The Abrupt End of Civilization: Cell Phone Virus

By Roger Hober

Perhaps everyone has had ideas of what a worldwide human catastrophe would be like. In this story, even though three-fourth of the world's population dies, it is not all gloom and doom. Action, adventure, and some futuristic, science fiction thinking will keep the reader from putting this book down until they have read it from cover to cover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641389310

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The Abrupt End of Civilization

Roger Hober

Copyright © 2018 Roger Hober

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64138-930-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64138-931-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Chapter One

The roar of the big diesel engines slowed to an idle. Almost immediately, the 110-foot-long fishing boat slowed down and moved through the water at only about half the speed it had been moving. The captain had pulled back on the throttles in order to stop making such large waves in the water. This maneuver was referred to as breaking its wake. One of the deckhands on the smaller craft they were passing waved at them in appreciation of the common courtesy.

The vessel carried a three-man crew and Mick, the captain. Mick had hired two of them right before leaving on the fishing trip a month before. The two young men had lied. They claimed to have worked on a fishing boat before. Mick had learned over the years that more times than not an inexperienced man might work out. The work was hard. Many long hours were spent on deck working in nasty weather and rough seas. Even though the situation normally carried some degree of danger, mostly it was repetitious. Most men that wanted to work and make some good money stuck with it and became experienced. These boys would not be hired to make another trip. They didn’t mind that Mick and his other longtime crew member had to take up their slack. The captain had seen a few boys that had no good work ethic or pride in their ability to work.

The boat had a few simple rules that every person working on her saw written on paper. They did not come on board until they read and signed it. No drugs. No drinking. No advances from a man’s pay to girlfriends on land while they were out fishing. Also, no cell phones on the boat.

The US Coast Guard had set zero-tolerance rules on all illegal drugs. The vessel could be confiscated if even a small amount of drugs were found on board.

The captain had seen too many men get back on land only to find they had no money left in the office. The crew members with wives would always be taken care of. Barroom girlfriends did not get advances on a man’s share of the catch.

Mick had learned the hard way about the crew using cell phones. They not only interfered with work but also caused drama and discontent. The captain had a cell phone. Normally it would not even be turned on during the course of the trip.

They had not been offshore fishing for a full week before Mick took a baggie of pot and two cell phones from the two new boys. The contraband was tossed overboard while they watched.

Mick could have forfeited their pay and sent them back to port on another boat. If they had been trying to learn their jobs, he would probably have given them another chance. Mick felt bad that these young boys might never know the victory of getting well paid for something that was very difficult. Mick would decide what to do when the trip was over. Life in a vessel on the ocean is no democracy.

The trip had been good. Every night of the month they had caught large amounts of the biggest shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico.

When the moon is full, the good fishing stops. All the boats come in to port. With these boats come young men with pockets full of money who have been away from many of the pleasures of life for over twenty days.

The sun would begin to rise within an hour. Fog was thick this morning. The captain maneuvered the large steel-hulled vessel up the narrow waterway using radar. Other boats coming toward them were only visible as a dot on a lighted screen. The lighted dots were actually boats built of hundreds of tons of wood and steel. They passed each other by mere feet. The captain could hear more than actually see them as they passed. Mick had always thought that piloting a vessel through the fog lent new meaning to two ships passing in the night.

Percy had been working on the boat for two years. He was a big man in his midthirties. He stood at six feet three inches tall, and he was muscular. He had long dark hair. A few jagged scars stood out on his face from old bar fights. Percy was 100 percent Cajun. Though he spoke perfect American English, Percy preferred to speak in his native Cajun French.

While running the boat up the channel to the dock, Mick decided what to do with the boys that did not know how to work. They had lied when they were hired. Percy and Mick had done double work because of them this trip. Lucky for Percy that Mick was one of the captains in port that would do a deckhand’s work when necessary.

Mick would let the other captains and boat owners know about the boys. They would not be able to get another free ride. He would give the boys 50 percent of their pay. That way they would not be down and out after they were forced to leave port for lack of work. Percy would get the other 50 percent of the share as a bonus. Mick would try to remember to thank Percy for controlling his temper. Mick had no problem imagining the effort it had taken.

The boat was scheduled to be hauled out of the water on dry dock this time in. A long list of repairs, along with needed maintenance, would be performed while it was out of the water. Frequent haul outs were expensive. In the long run, the work would keep the vessel looking good and working. That’s not to even mention still floating.

They would not be going out fishing right away. Mick and his partner, Captain Gary Jones, each owned 50 percent of the boat and business. They had both decided to take a break for a while. They usually took turns taking the boat out. Working every other month fit both men just fine. The full moon would always remind them that it was time to go back on the water.

Captain Gary and his wife, Linda, would come to the dock to meet the boat this time. Mick’s woman, Renae, would be with them too. After this month’s catch was off-loaded, they would all talk about what their first adventure would be. Over time this had become a sort of tradition among the four of them.

The two men had come a long way in their lives to get where they were now. One of the first memories starting their lifelong friendship was them hiding in a utility room inside an all-night bowling alley. They were barely even teens. It was cold, and there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

One of the first things they decided made them like each other was that neither one of them held any hate for anyone that had abandoned them. Not wasting time feeling sorry for themselves was probably another one of the first hard lessons. Life might have sent them a few curves, a few that had them on their own taking care of themselves at a young age.

As boys, they survived in bigger eastern and southern US cities. They learned ways to live from mostly older people who were living outside of society too. Some tricks they learned from experience. Probably the most valuable thing they learned was trying to take advantage of good opportunities that came their way. Doing that along with hard work proved to be much more dependable than most of the scams and petty crimes others used.

Together they roamed the country. They were always in danger of being mistaken for runaways or kids truant from school. Back in that era, many forms of identification didn’t have photos. The computer systems that the law used was usually hit and miss at best. Gary had someone’s driver’s license that said he was nineteen years old. Mick had a government draft card that claimed he was eighteen and eligible to be drafted at any time.

The phony identification allowed them to hitchhike around the US and even Canada. They could also get jobs that you had to be over eighteen to work at.

Sometimes they worked on farms helping put hay for the animals in barns. They painted a lot of fences too. Farmers helped the boys out a lot. They could always find something for them to do for a day or two. There usually wasn’t much money paid to them. The pay was in great food a lot of the time. The boys had some meals that even put the truck stop cheeseburger-and-chili favorite to shame.

Setting up and tearing down rides at travelling carnivals was another skill that people would hire kids to do. They learned to be careful about who they worked for at the carnies. Some ride owners were pretty good at leaving town without paying you. After working twelve or fourteen hours all night for a promised ten dollars, getting cheated took all the fun out of it.

Truck drivers on the big rigs would hire them to unload the truck. Some of the drivers were pretty generous. They would pay them decently and then take them to eat at the big truck stops. A couple of times they would ride from place to place working. A driver would line up another truck to unload on the CB radio.

During the sixties and early seventies, hordes of students and self-proclaimed political activists roamed the country too. VW busses were the hip way to travel then. You could about count on a ride when one came by. Some of these, mostly older people by a few years, seemed to be living a party life, going from one rock concert to another. Antiwar rallies were a favorite destination too. It hardly ever seemed to be about protesting the war much—mostly just more sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

In Canada, thousands of young Americans were avoiding being drafted into the Vietnam war. Canadians mostly took a liberal view, or maybe just a who cares attitude with the dodgers. Especially in the city’s shelters, free hostels and food were offered to the pacifists.

Gary and Mick sometimes used the free help too. Unfortunately, though it was free, Canada could be very cold in the winter.

Work was hard enough to find for two young kids as things were. In Canada it was even more difficult because of lack of citizenship and not having a social services card, the equivalent to an American Social Security card.

The boys had resorted to petty crime whenever it seemed necessary. They had been caught leaving restaurants without paying, sometimes shoplifting food and cigarettes. On a few occasions, they went to jail for hitchhiking, trespassing, and vagrancy once.

The phony identification they carried caused them to be locked up with adults in county jails. Some of their fellow inmates were quite scary career criminals.

Both boys tried to learn what they could from good or bad experiences. They listened to their cell mates’ stories, trying to soak up information like sponges. Once they had been put in a Canadian provincial penitentiary for five days. Turned out that hopping freight trains was a crime too. Five days with the hard cores went as slow as five weeks there. Then they were deported back to the States.

As they stood on a southbound highway entrance ramp with their thumbs out one day, something happened, something that would change their lives and also almost end it a few times.

Two men of about thirty or so years old pulled over to give them a ride. Gary and Mick were both impressed by the black-and-chrome newer-model Cadillac. Turned out that after both these guys were released from prison they were on a cross-country crime spree. The rough-looking and talking men were armed robbing banks. They would rob just about anything else too when the cash ran low.

Stories told to the boys about hitting the big time and living the high life impressed Mick and Gary. The job they had landed this time was stealing getaway cars and putting the money in a bag at the teller’s window.

Staying in the best hotels and casinos and eating anything they wanted was an experience they had never imagined. The drinking, girls, and practically throwing money away had them thinking they had finally found a career.

One day their teachers casually stated that they would be killed and disposed of if either of them quit or tried to run off. The boys knew the convicts were dead serious. Gary and Mick had been considering quitting for the last week. Continuing to carry on as they had been sounded not so bad after hearing the alternative.

It felt like they had been robbing and running for years. Actually they had been into their new profession for three months.

While they were in the act of committing the second robbery after being threatened, the problem of if they should quit robbing banks solved itself. As they were leaving a bank, carrying what seemed to be more money than ever before, they were surrounded by police.

The boys revealed their true identities and ages while in the justice system lockup. For thirteen months, they stuck together in some of the worst juvenile prisons in the country.

Today the institution they had spent the most time has been condemned. Now people can pay to take a tour of what has been named one of the most haunted places on Earth. Gary and Mick promised to try and make whatever good they could of the situation. Both young men gained weight and muscle. They also managed to obtain high school equivalency diplomas.

A little over a year had slowly gone by. Both their names were called by a guard one day.

The judge that had sentenced them had reviewed their cases. A social worker had been constantly monitoring Mick’s and Gary’s behavior during the last year. She tirelessly approached the judge asking him to consider extenuating circumstances, the circumstances mostly involving the two convicts who were the ringleaders in all the robberies. As it turned out, the convicts had shot and killed a victim during a holdup that happened during what must have been only a few hours before the adults recruited Gary and Mick.

Mick and Gary stood waiting in a hallway. An army recruiter waited for them in an office. The judge had agreed to release them if they could take the boys into the service.

The boys expected to be asked dozens of questions. They were ready to answer them too. They realized how important this interview was. Instead, the recruiter only asked a few basic questions. He must have had most of the answers on the large folders he kept glancing at on the desk.

This army recruiter didn’t act like he was very interested in Mick and Gary. Despite the lack of much open conversation, both young men did get the chance to say that they wanted to go to Vietnam. At that moment, they said it because it sounded like the right thing to say. Almost anywhere had to be better than this prison.

The recruiter only said, Try not to worry too much, boys, I’ll see what I can do. In what felt like a heartbeat’s time, he was up and on his way to the door. Both boys would have liked to ask him some things. Neither boy felt very confident at that time about the recruiter trying to do what he could for them.

When they got back to the prison population, the young men told no one about them possibly getting out. There were always other inmates that would try to cause a person not to be let out. Just starting a fight or planting contraband in your cell might be enough to jeopardize your release.

Three of the longest weeks in their lives crawled by. Then once again, a guard called their names. Before they knew really what was going on and with no ceremonies or goodbyes, they found themselves on a bus to boot camp. The recruiter had them in the buddy system. That meant they would not be separated. They were both heading to Vietnam.

They were told that infantry meant you walked and fought across the country with everything you owned on your back. With a few other choice words thrown in, the drill sergeant seemed to make it sound like they had a pretty rough way to go. Mick was glad no one could hear what he was thinking. He thought to himself that it sounded similar to what they did every day anyway. Only they didn’t have the expensive packframes and perhaps the most comfortable boots he’d ever had on his feet.

The young men’s lives were playing in the fast-forward mode. Boot camp and the trip across the sea to what would be their new home passed in a blur. Mick and Gary continued to do their best to listen and learn. They became good at the new job in Vietnam.

This would prove to be the beginning of a new life for them. Yes, Gary and Mick had come a long way in life.

The woman Gary was with on the dock was his wife Linda. They met in California while Gary went to an offshore diving school. Linda had four children from a previous marriage. They were very young kids. Mick remembered wondering what kind of magic had changed his wild friend into a perfect father. A man that was 100 percent dedicated to the family.

Renae was the woman that waited on the dock for Mick. By coincidence, she also had four kids from a previous marriage. Renae’s kids were older than Linda’s. They had graduated high school by that time. Linda’s oldest was nine years old. Mick had told Gary that he felt lucky her kids had accepted him. He was more of a friend than a father figure.

Mick and Renae had each been married a couple of times before. That was one reason they decided a legal marriage was not necessary.

Mick and Renae had started a small business in the mountains of Montana. They worked very hard at making forest improvements. They treated many hundreds of acres of diseased trees. Small lakes and streams that had been damaged by old-time logging methods were brought back to life. The work was very rewarding. Watching the forest and animals rejuvenate made the hard labor well worth it.

Gary took his turn running their fishing boat while Renae and Mick worked in the mountains thousands of miles away.

A couple of times a year, Linda and Renae would make a fishing trip with the two men. They had become fast friends just like the men had. Over the years, meeting the boat at the dock had become a sort of tradition.

While the boat was at sea, the crew would sort the highest-quality seafood to be distributed to the finer restaurants and specialty markets in New Orleans. Besides higher profits, they would visit with chefs and owners that had over time become valued friends.

Tonight after midnight they all had a date at one of their favorite Cajun food places in the Quarter. By the time the sun rose, they would be winding down in the hotel’s hot tub. Then after the couples got a few hours’ rest, they would split up and go on to their destinations. Gary and Linda would go on to a place of their own on the same Gulf Coast. Mick and Renae would be taking their time getting back to Montana.

It was not Mardi Gras time in the French Quarter, but plenty of tourists and people partying filled the streets.

Gary said to Linda and the other couple, Let’s make the rounds, have a couple of drinks, and maybe listen to some blues before we go to the restaurant?

Renae said, OK. Then they noticed the corner boys were tap-dancing on the next block.

Gary said, We have been knowing those boys since before they could even speak English.

Mick and Gary each tipped them a handful of bills. Sure enough, a couple of tourists tipped them well then.

Mick said, I guess they don’t want us to show them up in front of their girlfriends?

Mick and Gary couldn’t help but notice that the girls weren’t acting like they were very interested in what their boyfriends were doing.

They were cute young girls of maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. Gary and Mick had to smile when they remembered how an old girlfriend of theirs used to say, It looks like they’re trying to do a commercial for a cheap department store. Must be back-to-school specials today?

The three girls were all speaking into one cell phone at the same time.

Renae and Linda must have had enough of the young girls’ company by then. They wandered in closer to watch the street corner tap dancers.

What happened then took only a heartbeat in time. Something had changed everything. The schoolchildren sounded like they had changed over to speaking another language. They all went from a high-pitched giggling and sort of whispering into the phone to sounding almost like they were trying to pronounce words backward.

Linda gasped. They all noticed that a skinny, tall blonde-haired girl had her purple-painted fingernails deeply buried in her companion’s eyes. The blood flowed freely. Even the deeper, bloodier wounds were not slowing anyone down.

The three street kids who had been tap-dancing disappeared into an alley. Linda and Renae stayed behind Gary and Mick. More blank-faced zombie-looking men, women, and kids were rushing into the street. They attacked anything alive, including each other.

A small group of college-aged kids wearing football jerseys had obviously caught the sickness. A couple of them stumbled around trying to get ahold of anyone. Another one who had been a neatly dressed and groomed student chewed away on an infant’s face. The baby was very clearly dead. Its nose and lips were gone.

Two other former athletes lunged at Gary and Linda. Gary knocked one down with a punch to the jaw.

The only weapon Mick had was a large folding pocket knife. He used it to stab the other man, severing the jugular vein. Blood sprayed on Renae and him.

The noise from cars and trucks smashing into each other was drowned out by the sound of a commercial passenger jet in trouble and flying low. The jet was headed south and descending quick. It might have crash-landed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Gary wondered if this could all be an act of terrorism. All this couldn’t be a natural occurrence.

A truck delivering mail and packages plowed through people, including the few remaining vendors. The ones in the road who hadn’t turned into zombies scrambled for safe places to hide.

The hotel where the two couples’ trucks were parked at was still a city block away. Gary and Mick had their pistols locked safely away in their trucks.

It was clear to them that they must get out of the city. All the wrecks could have the roads blocked already.

When they passed the old brewery and could see some of the Levee, all hopes of leaving the city by water were abandoned. Boats and barges had collided, leaving the intracoastal waterway useless to them. No sight of the coast guard helping could be seen.

One of the Grand Old paddleboats had been rammed by a barge. It’s bow sunk low in the water, leaving the stern raised above the waterline. The big wheel kept slowly turning even though it was smashed to pieces.

They began to notice how many of the infected or mutated people were still acting like they were talking on the cell phones, continuing to hold them in their hands.

The dead lay everywhere. Zombies were still indiscriminately trying to kill anything alive, some choking victims. They were mindlessly tearing people to pieces. Many victims could be seen in the street with their throats torn or bitten open. Rocks and bricks seemed to be the only weapons they used. As the four of them got to the corner of the street the hotel was on, a scene unfolded before them.

Mutants tore, pounded, and chewed on what appeared to be what was left of one family. Two mutants still grasped bloody cell phones. A lone man was backed into the doorway of a shop. He was holding zombies away from him with a four-foot-long piece of pipe. Gary had salvaged a piece of wrecked truck to get a hefty steel rod for a weapon. He smashed two of the creatures’ skulls open. Mick used his knife to stop the other two.

The man backed up in the doorway was normal, not an insane mutation. The man automatically followed his benefactors. He would be the first one to join them in a very long journey.

At the hotel they found their trucks safe. Nothing was blocking them from driving out of the lot. With all the wrecked vehicles on the streets, they would be lucky to drive very far without moving objects out of their way in order to go ahead.

Gary and Mick each got their pistols and holsters out of the locked boxes in the trucks.

The new man they had rescued got into the truck with Mick and Renae. He told them his name was Don Lawson. Together with his wife, son, and daughter they had tried to see the famous French Quarter. They were there on vacation from somewhere up north. Don kept saying, It was the cell phone. The damn cell phone. Soon after their twelve-year-old daughter had answered a phone call, she had begun acting strangely. Her words were not coming out right. She became aggressive toward her nine-year-old brother. She had bitten his ear and would not let go. They had stopped on the street to get control of the situation. There they were attacked and overwhelmed by the gang of mutants. So it had been his family they saw dead on the sidewalk. The look of shock on his face would become very familiar to them as their journey continued.

The first few blocks they drove on the street were not very difficult. The two pickups steered around wrecks in the road.

Looting and burning had begun already. They watched people break out storefront windows and torch an occasional building. Mick thought that these people were probably destroying their own neighborhoods.

Battles between obvious mutants and normals seemed to be never ending.

They watched as a mutated child stepped on a live power line and was electrocuted. Then another zombie attacked the burning child and was also fried.

It wasn’t long before the pickups Gary and Mick were driving were stopped dead by all the other wreckage.

Gary got out of his pickup and went over to a loaded semitruck. Mick helped him remove three heavy chains that were binding his load of roofing shingles to the bed of his truck.

One by one they hooked chains to the cars that blocked the path. They used their trucks to pull them out of the way.

Sometimes they might make it for a mile or two without getting blocked. Time after time they managed to just barely squeeze past.

Some people in traffic behind them started to help hook and unhook the chains. Before long almost a couple of dozen cars and trucks made up a road-clearing crew. Some of the road-clearing crew ended up staying with them well into the journey. Power in numbers of people working was what got them all safe and well away from the deadly, crazy city.

The farther they travelled from the main cities, the fewer the wrecks blocking the road. For miles now everyone in their growing procession of cars and trucks were able to slow down and maneuver around them.

Gary’s truck was in the lead. A sign said State Highway Patrol One-Half Mile. Gary turned on his turn signal and pulled onto the entrance ramp. What they saw was not good. Instead of seeing something that resembled order and normality, they saw more carnage. Two police cruisers were crashed into the front of the police station. Three bodies lay outside on the lawn and sidewalk.

Mick’s truck followed Gary up the ramp along with most of the dozens of vehicles. The two men went into the police station together. A woman lay dead and mangled behind the receptionist’s desk. A couple of uniformed officers lay on the floor. They had died from the many gunshot wounds that riddled their bodies. From the expressionless, blank looks on their faces, they might have been infected with the sickness before they were killed. Static and noise were coming from the radio on the receptionist’s desk. Gary picked up the radio microphone and tried to get anyone that could hear him to answer. Still, nothing but static.

A bloody cell phone could be seen on the floor. It lay there almost exactly in the middle of the room. It looked almost like it was making a statement next to the other two dead officers on the floor.

There were around sixty people waiting for some activity to happen from within the police department. Different nationalities and mixed races of all sizes and colors stood together quietly waiting. A lack of children and younger people was clearly evident. To guess that their average age was forty years was accurate. There was some exception, but not by much.

Mick and Gary went directly to the small crowd. Mick stood up on a bench along a sidewalk to get their attention.

Mick spoke loudly to the people.

"They are all dead in there. It looks like we are going to need to