Chapter Fifty-Two
MYXO
1
Friday, September 30, 2022 was a typically busy day at the Denver International Airport. Jeppesen Terminal buzzed with a hive of activity. The numerals on all the clocks had just flipped to 10.13am as loud screams pierced the background din. A circle of space formed around a man who had just crawled out of one of the unisex restrooms. He was struggling there, on his hands and knees, clearly having a great difficulty in breathing. A number of women in the crowd continued to scream in horror as they witnessed the man, who was covered in suppurating sores, completely blinded by conjunctivitis and coughing up phlegm and blood with every breath, die a slow, painful death.
2
The blue Pantera rumbled through the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and up the Pacific Highway through North Sydney on its way to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. It was Wednesday, December 21, 2022. Alex and Sophia were on a day outing visiting Lloyd and Eva who were in the middle of a ten-day cruise to the Hawkesbury. Their sloop, Mecca, was anchored just outside the moorings in the secluded waters of Bobbin Head.
Alex drove slowly as he negotiated the tortuous twists and turns of Bobbin Head Road. As it was the middle of the week, they easily found a good parking spot. Sophia called Eva on her phone and informed her of their arrival. Ten minutes later, the tiny dinghy putted up to the jetty. Lloyd and Eva came ashore and greeted their guests. After hugging and shaking hands, Eva said,
‘I have to go to the shop for a minute. I need some fresh bread, milk and ...’
‘Do you mind getting a paper while you’re at it, darling?’ Lloyd requested.
‘Certainly, sweetheart.’ Eva replied.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Sophia.
The girls wandered off to the store while Lloyd and Alex stayed on the jetty.
‘How has the sailing been, Lloyd?’
‘It’s been perfect, Alex. We sailed up the coast in a nice southerly and we’ve been hanging around the Hawkesbury enjoying the afternoon north-easters for days now. We tend to sail for a few hours and then tie up at the Newport Arms and sit the rest of the day out there, drinking beer.’
‘Cogitating about what the rest of the world is up to, I presume.’
‘Er, not exactly.’
A few minutes later, the girls returned. They appeared somewhat animated as they approached. Noticing this, Lloyd asked,
‘What’s the drama?’
‘Look at the paper,’ said Eva handing the newspaper to Lloyd.
He read the headlines, which were written in bold print, and exclaimed surprised,
‘Pope Petrus Romanus is dead! Holy cow! And look what it says underneath … it says that they don’t know where the next Pope will come from because all the cardinals are dead as well.’ Lloyd turned the page. ‘It says that the whole Vatican City is in total lockdown because of a suspected viral epidemic. It appears that everyone in the place is dead. God! Oh, look down here; some elements of the Carabinieri have expressed suspicion that it may have been the work of Mossad, the secret Israeli intelligence agency. Israel has unequivocally denied the charges. And look down here … it says that the King of England and his brother have both been rushed to hospital. A Buckingham Palace media release stated that they were both suffering from a bad case of the flu and simply went into hospital for observation.’
‘Sweetheart, we better get this ham I bought into the fridge before it spoils in the heat.’
‘Sure, come on all, let’s pile into the dinghy and head off,’ suggested Lloyd.
They all sat in the tiny dinghy and motored through the moorings towards Mecca.
3
Christmas Day, 2022 dawned morbidly sombre. It may have been the annual anniversary of the birth of Christ, but that was totally overshadowed by the news headlines echoing out of every television screen in the world. The King of England is dead. Long live the King. Death had also come to his brother, his cousins, aunts, uncles and all their children. Initial investigations indicated that they were all victims of the same mystery virus that decimated the Vatican. The greatest dilemma facing the British people, on Christmas Day, 2022, was who was going to become their next monarch because everyone even remotely in line to the throne was dead.
British Parliament attempted an emergency sitting the very next day. Those parliamentarians who were still alive were flown back to London from their taxpayerfunded jaunts. Martial law was imposed and the military was assigned with keeping apart opposing factions, such as the fascists and communists, who were trying to take advantage of the sudden chaos. Everyone blamed ‘the Jews’, saying that Mossad must have been responsible. There were calls for an invasion of Israel. Israel responded angrily, saying that they had nothing to do with any of the deaths and that they had all of Europe’s capital cities targeted with nuclear missiles. Their top general was quoted as saying,
‘Our position is not that we will push the button if we are attacked, but that we won’t.’
When asked to explain what he meant by that, he replied,
‘It’s simple, in order to prevent our missiles from launching, a button must be pushed every five minutes. If for some reason, like an attack on Israel for example, the button is not pushed, all the missiles will launch automatically and wipe out every city between the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. So, get off our backs if you know what is good for you.’
That quietened everyone down somewhat.
By New Year’s Day, death was the most reported word on the planet. The second most reported word was panic and the third, fame. It was beginning to emerge that the mystery virus was targeting famous people. Hollywood moguls, movie stars, rock stars, presidents, prime ministers, captains of industry, heads of global corporations, bankers, media personalities, religious leaders and world celebrities in general were mysteriously dying off like flies.
The planet had become gripped by fear. No one knew anything about the virus. As a consequence, people began to avoid places of large gatherings. Many concerts were cancelled either because the acts were dead or because no one wanted to go to them. Movie theatres closed their doors and people stayed away from malls and off public transport. Everyone huddled around their TVs and waited for the news.
A report came out of Israel enumerating the disproportionate number of Jews that had died in the mystery epidemic. The report claimed that that was proof that Israel had nothing to do with it. The report then indirectly suggested that it might have been the Russians that engineered the virus. The Russians strongly denied the accusation and threatened Israel with total annihilation. One high-profile Russian political commentator even went so far as to say, on national television, that Hitler might have been right all along. The following morning, he was found hanging by his neck from the middle of Andreyevsky Bridge. A video appeared on YouTube the next day in which a masked man declared that too much Russian blood had been spilt getting rid of that ‘vermin son of a pestilent whore, Hitler’, for the people to forgive such a treasonous remark.
4
All through January, 2023, the world remained in the grip of fear, chaos, and in some places, marshal law. Gradually the deaths slowed until they finally ceased. Hollywood and the movie industry were decimated. Nearly everyone was dead. Most in the music industry were dead as well. The President of the United States, his Vice-President, half the House and most of the Senate were gone, as were most of the military leaders of the world.
Operation One World, which was the name of the imminent invasion of Iran by the combined forces of the USA and Israel, came to a crumbling halt as all its leaders perished. The million-strong army, which was concentrated on Iran’s eastern and western borders, collapsed into total disarray as fuel and food supplies dried up. They became sitting ducks in the desert as calls for evacuation were ignored. Throughout February of that year, 99 percent of Operation One World either died of thirst, starvation or were picked off one by one by the Revolutionary Guard. Israel launched an arsenal of nuclear missiles at Tehran, but the missiles mysteriously performed a U-turn twenty miles above Amman and fell back to earth in the middle of downtown Tel Aviv without exploding. The ayatollahs declared the event a miracle of Allah, while Israel suffered global humiliation.
On December 28, 2022, a virologist from Vienna, named Goldbaum, published a paper detailing his research into the mysterious epidemic. He managed to isolate the virus responsible and recognised it as a mutation of the Myxoma virus. He named it Myxoma-H2022. He noted that it was human specific, but couldn’t work out why it was only lethal to some humans, chiefly famous ones or leaders in their fields. He noted that nearly all humans on Earth were carriers of the virus, were infectious, but were totally unaffected by it. He assumed that most of the Earth’s human population had a natural immunity to it. In summation he wrote that the virus was most likely a natural chance mutation of the Myxoma virus, which killed rabbits, although the conspiracy theorist in him could not discount the possibility that Myxoma-H2022 had been engineered by a very clever team of virologists. He never worked out why the people who were killed by the virus were specifically susceptible to it, and every person on Earth that might have been able to illuminate him with the answer was now dead.
5
Lloyd, Eva, Alex and Sophia spent the night of New Year’s Eve, 2022 on Mecca, tied up alongside Lloyd’s jetty. Under normal circumstances, they would have been floating just off the Opera House watching the big fireworks display. That year, though, the fireworks were cancelled at the last minute as a mark of respect for the deaths of so many prominent people.
The night was warm and calm. There was a noticeable absence of frivolity around Rose Bay. They should have heard the sounds of music, laughter and gaiety, from many parties, wafting through the night air, but they didn’t. On that night, the celebration of life was replaced by the fear of death, and rejoicing was replaced by mourning.
The strangeness of the world was not about to derail the cheerfulness of our happy foursome, however. They were all intelligent, unafraid and used to mystery. They laughed at life and its constant threat of death. They expressed their total contempt for it by always insisting on being happy, no matter what. Above everything, though, was the fact that they all shared a secret that no one else knew and none of them actually understood, a secret about a date in September beyond which it seemed no one would live, no one, that was, except themselves.
They turned off all the house lights and lit dozens of colourful Chinese lanterns that they had strung up all around the back yard and over the boat. Lloyd played Sade through Mecca’s Bose speakers while Alex popped open the first bottle of Moet for the night. The girls made a platter of cut sandwiches and they all stretched out on the boat, relaxed and chatted about whatever came to mind. In the absence of the fireworks at midnight, they planned to each release a Chinese lantern into the night sky and watch it drift over all the moored boats towards Shark Island.
‘So, whose theory shall we start with?’ Lloyd asked. ‘What killed all the famous people?’
‘Well, we know it was a virus,’ said Alex.
‘Apparently we are all carriers,’ added Eva.
‘That is what they said,’ continued Lloyd, ‘although we are all supposed to be immune, but nonetheless highly infectious.’
‘I know,’ said Alex in a perplexed voice, ‘it’s bizarre. The whole thing stinks of a carefully-engineered conspiracy, like very specific people were targeted.’
Lloyd smiled, ‘Good old Alex and his conspiracies. Next he’ll be telling us it was the aliens that did it.’
Everyone laughed. Alex laughed as well and said,
‘Go ahead, go on, mock at my expense. I didn’t mention aliens, did I? I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of labs on Earth that could have come up with the Myxoma-H2022 virus. What I am having trouble wrapping my brain around is what could all the people who died have had in common that made them susceptible to that virus?’
‘That is the sixty-four-million-dollar question, Alex. We must ponder on the possible commonalities of all the victims.’
‘What if they all belonged to a secret club,’ suggested Sophia.
Everyone looked at each other, then at Sophia. Lloyd shook his head and smiled,
‘Sophia, you do this too often.’ He turned to Alex. ‘She is a genius, Alex.’
‘You don’t have to tell me, Lloyd.’
‘What did I say? Did I say something?’ said Sophia feigning naivety.
‘Who wants more champagne?’ asked Eva.
Everyone held out their glasses.
‘A club, a global club, that included as its members, royalty, clergy, film and music elite, bankers, industrialists, politicians, etc, etc, etc, need I go on? The virus killed all the famous people of Earth. But fame on its own couldn’t be the differentiating agent, no, it had to be something else.’
‘You know what always amazes me about all the famous people,’ said Sophia. Everyone looked at her inquisitively. ‘It is how well they all cope with their fame. I mean, they are always surrounded by thousands of fans, many of who could be complete psychos, probably capable of anything. If it was me, I would be totally paranoid. I couldn’t handle it.’
‘These women, Alex,’ said Lloyd, ‘are beginning to worry me. They are becoming too smart. If we are not careful, they could take over the world.’
‘What do you mean, could,’ responded Eva in jest. ‘We have always ruled, we just let you poor males think that you have control in order to prop up your fragile egos.’ ‘Ouch, that hurt,’ said Lloyd grabbing his heart.
‘You asked for that one, Lloyd,’ said Alex. He continued, ‘I think what Sophia is alluding to is some kind of medication. Am I right, darling?’
‘Yes, I was thinking that. I have always thought that. Those celebrities are just too cool to not be on some kind of medication.’
‘By the way,’ said Alex, ‘not just celebrities died, but also people who wielded a lot of power and influence behind the scenes.’
‘People are always talking about the Masons,’ said Eva.
‘Yes, and what about that Scientology, what’s all that about?’ added Alex.
‘There is no doubt that there are clandestine organisations,’ surmised Lloyd. ‘What we are contemplating here is a secret umbrella organisation which had as its members all the movers and shakers on the planet, including the Pope and kings and queens. If one didn’t belong, one didn’t get on.’
‘You know, that Tom Cruise always reminded me of the Joker from the movies,’ said
Sophia. ‘He was in with one of those secret clubs, wasn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he was a big-time Scientologist,’ replied Alex.
‘So, let’s assume that there was a secret club that was above all other secret clubs. And let’s assume that it had a way of controlling its members, keeping everyone in line so to speak. One of the best methods for achieving that type of control over a person is to get them addicted to a drug that only you supply.’
‘Yes, Lloyd, and let’s assume that this drug is so good that it makes you feel phenomenal. Er, it makes you feel powerful, confident, intelligent, clear … er, totally in control in any situation … er,’ Eva searched for a word, then found it, ‘it makes you feel … invincible.’
‘That’s right, Eva, and as long as you keep taking it, you feel that way, but as soon as you stop, it all goes to hell.’
‘You guys should write a book,’ said Alex.
‘I think we need more champagne,’ observed Sophia holding up the empty bottle.
‘I’ll get another bottle,’ replied Eva as she zipped into the house. Lloyd continued,
‘So, what we are talking about is the best drug in the world. In fact, it is so good that it is kept a secret from the general population and only used by the elite few who belong to the global, secret society. The society gives them privilege and the drug gives them superior abilities and feelings while at the same time keeping them in line. If they rebel, the drug is taken away, which results in some horrific kind of withdrawal, maybe even death.’
‘Wow, Lloyd, you should be a writer. That is good. OK, now we need to introduce an enemy. This secret society has an enemy that finds out about the drug …’ Alex paused and thought about it for a moment, then continued, ‘and … this enemy engineers a version of the Myxoma virus that is specific only to humans and is activated by the drug in the host’s system. It’s perfect.’
‘And it takes out the whole secret network,’ added Lloyd. ‘Wham-bam, thank you maam!’
‘OK, that’s all good but now the big question arises; who is the enemy?’
Eva laughed, ‘Maybe it’s your aliens, Alex?’
Everyone laughed while Alex protested,
‘I t may not be such a crazy idea, you know. We have all been following the exploits of that Drongo guy over the years. We have all seen every episode of Incident at Green River since they began. We have all been intrigued out of our minds. Those aliens were real and they have been visiting every year.’
‘Unless it’s all Hollywood bullkacky,’ suggested Eva.
‘It looked pretty real to me,’ said Lloyd. ‘How about this year’s show in which the alien got abducted by those black helicopters. That was pretty amazing.’ Alex sat up all excited.
‘That’s it, that’s the motive!’ he declared. ‘Do you see? He infects the group that kidnapped him and it spreads through their system.’
‘Interesting hypothesis, Alex, shame we will never know.’
‘I agree with Lloyd, Alex, but don’t you think a group like that would certainly have had Earth-based enemies as well?’ ‘Probably,’ Alex replied.
‘Let us all agree that we will never know the truth,’ suggested Sophia, ‘and thank our lucky stars that we weren’t part of this elite group.’ ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Eva.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Alex, ‘what about the dates? The aliens came every September 23rd, am I right?’
‘Yes, I think that’s right,’ said Lloyd.
‘Didn’t we see something in the news about a guy that dropped dead at Denver Airport around about the end of September? I remember it because the news came out the same night as the last instalment of Incident at Green River. Remember how they said that they rushed the documentary through production because they wanted it to go to air as fast as possible? It was later confirmed that the guy died from a mystery virus. We now know that he was the first because they found more and more dead people every day after that. They found the first viral death about a week after they abducted the alien. There is a synchronicity there.’
‘Actually, Alex makes sense. The guy that isolated the virus, Goldbaum I think was his name, reckoned that we are all highly infectious carriers. Why couldn’t the alien have been a carrier who was also highly infectious and completely immune to the effects of the virus?’
‘Bingo, Lloyd!’ exclaimed Alex. ‘I have always thought it strange the way the alien just stood there and allowed himself to be abducted. He didn’t even attempt to escape or resist.’
‘Yes, Alex is right,’ said Eva, ‘I noticed that. I thought it seemed strange the way he just let them take him.’
‘Yes, it’s as if he wanted them to take him …’ Alex suddenly stopped talking. Everyone just looked at each other. Suddenly it all made sense.
6
At the stroke of midnight there was no cheering to be heard, no fireworks and no one sang Auld Lang Syne. Lloyd, Eva, Alex and Sophia were struck by the silence.
‘People are really afraid,’ said Sophia gazing out into the tranquil night.
‘Happy New Year, one and all,’ said Lloyd.
‘Happy New Year,’ everyone repeated. They all hugged each other and held up their glasses.
‘To friendship,’ said Lloyd.
‘To friendship,’ everyone responded.
‘Let’s launch the Chinese lanterns,’ suggested Eva.
They took a lantern each, lit the small fire beneath it and released it into the night sky. They watched the glowing lights slowly drift across Rose Bay.
‘They look like UFOs, don’t they?’
‘Yes, they do.’
As they watched their lanterns hanging in the sky, Alex resurrected an old conversation.
‘Every year they come on the same date.’
‘And every year we talk about it,’ said Eva.
‘I finished my research into the junk DNA in 2010. The one thing that stood out was the date, 23rd September. Four years later, the aliens started arriving exactly on that date. Every year we discuss the possibility of a link …’
‘And every year we come up with nothing,’ interjected Lloyd.
‘And now it’s 2023, the last year,’ said Sophia grimly.
‘I’m going to get more champagne,’ said Eva.
They sat in silence while Eva retrieved another bottle of Moet from the refrigerator. When she returned, she gave the bottle to Lloyd and he began opening it. As he did this, he spoke,
‘You know, I’ve given what I’m about to say quite a lot of thought. The four of us share an amazing secret and perhaps an amazing destiny. We cannot possibly understand how certain things could happen, but Alex’s research was thorough and his results were crystal clear. The knowledge derived from his work was so consequential that we decided to bury it and not reveal it to anyone.’
He popped the bottle and gave it to Eva who topped up everybody’s glass. He then continued. Everyone listened in silence.
‘None of Alex’s cases lived past the 23rd of September this year, except the four of us. I won’t even pretend to understand how this could be true. One thing is for sure; much has changed in the twelve or so years since Alex shelved his thesis. For one, we have had nearly a decade of alien visitations. That is something we could never have foreseen back in 2010. And now we have this global mega-death of all the important people in the world. Also, we know that everyone on the planet is a carrier of the offending virus. Things have changed and some sort of extinction-level event does not seem as inconceivable as it did twelve years ago.’
No one else spoke. They were subdued to silence by the grave tone of Lloyd’s voice.
‘It might be a plague or it might be a nuclear war, hell, it might even be an alien invasion, who knows, but I have decided that we should use the knowledge we have and take some precautionary action. Look, I will be 73 on my next birthday, so I’m not all that fussed, but I still feel good …’
Eva butted in, ‘Darling, you are still a spring chicken.’ ‘And Alex is my rooster,’ added Sophia.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ said Alex.
That broke everyone up in laughter.
‘Well, that’s all very good,’ continued Lloyd, ‘but I have an idea that I would like to run past everyone.’
‘We are all ears, Lloyd. Fire away.’
‘Well, we don’t know what is going to happen on the 23rd of September, we can only guess. One thing is for sure, when something bad happens it usually happens in cities. My idea is that we provision the boat up for about a month and take her out to sea about ten or twenty miles and sit-it-out out there for a few days. Whatever is going to happen will probably happen on land. Even if there is some kind of tidal wave, we will still be safest out there.
‘I have given thought to Leon and Russel, and their families out on the farm, and I believe that they are located in a good place for some kind of disaster. I intend to instruct them to provision up for an extended period.
‘I think that you, Alex, and you, Sophia, should come with us on the boat. My gravest concern is that the world will break down into nuclear war. The Australian outback or the open ocean will be the best places to survive such a catastrophe.’
They sat in the boat, discussing Lloyd’s plan, for hours. They finally all retired to bed as the first light of 2023 set fire to the eastern horizon.
…….