Near Ending of Manind

NEAR ENDING OF MANKIND

Loving Wives Sci-Fi story of a man who loses his wife in a catastrophic worldwide pandemic, and his survival in the aftermath in a new world order where most of the world's population is wiped out and females are now in the majority.

Apologies but the story is a little long. It is in 2 parts which can be read separately.

There is little overt sex in this story, so better not to read it if that is what you are most interested in.

The story is a complete work of fiction.

Foreword

I didn't realise it at the time, but the virus that struck the world could not have mutated from an exotic animal disease, no matter how terrible it was. My best guess was that it some sort of man-made bio-weapon that had escaped from a laboratory in Asia. The world had learned nothing after Covid and it reaped he results.

PART 1 - The Pandemic

My name is Robert, Rob for short. I had landed a great short-term job as a ship's medical officer on a super yacht transiting from Genoa, Italy, to Florida, where its new owner waited to take delivery. At 25 years old, after 7 long years of training, I had recently completed my medical internship and in 6 weeks was due to take up a permanent job as a resident doctor in a Boston Hospital. Finally I would start getting a decent salary and financially contribute to my marriage. This side-job on the ship was highly lucrative providing some much needed extra cash to help pay off student loans.

My wife Lauren and I had been high school sweethearts since age 16 and together ever since. We married when she finished her teaching degree 4 years ago and we had recently decided to start trying for a family. In expectation of my new job, we had just moved to Boston from Portland and set up a new apartment. She soon found a new teaching job and was busy with her new students. I had been at a loose end in the apartment waiting to start my new job when I spotted the job advertisement. I had flown to Italy 2 weeks ago leaving Lauren waiting patiently waiting for my return.

I joined the crew of 11 others, and after a week of preparations, we set off on the Atlantic Ocean crossing to Florida. The voyage was expected to take up to 3 weeks including a refuelling and resupply stop in Gibraltar. The crew were a mixed lot of five men and seven women. The captain was English, and the rest were from various countries in Europe - England, France, Sweden and Italy. The only other North American was a younger girl from Canada.

After departing Gibraltar, to keep up with what was happening in the world, we were in the habit of gathering in our crew lounge and listening to the BBC World Service on the short wave radio every day. We were all concerned as, before we departed, there were reports of a new very nasty illness which had very recently emerged in Asia. Within days, cases were being reported in the UK and in many other European countries, apparently spread by air travellers.

The news emerging on the radio over the next week was almost unbelievable. People were presenting to hospitals in the UK with symptoms of severe lung congestion and fever. It was a respiratory illness somewhat similar to Covid but apparently far more virulent and deadly.

The speed of the disease spread was frightening. Soon the virus was now worldwide and people were literally dying like flies. International borders were being slammed shut but 'the horse had well and truly bolted'. It seemed unstoppable.

After many unsuccessful attempts, I finally reached a doctor friend in Boston on the ship's sat-phone. He told me the virus had reached the USA and was also spreading like wildfire. The hospital where he worked was already overwhelmed. No treatment seemed to be effective, almost everyone who caught it was dying, and everyone was catching it. Their morgue was full and they were stacking bodies in the carpark. His final words, in between bouts of coughing, were a stark warning - "stay away from here."

I started to get frantic. From the reports it was nothing like the world had ever been experienced before, including diseases like cholera and the black plague. It made Covid seem like a common cold. The medical system had all but ceased working.

I finally managed to contact Lauren. Her school had closed and she was at home in our apartment, terrified. I told her to get as many provisions as possible, seal the flat, not let anyone in, and just stay put. I would come to her somehow.

The next day Lauren I called she said she was starting to get sick. I helped her locate some antiviral drugs in my medical kit at home which I hoped may help. I talked her through inhaling some steroids to try clearing her lung congestion.

The following day I managed to contact her again briefly. I notice she sounded much worse. She was coughing badly and having trouble breathing. A terrible feeling of despair swept over me, she was probably dying, and she knew it. I couldn't do anything to help. She calmly told me there was nothing we could do about it and begged me to stay away and save myself. I knew she was right but my heart was breaking. In tears I told her about other drugs in the kit which she could use if she needed to end her suffering. Her last words to me were "I love you so very very much, goodbye Rob." She closed the connection and there was just silence.

I tried to call an ambulance and also other people I knew nearby for help, but nobody answered. That evening the phone network in Boston went down permanently.

We held a crew meeting to decide what to do. Most of the crew were from Europe and wanted to return home to find loved ones, but we were past the 'point of no return' for fuel in the ocean crossing. We had no choice but to keep going. We also realised it would be fatal to continue to our destination.

We decided to continue west, find a deserted place where we could anchor and hopefully wait for the virus to burn itself out. After that, to find somewhere to refuel the boat and then go back to Europe. I would leave the boat there and go north by some means to search for my wife. I knew it would probably be a 'wild goose chase' but I had to do it. There was always hope and in any case there was little else I had to do.

We found a sheltered anchorage in the Bahamas. The radar showed no other ship contacts and no sign of life was visible ashore.

Our life in quarantine became a surreal existence. In the real world everyone, including our loved ones, were probably dead or dying, but here we were on a luxury mega yacht in paradise. The owner of the yacht was surely also dead, so we moved out of the cramped crew quarters into spacious guest staterooms, helped ourselves to fine whiskies and wines, swam and sun-baked, played with jet skis, etc. Time went slowly but we amused ourselves as best we could, a diversion from our grief. The Nordic and French girls in the crew helped. They decided clothes were optional and the rest followed suit. Many of the crew 'buddied up' but I couldn't bring myself to do it, despite offers. I still wanted to stay faithful to Lauren.

After a month at anchor our food supply was almost exhausted so an expedition was sent ashore to a small deserted village to forage. Luckily we had sufficient fuel to run the generators and plenty of water, curtesy of the on-board desalination plant. The expedition returned at sunset with ample supplies reporting that they had seen no-one alive, only decaying bodies.

After another 2 months at anchor there, with more expeditions ashore for supplies, we motored to Nassau and berthed at a marina. There was no sign of life around the docks.

The scenes in town at Nassau were far worse. The virus had certainly been deadly. The place was full of dead bodies everywhere. Many people had gone to their homes sick and then died, but for some it had been so deadly that they had just died on the streets, in their cars, in shops, everywhere. It seemed that the virus had been fatal to most of the Island's population. By now everyone had caught it and either died or survived. Without any more hosts to infect the virus had faded out as quickly as it had come.

Occasionally we saw a few people who had survived. Some would talk to us from a distance, others would fire shots to warn us away.

Any hope I had of finding Lauren alive had faded to almost nothing, but I had given her a promise which I intended to keep.

I decided the best way to get to Boston was find a boat and sail up the coast to Boston harbour. I had decided on a yacht. I was an experienced sailor, thanks to my uncle when I was a youth. It would be slower by sail than by motor yacht, but fuel would not be a problem. There were plenty to choose from in the Marina and I found a 50 footer that was rigged to sail short-handed. I would not go alone, the 19 year old Canadian girl in the crew, Shelly, asked to accompany me. She wanted to go search for her fiancé in Quebec.

Together with all the crew we foraged for supplies in the city and restocked the two boats.

Finding supplies was not a problem as there were few other scavengers around. There was no fresh food since power had failed long ago and everything had spoiled, so we would eat mainly canned and dried food. A camping warehouse proved to be a bonanza with outdoor clothes, equipment, sleeping bags etc. and particularly stocks of dehydrated foods. It would be coming into winter when we got up north so we needed to be prepared. Refuelling the boats was a challenge but we rigged up a small pump powered by a portable petrol generator.

We were finally ready. After a farewell with the rest of the crew, Shelly and I sailed out of Nassau Harbour bound for Boston, a journey of about 1,000 nautical miles.

Shelly had never sailed, but after some tutoring she started to be some help on the boat, though the auto-helm was a bigger help. Luckily her time on the Super Yacht had cured any sea sickness. We had a following wind at first and made an easy 5 knots in a broad reach. We would do alternate watches during daylight but Shelly was too inexperienced to keep watch at night so I opted to set the auto-helm, shorten sail, and set alarms to sound if the wind increased or changed direction.

The second night, after we went to bed, Shelly came to my cabin, crying. I pulled back the covers and she slid into bed with me. The whole situation had finally overwhelmed her. I started crying too for my lost wife. After cuddling for quite a while it seemed natural that we peeled off our clothes and gave comfort to each other. It had been a long time for both of us. Shelly was very wet so I slid inside her easily. We both came after a few furious minutes. After resting a while we made love again, gently this time. It was cathartic and became our routine during the voyage. Did I feel guilty? Well part of me felt guilty, but deep down I knew Lauren was surely gone and I needed the comfort of sex to cope.

The days passed and we saw no other vessels or heard any radio traffic. As we travelled north it became colder. The wind turned to the north 'on our nose' and strengthened with the seas increasing as well. The passage became much slower and more uncomfortable. We often had to set a sea anchor and 'heave to' so we could safely get some sleep at night. After about 15 days we were approaching Cape Cod when we saw the signs of a large storm approaching, so we ran for shelter to the closest haven at New London, behind Long Island.

We motored into the port and tied up to a buoy outside a Marina, then launched the tender and did a reconnaissance of the area. It was deserted except for the dead. We secured the boat at the marina and stayed there.

The storm blew hard for 3 days and the weather was freezing. It was obvious that it was now too late in the season to continue sailing to Boston. Our new plan was to find a car then drive there, about 100 miles. Normally that would be about a 2 hour drive but who knows what we would find. After searching for Lauren in Boston, I agreed with Shelly that we would then try to reach Quebec to look for her fiancé.

We spent a few days foraging for fuel, supplies and equipment. Every night we huddled together on the yacht, trying to come to terms with what we had seen. It was all very hard to comprehend and any remaining slim hope of finding our loved ones was almost gone, faced with the reality of what we were seeing everywhere.

I had found a 4WD land cruiser with the keys in the ignition, the previous owner nearby dead on the ground. We loaded up and set off. The going was very slow as there were often abandoned and crashed vehicles blocking the road, often with their owners still inside dead at the wheel.

Occasionally we saw a few people. Most kept to themselves but some would warily approach us and talk from a distance. They told us what had unfolded in the city. Most of the populace had perished with only a small number surviving. The good news was nobody seemed to be catching the virus anymore, it must have burnt out. Oddly the majority of the survivors we saw were women often in small groups for mutual protection and support.

We drove on very slowly, taking our time, frequently having to detour around road blockages. We would search for an abandoned house to sleep in overnight. Unfortunately many contained their dead owners so we kept searching until we found an empty one.

After a few days we reached the outskirts of Providence and came upon an erected roadblock on a highway bridge with no way easy around. There was an armed guard posted. After a little standoff, we managed to convince them we were no threat and were allowed through.

We found ourselves in a small new community of about 500 people in a suburb on the southern edge of the city.

Shelly and I were offered hospitality and we decided to stay a few days and check out the place.

We noticed, again, a strong predominance of females with over double the number of males there, and not that many very young children or older people. The disease had apparently hit males a bit harder, and also the very young and the old.

A woman about 40 was their leader, but decisions were made consensually by a representative Council. Laws were few and mainly centred around sharing, and also selfish or violent behaviour which was not tolerated. A very female view of the world I thought. Those who didn't like it were free to leave.

It seemed that very few couples had survived intact and most surviving children and teens were orphans. The whole community was grieving from the loss of everyone they loved. The tragedy of it had pulled all these strangers together into a tightknit group and most were just clinging on while trying to move on with life. To cope with the stress and personal loss, new relationships had quickly very formed. All the orphaned children had been unofficially adopted by adults.

The community structure was interesting. The old free enterprise system could no longer work, so they had set up a co-operative, like an Israeli kibbutz, where everyone contributes their labour to the community and resources are evenly shared. There was no money and no bartering for goods as everything was joint property.

Despite the difficulties, they were working hard trying to re-establish a functioning society. They had already restored partial power using generators and were moving out of their previous communal accommodation in a hotel into individual houses.

They were very keen for new community members and when they found out I was a doctor I was REALLY welcomed with open arms. During the height of the pandemic most doctors had worked trying to save lives and had subsequently paid for it with their own. There was no other surviving Doctor there, only a nurse practitioner and a nurse.

By now, Shelly had realised that with the state of roads, we would never get to Quebec before the snows came in earnest. With what we had witnessed, she was under no allusions of what she would find there. So our Quebec venture would have to wait until springtime. I still intended to fulfil my promise to find Lauren, whatever the outcome.

After a week 'resting,' meaning working in their hospital, I told the community leader we were going to Boston and why. She and the leadership group were aghast at the idea. I was I an extremely rare and valuable resource to them as a doctor. I was also a scarce male. They explained it was dangerous as there had been some banditry in the area from small groups of mainly men, and the situation in Boston was unknown. They hadn't explored more than 20 miles in that direction. They offered instead to send a search party on my behalf, but I declined. For me, it was part of grieving for Lauren and closure. I gave them a promise I would try to return. For a while I was worried they may forcibly detain us, but after much argument they reluctantly gave their blessing and assistance.

As a compromise, they asked that Shelly stay behind to help out at the hospital. She had been training to be a nurse and was almost qualified. Like me, she had just taken a summer job on the boat as a cook's assistant to help earn extra money. That made them a bit more relaxed as I guess they assumed we were a couple and thought she was 'insurance' I would return.

Shelly, who was barely 5 feet tall, stood on tiptoes and kissed me passionately goodbye. We hadn't intended it, but I realised that in a very short time we had developing strong feelings for each other during adversity. She was a really lovely girl. I promised her I would return whatever I found.

Thus, I set out for Boston on my 'fool's errand' to search for Lauren, probably to bury her. I didn't set out alone, I was accompanied by three other woman who were my guards. I didn't quite know whether their main role was to protect me or make sure I returned. Maybe both. We travelled in an army Humvee they had acquired.

As we travelled I got to know the three of them. The boss-girl was Kate, a 6 foot tall, solid, ex. no-nonsense police officer, about 28 years old. There was also Trish around my age, also tall and solid, who was our driver, and Kristin who was about 23 and a little under my height. Both had been in the military reserve. All 3 of them looked like they meant business and they were carrying enough weapons and ammo to fight a small war. The Humvee itself had a 50 cal. machine gun on the roof. They took no chances, and we all carried weapons and body armour when outside.

Neither Trish nor Kate had been in relationships, but Kristen was a newlywed when the pandemic hit. Her husband had sadly not survived. I soon discovered that Trish and Kate were now 'an item' and they would usually head off early to bed leaving Kristen and me chatting.

Kristen was a 'drop dead' gorgeous girl on the outside and, as I found later, gorgeous within as well. I was quite taken with her. Despite being outwardly calm, I could tell that underneath she still grieved for her husband terribly. Like Lauren and me, they had been high school sweethearts.

The journey to Boston was similar to before, slow going. We saw a few populated settlements along the way. Sometimes the people came out warily to talk. Many of them had left a city to escape the death and decay there. Once passing through a small town some residents took a few 'pot shots' at us that we could hear plinking against the cabin walls. Kristin gave them a blast from the 50 cal. just above their heads which sent them scattering. After three days travel we reached Boston.

Being a larger city of 4 million people, I cannot describe the horror of the place which was like a scene out of an apocalypse movie, only it was real. Even though as a doctor I had witnessed a lot of death, this was unbelievable, especially the smell of decay which pervaded the place. It was mostly deserted as the living had just run away from the unfolding catastrophe.