The Final Goodbye

You know this wasn’t too hard to see coming. God knows that there were many warnings that it was going to happen. Maybe that was the problem? There were so many warnings that people just stopped listening and their thoughts went back to their normal humdrum lives. That had to have been what happened…people just turned numb to the idea that the world was going to end.

I just want to tell you before you continue that if you are reading this….I am already dead.

It all started, let’s see its September I think, so it started just about a year ago. The CDC was experimenting with some new superbug that they thought maybe hitching a ride back from the spaceships that travelled to the Moon and back. I think they were up to three or four flights a year and they knew that there was a possibility that someday something would come back. They took about a month to find it, isolate it, and create “breeding colony” for their research.  They found that it was airborne and it was extremely fatal to anyone and anything that happed to breathe it in.

Now, remember that the United States government did everything they could to keep it a secret and it worked until they tested it in a secluded valley out in Wyoming. The test was for a herd of cattle to be gassed and the measure the results. Needless to say it worked…a little too well. Unknown to the Feds there was a campsite on top of a mountain a couple miles away and when the gas reached them they all died within seconds. Their bodies were found a few weeks later half rotted and dehydrated. It was almost as if they died of thirst despite the fact that there was a creek less than fifty feet from their camp.

The government decided that more wide-spread testing was needed so they launched an attack on a small village in the country they were at war with at the time. There had been so many since President Bush launched attacks in Iraq in was hard to remember what country. Anyway, the entire population was killed. That weapon was perfect…it killed everything and it was easy to deliver. The thing was there was one thing that the government didn’t know and that was the way those creatures reacted after they were let loose in the air…they continued to live long after an attack.

By the time they learned that they had unleashed a pandemic on the world they had given it a name The Imperian Bow named after the mythological bow created by Hercules. It was said that it was the ultimate weapon and was used once during the war between the Greek gods and the Titans. The original bow was never found but this on proved that an ultimate weapon could be created.

It didn’t take long for the disease spread. Wyoming was the first to feel the effects followed quickly by the Middle East. It was spreading at a rate of more than a hundred miles a day killing every…humans, animals and even plants were affected. Within a week most of the western and central United States, Canada were wiped as were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Greece. Cities, forests and water basins were empty.

Once they realized what was happening people tried finding places to hide but to no success. The underground places they were hiding had air brought in from the surface and their filters were not made to filter out something as small as the plague that filled the air. One by one their “safe” places became the 22^nd century versions of the ancient crypts of Egypt.

I guess I was one of the lucky ones or maybe not. I was in a Lear Jet flying from England back home to the United States when the worst of it was just finishing. I landed outside my hometown of Casper. My car was waiting in the hanger just where I left it so it only took me about ten seconds to get from the plane to the car.

It took me about twenty minutes to get in to town. It was hot outside. That was rare for this area so I turned on the air conditioner at set it to recycle the air inside the car.

As I was driving I saw corpses lying on the side of every street. Whole families were laying together some must have died separately while others were holding each other tightly as if they had a final moment or two to gather their loved ones close to them before they died.

Finally, I reached my house. I was afraid as to what I might find but I had to know. I pulled into the garage and went into the house. My wife was slumped over the kitchen table and the baby was in her highchair. My wife must have been feeding her when she died. I looked for my son. He was nowhere to be found. Then I thought about it for a minute. We had always sent him to camp the first week of September. Odds were that was where he was. Then I looked back to my wife and baby. My only thought was that I hoped that they didn’t suffer but as for anything else it was too late.

Before I left I walked into the bedroom and took a package out of the closet behind the door. I stuck it in my pocket and walked out, got in the car and left. I had nowhere to go and I wasn’t sure if I had enough time to do what I knew I had to do.

I took back roads all the way into the mountains. It was so quiet. There was not an animal or bird anywhere, God, how could a whole city’s residents just die off at the same time?

I finally made it to Dinwoody Peak and I was lucky…I found a road that lead up near the peak and it was a quick ride. When I got there I was having trouble breathing, I was sweating like race horse and my mouth was so dry but there was no water to be found.

I got out of the car with my package and started walking the last one hundred feet to the summit. I knew what I was going to do when I got there. That package I was carrying was a 22 caliber pistol. I wasn’t going to live on a planet all alone and I was goddamn if I was going to die like everyone else. Before I was going to do that though I wanted to write this and maybe leave it as a warning for the next version of human being. I just hope that they would be smarter than we were.

It is time to go. There was a beautiful sunset and that would be a perfect last memory for me. All I had to say was “The rotten bastards finally did it” and then it was finished.