USHER'S HARBOUR

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

Winter, 2089

Where once stars had twinkled in the night sky, the Earth was now enveloped in an unremitting blanket of clouds. Pollutants defiled the atmosphere, thanks to humanity's greed, arrogance, and neglect. One could forgive the citizens of Richmond, Virginia for failing to recall those halcyon starlit nights of bygone times, especially now that a thousand fires blazed all around them, sending up pillars of black smoke that blotted out the merest suggestion of a sky above. A storm approached. Its cloaking clouds glowed red and angry, reflecting the light from the conflagration ...

... and in that savage light, Mark Wells stood on his balcony high above the blazing city, clutching the railing in a death grip. Far below him, the clamour of sirens and klaxons, each conveying its own particular message of panic and distress, all but drowned out by the angry cries of the rioters, the shattering glass, the screams of the victims of rape and pillage. He could see the flames rising from the burning buildings, the firestorms that engulfed the industrial areas, and the funeral pyres on the city's periphery, but the stench of searing flesh and the reek of decaying bodies in the shattered buildings and ruined avenues below had not yet reached that high.

The ravening mobs moved from street to street, looting, burning, and clashing violently whenever they chanced to meet. Drunk, enraged, caught up in the mob hysteria; it didn't matter. The end result was the same. There was neither rhyme nor reason to their actions, save for the terror all felt as civil society collapsed. The plague, lethal and inescapable, fell upon them, as governments stood powerless against it. Born of the overcrowded camps, where interned eco-refugees thronged together in their misery as they fled the rising oceans and the desertification of their lands, it spread rapidly, a story repeated the world over.

Riot police fell back in the face of the relentless power of the marauding gangs, many of them deserting the ranks to guard their own families, some even joining in the mayhem. Military forces were confined to their bases, held in reserve to mop up and restore order after the rioting abated. Inevitably, they too would be drawn into the madness, the death throes of the damned.

Tears rolled down Wells' cheeks. It wasn't just the smoke from countless fires befouling the air that caused him to weep. His wife and son lay dead in the penthouse behind him, victims of the deadly disease. Incurable, it took them in a matter of days. He whispered low, "What have we done?" Then louder, "What have we done?" Then in a gut-wrenching scream, "What have we done?" He collapsed to the floor, his cheek against the railing, his body racked with sobs.

"We failed," he moaned in anguish. "How could we have been so arrogant? To imagine that we could change the world." He sighed deeply, forlornly. "But we tried." Now in a whisper, "At least we tried." Old age had taken his friend Jace near a decade before, and D.J., the third member of the Founders, had drowned attempting to save a friend in peril. Now only he remained, a ruined shadow of his youthful self, as the nucleus of an ever expanding group dedicated to saving mankind from itself. Failure weighed heavily upon him.

From his lofty perch he was unable to hear the mob breaching the building's defenses, overwhelming security, breaking through the iron gates and locked doors. He didn't hear the final panicked announcement as the concierge tried to warn the residents even as the mob surged over him. He didn't hear the building's alarms as danger drew ever closer. At last he became aware of the looters' presence when they battered down his door, flooding into his home, his last refuge. They tore the place apart, destroying what they couldn't carry away. The bodies of Wells' family were tumbled indifferently to the floor, evicted from their beds and kicked aside as their mattresses were appropriated by the looters. Wells tried in vain to stem the tide.

"No," he screamed. "No. You don't understand." His entreaties were ignored as two of their number pushed him back, picked him up and hurled him from the balcony, laughing in derision at his terror. As he fell, he had only moments to lament the sad fate of his kind before he crashed to the pavement below, to join the detritus of a failed world, a failed vision.

Later that evening, torrential rains pounded the city, sweeping clean the blighted air, extinguishing all but the most entrenched of the fires as it sluiced down hills and gutters and rooftops, temporarily cleansing the streets and forcing rioters and defenders alike to seek shelter, save for the maddest and most frenetic of them. Sadly, the rains did not make an end of it. Tomorrow would be another day, and the violent appetite of the survivors was far from being assuaged.

Summer, 2089

There was little cause to celebrate the nation's birthday, yet they did. The plague had taken most of the world's populace in a mere ten weeks. In the United States, a scant twenty-two million survived, scattered over the land in cities, in towns, and on farms. Of Richmond's inhabitants, only a few thousand remained. Those pitiful few, the plague's survivors, had dragged themselves from the ashes and tried in vain to rebuild. The extent of the damage and the hundreds of thousands of rotting corpses finally persuaded them to abandon the effort. Most of the city was gone, the charred and twisted wreckage attesting to weeks of rioting and looting. They'd salvaged what they could from the rubble and built shanty towns of tents and huts and lean-tos in parks and fields. On the Fourth of July they'd found flags and bunting and decorated their hovels, to celebrate their elation at being amongst those who yet endured, still joyous to have their freedom and the bounty that the government pro tem was even now showering upon them. Few would admit that they were the damned, condemned to live out their lives in privation and misery unless they found a way to resurrect the comfortable civilization they'd helped to destroy.

The members of the federal government and others of wealth, rank, and privilege had taken refuge in bunkers and had managed to ride out the crisis in relative comfort. After the calamity they had emerged to govern a blighted land. They'd promised much, for of necessity there was much to be done, the feeding and re-housing of millions being a priority. For now, there was an abundant supply of food, in houses and supermarkets and warehouses that had survived the worst of the fires and the looting and destruction. Even now, survivors scrabbled for sustenance in the cellars of gutted homes and the wreckage of commercial buildings. Farms and ranches, whose owners had succumbed to the plague or to looters, were repopulated by grateful refugees from the ruined cities, and the government sent out teams to train them in the agricultural sciences. The massive recovery effort had begun.

Like North America, South America, Australia, Europe and Asia had begun their own recovery programs, but normal would never again be a state to which any of them could return. Africa was already lost, with no hope of aid or surcease, as the plague decimated populations and ancient intertribal rivalries took care of the rest. Only isolated populations in areas verdant and fertile would survive there. So much more had to be done, and the solution lay in the past and in the near future.

...