Mary C. Brezler
Author
Far From Before
Synopsis
Twenty-five year old Helen Eaton is planning a career shift that will test the future of her marriage. But those plans are quickly abandoned when a deadly new virus emerges and threatens all of humanity. She watches helplessly as her loved ones fall victim, leaving her alone.
In her search for others she learns she is one of the only female survivors.
As a power struggle between what's left of the military and an oppressive new rule begins, Helen battles the expectations of women in the developing world. She and other female survivors are forced into a facility intended on preparing them for repopulation.
In this facility Helen draws the attention of Dorian Aaman, a man at the center of a tyrannical power crusade.
She also meets Arthur Cates, a military captain who becomes entwined with Helen's cause and whom she ultimately marries.
Helen must now learn how to survive by maintaining her identity while working within the new reality.
Together Helen and Arthur find peace and begin to redefine what makes life worth living for again. But the looming threat of Dorian Aaman puts them in unimaginable danger.
Excerpts from
Far From Before:
'We Have to Help'
A low sound tugs at the corners of my sleep but I desperately reach for the tendrils of the dream with no luck. It disperses like drops of blood into water, irretrievable and I groan in frustration.
Beside me Mark shifts and the sound comes clearer through our windows. Suddenly it crescendos from a dull murmur into a shrill wail. Mark and I bolt up and look at each other, making sure it isn’t somehow one of us. We then launch out of the bed and throw clothes at one another until we’re reasonably dressed and rush out the front door, the late April air barely touching us.
In the middle of the street, a man on his knees howls into the night, his words indiscernible. As we get closer the man’s silhouette grows and Mark suddenly stops and grabs my waist. He begins to pull me away, trying to shield from the scene but I see the poor man is not alone. He's clutching someone to him.
“We have to help,” I say, trying to move but Mark’s grip tightens.
“Babe, there’s nothing we can do,” he says calm and quiet, pulling me back.
“We can’t just leave him,” I rebuke, waving an arm out as though Mark may be blind. “We have to help, we can’t just walk away.”
Other neighbors are now in the street with us but they too keep their distance.
Mark envelopes me completely when I try to escape his hold. “I’m sorry but she’s already gone. And so is he,” he whispers in my ear, fear shivering through him. And I know he’s right.
But M44 has not killed my empathy.
“There has to be something we can do,” I cry, not just for the man but for us too. “There has to be something."
'Idling Among the Stars'
I check my supply bag once more and the glint of the cold metal makes my heart race. I knew my neighbor had a gun and I’m thankful it was in his hallway closet rather than his bedroom with his body. I’m not entirely sure why I want a gun with me but there’s a hope and a fear springing from its capabilities. I have a way out. I could end all this.
My car’s engine thunders to life and I grip the steering wheel for reassurance. Taking a few calming breaths, I put it into drive and head for downtown.
I weave around cars and ignore all traffic laws, spending hours driving in circles, hoping someone will hear and come rushing out, waving their arms to flag me down. But there’s no one.
I pull onto the sidewalk of one of the tallest buildings at the edge of the city and look up and down the road. I can’t tell what’s worse; feeling like I’m being watched or knowing no one is watching.
I grab the tire iron out of the trunk and take it to the glass door of the building. With no electricity I find the stairwell and retrieve my flashlight for the long climb up.
My lungs and legs are burning when I reach the rooftop and my head spins in punishment for not eating since…since Mark. I lean against the wall, closing my eyes and breathing through the painful throbbing in my chest again. Apprehensively I make my way to the edge, holding onto the smallest hope of finding something, anything. But disappointment flows from up here just as it does down there.
Adagios of abandoned cars line every street and in every other breeze I smell the dead.
The world stands silent, idling among the stars. Billions of people simply slipped away in the night and I stand on the face of Earth, alone. How do I fathom this depth of loss, this daunting loneliness; every religion purged from the world, every god and deity vanquished in the dawn of a single day? Every language silenced in a spring rainstorm? The music that defined us, the art that created us and the love that bound us is now lost to the echoes of what was.
Tears streak down my face once again and my breathing is nearly in vain. From my bag I pull out the gun and slowly turn it over in my hands. The cool metal lays heavy against my fingers and as the sun hits the barrel, a calming grey gleam presenting itself. Offering itself.
“He didn’t wake up,” I quietly cry to the gun. “He left me. They all left me.”
Clutching the gun to my chest, I sink to my knees and the crack of my own cry ricochets through the caverns of the city.
“Why?” I cry out. “Why did they leave me?” My face crumples and the world blurs behind the anguish. A shooting sensation fires down my spine and my heart becomes a runaway train, heading for derailment.
“He left me. He’s gone. They’re all gone.”
My clogged nose and swollen face only make matters worse and I’m abruptly seized by a choking cough. I drop the gun and fall to hands and knees, frantically gasping and wheezing.
“Why?!” The scream violently rips through me and I cough until my lungs contract in dissent, dragging me into the dark.
'Baby Pandas'
“Then what? M44 brainwashed the male gender?” I ask sardonically.
“No, there have to be good men left but the good men wouldn’t participate in this.”
“We don’t know that. They could be pressured as well.”
She groans. Loudly. “I don’t know. It’s just a crazy scheme. How the hell did this happen?”
“Fine, theoretical third-party approach then. Let’s say pandas are on the brink of extinction. How do you save the species? You put the boy panda with the girl panda and you hope for baby pandas.” I wipe the sweat off my neck and nose with my shirt thinking the scenario through. From this point of view, it does make sense. “It’s exactly what they’re doing, just with slightly more opinionated creatures. I wholeheartedly disagree with it but that’s what it is.”
“Don’t we get a say? What if girl panda doesn’t like boy panda? What then?” She sweeps her hand in front of her visualizing the argument, her tone saturated with revolt. “Can girl panda say ‘Hey zookeeper, this is a no-go’?”
I chuckle, Dr. Korres as a zookeeper is as laughable as him being a doctor.
“Doesn’t boy panda have any morals and say ‘Hey zookeeper, girl panda deserves freedom of choice, including the choice to not participate at all’.”
“That’s a very intelligent boy panda.” I offer as my own strife begins to appear and build, tightening like a belt around my chest. “I agree with everything you’ve said, Ina. You know I do. I’m just as frustrated. We’ve both spent every waking moment here trying to figure out how to survive, how to cope, how to find any peace with this. I don’t want a boy panda and I certainly don’t want baby pandas." I reach my breaking point like always, my voice cracking and a low hammering in the back of my head starts up. "I want my husband back. I want my life back. I want to leave this God forsaken world and go back.” My hands ball into fists on my hips and I begin to kick the dirt up. “I can’t have any of those things. I can’t do anything but make peace with it and try to survive; whatever that even looks like.” I sigh, feeling hopeless once again.
We both take some deep breaths and avoid looking at each other as we wipe our cheeks.
“I know us venting doesn’t accomplish much, and sometimes hurts us even more, but I just have such a hard time,” she says, pushing her pain through her teeth, seething with reality. “I need to worry about what I can control.”
“Good luck,” I tell her flippantly. “Let me know how it goes.”
I roll my shoulders and neck around. Last time we had one of these conversations we were attempting to grasp the cold hard numbers of death and then why we survived. I would say it’s like trying to solve world hunger or poverty, except M44 did that. Now there’s an abundance of everything.
Except women.
'Surviving in the Garden'
“After all of that, you don’t believe Mark? You don’t think you have a skill for surviving? Because not many people could go through everything you did and come out the other side still finding a way to smile,” he says, confidently.
I open my eyes to the sky again. “I don’t think it’s a skill, I think its luck.” I had this conversation with Mark too. “It was luck I could run faster than my dad when he was drunk. It was luck someone heard my screams the night I was attacked, it was luck I survived the car crash and it was stupid, stupid luck I survived M44,” I tell him, feeling the familiar frustration.
It’s darkly comical how surviving has made me feel unworthy.
Again, Arthur props himself up on an elbow and hovers over me, his countenance determined. “Helen, yes, it was luck that you didn’t contract M44 but it’s what you did after. It’s how you handled losing Mark and watching the world die right in front of you. If you’re anything like me you dug his grave and buried him all by yourself and that is soul crushing,” he says. “I know it is,” he then whispers, trying not to come apart at his own seams. “But it’s what you chose to do after. You chose to keep going, to search for others. That is surviving. You left that grave, your home and all its securities to search for an unknown. And when you did find life you were forced into an impossible situation. You were stripped of your rights and your freedom and you still fought for your name, you fought for who you are and still do. That is surviving. Hell, Helen, we’re laying in the middle of gardens you’ve poured your life into so that we can continue with a future. Mark was right, you survive."