She eyed him suspiciously, and then laughed. “What the hell!”
“Come on,” Luke said. “We need to keep moving.”
Luke and Sophie clattered down the unlit internal staircase. It would take a long time to make the descent. Sophie said. “Diseases have wiped out civilizations before you know? You must remember that from school?”
“Remind me,” he said.
“When Cortes and the Spanish invaders landed on the shores of Mexico in 1519 it was the heart of the Aztec Empire. An Empire numbering between five and ten million people. Within the year the Aztecs rose up in rebellion and the heavily outnumbered Spanish fled, leaving the bodies of their dead behind — along with smallpox.”
They descended two more flights of stairs, the heat sapping their strength.
“During Cortes’s absence,” she continued. “The smallpox virus decimated the Aztec population and when he returned in 1521 he found the Aztec army in ruins, the remaining soldiers were too weak to fight and were easily defeated. It was claimed that the Spaniards could not walk through the streets without stepping on the bodies of smallpox victims.”
“And I don’t have to tell you what happened to the Incas.” She smiled.
“Remind me….”
She looked at him sideways. “Well, suffice to say, the Inca Empire with a population of between six and twelve million suffered an even more devastating ending where smallpox annihilated up to ninety percent of their society.”
Luke’s shirt stuck to him with sweat, he tugged at it to no avail.
“And I don’t need to tell you about the Native Americans,” she said.
He scrunched his face, and then made a carry on gesture with his hands. She stared at him incredulously.
“Remind me,” he said flatly.
She stopped dead, and regarded him balefully. “Didn’t you go to school?”
“Sometimes.”
She sighed heavily, and descended the stairs. “The combined Native-American nations were thought to be around ten million strong when the Europeans arrived from the Old World. The Native-Americans’ only needed to see the white man before succumbing to the disease. It's believed that a virus from the Old World had decimated ninety to ninety-five percent of the New World. Smallpox had been single-handedly responsible for killing nearly all the native inhabitants of the Americas.”
“Maaan, I didn’t know — I mean, I forgot.” He quickly corrected.
“The invading Europeans realized what had happened and decided to speed up their demise; the Natives gave them food and the settlers traded smallpox-infected blankets.”
“Not our finest hour,” Luke agreed.
“It was possibly the world’s first attempt at ethnic cleansing.”
“And germ warfare.”
“That’s precisely what happened next — the Native-Americans figured out that the white man had deliberately given them this awful contagion and decided to repay the betrayal. They would creep into town under the cover of darkness, and wipe their saliva around door-handles, they even put infected bodies into the town’s water supply.”
As they neared the bottom of the building their pace quickened. “During the 20th century it was estimated that smallpox was responsible for between three to five hundred million deaths.”
“Man, this is incredible. I could do a news item on—” He stopped as he remembered that there would be no item as there was no longer a news station.
Sophie noticed and continued her story hoping to distract him. “As recent as 1967 the World Health Organization calculated fifteen million people contracted the disease and over two million died in that one year alone.”
“But there’s a cure now, right?”
“Yes, after a succession of successful vaccination campaigns the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979. To this day smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated.”
“So, why ain’t the government learned from history and prepared for this?”
“Beats me. I guess they leave it to the Center for Disease Control to handle. They can deal with the odd local pocket of exotic disease; but nothing on this scale.”
“Do you think the government has grasped the enormity of the problem?”
“Doesn’t look that way. But only a complete fool would treat the plague lightly.”
Hamilton Parker stretched out on the luxurious king-sized bed in his opulent White House bedroom. He rolled onto his side and stared down at the cute young, blonde lying next to him. She was cute all right — and young. Too young and in all probability could land him in jail.
Pity Washington wasn’t in Alabama then she’d have been eligible to have been married five years ago. They only had to be twelve or was it fourteen to marry in Alabama, or did they have to be cousins? He could never get his head around the South and their peculiar notions and as for the way they clung onto the past. ‘The South would rise again’ they liked to toot. The hell it will, that way of life ended with the conclusion of the civil war. A war that’d ended a hundred and fifty years ago. For Christ’s sake, get over it.
The cute blonde-haired teenager stirred, saw him and smiled. She gazed around the vast bedroom seeing it properly for the first time. “Whoa! Your bedroom’s bigger that my mom’s trailer.”
“Well, you won’t be going back there anytime soon, that’s for sure.”
“Does this make me the first lady?”
“You’re my first lady, baby.” He smiled at her. She’d been his mistress for a few months now, extremely hush-hush obviously. Ever since he saw her center-spread in April’s addition of Playboy, he was smitten. She had an air of innocence about her, a naivety that simply poured from the page. He had to have her, and what Hamilton wanted, Hamilton got. Their affair had to be discreet, very discreet, even more so since becoming President.
She giggled and slid her hand down his flat stomach and he felt himself stirring again. She did things to him the first lady wouldn’t, couldn’t, perhaps he even shouldn’t. Things he wouldn’t dream to suggest. No, Miss April had been the best thing that had happened to him. Talk about bad timing. Any when else he could have set her up in an apartment, she would have wanted for nothing, and no one would be the wiser, but now all eyes were upon him. Luckily, he had a gang of loyal friends from college days that would act as decoys, to throw the press off his trail.
She kissed around his neck, and then moved down his chest, “Thanks for getting me and mom out of Miami.”
“You’re welcome, honey.”
“I was so scared. I thought we would get the plague if we stayed much longer.”
“Think nothing of it. You’re safe now. Besides, what’s the point of being the President if you can’t pull a few strings?”
“You’re the best, Hammy,” she said and giggled as her hand slid further down his body followed by her head.
“Oh boy….”
Luke and Sophie eventually made it to the bottom of the thirty stories exhausted and panting for breath. Both glad to be out in the fresh air for what it was worth. It was still swelteringly hot, and they were drenched in sweat.
He heard an engine in the distance of a car travelling at great speed, he ushered Sophie back further into the foyer. Moments later a dark green Cadillac with a solitary passenger zoomed past, trying to put as much distance between him and the god-awful pestilence behind. They heard loud rock music blaring from his open window, and watched as the tail-lights disappeared down the street, followed by the softening of the drumbeat.
Luke stepped forward to continue their journey, but Sophie held him back. “Wait!” Luke craned his neck, and sure enough heard in the distance the rumbling of a military vehicle. They crouched back into the foyer as the heavily armed Humvee flashed past, and moments later they heard gunfire, the squeal of tires and subsequent crash.