“Not even close. Bees are sophisticated animals. It’s damn hard to cultivate them successfully to begin with, and now they’re poisoned. Do we have any idea on what the half-life of these pesticides is? How long will it take for them to be cleansed from the environment?”
“Which ones? People have been dumping and spraying everything they can find, we don’t even know what the hell is out there. In any case, I don’t think it’s going to matter.”
Jason shook his head. “Even if it’s flushed out of the soil in a year, that’s still too long.”
Nolan agreed. “This is the next great extinction.”
“So what do we do about it?” a husky voice asked as he walked up. The biology professor dropped a file onto their table and sat down with them. “Bruce Dempsey,” he said, and offered a meaty hand, which they both shook. “So you must be the bug man, and you, well, we all know you,” he said amiably to Nolan, who had the surprising grace to smile humbly.
Bruce continued, “This is happening everywhere. The plasmodium lyssa parasite hopped over to Europe almost as quickly as it sprang up here, and like our citizens, they jumped immediately into mass damage control, insect genocide. After all, the U.S. was doing it, it made sense to them. The bee die-off has been profound, all-encompassing. Thankfully, the mosquito population has been knocked down as well, though I’m sure that won't last. It’s always the one thing you're shooting for with all your might that you are going to miss.”
“So what's the situation in the animal world, then?” Nolan asked pleasantly, giving Jason a glance. The big man obviously liked to talk.
“Well, I would think you'd have a pretty good grip on that, Dr. Peterman.” He looked at Nolan pointedly.
“I don’t have any real-time data like you do here. I know you've been pouring over this, what do you have?”
“The food chain is broken. Birds and small mammals are dying en masse all over the United States. Oklahoma is like a damn concentration camp for birds; they’re all over everything.”
Jason frowned at his off-color analogy. “So what’s next?”
“The freshwater fish are nearly gone.”
“What?” Nolan exclaimed loudly, causing a few heads to turn in their direction. “How could they be gone? My projections were that they would survive for months yet.”
“They might have, if a bunch of dickheads hadn’t started dumping imidacloprid into the Great Lakes last week.” Bruce shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know where people keep getting this shit. Somebody out in the Rockies was dumping bleach into mountain streams, thinking it would kill mosquito larvae before it had a chance to hatch.”
Jason blew out a breath. “End game, what’s your take?”
“The animal die-off will peak in about six months. We will lose seventy-five to eighty-five percent of all mammals. The amphibians are almost gone already, as they mostly ate the insects, which we’ve killed off. The reptiles, big ones anyway, will hang on. Snakes and gators, crocs and large monitors, they don’t need to eat but a few times a year. The little guys will be gone in the next month, since they eat the amphibians that are gone now. We will lose the vast majority of small flowering plants, the ones that give us food. Trees will stick around; they’ve been weathering the storms for centuries. They’ll watch us all die.”
“And humans?”
“I don’t do humans,” Bruce said flatly. “Honestly, gentlemen, we are the problem here. But you both know that. I’m just hoping the planet will survive once we’re gone.”
“So, yours is a ‘no hope’ scenario?” Nolan asked, and not sarcastically.
“No hope. I’m here to try to slow it down, to give all the big brains a chance to work, maybe even to give a few species a little more time.”
“Hopefully we can do a little better than that,” Jason said. “Dr. Dempsey, with all due respect, we are here to come up with a solution to try to save this planet’s current ecology.”
“Impossible,” Nolan chimed in, and Jason put his head down momentarily in frustration. “Well, it is not possible Jason, I’m sorry. This ecosystem is dying, it’s done. We need to prepare for what comes next, try to find a way to preserve our species and as many others as we can.”
Jason cracked his fingers in his fists. “All right, agreed. We all know what’s at stake. Let’s start from the ground up. What is this doing to the bacterial life?”
“Bacteria are surviving surprisingly well, actually. Many of our bacterium have developed tolerances to a lot of the organophosphates, neonics, and imidacloprids that are commonly sprayed.”
“Thank god,” Nolan said.
Jason nodded, “Thank god indeed. Without the bacteria, we might as well throw in the towel right now.”
“Most of the world doesn’t realize that we cannot live without the bacterial world. They literally make our air breathable and earth livable.” Bruce cracked his back against the chair. “This whole antibacterial antimicrobial craze that has taken over is really baffling to me.”
“People don’t realize that by constantly disinfecting everything they touch, they are in fact retarding their immune system to a point where it cannot cope with even minor infections,” Nolan said.
“Let's get back on track,” Jason said. “Bacteria means there’s hope. So, the wind pollinators will survive, yes? Grains, grasses, corns?”
“They will but it’s tricky. Without insect life, the ground will be significantly less fertile. The bacteria that break down rotting matter can only do so much, they need the insects and fungus all working together. So yes, we’ll be able to grow grains, but the yield is going to shrink.”
“Any idea how much?” Nolan asked.
“No way to tell for sure. Maybe they drop by twenty percent, maybe it’s more like sixty.”
“So first steps are going to be mass sowings of wind pollinated food crops. We will have to appropriate every available acre of land, get everything planted in the warmer states.”
“First step is to stop the dumping of pesticides,” Noland said. “The global genocide of smaller species has to be halted.
“I agree. Dumping and spraying has already been banned. The police are tracking down as many crop sprayers as possible, but they cannot keep up.”
“Can the National Guard be brought in to assist?” Nolan asked, “There has to be more they can do.”
“You’re forgetting something, Dr. Peterman,” Dempsey said, with a bit of smugness.
“What’s that, Dr. Dempsey?” Nolan retorted, equally smug.
“There are ZOMBIES flooding the streets!” Bruce said, leaning forward and fixing Nolan in his hard stare. “The world is dying, gentlemen, but very few people know it. What they know is that there are freaking zombies roaming the streets, killing their children, killing their friends. The police and the National Guard are out trying to protect human life. Will they stop some of the planes? Yes. Will it be enough? No.”
Nolan was pissed. “The disregard for the natural world in this country sickens me!” he spat, shaking his head.
“Oh, shove it up your Australian ass,” Bruce shot back. “I have satellite footage from Queensland that’s three clicks away on this monitor. You know what it will show? A bunch of you Crocodile Dundee mother fuckers dumping crude oil into the Mitchell River! Sydney has been erased, it's completely overrun with zombies, gone! The only saving grace for some of the easterners is the vast desert between them and the west. Your precious Aussies are no more responsible than we are.”
Nolan raised a finger at him. His face was red and trembling. Jason watched with interest. Nolan was an incredible conversationalist, but Bruce Dempsey had just shot him right in the heart. Nolan looked like he wanted to say something, then turned and walked off into the laboratory.
“I don’t really know why he was brought here anyway,” Bruce told Jason. “He doesn't bring anything to the table.”
“He has a lot of media experience. He’s good with the public and people trust him.” Jason cleared his throat. “What kind of oversight do we have here? Can we make decisions? Can we start implementing changes right away?”
“We are the best men for the job,” Bruce stated matter-of-factly. “We can make changes; we can start policy. But you had better be damn sure about what you're talking about before it leaves your mouth.”
“Fine, good. Is there a publicist here, a news person of some type?”
“Of course.” Bruce pointed over to an attractive black woman sitting in a cubicle; she was talking on a headset.
Jason stood. “You and I have a lot more to talk about, Bruce, but for now, I need to get things in motion.”
Bruce held out his hand in a ‘go ahead’ type of gesture.
“Nolan,” Jason shouted into the large room. Nolan sauntered out from wherever he had stalked off to. “That’s media, over there,” Jason pointed to the woman. “Get on the air, get online, get on camera. I want you to give the people of America and the world a very simple explanation on why the pesticide dumping has to end. Beg them if you have to. There’s a lot of idiots out there that think they know better than anyone else.”
“It won't be easy to get through to them.”
“I also want you to start an appeal to everyone and anyone with farmland. Implore them to plant grain, and do it now. A worldwide food shortage is coming, and our government has its hands full fighting zombies. We aren't going to be sending soldiers to plant crops, at least not at this point. We need the people to rise up and help, while we still have the ability to broadcast.”
Nolan smoothed out his shirt and ran a hand over his handsome face. He was made for television, for people, he would be the perfect face for their message. He nodded at Jason.
He will be fine,
Jason assured himself.
Hopefully.
Jason returned to his table and sat. He touched the satellite link monitor and it came to life.
This is no kind of plan,
he thought,
not at all.
He was stalling. Planting wheat and halting the use of pesticides wasn’t going to stop the tidal wave that was coming.
What can I do, what can I do?
The honey bees are a lost cause,
he knew that, he had to give up on that lot. Wild pollinators wouldn’t fare much better. The only advantage the ground-dwelling bees and carpenter bees have is that they don't rely on complicated communication techniques to maintain a hive. That's why the honey bees were gone, if they can't communicate with the hive, the hive fails, the bees die, end of story.
Even if perhaps ten percent of the wild pollinators survive, maybe more in the northern states, that isn't enough
. It just isn't enough.
Jason put his head in his hands once again. “I need pollinators. I need pollinators,” he muttered. “Bruce!” he shouted, “I need the damn pollinators!” Bruce swiveled a half turn in his office chair, gave Jason a contemptuous look, shook his head, then turned back around.
Frustrated, Jason brought up the satellite link. He was curious, he hadn't seen much of the south and he wondered how they were faring. He typed in, ‘Florida state.’ The map zoomed in on a dizzying wormhole of information until the state of Florida, in perfect satellite clarity, filled the large monitor.
Funny,
he thought,
it looks perfectly normal from space.
Like there was nothing wrong at all. He clicked on Orlando, home of Disneyworld and Universal Studios, his two favorite places as a kid; his parents had brought him there twice. The map flew down to Orlando, down toward the Magic Kingdom. It kept going and going as Jason continued to click on it.
Then Jason gasped as the zoom came to an abrupt stop in front of the attraction. He recoiled from the scene.
Holy god,
he thought. There were no happy children playing here, no parents throwing money at the vendors for souvenirs. There was blood, blood everywhere. In startling and grotesque clarity, Jason watched the remains of humans dripping from a large carousel ride. There was a child. It had been a child, torn in half. His torso lay on the ground, five feet away from his mangled legs.
Jesus.
Then he saw one of them. One of the dead. It shambled onto the monitor.
Oh god.
It was a kid. Ten or twelve by the looks of him, or maybe her. He could not tell because half of its face and scalp were missing. It looked rotten. Jason leaned forward, enthralled by the horrific scene coming to him in four thousand pixels. He clicked on the zombie, and the satellite inched in even closer. He could see the face clearly now, what was left of it. It was a boy. His eyes roamed madly to the left and right. His mouth was opening and closing mechanically. Jason saw broken, bloodstained teeth in the boy's mouth, as if he’d bitten something, or someone, deeply. He followed the boy through the park for ten minutes with a morbid fascination. He thought that eighteen years ago he could have been that kid.
Then the boy's head snapped to the right. Jason's head cocked curiously. His nose lifted into the air.
What is he doing? Holy crap, is he smelling something, can he still smell?
To answer his question, the creature on screen turned his head just a little, his nose still in the air. Then he took off at a dead run. Jason panned hard on the screen, barely keeping up. The boy leaped ten feet through the air and pounced, on something. What was it? Something brown. A dog? It was a dog, a beagle, it still had a collar and leash hanging from its neck. The boy grappled with the animal, bear hugging it around the middle. He could hear nothing but imagined the dog’s sad, pained screams; first it lost its family, now it was being attacked. Then the boy clamped his broken teeth onto the dog's hairy neck. His mouth opened so damn wide. He shook his head back and forth, and the dog flopped wildly in his jaws before the dog's head suddenly went limp and sagged sideways.
A broken neck.
The boy wasn't done though. It crawled, crawled like a beast of the earth, the dead beagle hanging from his mouth. He crawled into a darkened area and hid behind some counters.