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A zombie apocalypse with a twist of Native American Lore.
It all began from a sequence of events so absurd, complicated and uncommon as to be unbelievable but an ancient Hopi Pueblo Prophecy predicted a time when the...
Streams of dull sunlight barely permeated the criss-crossed, checker board of ramshackle metal and wooden rooftops that dotted the sparse hillside.
The warmth they represented never really touched the muddied, trashy paths winding crazily throughout the rat-infested shanty town.
Ndidi's Quarters.
It was a roost for all sorts of hedonistic living.
Low rate drug lords all skin and bones, sat in front of dilapidated huts with no doors, hawking poppy opiates and cheap weed openly, and their buyers foregoing a bite of life sustaining food for a high, bartered for their next spoon or smoke.
Slimy artillery merchants and war mongers on missions to provide rebel forces with arms and ammo, dressed to the T, scouted for new sales wearing those large, mirrored sunglasses that hid their faces, though the skid row, paper board quarters where they did business were as shady as their deals.
Slovenly women and half naked children with unknown fathers lulled listlessly about in the dirt streets with aimless expressions waiting for a savior among a lost generation of poverty-stricken guerilla fighters, whose only reason for living was to overthrow a wickedly greedy government system, with tentacles winding so deep into the land it would take a miracle to extract it.
But these resistance fighters were not thinking about a miracle.
They wanted annihilation.
Extermination.
Freedom.
Two of those outlooks just didn't sit well with Investigative Journalist and War Correspondent, Nathan O'Connor Sr.
He had tried to make his true life's work here in Ethiopia a thing of beauty. He had given all to tell the stories of these poor people.
To tell the world outside about these squalid, starving, piss-holes of humanity, laden with all the sins of their forefathers on their shoulders and their silent screams of death and the needle pricking anxieties of their fear.
They had not deserved this fate.
But it was bequest them from an earlier time.
From the ancient, mindless ideas of madmen intent to battle it out until death do us part, a cynical oxymoron reserved for love of the deepest kind and not lost on Nathan as he chronicled the never-ending dance of war all around him.
How he had chanced to learn of the deep dark plot on their kindred, one that would affect family and foe alike, he would never tell, but he took it seriously and, gathering all that illicit material together he jumped on board his twin engine Bandeirante and headed for the Diplomatic Emissary in Switzerland.
Nathan distinctly remembered Claira's professional reaction to what he had discovered, and how she had immediately rattled off a list of reasons he should ditch his findings and get his head on straight.
With her Doctorate in Medicine and years of study in Bio-Diseases, she held a lucrative, Honorary Seat on the Research Advisory Panel of the World Health Organization and it would not bode well for him to be running about like a chicken-little declaring the end of all things and besides, it would not be taken seriously by anyone of clout, she assured him. No, not at all. It would be just the opposite. It was too far-fetched for anyone of governmental level to believe any rebel group in African territories could produce a bio-weapon.
Discreetly hiding her own feelings as she had inspected the information, Nathan never knew her true thoughts concerning the dangerous black-market propaganda he had bought in the cesspool of Ethiopia's underbelly.
Even having the gall to tell him he had probably unwittingly funded some guerilla fighter group enough money for years of attacks on the innocent with some made up formulas and plans to kill off all humanity in a single swipe. Finally, she demoralized him, calling it all garbage.
Still, he loved Claira Lottridge. She had a narcissistic way of making him feel needed/not needed that he couldn't walk away from, despite being a long-married man with two sons. He wondered if he was as spineless as she made him feel. Or perhaps he was addicted to guilt.
Either way, he and Claira flew off together, back to Copenhagen, where two weeks of meetings, binge drinking and speaking to various organizations for the World Health Organization about the disastrous conditions in Ethiopia, led to consoling Claira's irrational jealousies and ultimately led to a random night of profanity laced arguments between them.
Where, she told him in a neurotic fit of rage, she had disposed of his years-long study of communicable diseases he had compiled for the WHO, and his ill bought cache of classified documents.
Nathan O'Conner Sr. walked out on Claira Lottridge that night.
He never returned.
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