto the tarmac and walked to the blackened hulk of an airplane. It was charred except for the tail and nose which looked almost untouched by the blaze that once enveloped the plane. She saw no bodies around the plane which had been a Boeing 707 belonging to TWA. As to why it was torched she hadn’t a clue.

Suddenly she caught movement near one of the buildings to her left. It startled her for sure. She stood motionless and scanned the area where she had seen something move. Justine suddenly felt exposed all alone in the open for some reason. For some reason she sensed danger.

She took a step towards the building, at first hesitant then at a quicker pace until she reached that place. She turned the corner, and saw no one. Justine looked and listened but only heard the leaves rustling from a summer breeze.

She relaxed and shook her head.

“Great now I’m seeing things…………………and talking to myself.”, Justine said aloud.

A second later she saw a figure maybe 50 yards away duck into a open door.

“That was real…………..damned real!”, she said aloud.

Justine trotted to where she saw the figure.

“Hey! Hey man!”, she yelled out.

She reached the door way which lead to a hallway filled with strewn garbage. She stopped just inside the corridor. She scanned for whomever it was. She DID see someone.

“Excuse me.”, Justine said in a quiet voice.

Her voice echoed down the dark hallway. Justine could barely see the other end. She was sure whomever she saw was watching her from the dark shadowed in between.

“Hey. Uh, my name is Justine. Ummm look I’m not armed. I won’t hurt you I swear………..I just want to see you. You’re really here aren’t you? I did see you. Please come out………………………please.”

Justine listened for a response……………………………….......there something moved! Or was it a trick of the eye. She heard a faint noise to her left down the corridor.

“Please,…………………….come out. Please. ”

Justine repeated her plea in German, French and Dutch and got no response.

“Look I haven’t…………”

A mumbled voice uttered something from the darkness! A voice! A real voice! Justine felt a tingle go up her spine.

“English? American?”, she asked.

“Yes.”, the voice muttered.

“Uh……..are you sick?”, she asked taking a step forward.

“No.”

Whomever it was crouching to her left and far down the dark hallway. Her eyes got used to the dark and began to detect something just past a doorway.

“What’s your name?”, Justine asked rubbing her hands together.

The person mumbled something but she couldn’t make out what apparently he had said.

“I’m sorry……………………….wha?”

“You’re not supposed to see me.”, he said a little louder.

She took a step back.

“Sorry, I………..”, Justine replied.

“It doesn’t really matter now.”, the voice said with a sigh.

Justine heard whomever it was get up from the floor and walk out from the shadows. The mysterious stranger was white, male about late 30 or early 40s with dark hair with strands of gray near the temples. He walked passed her and made his way out of the building and back onto the tarmac. She slowly followed him. Justine had no idea whether this guy was sane, insane, or in shock at this point. She found him standing with hands on hips looking out towards Frankfurt Airport. He stood there, shaking his head now and then.

“My name’s Justine.”, she said to break the silence.

“Peter.”, he replied.

She walked up beside him.

“You American, or Canadian?”, Justine asked.

“American.”

“You didn’t get sick……………………at all?”, she inquired.

“No. There’s a reason why……………….but I can’t tell you.”, Peter said still looking out never once turning towards her.

“You military?”

“Yeah something like that.”, Peter replied.

“Jesus, what a clusterfuck this is. I cannot believe this. Wouldn’t you know it. I come here and this is what happens. A whole shitstorm takes place. It’s like a movie,……………jeez.”, he said in a louder voice showing a good deal of exasperation.

Justine had no idea what he was ranting about. Maybe he was off kilter. Then again who wouldn’t be a little off after everything that had happened.

“I bet if I went to the other place something big would go down.”, he said in a raised tone looking at her for the first time.

“What other place?”, she frowned.

“Never mind. You wouldn’t know. It was just not supposed to be like this……………in any way.”, he quietly added.

“Wasn’t supposed to be like this? What do you mean. Do you know something?”, Justine said looking directly into his eyes.

“Do I know something………………………………......hmmmm yeah you could say that.”, Peter replied sarcastically.

“Tell me……………right now.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” , he said as he began walking across the tarmac towards the other side of Frankfurt Main to the civilian airport.

“Hey wait a minute!”, Justine shouted.

She ran towards the vehicle she drove earlier, started it up and sped after him.

“Get in…………………………….come on……………….get in!”, she commanded.

He stopped walking and turned towards her, looked at the vehicle, then at the distance he’d have to walk.

“I can’t tell you anything Justine. I can’t. I want to you to know that. I had no idea this would happen.”, he said.

She began thinking Peter was a little off, actually a more than a little. After all what are the chances that she would meet someone who had any inside knowledge of the pandemic at this point. Infinitesimal wouldn’t even describe how impossible the odds would be. Crazy or not he was the first living soul she had come across so far and she wasn’t willing to part company as of yet.

“Just get in.”, she nodded.

As she drove he simply looked out the window saying nothing. As a matter of fact he said nothing for the rest of the day. Peter simply ambled around the vast apron where Justine had parked the Jet Commander looking at all the parked Lufthansa and Condor airliners. She kept an eye on him from her temporary camp making certain he never left her sight for long. She studied him. He was a strange person to be sure. She thought she caught him talking to himself or maybe he was talking to the airplanes by the way he would reverently touch one. If he had snapped she couldn’t blame him. After what she had experienced it was a wonder she wasn’t stark raving mad.

Justine called for him to tell him some food was ready if he was hungry. After a while he slowly walked up, sat down, and ate some heated soup, tin of sardines with crackers. It was getting dark and the whole environment of a dark quiet airport of Frankfurt’s size was surreal. Peter not talking didn’t help either.

“Where are you from?”, she asked.

“The South.”, he mumbled.

“Alabama, Georgia?”, she added.

“Florida.”

“Ah. I was in Miami a few years ago. Nice place.”

“Yeah it was. I wasn’t from there though.”

“You like airplanes I see.”, she decided to change the subject.

“Yup. Ever since I was a kid. Never saw them like this though. Not like this.”, he replied looking up at the massive 747 behind them.

“I was thinking of flying down to Munich tomorrow. Seeing what’s down there.”, she remarked.

“Nothing but dead. Nothing at all Justine, just more of this.”, he mumbled.

“Peter, we have to move on, keep going. Understand? We can sit, do nothing and be like the dead. Not me, I’ve gotta keep going and so do you. You’re military, you know what I’m saying.”

“Yeah…………military. I’m not who you think I am Justine.”

“It doesn’t matter Peter………whatever we were or did no longer does.”

“I wonder how many people made it? How many are still dyin’ out there?”, Peter said.

“I don’t know.”, Justine answered.

“Maybe we should drive. I mean if we fly, we definitely won’t see any survivors.”, he added.

“Yeah true. Jesus, just the word survivor.”, she shook her head.

“There’s a Land Rover parked near the military control tower. I figure that be better transport than a regular car.”, he said.

“Yeah we’ll check it out tomorrow and scour the place for some supplies. Guess the ol’ Jet Commander’ll stay here forever then.”, Justine said turning on a portable short wave radio.

“We could drive to Spangdahlem and you can have your pick of any F-4 Phantom if you want. They’re just sitting there, collecting dust.”, Peter snickered.

“Yeah. Just like those Soviet fighters I saw. Some even had missiles and bombs on ‘em. Not that it matters anymore.”, she laid back resting her head on a bedroll twiddling with the tuning knob.

She scanned the bandwidth a few times. Nothing but static and some weird radio garbles.

“Guess the music died.”, she muttered.

“Miss American Pie….”, he added.

“Everyone went to levy and died alright. I keep wondering what happened to movie stars and musicians. I mean they got sick. Can you imagine Paul Newman in bed dead, his sheets messed up from his shit. Jesus it doesn’t even seem real. Or all the members of Led Zep sprawled out dead as doorknobs. I wonder when Nixon died? Or where? Maybe in some bunker. I wonder how many thought this was some Commie attack?”, she said still fiddling with the radio.

“You’d be surprised. I don’t know when or where Nixon died exactly but he supposedly made a statement when everything was hitting the fan. Told the public this was a dangerous outbreak but everything was being done to contain it and for everyone to be strong. The usual pep talk kind of stuff. By the way how long were you sick for Justine?”

“Man I have no idea.”, the question stopped her playing with the radio knob.

She thought aloud for a minute or two.

“I honestly don’t know. I do know I was sick as shit but by the time I got well enough to move around………I just don’t know exactly. It’s weird but………..you know.”, she looked over at him.

“Yeah long enough for you to miss the final chapter I guess.”, he said lighting up a cigarette.

“Final chapter……….pretty much…………”, she muttered.

Suddenly the radio sent out what sounded like a voice. It was enough to make both sit up.

“Whoa!!!”, she exclaimed.

“What the….!”, Peter yelled eyes wide open.

“You think……….?, he added.

“Shhhhhh, quiet for a sec! Dammit I had it!! Dammit don’t fuckin’ go. Come back!”, she nervously fine tuned the knob.

“There!”, Peter pointed as if he could see the source of the voice.

It was faint and came in and out distorted and meshed with interference. She put the radio closer to her ear as if to somehow make the signal clearer. It was a voice.

“What’s it saying?”, Peter whispered.

Justine didn’t answer but listened intently closing her eyes. The voice was male and the dialect sounded like Korean.

“Well?”, he asked.

“It’s Korean. I’m almost sure it’s Korean. Shit I’d swear it is.”, Justine said still listening to the voice.

“Can you understand him?”, Peter inquired.

“No. He’s talkin’ to someone else though, someone we can’t hear.”, she said.

She gently put the radio down, got out a little notepad, looked at her watch and wrote down the time and frequency.

“You said Korean. North or South?”, Peter asked

“I’ve no idea.”, she said closing her notepad and picked up the radio.

It didn’t take long for the weak voice over the radio to fade away and be replaced by static. No amount of tuning could bring it back.

“Shit.”, Justine said.

“Well at least you got the frequency and the time. We can try again tomorrow. What we really need is a transceiver .”, Peter said.

“Well I’m sure there’s one across the field but without power it’s useless. Besides do you know how to access the generator or for that matter do you know where the generator is? I sure as hell don’t.”, she huffed.

“Nah. We can check in the morning though.”, he replied.

“To hell with it. I wanna get outta here. We’ll pick up that Land Rover and drive to Nurnburg.”, she said lying down looking up at the stars.

The following morning was clear and warm. Justine and Peter had gotten hold of the Rover, got a bit of luck finding the keys under the driver’s floormat, and charged the battery. They took over and hour and a half scouring through the military buildings in this US Air Force facility finding maps, some tinned food, dosimeter, blankets, cigarettes, scotch, warm beer, fuel, and lastly a couple of M-16s with a few bandoleers of magazines. Peter came out wearing a steel helmet complete with green Mitchell cover and gave one to Justine.

“What am I gonna do with that?”, she asked when he handed it to her.

“You never know. I’ll just put it in the back.”, he said.

They had the back of the Rover packed with material and were ready to go. Justine wanted to look for penicillin, morphine, and some extra first aid kits

“The base hospital for sure if it isn’t cleaned out.”, Peter said.

“ Wonder where the PX is?”, she looked around.

“What for?”, he asked.

“Women’s stuff.”, she replied.

“Oh…………right. Well, go down that street and second left.”, Peter said.

“How’d you know?”

“Hey I walked all around before you flew in.”, he motioned.

They drove to the PX which looked looted. Broken bottles, paper, cans, dollar bills, hundreds of coins, crushed tin cans, even a bunch of June issues of Playboy strewn about the store front parking lot.

Justine’s boots crunched on broken glass as she gingerly walked inside and got what she needed plus razors and shampoo. As she walked past the register a wall calendar was frozen in time to May 1973. Someone had circled the 15th and scribbled a note to themselves. She was sure it was now June but how far into the month she didn’t know. She walked back out into the bright sunshine cradling her loot.

“I wanna check out the officer’s quarters first then the hospital.”, she said.

“The officer’s quarters is back that way.”, Peter motioned with his thumb.

The BOQ (Batchelor’s Officer Quarters) was a squat building not far from the flight line. Back before the pandemic, an officer stopping in Frankfurt Main AF Base could come in here, get a meal, shower, relax, play pool or pinball to pass away the time. A nice place to whittle away your spare time.

The front glass doors were smashed and what appeared to have been a fight had taken place.

“What the………”, Justine said getting out of the Rover.

“Shootout. Over there. It was pretty amazing when I first saw it a few days ago.”, Peter nodded.

There were a number of bodies wearing green Air Force fatigues laying in the grass and near the front entrance. They were all black judging from their hair. The bodies had decomposed enough to make a distinction between Caucasian and black almost impossible. There were M-16s, shotguns, .45 pistols, and umpteen thousand spent brass shells lying everywhere and the walls were spattered and pockmarked by holes and shrapnel fragments.

“Blacks against whites I think. There’s a bunch of bodies inside so watch out when you go in.”

“Fuckin’ unbelievable…”, she muttered looking at the carnage.

Justine made her way in and saw the bodies of several white officers lying in pools of dried blood and body fluids. Their was still an odor of decay but not as bad as what she had smelled before. She flicked on her flashlight.

The BOQ interior was a mess from the racial firefight as she saw other corpses both black and white laying amidst the garbage, the pool tables, pinball machines, even in the kitchen where a couple of bodies lay, one holding a cleaver. She’d seen enough.

“Fuck this.”, she said turning back.

The base hospital was just as hectic. Litter, papers, broken windows scattered the grounds and inside it was infinitely worse. Filthy beds everywhere, the floors covered in dried fluids and reports and that odor that unspeakable odor still lingered yet they found no bodies. Disgusting to be sure. With flashlights they scoured the place even the basement for bits of supplies left behind. They found some. A small box of morphine, and penicillin, syringes, needles, a sewing kit for wounds, loads of gauze, bottles of hydrogen peroxide and aspirin. They left with two book boxes full of supplies. Now they were ready to move on.

They left Frankfurt behind getting on the A15 highway to Wurzburg and Nuremburg. The road conditions were fairly ideal as there was hardly any civilian traffic which was surprising to both of them. Justine thought the roads would’ve been jammed with cars but she found just the opposite. What they did find occasionally was military traffic. The highway had many lanes and often the shoulder was bumper to bumper with trucks, armored cars, APC’s, and even tanks. The vehicles belonged mostly to the West German Bundeswehr. All were abandoned, the soldiers long gone. In a field near the town of Rothenbach Peter pointed out a whole flock of US Army Cobra gunships bathing in the sunlight. They too were unattended left to decorate the vast green field.

“Jeez look at all this military hardware.”, Peter said as they zipped passed parked army vehicles.

“Looks like they were getting ready for some invasion. Someone must’ve pulled the alarm switch.”, she said.

“Looks like someone thought this pandemic was an attack or something’.”, he nodded.

“Makes you wonder. If anyone in the missile silos are still alive, and if they are what’re they thinking’. I mean they’ve noticed nobody is answering their calls, the radios are silent and no orders are coming in. You know somebody is alive, down in one of those things in the US or Russia. Wonder if anybody thought WWIII started and they launched. How about the guys in the missile subs under the polar ice caps. They’re still alive most likely and thinking’ the same thing the silo guys are. In other words, the shit’s hit the fan and we gotta launch.”, Justine said.

“No shit. We’re here in West Europe, if any missiles did get launched we wouldn’t know since those missiles wouldn’t even target this place. Those silo crews can’t even leave their posts even if they wanted to, I think you’re stuck down there until you’re relieved, which in their case would be never.”, Peter shook his head.

As Peter looked out his window something in a field beyond a thin line of trees caught his eye.

“Whoa! Justine pull over quick!”

“Wha? What for?”

“Just do it!”, he exclaimed

She stopped, put the Rover in reverse, and backed up a few hundred feet.

“What the fuck did you see?”, she asked as he got out.

Peter looked down an embankment from the highway which merged with a gravel road. There were a couple of army trucks as well as sanitation trucks stopped along this road which led into a vast level field beyond. From the highway it was hard to see what was in the field because of a thick line of trees. But you could make out specks of color, blue, red, green, orange, yellow, purple and white all jumbled together in different patterns.

Peter walked down the embankment and onto the gravel road, with Justine following. They had entered a tunnel of trees along which were a number of trucks, including dump trucks. Halfway in Justine an arm draped over the side of a blue dump truck. Then they both smelled the faint scent of decay and could hear a low buzzing sound emanating from seemingly everywhere. Their faces were smacked by dozens of flies hungrily buzzing to and fro all around them.

“Oh, man!“, Justine yelped.

As they walked along the gravel road, the tunnel of trees gave way to a vast field. What was in the back of the trucks was nothing compared to what lay in dozens of triangular heaps. The flies too had grown in sound and number forming clouds of rotating and morphing black swarms hovering over and amidst the multicolored mounds.

“Sweet Jesus.”, Peter said.

“Christ.”, Justine muttered.

Justine was flabbergasted. These were bodies the West German authorities dumped and apparently gave up on proper burial at some point. They were unceremoniously disposing of the victims. There must’ve been thousands of places like this across Europe where burying the dead was no longer feasible both because of manpower shortages and the increasing number of dead. As a result dumping them in fields, ditches, quarries, mines, and pits was the only solution.

She had never witnessed so many dead. Checkpoint Charlie and it’s carnage was nothing compared to this. Here tens of thousands of bodies lay unburied amidst a vast sunny field where she heard birdsong in the distance and the rustling of leaves from a summer breeze. She just stood there her mouth agape.

“I’ve seen enough.”, Peter mumbled covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and walked back to the Rover.

“My God.”, she whispered as she looked up at the cerulean blue afternoon sky standing before mankind’s fate.

Neither said anything on the drive to Nurnburg. Justine smoked cigarette after cigarette while driving. Peter turned on the radio listening for any station. But there was nothing but static to be heard. Neither said much as they noticed an Army truck parked along the highway with a cargo of bodies in the back.

“Screw this.”, she muttered exiting the Autobahn and headed for the large town of Wurzburg on their right.

“What’s goin’ on?”, Peter remarked.

“I’m getting something to drink.”, she replied.

“We got stuff in the back.”, he pointed.

She didn’t answer and drove down a main street before stopping at a major intersection where she simply put the Rover in park and turned off the ignition. Peter shrugged his shoulders and got out catching up to her.

“I don’t suppose you’ve been here before? I mean the way you parked and just got out.”, he asked.

“Yeah once back in ‘69. Bayeurth University is right over there and the Juliusspital Hospital is just beyond. And no, I’m not going near that place. I’ve seen enough dead for a day.”, she replied her boot heals scraping the pavement.

They both ambled down a narrow street that made an sharp right turn. Up ahead was an atypical white and brown painted beer hall called “Schrepke Weisbrau/Restaurant”.

The front door was locked but after a few swift kicks from Justine’s boot it swung open. Inside it was a bit musty but clean and orderly as if the owners had prepared it for tonight’s dinner.

“God I wish the kitchen was open.”, Peter grumbled.

“Go look in back.”, Justine replied finding a bottle of Laphroaig scotch.

“Yeah, first I want to look a for some candles, it’s getting pretty dark in here.”

He opened a few drawers near the bar finding none but then found a nice stash of table candles in an ornate armoire’s bottom drawer. Peter planted a number in each table’s candle holder and lighting each with his Zippo.

Justine downed a shot, and looked at all the tables lit. She just stared at all the empty seats and the deafening silence. No “oompa” music blaring, no buzz of conversation or drunk laughter. No pall of blue tobacco smoke or the bustle of pretty waitresses. Nothing but awful silence. She shuddered a bit and downed another shot.

“I take it, we’ll camp here for the night.”, Peter said.

“Yeah………..might as well.”, she muttered.

“Justine don’t worry it’s gonna be…………”, he said trying to be upbeat.

“Fine? Alright? Tomorrow’s a new day and everyone’ll be up and around going about their daily business after having a nasty bout of the flu? I don‘t think so. Everything is finished.”, she answered.

Peter just sat down and rubbed his temples letting out a muffled cry which blossomed into mournful sobs. She walked up to him and placed a shot glass full of scotch on the table in front of him.

“Just drink. It‘ll make you forget all this, at least for a while.”, she said filling her glass again and downing it quickly.

“I just cannot believe this is real. It can’t be.”, he whimpered.

Justine walked outside and lit a cigarette.

“Neither can I.”, she said to herself.

They had made a bit of headway driving towards Nurnberg. The highway was largely clear of any cars or trucks save for a few accidents along the way. They stopped at an Aral gas station to refuel near Erlangen. The station had been looted, windows smashed, and various articles from within scattered around the parking lot. A lone blue VW Bug was parked at one pump, the driver’s door open.

Peter retrieved the long hose and hand crank pump to get siphon the fuel from the station’s main underground tank while Justine took an M-16 from the back of the Rover and walked around the place. She saw a body of a man inside the station spread eagle on the floor, a large pool of dried blood had come from some unseen wound near the victim’s head. Her boots crunched on candy and glass. She looked down to see dozens of picture postcards showing pretty towns, castles, and city life scattered about the floor. Justine peered outside to see Peter filling two canisters of fuel. She walked around the back of the Aral station walked across the parking lot to the woods nearby which were quite beautiful, the vast array of greens and blues contrasting with the sunlight. The wind whispered through the tops of the trees as she drew in a deep breath.

Justine walked back into the station as Peter was busy filling up the Rover’s fuel tank. As she walked past the cashiers counter her eye caught a hand written note on the floor amidst the litter. Justine picked it up read it aloud softly:

Christian,

wir sind okay.

Richart, Nicole, und Oma Ade, sind vorbei.

Zur Tante Ute's so schnell wie möglich.

Auf bald.

Liebe,

Mim

She let the note slip from her fingers and wondered how Aunt Ute, Mim, and Christian made out. Who was Nicole? His girlfriend, or wife? Did Christian ever make it to his Aunt’s house? Justine rubbed her forhead and tried not to dwell on it.

She heard Peter curse out loud as he tried to finish refueling.

“You need help?”, she asked walking outside.

“Nah, I got it. Just got gas on my shoes that’s all.”, he said wiping his hands on a rag.

“Anything in the store?”, he asked.

“No,…………………………nothing useful.”, she answered starting the Rover.

Nurnberg

She turned off the Autobahn and headed south through Boxdorf, Buch, and Thon which seemed untouched by anything unusual. As a matter of fact by the time she parked the Rover next to Nurnberg’s Schoner Brunnen or Golden Fountain located on a open stone paved plaza the city seemed to be taking a long siesta. There few signs of looting and no fires.

By the time she parked the sun cast long shadows, and a gentle breeze blew across the square. It was a beautiful summer evening. One would expect the plaza to be filled with open market stalls, and couples strolling hand in hand. But there was nothing except the sound of pidgeons flying about.

Justine looked across the square at the Frauenkirche or Women’s Church and saw one of it’s front doors was wide open. At first she wanted to go inside but decided against it.

“Do you really want to go in there?”, Peter asked.

“No, I guess not now, maybe later, maybe tomorrow. Let’s walk to the center of town and see if we can find some store and get something to eat. “, Justine replied.

They walked across a small stone bridge across the Pegnitz River upon which Nurnberg sat and ambled amidst the centuries old architecture of the city center. Both walked by the twin spire St. Lorenz Cathedral, it’s front doors open. They saw a pack of dogs growling and barking run out from the church something large being held in one of the dog’s mouth, it‘s pack mates trying to get a piece. Peter looked over at Justine who said nothing, her face practically void of emotion at this point.

She spied a small store down Konigstrasse. The store windows untouched, the display full of canned delicacies.

“Oh, yeah. Come to mama.”, she said picking up a stone smashing the window.

Their mouths watered as they picked up anything canned, loading their haul into shop baskets. They sat outside on the sidewalk opening a few cans of canned fish, meat and caviar. Justine finished a tin of beef and was about to throw the tin can into a nearby trashcan when she stopped herself and tossed the can onto the street. A few dogs trotted close by, their mouths salivating, one sat down watching Peter eat while another came close to Justine wagging it’s tail.

She opened a few tins of fish and threw them onto the street, whereby the dogs ate it ravenously. Peter opened a bottle of white wine and let Justine have the first drink.

He watched her drink from the bottle, looked at her tired eyes staring out into space and the streak of dirt on her right cheek. She handed the bottle to him wiping her sleeve across her bee stung lips. Justine went back into the store and came out with a carton of cigarettes.

“You want one?”, she asked.

“Yeah thanks.”, he answered quietly.

They walked south towards the Opera and Theatre house munching on a bag of German sweets, the streets completely devoid of any cars save for one or two parked. It was almost as if most of the residents had fled or were evacuated.

“Where are we headed?”, Peter asked.

“The train station, down this street then a left and eventually it’ll be on the right.”, she nodded.

“It’s getting’ dark awfully quick Justine.”, he remarked looking up at the first stars.

Within a few blocks they began to see green Bundeswerhr troop trucks parked bumper to bumper. There were close to 100 of them all empty. They walked past the massive convoy sometimes having to squeeze between the vehicles that at times seemed abandoned. The huge roundabout in front of the Bahnhof was equally crammed with both military and civilian cars, buses, and trucks.

Up close the train station was a large Baroque like structure. With night now upon them, the dark made the station appear as if it were a massive crypt on the outside, something that made both hesitate for fear of what they would find inside.

“Why don’t we wait till morning. To be honest I really don’t want to go inside, not now.”, Peter said.

“Yeah, tomorrow. Let’s go back and get the Rover. “, she replied.

They retrieved the truck and parked in a large grass field known as the Wohrder Wiese, a city park two football fields in length surrounded by trees whereby camp was made. The stars above shone bright and vivid as Peter made a small campfire. Justine opened a few more tins of food from the store and opened a few warm beers.

“God I could go for some bread and not the green kind. I can’t remember the last time I had some.”, she said staring into the fire.

“You know what’s real good? German beer bread. There’s a place not far from Munich that had the best beer bread you ever tasted.”, he said breaking some twigs.

“When were you there last?”, she asked.

“Oh, in ‘66 when I was in the Army.”, he replied.

“You were in the Army? For how long?”, Justine asked lighting a cigarette.

“Well I joined in ‘54 and left in ‘67. Almost got sent to ‘Nam. But thankfully I didn’t. I spent most of my time in the Stateside or here in West Germany up near Fulda.”

“Doin’ what exactly?”, she asked.

“I was with the 14th Armoured Cavalry Regiment from ‘62 to ‘67. Good times and a great group of guys. We stood guard watching the big bear ‘cause we’d be the first ones he’d hit if he invaded. All that doesn’t even seem real anymore, like it happened in another universe or something. Now all those guys are who knows where, probably dead. Some guy I was talkin’ to a few weeks ago or however long ago it was, told me this damn virus came from the Soviets or Chinese. One of them screwed up, released this germ and that’s why they went to war. Who knows. I guess I went off on a tangent didn’t I.”

“What about your wife?”, Justine inquired.

“Yeah, my wife Veronica. Here’s a picture of her.”, he said pulling out his wallet and showing her the small photo.

“Pretty. She looks happy.”, she remarked.

“Yeah, she was a very happy person, sunny personality my Veronica.”, he seemed to trail off.

“I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to….”

“No it’s uh okay. I last saw her on May 14th when I left on business to come here to West Germany. I told her I’d call. I tried twice. One time the phone kept ringing no answer, the second time the lines were all screwed up. When I drove to the airport I was worried how much the yard fence was gonna cost and when I was gonna get it put up. Now? Christ this is all like a friggin’ movie that just goes on and on, never ending and we’re characters in it.”, he shook his head.

“Like Omega Man? That would make you Charlton Heston and I’d be Rosalind Cash. Too bad I can’t grow a fro.”, she smirked.

“Yeah, both he and that black woman are probably dead. Played a part in a movie that would become real for them, for everyone. Their on screen apocalypse lasted what somewhere around two hours? Look at ours. Jesus. They should have cameras on us. We’re the real fuckin’ movie stars. Give us an Oscar.”, he said bitterly.

“Go to Hollywood and get all the ones you want now.”, she remarked opening another beer.

“Yeah, all the ones I’d want. What a life.”, he said.

“Humph.”, she grunted.

“What.”, he looked over at her.

“Nothing.”, she shook her head.

“Come on, I said something that made you go ‘Humph’ didn’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter. What happened to your parents?”, Justine asked lighting another cigarette.

“My father and mother passed away several years ago. Thankfully they avoided seeing all this. What about yours?”, Peter asked.

“I never knew them. I knew of them but that’s about it. An Aunt and Uncle raised me in California.”, she replied.

“What happened to your biological parents…..if you don’t mind me asking.”, he pressed.

“Disappeared after the Second World War. Apparently my mother was a Norwegian Nazi and my father was an officer in the Waffen SS or something like that. He was either killed in the last month or captured and my mother left me with her sister living in Sweden.”, she shrugged.

“SS huh. Tough hombres. I knew one veteran from some SS Division that I met back in ‘65 near Stuttgart. The guy still had his Iron Cross and visor hat. He told me about his time in Russia. Crazy stuff.”, Peter said sipping on another warm beer.

“He ever mention Lebensborn?”, she asked.

“Uh uh no not that I can remember. You mean lebensraum?”, Peter shook his head.

“No. Lebensborn. It was a program to raise racially superior Aryan children. Mothers came from Germany or Nordic countries and the fathers were all SS officers.”, Justine replied.

“Ohhh. Now I see. You…………you were born under that program?”, he inquired.

“Yep. A hospital or center located in Norway. That’s something huh. I could’ve told my friends that my parents were Nazis and I was racially pure and superior. A lot of good that does me now.”, she said taking a drag from her cigarette.

“Well I don’t think anyone is gonna hold you for it Justine.”, Peter replied.

“No not anymore. But that’s what brought me here last month. I was going to pay off some people who did know my past. They were blackmailing me. So I had little choice. The friggin’ money is still in my hotel room in West Berlin. The shit hit the fan before they could collect.”, she smirked.

“Guess that’s either luck or fate.”, he remarked.

“I’m thinking fate. It was meant to happen.”, Justine said staring into the fire.

“You mean like all of this?”, he said waving an arm in a sweeping fashion.

“Why not. Fate rules us all. Fate ultimately decides and ultimately wins. Who are we to act against it? It’s had it in for humanity since day one. Ever since then all we were doing is buying time until the end. It’s paid us many visits before in the form of plagues and wars. The Black Plague, the Spanish Flu of 1918, WWI, WWII, the rampant population growth, pollution, and nuclear war.”, she stated.

“Ah Justine, those were man made events, not some hocus pocus crap. Mankind screwed itself over and over ending with this doozy. This time somebody really fucked up. I don’t why or how but someone got a good dose of stupid and made this happen.”, Peter said.

“Then it was inevitable and that means fate had a hand in it. Guiding mankind towards his demise.”, she added.

“Then fate shouldn’t have made us intelligent.”, he quipped.

“Fate didn’t make us that way. Intelligence is creativity, curiosity, and the yearning to know. That’s endemic to intelligent beings. It’s the product of evolution and adaptation. It comes with the evolution package. Therefore, mankind could never separate itself from it‘s own intellectual needs and because of that it was bound by fate that it would ultimately perish from it‘s simple desire to know“, she responded.

“So evolution is to blame?”, he chuckled.

“Evolution was a mean to an end, the vehicle that delivered mankind to his end.”, she went on.

“Let me ask you Justine, if you could go back in time and change all of this from happening would you? Or would you let it happen since you believe fate has it in for mankind.”, Peter asked.

“Let’s say I did go back and convince people this pandemic would happen and lo’ and behold the future was changed. Fate would only intervene somewhere else in time. Maybe in 1983 or 1993, some disaster sooner or later would befall mankind.”, she replied turning on her shortwave radio.

“Ah hell with that attitude you’d never get up in the morning.”, he said sipping his beer.

“Is there a reason to get up now?”, she quipped tuning the radio.

“Touche.”, Peter answered.