The Doomsday Papers Read online

  The Doomsday Papers

  A novel by

  JanJan Untamed

  Please note that this is a work of paranormal fiction. The names, characters, places and other incidents are the product of the author’s twisted imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, businesses, events or locations is coincidental. Content warning: This book contains graphic language, graphic sex scenes, graphic violence, instances of mental and physical abuse, rape, kidnapping, adultery, polygamy, voyeurism, same sex intimacy, and a large word count. All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  It all started with a cough. No one knows who coughed or where, but it changed everything. It changed me. I don’t know myself anymore. Nothing about this woman feels familiar. Her thick, tangled, hair is longer. Her warm, brown, skin is darker and her full lips seem fuller. This woman’s lucid, chocolate brown, eyes are not sad or submissive. The big irises are hard and sharp. They have taken on a wildness that has no place inside me. There is a stranger living here now. A stranger with ambition and grit. A stranger who will gut you and eat your tender parts with a few wild onions and a sprinkle of salt. A stranger who will shoot you down or run past your burning body to save herself. The stranger is a woman that a mother can be proud of. She isn’t anything like me.

  What happened to the weak spirited daughter who does as she is told and never talks back? Where is the woman who worked the farm like a man and cleaned for her family like a slave? That woman kept her head down and her mouth shut. That is the woman I know. I was never skinny or pretty enough. I was never lively or funny enough. I was never good enough. I was the girl the women whispered about. I was the girl the boys never mentioned. I grew up to be the kind of woman that men don’t choose. I felt like an outcast. I worked the hardest but I still got the most thrashings in church. I am the Dare girl. No, the other one. The fat one. The unfortunate one. They made me feel like I was always doing something wrong. That’s me. Not this person. Not this imposter.

  My sisters teased me when they sat in the shade watching me do their housework. I was reminded of their future weddings and handsome husbands every day. They were taught to dislike me. Their mothers made it okay to look down on me. Except for Titus, our oldest and strongest brother. He made them leave me alone. He made everyone leave me alone. They would never call me ugly or a sow when he was around. No one loved me except my brother. The church whispered vile things about us. They accused us of all sorts of nastiness, but none of it was true. No one ever said it to Father. No one whispered it around Titus either. I used it as an excuse when no one wanted to marry me when I came of age. I’m an old spinster. I’m too big, too sweaty, un-pretty, and unimportant. The pudgy hand that reaches for a third piece of cake with greasy fingernails is mine.

  Not anymore. There is a slimmer, better, figure in the reflection with thin, feminine hands. Her old dress is falling off her. I can’t remember what color it used to be. Brown or black? If only mother and the rest of my family could see me now. Of course, they can't see me. They're all dead. Dead and burned in the south field. The fire got away from us and burned acres of thirsty grapevines. Father was more upset about the grapes than cremating fourteen of his children. The fourth and fifth favored children. I am not the favorite. I am the embarrassment. I learned to stay out of sight when company was visiting. I learned to adapt.

  “Duma, why do you continue to eat after you've emptied your plate?”

  That's what my birth mother whispered with her familiar frown. I call it my frown because she only frowns that way for me. Mother whispered because she would never shame me in front of others. Never once has she insulted me. Chastise me, yes. Shame me, no. She has huge brown, eyes that go right to her soul. That’s how I know how unhappy she is. When I look at her, I see why Father chose her. She’s beautiful and kind. My mother is also the saddest person I know. I watch her sitting out in the orchards sometimes with a faraway look. She has the look of a woman who has seen beyond our town and its borders. It gives me chills and makes me wonder things that are not my concern. What is she thinking about? What is she looking for? Mother is mostly quiet and doesn’t help much with farm work but I don’t mind. I want her to sit and dream of that faraway place. I want her mind to take her where her feet cannot go. When I was twenty, she said to me. “Dumani, I wasn’t capable of being the kind of mother you needed. I’m poison and broken. I let the church break me and I let them break you too.” Her voice cracked. “I have no choice. I repeat those words in my head hoping that one day I will believe them. The church is the safest place for us. There are bad things out there, daughter. Things worse than anything you can dream up. There are also wonders that cannot be explained. My greatest fear is that one day you will look up. That is how it starts. If you ever see past this place, you will hate me.”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant but I would never question my mother. I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder and tell her that she is my mother and I am thankful for her. I didn’t do it or say it. I kept picking apples and left the nicest ones for her. She never spoke to me freely like that again and I let it go. My mother is my mother, no matter what.

  “Duma, no one wants a fat wife. Women get fat after having babies, not while they’re still babies themselves.” The third wife liked to laugh at her own jokes when she brought up my weight.

  “Now Carol, she's still young. Let the girl be. She's a good girl and hard worker. Besides, she'll be married soon and taking care of a household is hard work. I'm sure she will lose the weight. It's baby fat.”

  That's what Father used to say when he got tired of hearing her nag. I was twenty-two the last time he said it. It wasn't baby fat. Thinking about my family makes me sad. Thinking about the food that I took for granted makes me sadder. After the virus broke out, food became as scarce as the uninfected. There was mass hysteria and total chaos across the country. There were murders and looting and stuff you only read about in crime novels and sci-fi comics. Entire cities were burned to the ground in protest of small rations and government mandated quarantines. After the public burned businesses and their own homes, they started migrating into the suburbs and the gated communities where they were met by neighborhood militia and the National Guard. They were not welcome there. They were forced back into the cities by tanks and armed soldiers. The cramped tent camps and poor sanitation made the perfect recipe for disaster. The virus spread through the shanties like wildfires. The sick died painfully of dehydration from the diarrhea. They vomited blood from coughing so hard. Malaria and infection killed off whatever wretches survived the sickness. The dead bodies were stacked in piles twenty feet high as the government raced to get rid of them. People died faster than they could bury them. There were mass burnings and quarries were turned into mass graves. The rotting bodies were everywhere, they contaminated the air, the land and whatever water was around.

  My parents, siblings, and I sat in our cozy living room eating steak and fresh collard greens listening to the disaster play out on live radio until the signal went dead. It was the first time I ever listened to a radio with my family. It was an old model that sat in our barn unused for twenty years. We are not allowed to dabble in outside influences. No books, TVs, radios, and even thinking about outside influences is a sin. Sins that you are expected to confess before the good Reverend every Friday morning. Whether it was wishing for a new dress or stealing an extra pork chop, I had to confess it all. Basically, anything that isn't directly associated with being useful for the betterment of the church is a sin. We meet on Fridays so as not to be confused with the Christians who meet on Sunday or the ones who meet on Saturday.

  The third wife was in Texas when the outbreak started and Fathe
r was worried about her. The radio was the only way of finding out what was going on out there without leaving the confines of our walls. Walls built to keep out prying eyes, hateful Christians, and anyone else who isn’t one of us. Everything about the commoners is corrupt, even their religions. Our walls keep them away. Behind our walls, Father could have four wives to spawn infinite children. He could pray, and punish, and procreate as much as he wanted to. And he did. The wives were pumping out babies every year and we buried too many to count; maybe because wife number one and wife number three are the product of incest. Their parents are second or third cousins, I forget. People in our church do not marry commoners. My mother is of no relation to Father and she says that is why I am so smart and why my siblings are not. Except my brother, Titus. He's smart like me even though his mother is, Magdalene, wife number one. My mother is his second and only black wife although Father is black himself. The other three are white with dark hair, the way that he will happily admit he likes them. My mother was a love match.

  I am mother’s only child and that makes her worthless in the church’s eyes. A woman is born to please her husband and bear children, preferably sons. That is all. Aside from my weight, my mother is another reason why none of the boys in our church chose me. If she can’t have sons, then neither will I. It has nothing to do with me being black. We are all Saints. I'm not pretty like the pretty girls or witty like the outgoing girls. I'm not wealthy like the rich girls. I have nothing going for me. I work, play the old piano in church upon request, and do more work. That was before everyone got sick and died. I did have one other friend growing up. My brother Titus would drag me along to meet his friend Judea. It’s the next place to our west.

  Jude is the son of the good Reverend, Mordecai Hamilton. The most blessed and revered person in our society. He is the most important man in our lives because he was chosen by God to show us the way to salvation. If he is our messiah, his son is a blessed prince. The boys want to be him and the girls want to marry him. Fathers want their sons to be more like him. Mothers urge their daughters to smile and be more when he is around. He and my brother have been friends since birth. Titus is tall and tan skinned like our Father with sandy hair and bright hazel eyes like his mother. Everything about Judea Hamilton is dark. Dark eyes, midnight colored hair, and a quiet, brooding attitude. If you look at his blonde haired, blue eyed, Father you would never think that he is his son. The only thing they have in common is skin color. Jude is what you would call lily white. The girls who don't fall for Jude, go for my brother. They always go for one of them. Titus already had three wives lined up before he was eighteen years old. If you think that’s impressive, Jude had five. He could have had more.

  The two of them were always carefree and the worst kind of sinners. They were not Godly at all. Boys had a freedom that girls couldn't even think about without paying for it with a pound of flesh. My brother Titus was a wild boy from birth. He could do what he wanted and didn’t do what he didn't want to. That means work. Farm work, school work, any kind of work. Titus had one rule, go to church. That was it. He would find me in the field or in the orchard and say, “Let’s go.” That was all it took to get me out of work for the day. Not even Father protested. The women wouldn’t dare object to anything my brother said. He and I are only five months apart in age and it made us closer than the other kids. I was his first friend, also the first person he fought. We took our music lessons together, trained together, worked together, cheated together and almost burned our house to ash together. I remember like it was yesterday. We were starting a fire in the corner of our playroom because it was cold. We'd fashioned a fireplace out of paper and thought it was very clever. Until the fire spread. We were five years old at the time. Father blamed the first wife for not watching us and beat her to the very edge of death. We never started anymore fires.

  I never told anyone what we did when we ran off with Jude. When we were little, we would stand on crates and peek into his father's bedroom window and watch him having relations with his seven wives. Sometimes he'd have them lay side by side on the bed and go down the row with each of them until he'd finally stiffen on top of one of them and groan like an animal. The women laid there like dead bodies not moving or speaking or doing anything. They just laid there. Other times they stood in a line beside the bed awaiting their turn. That’s what good wives do. We grew bored of watching after a few occasions. Skipping rocks on the lake was more fun. That was before they built the new house. After construction began, the Hamilton’s walls grew higher and no one was allowed on the property anymore.

  In our teen years, Jude and Titus found better things to do than peeping or skipping rocks. They sat down by the river drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes. They would listen to loud music and watch pornography on Jude's contraband iPad. Judea Hamilton. The handsome boy in the black cowboy hat, faded blue Levi’s and snakeskin cowboy boots with silver toes. When he wears his hat, and he often does, most of his face is covered. It only makes him handsomer in my eyes. I never drank with them or smoked or watched porn. They wouldn't let me anyway but the music was good. The river is not on Saints’ land and that’s why they never worried about being caught. We were not supposed to be there and it was a long, long walk for a fat girl.

  “You can use the exercise.” Titus would joke.

  “Stop fucking with her, man. She gets enough shit from everyone else.” Jude would say in that soft, quiet voice of his.

  I can picture him laying back on the soft green grass with his shirt off trying to catch the tan that never took. I can be whipped for being that close to a half-dressed man. Even if he is a childhood friend. No man would marry me if they found out. That is, if he got past the rest of my faults. Everyone knows Duma Dare, even the trash in town. As I got older I changed. Not only did my body change, my feelings changed with it. My breasts grew heavier and my body grew rounder. Certain things affected me in ways they didn’t before. Like the sex sounds the people make in the porno movies Jude and Titus used to watch. The sound made me feel impure feelings and think impure thoughts. It made me think of the preacher’s son. It made me think about making those sounds with him. I always feel impure feelings when I think about Jude with his dark eyes and black hair. I had impure thoughts every time he took his shirt off. I coveted what did not belong to me. I felt warm and fuzzy inside when he laughed at something that I said when I wasn't trying to be funny. The way his muscles flexed made me sweat.

  I am getting a bit of anxiety just thinking about him. My belly feels queasy and my heart is beating fast. He’s always made me feel this way. When I was a girl, I didn't notice any of this because he was still the skinny preacher’s kid. By the age of twenty I was infatuated with Jude. I am going to hell for harboring lustful feelings for him and I am prepared to make my peace with God when the time comes. Judea is four years younger than me. It didn't matter. He always treated me kindly. He treated me like an unfortunate sister. It was far better than being called fat and sweaty by the other boys. It was better than nothing at all. I am not his type. He never said it aloud. There was no need to say it and I would never ask. That’s what he would say after turning down a town girl. She’s not my type. I am no one’s type.

  The women chosen to be his wives were the prettiest girls the church had to offer and five and six years younger than me. His first wife he chose himself. My sister Hannah. Her mother is the third wife. Hannah is Father’s favorite daughter the same as Titus is his favorite son. The rest of us were born to work and to prove to the church how virile my father is. I heard Father speaking to the good Reverend Hamilton about God blessing him with a new wife because my mother was barren. He even made a very generous contribution to the church, the entire profit from last year’s apple harvest to be exact. It was about $35,000 in total after a late freeze wiped out most of our blooms. And for what? Another wife to take turns on. That’s what. The good Reverend thanked him for his generosity but he didn't make any promises. His own son and the goo
d Deacons’ sons were coming of marriageable age and they had first pick. That’s when Father offered my two prettiest sisters and the promise of next year’s apple harvest as well. The good Reverend readily accepted.

  Jude came over one day and Father lined my sisters up. The ones old enough to marry anyway. He was only seventeen himself at the time. After walking past the line once he chose Hannah. I watched from my hiding place behind the woodshed. I wasn't even considered. Father’s four wives were dressed pretty and watched on with pride as their daughters were paraded before Jude like prize mares. My sisters were happiest of all. Why wouldn't they be? I was happy for them. I remember watching with sweat pouring down my face. It oozed from my pores, wetting the back and armpits of my big dress. I knew he would choose Hannah. They all want Hannah. It is an honor that she was chosen. After looking my other sisters over, Jude decided that he didn't need another Dare girl. Hannah would do. She gloated and acted like she was marrying the good Reverend himself. I wanted to congratulate her after Jude and his father left. I wanted to tell her how proud I was to be her sister. I found her checking her reflection in the still water at the bottom of the well. This is her favorite seat. She thanked me prettily and dismissed me with the turn of her back. Mirrors are not allowed in our household. They are instruments of vanity. Hannah spent a lot of time at the well adjusting her pretty scarves. After my last marriageable sister was promised to a boy in Pennsylvania, the others started looking at me. They ignored me before, but after Katie was promised they started watching me with contempt. I pretended not to notice. Hannah cornered me one day coming out of the barn. She would never step foot in a barn.

  “What are you going to do with yourself, Duma?”

  “I’m going to wash up and check on the pot of chili cooking in the—”

  “You’re disgusting. You’re crazy like your mother and good for nothing. Men don’t marry farm equipment. You will be here burdening Father for the rest of his life. All of us found husbands and wives and you are going to be here with the babies working like a pack mule until they all marry too. No one is ever going to want you. Your own useless mother can hardly stand to look at you.”