Dana Blankenhorn

The Survivor

This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited. 

__________

In early 2020 Ann Jefferson was the golden girl of Tulane University.

It wasn’t her looks. It wasn’t her athleticism. It was her grades and her study habits. She was going to spend the next few months choosing among Harvard, Baylor, and Stanford Medical School. Her grades, MCATs and references were immaculate.

Then came COVID-19.

Ann had grown up in what became one of the early hotspots, Albany, GA. Her parents had been at one of the funerals which fueled it. Her mother, Anita, died from it. Her father, Albert, was crippled by it.

Ann went home the moment Tulane closed. She volunteered at a local hospital, the world’s most overqualified candy striper. Soon she was doing a nurse’s duties.

During that whole sad spring and summer, Ann Jefferson nursed strangers all day and her father all night. She lived in a gown, a mask and face shield, without complaint. She washed her hands and face so often her skin blistered.

Albert Jefferson had the full range of post-COVID symptomology. He couldn’t eat. He suffered a stroke. His lungs were permanently scarred. His right foot was amputated. His kidneys were damaged.

The Scientist

This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited. 

__________

Taye Jones was a big man when he came home.

Taye had grown up in Swainsboro. It’s in deep southeast Georgia. Most of the people in Swainsboro are black. Most are poor. Taye was both. Only half the people in Swainsboro own their own home. In the summer, when the temperatures shoot up near 100, and the mosquitoes come out to play, there’s little to do but sit outside on the porch and swat them.

But there is a college in Swainsboro. East Georgia State College. The Bobcats. It was founded as a junior college. It wasn’t given permission to offer bachelors’ degrees until 2011. In 2012 it enrolled its first four-year students in Biology.

Taye Jones was one of them.

It turned out that Taye Jones had a gift. He had a gift for science, for research. He could explain what he wanted to do. He had the skills to do it, thanks to years spent helping his mother cook.

Two years into the program, Taye was offered a full scholarship at the main Georgia campus in Athens. There he found mentors, sponsors, people who believed in him. When he graduated in 2016, he was offered several fellowships and chose MIT.

He lived frugally and was able to send money home from his stipend of roughly $30,000. He worked hard and was able to propose some important experiments involving kinases and other protein structures.

The Soldier

This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited. 

__________

Q Flint had made service his life’s work.

He was raised in Selma, Alabama. His grandmother was of the Greatest Generation. She had made sweet bean pies for Dr. King in the 1950s. She told Q that he liked them.

From the time he was a little boy, during the Clinton years, Edna had drilled it into him. You are not what you say. You are what you do. You don’t talk about service. You serve. Life isn’t about your getting ahead, but all of us.

Q joined the service as soon as he could. He trained for the mission to take out Bin Laden but broke a small bone in his ankle and was scratched. The moment his tour was over he applied to join the Secret Service. The President himself approved the application.

That was four years ago. Now he was on body detail, his strength concealed by a dark suit, his all-seeing eyes hidden by dark glasses. His face was expressionless as he scanned his surroundings, keeping the Man safe.

Dolly

This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited. 

__________

For the first year of her life, Dolly stayed in the hills.

It was quiet in the hills. There was a lot of grass. Her mom was by her side.

Then, one day, her mom went away. Dolly did not know where. There was still grass, so Dolly ate it. It was good. She was in the flock. The flock made her feel better about missing her mom. In time she forgot all about it.

On a fine early spring morning, Dolly and her friends all flocked together into a big space that soon became small. One by one they were grabbed by their hind legs and dragged away. Dolly was one of the last, because she did not want to be grabbed.

They got her anyway.

Interview with a Virus

This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited. 

__________

“My first guest tonight is the hardest get in the news right now. Ladies and gentlemen, COVID-19, the coronavirus!”

“Thank you, Steve.”

“It’s Stephen. Sorry we don’t have the orchestra tonight. Or the theater. We’re social distancing.”

The virus looked askance. “What-evs.”

“So. Coronavirus. You’re pretty famous for something that may not even be alive.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Yes, there is dispute about that, Steve. Many scientists don’t think viruses should be classed as living. But here I am.”

Russian Roulette

In honor of the coronavirus quarantine, and because April 1 is coming, here's another fiction story for you. 

__________

Pandemic response had improved by 2050.

Instead of a stay in place order, the government was ready with mass testing on the onset of SARS-49.

The tests were sophisticated. Not only could they tell if someone was infected, they could scan their likely response and predict who might survive the infection and who would likely die.

As with all pandemics the infection was coming, but not everyone was going to get through it.

I felt confident. My name is Alan Petrie. I live in New Rochelle, New York, with my wife Kim and our two children, Bill and Alice. We lived through the first global pandemic back in 2020. We had a basement full of food and medical supplies. We were ready for what was to come.  

Everyone would get the virus. Everyone would take the bullet.

The Killer

In honor of the coronavirus quarantine, and because April 1 is coming, here's another fiction story for you. 

__________

“It was a joke. A JOKE!”

I screamed it as I was strapped to the gurney.

A doctor approached, holding the first of the syringes that would soon end my life. Across a window, a small group of witnesses looked on with anger. All except one man, of indeterminate middle age, thin, with a salt and pepper beard and glasses, who just shook his head mournfully. The man I’d spent my life hoping to meet.

It was the first execution in California for many years. It was real. It was happening to me. And it really was just a joke. This was the punch line I’d been waiting for.

I was born after my father joined the witness protection program, in Massapequa, on Long Island. I learned much later he had been born Giacomo Moroni, but the feds made him change his name after his career as a contract killer ended in Arizona. He got out by ratting on his capo, Don Julio Pasquale, the boss of Phoenix.

My dad’s mind didn’t work well back in the 1980s. I think it was coke. He didn’t remember things all the time. He said he couldn’t just make up a new name for himself, so he’d just take the vowel off the end. But that made his name moron, and that didn’t make any damned sense. So, he tweaked it just a little. He became Mike Maron.

I’m his son, Matt.

Operation Trump

While we're all in quarantine I'm entertaining myself, and hopefully some others, with some short fiction. You can find my entire collection of short fiction here.

Enjoy!

__________

Jack Wong was not just an expert on alternate history.

In the year 2080, he was the world’s leading expert on altering history.

Wong’s invention of the Turtledove Drive a decade before, his Ph.D thesis project at the University of Minnesota, stunned the world.

Since then he had succeeded in altering history twice.

First, he traveled from his lab to the 2075 Coronavirus outbreak, reached its Patient Zero, and brought him to a hospital before he could infect others. Three years later, from the front of his Minneapolis classroom, his team prevented the 2001 World Trade Center bombing by shooting the terrorists before they reached Logan Airport.

When New Yorkers woke up, on a fine spring day in 2079, to find two 120-year old buildings instead of one 65-year old one, it was a shock at first. Then the mass psychosis took hold. The attacks had never happened. The Twin Towers had always been there.

It was magic.

Now Professor Wong was Time’s Man of the Year, which meant even more was expected of him.  

Doug and Alexa in Quarantine

Doug and Alexa welcomed the quarantine.

Doug could spend his days reading and watching TV. He would be a hero. Wasn’t he an Amazon Prime member?

Alexa insisted he would be the hero of the age.

So, Doug cuddled up with a good book on his Kindle. Then another. Then another. He made himself coffee, he made himself tea. He binged everything on BritBox. He watched hours of Dr. Pol. He ordered what he needed, and it came. His savings dwindled, but very slowly.

Alexa ordered him a stationary bike and he rode it. Alexa ordered him a yoga mat and he used it. Alexa filled his apartment with music. Rock in the morning, show tunes in the shower, the soothing sounds of water as he slept. Doug was never lonely with Alexa around.

The days passed slowly. Doug didn’t trust his country’s leaders, so he didn’t watch the news. Doug had never known his neighbors, so that when they passed by his door he didn’t speak and neither did they. He didn’t even pet their dogs. He was very careful.

But Doug knew Alexa, and Alexa knew him.

The Coffee Man, A Short Story

Note: This story emerged from a small brainstorm. We know that climate change is driven by over-use of fossil fuels but what if, instead of an invention that burns coal or oil, someone had invented a machine that just sucked energy out of the air?

With just a tweet of encouragement from a well-known alternate history writer, I set to work

____________

The old man put on his “Juan Valdez” hat, a term his young employees did not understand, and walked slowly into the greenhouse, a sling across his left shoulder, the basket against his right hip.

The delicious fruit, with its precious stones, awaited him. His hands shook in anticipation.

Carefully, he pulled down a branch and picked only the ripest, reddest cherries, placing them one-by-one in the basket. It took him nearly an hour to fill the basket, not due to his age but to his care, for he avoided all the green, unripe fruit that had long been pulled routinely by those desperate for what lay within.

By the time his young workers arrived for work, chattering in a half-dozen languages, the old man was sitting at their shared lunch table, picking fruits from his basket like an aged chimpanzee, stripping off the thin fruit layer with his teeth and gums, then carefully placing each seed beside him in a dish. Satiated, he hefted the remaining fruit in its basket and placed it in the hopper of a processor.

The fruit had an intense, citrusy taste and a grape-like texture. He rubbed his hands together after emptying the basket, then smelled them with pleasure. The fruit not only tasted great, and energized him, but left a waxy residue which made his hands look younger. The fruit would be separated from the stones, dried into a pulp, and become a second harvest for the greenhouse.

His workers would go through the greenhouse today harvesting from several trees, separating the red fruits from the green, and processing them all so that, when the seeds were dried green, then roasted, they could be crushed to create what was now the most expensive beverage in all the world.

Coffee! Glorious coffee!