The Big Bang by Roy M Griffis

Author:Roy M Griffis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504007436
Publisher: Liberty Island

Whistler (2)

After watching the two imbeciles drive away, Whistler looked down at what remained of Anselmo Lopez. Boy, was this morning turning to crap in a hurry. Lightning squatted beside the body, observing it with the detached interest of a professional.

“He wasn’t shot,” she announced.

“Figured,” Whistler said. He knelt beside her and began unwrapping the chain. “He’ll turn fast in this heat.”

“I’ll get a bag.”

“Thanks,” he grunted. Delicately, trying to get as little blood on himself as possible, he loosened the shackle under what was left of the dead man’s arms. What the hell, he thought. I’m older; I probably had better health insurance than anybody for a hundred miles around. My immunizations were up to date.

He’d rather not do this, but his other choices held less appeal. Leave a perfectly good length of steel chain with the body when it was returned to his family, or have Lightning free the chain. That would expose her to the dirt-caked blood and fluids. This way, only one of them risked infection. It was another gift from our Islamic guests. With the breakdown in interstate commerce and transport, along with the fracturing of the manufacturing infrastructure, diseases long forgotten had made staggeringly virulent comebacks. Antibiotics, even those in crumbling foil packages long past their expiration date, were worth more, literally, than their weight in gold. The only things more valuable than the antibiotics were working batteries and bullets.

As he expected, Lightning was back just about the time he’d finished rolling the chain over and over in the dirt. He’d bleach it later, but for now he wanted to keep the moist blood from drawing flies.

She had a standard-issue FEMA body bag. Plenty of those lying around. FEMA had smuggled them out from regional centers about a year after the Big Bang when the Red Flu had swept through the US, probably brought in by a troop of janissaries from Malaysia. Those FEMA boys and girls had impressed Whistler. Bureaucrats for a government that no longer existed, most of them stayed at their posts until they’d been felled by the diseases they were trying to fight or until they’d been rooted out and killed by the Caliban and its brethren. The Imams didn’t want the original citizens to be buried, they wanted the people to see Allah’s wrath visited upon the people of the Great Satan. Naturally, thousands and thousands of unburied bodies had created additional plagues and fouled water supplies, and the only good thing about the poor dead bastards bloating in the sun was that they took a few million of the Prophet’s children with them before the Imams realized sanitation wasn’t their strong suit, and began incinerating the dead cities wholesale.

He held his hands away from his body, and away from Lightning. “Open it up.” She unzipped the bag, shook it out beside poor Anselmo with the flap opened, and reached for the body. “Nope,” he told her sharply. He grabbed the dead man by the one leg and under one arm, and tossed the body into the bag.

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