Pandemic A

Kaylie Barnsley

"Sandbags! More sandbags!"

The line of workers grunted with the heavy interchange of the sacks of earth, one person tossing it to another, all the way up the line.

Sandbag after sandbag after sandbag.

The cool marine layer covered the Australia sunshine as the small fishing town was fortified.

The place had done this before, in preparation for hurricanes or other storms, but this force of nature would be that of humanity, grieving and desperately searching for a place to stay.

Sydney was an awfully large city, but it was the most recognizable destination for ships.

The Australian government, after ridding itself of incompetent leaders, was preparing for a flood of people that may not even come.

The nation, in light of the disease, had made many reforms and re-wrote the constitution after an astounding twelve hours of delegation.

The country was being divided into four. Like an X, Australia was now bitten into more manageable pieces.

Every beach was being turned into a riddle of trenches and walls of sandbags, barbed wire, and good old-fashioned land mines to keep away anyone sick with a boat.

Australia had been spared the infection, and they wanted to keep it that way.

The current plan was for Sydney to receive any immigrants, have them quarantined for forty days on a cruise ship commandeered from that same port anchored two miles off the coast.

After that they'd go through intensive checks. With blood, urine, saliva samples, anything to keep the disease out.

If considered to have the disease they'd be given the option to be deported, killed, or held in a solitary cell on a different boat also in the ocean, where they planned to keep the sick until they could develop a cure.

But if they proved to be healthy they'd be moved to a great system of walled-off villages around the desert, built from wet sand or whatever recycled materials possible.

Kaylie herself was just another citizen of Australia. Just another fifteen-year old with soft golden hair, piercing eyes and a soft smile. Just another person put to work to fortify the city. Just another citizen who'd been awake that fateful night when the army took control.

She was yet another who noticed the secret executions of the gays, the lesbians, and other minorities over months of secretive activities in the dead of night.

The Prime Minister spoke of wonderful happiness but really he was a modern-day Hitler after the sun set.

She was very happy when they were told that Australia would become the golden land of tolerance and safety to refugees, but it was all a trap.

What they would arrive to was a secret separation from the different groups.

Blacks, hispanics, asians, LGBT— if they weren't straight, white and spoke English they would be killed.

But this ended today.

As she looked around to the other workers, who'd been living on a moving train going across the country, building anything from a toilet to anti-aircraft guns, they were looking to her.

She, at the very end of the line, giving the sandbags to the people who put them into place, turned to the line and nodded.

The nod was passed on, person to person, the secret signal.

The guards didn't even expect it.

In their police uniforms, they faced outwards so the workers felt like volunteers, so they didn't see the line break, the sandbags used as weapons to take down the men.

They had been setting up a wall around a radio center, connecting straight to the satellites that broadcasted everywhere and anywhere.

At the door a new set of guards mowed down the rioters.

The doors were easy enough after three well-aimed sacs of sand snapped their necks to the side, killing them instantly.

There was one man sitting in an office chair in front of a panel of buttons and monitors.

He didn't even hear them coming. But when the signal changed from "Australia is accepting any healthy refugees" to "Stay away from Australia! You will be killed!" Someone at the military air field a few miles away got a clue.

Defying the Secret Police was punishable by nothing less than death.

And with a well-aimed missile from a quickly dispatched helicopter, that is what came to Kaylie Barnsley, and her ten-minute rebellion that saved millions of lives.

Her sister, Katie, would later be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf after the New Australian Revolution.