Eden in Hell-2

           Dwayne lost his family of four, a wife and 3 little girls, to the last global pandemic, the deadly virus of 2056 called Javari-01 that came out of the unexplored jungles of the Amazon. This virus swiped his family in 3 days and would have delivered him this fatal blow too if he wasn't away for 6 months working on a virus-resistant plant he and his partner were working on for years. Now, ghost towns stretch across the country, and many are ungovernable, unkept, and desolate. Huck and Dwayne met years ago while working together, Huck was an engineer helping out on virus-free sealed domes, for he too lost his family, a wife of 20 years, and 2 sons, not from any virus but from scavengers and renegades who murdered them for food and water. While both men have succumbed to tragedies, neither one ever talked about it. 

            Dwayne was peering out the window that overlooked the shambled and dead-forsaken town, they found an unravished bunker filled with tin food and expired drinking water, yet luckily it was all virus-free. Dwayne carried the blueprints of his bio-engineered virus-free plant food in the canister his wife gave to him on his 40th birthday, and he planned to utilize his company's laboratory located in California to finish up his work and possibly save mankind. The present time was staying away from the radical and armed militia that rarely bargained for anything other than food and water. 

          Our earth gave way, it was dying to put it mildly, and after years and years of drilling out its core to obtain antiquated fossil fuel, the fracking, the spills, and the drilling just fractured her globally, every water aquifer and water table was saturated and contaminated with oil residue of some sort and not to mention the deep mining of ores depleted her belly to fight back, the Earth’s oceans were littered with so much plastic there were miles and miles of it, mountains of plastic were forming, and the ozone was so thin you couldn't stay in the South too long due to the humidity and ultraviolet rays, the sun toasted every animal to a crisp, unless you were a desert-dwelling critter you were history. The only visible green life left was guarded by the Government. Beyond that, it was dog eat dog, every man for himself, if you were weakminded you perished quickly, and religion became obsolete and laughable, what caring God destroys his own Eden?    

     

                                                                     2 

          

Eden in Hell-1

 

Preface: Earth has become a refuge of sickness: plagues, bioengineered super viruses, and every surface disease known to man have infiltrated every nook and cranny of this decimated planet. Every water table is saturated with oil contamination, and our oceans are filled with so much plastic it has suffocated what aquatic life we had left into extinction. The Revelation is fulfilled. How did we let the 1% annihilate and destroy this planet with their greed? Now, survival for a day is the ultimate challenge for the remaining population that somehow escaped the travesties of destiny. The survivalists must defend their ground, water supply, and lives, and that is an everyday task at hand. This is the story of the families that fought every adversary. The year begins in 2076. 

                                                     Chapter 1

                                                      Genesis 

                                                  

          Huck looked at the time on his antique PC and it showed 11:47, he took a quick leak and tried to recall what time it was, and couldn't recall what he just saw. ‘Damn, I'm getting old,’ Huck mumbled to himself as he wandered into the old kitchen he was sharing with his old buddy Dwayne. The building they shared together was over 100 years old and still powered by boot-legged and outlawed coal. The Solar Industry took over everything and bought every politician who finally pushed the fossil industry into submission. Only the impoverished towns and rural areas subsidized the outdated smoking coal-firing plants. 

          Dwayne was eating some Armour potted ham on a cracker, and Huck laughed, “How are those chicken peckers and pussies you eating?” 

“What?” Dwayne smacked out of his mouth. 

  “That shit your eating on that salted cracker is ground-up chicken peckers and pussies, read the ingredients,” Huck uttered. 

          Dwayne picked up the Armour can and read out the ingredients: Mechanically separated chicken parts, pork, water, and salt. Contains 2% or less of mustard, vinegar, dextrose, sodium erythorbate, garlic powder, natural powders, and sodium nitrate. 

“Those separated chicken parts are combs, chicken feet, peckers, and pussies!” Huck spurted out laughingly as he turned and poured himself a cup of coffee. 

Matriarchal Love-Nonpareil

 

A Mother’s Vow to her children is the most

profound and divine link, she is above all a 

protector, provider, and giver of endless love.

Living on Kentucky time, kairos time, and God’s time, 

and the endurance of hellish hours in between, this prologue 

of unceasing questionnaires, the filament of sorrow, just

one fracture of uncertainty returns this

recollection in rancorous guilt. The blasphemy of 

Atropos for whom wreaked threadbare this grief, whose sever 

of life sheared more lives than one. God may forgive though 

a Mother sits patiently as the tempest that vents the carriage

of years between mother and son, the expanse of understanding 

and unbound love ‘tween kindred souls. This inseparable yoke

memorializes this gilded chain, plaited mementos enumerate and

grace this union for all eternity. Just one song can cultivate  

a thousand memories and one memory can effectively

canvas scenically season after season in mercurial symphony. 

Yet, one picture can powerfully dispatch a lifetime of sempiternal 

joy and agonizing melancholy. Just an afterthought to a loon, this 

crazy life, this prying catharsis, to reach the spirits beyond that 

which holds your child to all repressed memory, the dust collection 

of mortal thoughts and the wake of an existential crisis, to understand

the cosmic question of why? Fate rarely doles out forgiveness and reprieves. 

Anthony Craig was an extraordinary soul whose love for life 

superseded every modicum of God, his light outshined every  

glistening star in the celestial sphere, and his family is the prolific 

element that bond Earth and Heaven. His love will rest in

vigilance until his family reunites in that perpetual garden where

eternal bliss grows the evergreen of happiness. Within the mortal 

basket of hope lies the sacred breath of time and tears cloud and 

constitute the shattered remains without you, always remember 

Mom loves you. 

(In remembrance of Anthony Craig Lawrence, the loving father of Allie Marie, and

son of Mona Fay and Bruce Lawrence, may he never be forgotten.) 

- John Hardesty