Journals of the Plague Years Read online

  “NORMAN SPINRAD IS A HIP, WORLDLY, HIGH-TECH NOSTRADAMUS WHOSE ENGAGING PREDICTIONS ARE OCCURRING ON CNN AS YOU TURN HIS PAGES.”

  —Timothy Leary

  * * *

  ALSO BY NORMAN SPINRAD

  DEUS X

  “THE AUTHOR HAS GOT HOLD OF A POWERFUL METAPHOR FOR TRANSCENDENCE THAT HE INTENDS TO PUSH TO THE LIMIT—WITH THOUGHT-PROVOKING RESULTS.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  RUSSIAN SPRING

  “SPINRAD’S VISION STRIKES TO THE HEART OF OUR WORLD’S CURRENT MORASS. HIS DESIRE TO SLIP THE SHACKLES OF HISTORY…AND START ANEW TO BUILD A WORLD IN WHICH OUR BEST QUALITIES ARE ACCENTED IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED NOW.”

  —Omni

  “A MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT.”

  —The Washington Post

  LITTLE HEROES

  “FEROCIOUS AND FUNNY, STREET SMART AND HEARTFELT.”

  —William Gibson,

  New York Times bestselling author of Virtual Light

  “A PRIMER FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE HUMAN SOUL.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  BUG JACK BARRON

  THE CLASSIC NOVEL OF SEX, LIES, VIDEOTAPE…AND IMMORTALITY

  * * *

  AND HIS LATEST NOVEL

  PICTURES AT 11

  OTHER WORKS BY NORMAN SPINRAD

  Novels

  Agent of Chaos

  Bug Jack Barron

  Child of Fortune

  The Children of Hamelin

  Deus X

  The Iron Dream

  Little Heroes

  The Men in the Jungle

  The Mind Game

  Passing Through the Flame

  Pictures at 11

  Riding the Torch

  Russian Spring

  The Solarians

  Songs from the Stars

  The Void Captain’s Tale

  A World Between

  Story Collections

  The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde

  No Direction Home

  Other Americas

  The Star-Spangled Future

  Nonfiction

  Fragments of America

  Stayin’ Alive: A Writer’s Guide

  Science Fiction in the Real World

  Anthologies (editor)

  The New Tomorrows

  Modern Science Fiction

  JOURNALS OF THE PLAGUE YEARS

  A Bantam Spectra Book/September 1995

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  BOOK DESIGN BY GLEN M. EDELSTEIN

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1988 by Norman Spinrad.

  Afterword copyright © 1995 by Norman Spinrad.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

  by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Spinrad, Norman.

  Journals of the plague years / Norman Spinrad.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-553-37399-4

  PS3569.P55J68 1995

  813'.54—dc20

  94-39704

  CIP

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  * * *

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  * * *

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  FFG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In memoriam:

  RUUD WICHERTS

  LUC ALEXANDER

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  John David

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Linda Lewin

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  John David

  Linda Lewin

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Linda Lewin

  John David

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Linda Lewin

  Walter T. Bigelow

  John David

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  John David

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Linda Lewin

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Linda Lewin

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Linda Lewin

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Linda Lewin

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  John David

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Linda Lewin

  Walter T. Bigelow

  John David

  Linda Lewin

  John David

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  John David

  Linda Lewin

  John David

  Linda Lewin

  Walter T. Bigelow

  John David

  Walter T. Bigelow

  John David

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Afterword

  Introduction

  It was the worst of times, and it was the saddest of times, so what we must remember if we are to keep our perspective as we read these journals of the Plague Years is that the people who wrote them, indeed the entire population of what was then the United States of America, and most of the world, were, by our standards, all quite mad.

  The Plague virus, apparently originating somewhere in Africa, had spread first to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users. Inevitably it moved via bisexual contact into the population at large. A vaccine was developed and for a moment the Plague seemed defeated. But the organism mutated under this evolutionary pressure and a new strain swept the world. A new vaccine was developed, but the virus mutated again. Eventually the succession of vaccines selected for mutability itself, and the Plague virus, proliferated into dozens of strains.

  Palliative treatments were developed—victims might survive for a decade or more—but there was no cure and no vaccine that offered protection for long.

  For twenty years, sex and death were inextricably entwined. For twenty years, men and women were constrained to deny themselves the ordinary pleasures of straightforward, unencumbered sex, or to succumb to the natural desires of the flesh and pay the awful price. For twenty years, the species faced its own extinction. For twenty years, Africa and most of Asia and Latin America were quarantined by the armed forces of America, Europe, Japan, and Russia. For twenty years, the people of the world stewed in their own frustrated sexual juices.

  Small wonder then that the Plague Years were years of madness. Small wonder that the authors of these journals seem, from our happier perspective, driven creatures, and quite insane.

  That each of them found somewhere the courage to carry on, that through their tormented and imperfect instrumentalities the long night was finally to see our dawn, that is the wonder, that is the triumph of the human spirit, the spirit that unites the era of the Plague Years with our own.

  —Mustapha Kelly

  Luna City, 2143

  >

  John David

  I was gunfoddering in Baja when the marks began to appear again. The first time I saw the marks, they gave me six years if I could afford it, ten if I joined up and got myself the best.

  Well, what was a poor boy to do? Ta
ke my black card, let them stick me in a Quarantine Zone, and take my chances? Go underground and try to dodge the Sex Police until the Plague got me? Hell no, this poor boy did what about two million other poor boys did—he signed up for life in the American Foreign Legion, aka the Army of the Living Dead, while he was still in good enough shape to be accepted.

  Now you hear a lot of bad stuff about the Legion. The wages suck. The food ain’t much. We’re a bunch of bloodthirsty killers too bugfuck to be allowed back in the United States fighting an endless imperialistic war against the whole Third World, and our combat life expectancy is about three years. Junkies. Dopers. Drooling sex maniacs. The scum of the universe.

  For sure, all that is true. But unless you’re a millionaire or supercrook, the Legion is the best deal you can do when they paint your blue card black and tell you you’ve Got It.

  The deal is, you get the latest that medical science has to offer and you get it free. The deal is, you can do anything you want to the gorks as long as you don’t screw up combat orders. The deal is that the Army of the Living Dead is coed and omnisexual and every last one of us has already Got It. We’ve all got our black cards already, we’re under sentence of death, so we might as well enjoy one another on the way out. The deal is that the Legion is all the willing meatsex you can handle, and plenty that you can’t, you better believe it!

  Like the recruiting slogan says, “A Short Life but a Happy One.” We were the last free red-blooded American boys and girls. “Join the Army and Fuck the World,” says the graffiti they scrawl on the walls about us.

  Well, that too, and so what?

  Take the Baja campaign. The last census showed that the black card population of California was entitled to enlarged Quarantine Zones. Catalina and San Francisco were bursting at the seams and the state legislature couldn’t agree on a convenient piece of territory. So it got booted up to the Federal Quarantine Agency.

  Old Walter T., he looks at the map, and he sees you could maintain a Quarantine line across the top of the Baja Peninsula with maybe two thousand SP troops. Real convenient. Annex the mother to California and solve the problem.

  So in we go, and down the length of Baja we cakewalk. No sweat. Two weeks of saturation air strikes to soften up the Mexes, a heavy armored division and two wings of gunships at the point, followed by fifteen thousand of us zombies to nail things down.

  What you call a fun campaign, a far cry from the mess we got into in Cuba or that balls-up in Venezuela, let me tell you. Mexico was something like fifty percent Got It, their armed forces had been wiped out of existence in the Chihuahua campaign, and so it was just a matter of three weeks of leisurely pillage, rape, and plunder.

  The Mexes? They got a sweet deal, considering. Those who were still alive by the time we had secured Baja down to La Paz could choose between deportation to what was left of Mexico or becoming black card citizens of the state of California, Americans like thee and me, brothers and sisters. Any one of them who had survived had Gotten It in every available orifice about 150 times by us zombies by then anyway.

  Wanna moralize about it? Okay, then moralize this one, meatfucker:

  The damn Plague started in Africa, didn’t it? That’s the Third World, ain’t it? Africa, Latin America, Asia, except for China, Japan, and Iran, they’re over 50 percent Got It, ain’t they? And the It they Got keeps mutating like crazy in all that filth. And they keep trying to get through with infiltrators to give us the latest strain, don’t they?

  The Chinese and the Iranians, they kill their black-carders, don’t they? The Japs, they deport them to Korea. And the Russians, they nuked themselves a cordon sanitaire all the way from the Caspian to the Chinese border.

  Was I old Walter T., I’d say nuke the whole cesspit of infection out of existence. Use nerve gas. Fry the Third World clean from orbit. Whatever. They gave us the damn Plague, didn’t they? Way we see it in the Army of the Living Dead, anything we do after that is only a little piece of what the gorks got coming!

  Believe me, this poor boy wasn’t shedding any tears for what we had done to the Mexes when the marks started coming out just before the sack of Ensenada. Less still when they couldn’t come up with a combo of pallies that worked anymore, and they shrugged and finally told me it looked like I had reached Condition Terminal in the ruins of La Paz. Like I said, when I first Got It, they gave me six years, ten in the Army of the Living Dead.

  Now they gave me six months.

  I shot up with about a hundred milligrams of liquid crystal, chugalugged a quart of tequila, and butt-fucked every gork I could find. Think I blew about ten of them away afterward, but by then, brothers and sisters, who the hell was counting?

  >

  Walter T. Bigelow

  Oh yes, I know what they say about me behind my back, even on a cabinet level. Old Walter T., he was a virgin when he married Elaine, and he’s never even had meat with his own pure Christian wife. Old Walter T., he’s never even stuck it in a sex machine. Old Walter T., he’s never even missed the pleasures of the flesh. Old Walter T., he’d still be the same sexless eunuch even if there had never been a Plague. Old Walter T., he’s got holy water for blood.

  How little they know of my torments.

  How little they know of what it was like for me in high school. In the locker room. With all those naked male bodies. All the little tricks I had to learn to hide my erections. Knowing what I was. Knowing it was a sin. Unable to look my own father squarely in the eye.

  Walter Bigelow found Christ at the age of seventeen and was Born Again, that’s what the official biography says. Alas, it was only partly true. Oh yes, I dedicated my life to Jesus when I was seventeen. But it was a cold, logical decision. It seemed the only means of controlling my unwholesome urges, the only way I could avoid damnation.

  I hated God then. I hated Him for making me what I was and condemning me to hellfire should I succumb to the temptations of my own God-given nature. I believed in God, but I hated Him. I believed in Jesus, but how could I believe that Jesus believed in me?

  I was not granted Grace until I was twenty.

  My college roommate Gus was a torment. He flaunted his naked body in what seemed like total innocence. He masturbated under the bedclothes at night while I longed to be there with him.

  One morning he walked into the bathroom while I was toweling myself down after a shower. He was nude, with an enormous erection. I could not keep my flesh from responding in kind. He confessed his lust for me. I let him touch me. I found myself reaching for his manhood.

  He offered to do anything. My powers of resistance were at a low point. We indulged in mutual masturbation. I would go no further.

  For months we engaged in this onanistic act, Gus offering me every fleshly delight I had ever fantasized, I calling on Christ to save me.

  Finally, a moment came when I could resist no longer. Gus knelt on the floor before me, running his hands over my body, cupping my buttocks. I was lost. His mouth reached out for me—

  And at that moment God at last granted me His Grace.

  As his head lowered, I saw the Devil’s mark upon the back of his neck, small as yet, but unmistakable—Kaposi’s sarcoma.

  Gus had the Plague.

  He was about to give it to me.

  I leaped backward. Gus was an instrument of the Devil sent to damn my flesh to the Plague and my soul to everlasting torment.

  And at last I understood. I saw that it was the Devil, not God, who had tormented me with these unwholesome urges. And God had let me suffer them as a test and a preparation. A test of my worthiness and a preparation for this moment of revelation of His Divine Mercy. For had He not chosen to show me the Sign that saved me from my own sinful nature at this eleventh hour?

  That was when I was granted true Grace.

  I sank to my knees and gave thanks to God. That was when I was Born Again. That was when I became a true Christian. That too was when I was shown my true calling, when the vision opened up before me.

/>   God had allowed the Devil to inflict the Plague on man to test us, even as I had been tested, for to succumb to the temptations of the flesh was to succumb to the Plague and be dragged, rotting and screaming, to Hell.

  This was the fate that Jesus had saved me from, for only the Sign He had shown me had preserved me from death and eternal damnation. My life, therefore, was truly His, and what I must use it for was to protect mankind from this Plague and its carriers, to save those I could as Jesus had saved me.

  And He spoke to me in my heart. “Become a leader of men,” Jesus told me. “Save them from themselves. Do My work in the world.”

  I promised Him that I would. I would do it in the only way I could conceive of, through politics.

  I became a prelaw major. I entered law school. I graduated with honors. I found, courted, and married a pure Christian virgin, and soon thereafter impregnated Elaine with Billy, ran for the Virginia State Assembly, and was elected.

  The rest of my life is, as they say, history.

  >

  Linda Lewin

  I was just another horny spoiled little brat until I Got It, just like all my horny spoiled little friends in Berkeley. Upper-middle-class family with an upper-middle-class house in the hills. My own car for my sixteenth birthday, along with the latest model sex interface.

  Oh yes, they did! My mom and dad were no Unholy Rollers, they were educated intellectual liberal Democrats, they read all the literature, they had been children of the Sexy Seventies, they were realists, they knew the score.

  These are terrible times, they told me. We know you’ll be tempted to have meat. You might get away with it for years. Or you might Get It the first time out. Don’t risk it, Linda. We know how you feel, we remember when everyone did meat. We know this is unnatural. But we know the consequences, and so do you.

  And they dragged me out on the porch and made me look out across the Bay at San Francisco. The Bay Bridge with its blown-out center span. The pig boats patrolling the shoreline. The gunships buzzing about the periphery like angry horseflies.