by Morris, SJ
Before the Outbreak:
Short Stories of the
Apocalypse in the
Z-Strain Universe
By SJ Morris
Copyright © 2019 by Forever Morris Publishing, LLC
This book is a work of fiction. The name, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, business establishments, or actual events, or organization(s) is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of any author’s rights.
First Edition November 2019
Published by Forever Morris Publishing,
LLC
ForeverMorrisPublishing.com
®
William DeFranco’s Story
Zhang Wei’s Story
Jessica Chambers’ Story
The Stanton Family’s Story
Before the
Outbreak:
William
DeFranco’s
Story
"And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them."
― Revelation 9:6 ESV
Chapter 1
Today was supposed to be my day off but here I am, getting ready to head into work. It was just my luck that Jessie, the new stewardess for Sun Air, who was supposed to cover me today would get sick.
The girl was dumber than a box of rocks so she probably got drunk with some guy last night and her hangover was ruining what should be a nice relaxing day planting flowers in the yard with my partner, Mason.
At least this was only going to be a quick five-hour flight to Halifax, Canada and back here to Sussex Airport in New Jersey.
Some rich curmudgeon wanted to get out the country quick and was paying a premium for a private plane. I was going to make $1500.00 for five hours on my day off.
I guess it was a blessing in disguise. I wanted to get Mason a new watch for our five-year anniversary and this extra money was going to let me get the one I really wanted to get him, not the cheap knockoff I thought I was going to have to get.
Even so, Mason was not going to be happy when he heard the flower beds were going to have to wait for another day.
“Hey Will, who was that on the phone?” Mason yelled from our bedroom.
“It was work. Jessie isn’t feeling well and there’s some rich guy who wants to get his family to Canada as soon as possible. He’s paying a huge premium, so I have to head in. I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said with my best sad face, as I walked into the room buttoning my navy blue Sun Air uniform shirt.
“Oh come on! You said we were going to have time to plant the flowers today. You promised me last weekend that we would do them today and now you have to go to work? I’ll just do them myself, then,” he said, huffing and turning on the television to end our conversation.
“You know I want to help you plant. Why don’t you wait until later today? I’ll be home in like, six hours. Before the sun goes down, we’ll plant. Then, we can wash up and have some dinner outside by the fire. It’ll be so romantic!” I replied, trying to get his attention again but he just stared blankly at the television. “What are you watching?” I asked as I sat on the edge of the bed.
I looked up at the TV and the news was saying there was some kind of unknown virus outbreak in China. They were showing video of people running around with masks on, as well as military people wearing gas masks and armed with huge guns. There were looting and riots in the street. It seemed too crazy to believe.
“You don’t think this is why the guy you have to go to work for is flying his family to Canada, do you?” Mason asked looking at me with fear written all over his face.
“No, Mason. This is in China. You always jump to conclusions before you know what’s going on and you expect the worse out of every situation, so relax. I’ll be fine,” I replied dismissively.
“Well, not everyone’s family is as welcoming as yours when you come out. I saw the worst in people all of my life until I met you and your family, William. I worry about you is all,” he said jumping out of bed to kiss me.
“Eww! Get away! No kissing before you brush your teeth. That’s the rule and you know it!” I laughed.
“I couldn’t wait! I wanted one last kiss before you flew away and never came home!” he said, tossing his head sideways and running for the bathroom.
“You are more than overdramatic. You know that, right? I’ve said that before. You’ve heard me say that a few thousand times, right?” I yelled as he closed the door, laughing again.
I was going to have to get something to eat on the way. I was probably going to be late and the passengers were expected to arrive in about forty- five minutes.
“I’m running out, babe, see you in a few hours!” I yelled as I started for the front door.
I had just opened my car door as Mason came running out to say goodbye. He handed me a mug of coffee and a bagel since he knew I always forgot time to get myself something to eat.
We kissed goodbye and I was off.
Chapter 2
Sussex Airport is in northern New Jersey and it’s a very small airport. It’s only for smaller, private planes and helicopters.
My boss, Nathan, used to fly big passenger jets all over the world but when he retired, he started Sun Air. He became a private plane for hire. The plane we flew was a 2001 Cessna Citation Encore 560. It has seating for up to eight passengers and was a beauty of a plane. Don’t ask me where Nathan got the money for a plane like that because I was sure it wasn’t in his retirement budget.
He always did say he only felt alive while he was flying. He had no wife or kids, so I assumed he rented an apartment all of his life and flew as much as possible. I guess that left little to no time for spending money on other things so he probably banked virtually all of his earnings over his forty-year flying career.
Oh well, it was his money. He could spend it however he liked; especially when it meant that I was employed and making a decent living without the craziness of working for another mainstream airline.
The big airlines were always such assholes to work for. There was always a mess of crazy schedules, where you never knew where you were going until you boarded the plane and the passengers... ugh.
Let’s just say that dealing with whiny, horrible passengers who seemed to lose all respect for other people when they boarded an aircraft was no longer my cup of tea.
I actually had one lady spit on me because we were all out of diet soda during the last hour of a packed six-hour flight. Did I mention she wasn’t wearing any shoes and she had a pair of toenail clippers in her hand as she spat at me?
Yeah, shortly after that incident, I quit.
I needed a slower pace for my life and I found Wantage, NJ.
It’s an amazing, quiet town, only thirty minutes from where my family lived. I also found Nathan with his startup private jet business and shortly after that, I found Mason, the love of my life.
Mason’s a registered nurse and currently, works at a retirement home close to where we live now. He had a similar story to mine where he worked for a super busy ER in New York and his hectic work schedule sucked the life out of him.
He came up here looking for a new, slower-paced
life too and we found each other.
Well, I found him. He was looking at houses to rent all day and he let his car run out of gas on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He was lucky that I came along and rescued him.
We always joked that it was fate that brought us together. We’ve been with each other ever since.
I parked my car and I spotted Nathan running around like crazy, which was not normal. He was always such a chill guy.
“What’s going on, Nathan?” I asked.
“We need to get the plane in the air as quickly as possible, Will. Hurry up and help me!” he demanded not even looking at me.
“Okay, but what’s the rush? The clients haven’t even arrived yet? Why are you so grumpy? It’s supposed to be my day off, I’m the one who should be grumpy!” I joked.
“There’s something going on overseas and they’re shutting down almost all international flights; even private ones, so we have to get in the air as soon as possible. I called the customer and he’s only ten minutes away, so we need to be ready to fly as soon as they get here.”
“Don’t we have to request to change the flight times with air traffic control, then?” I said starting to worry with the idea of international flights being grounded after what I saw on the news earlier.
“I already called them, they said to get our asses in the air as soon as we can, so let’s go!”
Well then, I guess that was going to be all of the conversation we had time for. I ran inside the hangar to grab everything we needed to stock the plane for the two and a half hour flight into Halifax. I had the plane stocked and ready to go in under ten minutes, which was perfect timing since the clients were just pulling in.
The man who booked the flight was Dylan Harper. He had his wife, Gwen, and their two daughters, Emma and Mia, with him. They pulled up in a large black SUV that was probably more expensive than my house. He was in such a hurry he didn’t even bother parking it, he just pulled up half on the tarmac, jumped out, grabbed his girls and threw me the keys, yelling for me to grab the luggage from the back.
I guess Mr. Dylan Harper meant business.
I grabbed two of the seven huge suitcases from the trunk of the car as Nathan went over some paperwork with Mr. Harper. Mr. Harper then took out few thousand-dollar straps of hundred-dollar bills from a briefcase he was holding and handed them to Nathan.
Nathan seemed as shocked as I was, but he took the money and looked at it as if he was counting quickly and shoved the bills in his folder of paperwork he just had Mr. Harper sign. He then showed the guests onto the plane.
I ran back and forth from the plane to the car with the remainder of the bags and just as I was finishing, Nathan ran over to me.
“This guy means business, so give him whatever he needs. This is your cut for today. I figured I’d give it to you now since this is such a rush thing. It’s a little more than we thought, thanks for coming in, by the way. Let’s get ready to get her in the air!” he said, smiling as he handed me three thousand dollars in wrapped one hundred-dollar bills.
I shoved the money in my jacket pocket with a smile and was off to get inside the plane and make sure our guests were as comfortable as possible.
All of the checks were completed rapidly. I made sure the four guests were content and we were taking off less than fifteen minutes after we closed the door.
Mr. Harper turned on his computer immediately and was talking on the phone for most of the flight.
Mrs. Harper, she asked that I call her Gwen, and the girls stayed in the back and it looked like Mia, the younger of the two girls wasn’t feeling well. I offered my help but Gwen said she was fine. They only needed me to bring cool towels and some cold water.
Mia apparently had a fever when they took her out of school this morning.
Emma, the older of the two girls, later told me there was a fight at their school this morning when one of the custodians had a breakdown or something like that and Mia was somehow bitten and thrown to the ground, knocking her unconscious during the mayhem.
They closed the school down shortly after the incident, sending everyone home.
Emma was angry with her father that he refused to take Mia to the hospital. She said one of his business partners told him they needed to get up to his house in Canada because some kind of economic crisis or something like that was coming.
She was just angry with her dad that he seemed to care more about his business partners than his own daughter. Emma said he only talked her mom into getting on the plane because his business partner has a doctor on site up at his compound in Canada.
Emma was a good kid and it sounded like Mia was too. I felt bad for them and made sure I had plenty of cold towels for Mia.
I gave the first aid kit to Gwen as well, just in case it would help.
I saw Gwen unwrap the bite wound on Mia’s upper arm and it was alarming to see that someone had bitten another human being; a child no less.
I had seen some pretty crazy stuff while working for the airlines but full on biting and leaving teeth marks on a child, this was a first. The bite wound was odd too. The teeth marks were jagged but definitely human and the skin around the punctures was turning black. I saw Gwen’s face, full of desperation when she saw that I had seen and I rushed over to her, opening the first aid kit.
“Let’s get some ointment on that, it looks like it might be getting infected,” I said quickly.
“Thank you. I don’t know how it could get like this so fast. This only happened first thing this morning and Mia is burning up, too. How long is it until we land? I need to get Mia to the doctor as soon as possible,” Gwen said with tears in her eyes as she stroked her daughter’s hair away from her sweaty forehead.
“Let me check with the captain but it can’t be much longer. Can I get you anything else when I come back?”
“More cold towels, please.”
I ran up front and checked with Nathan on how much longer it would be until we landed, and he said that Halifax was now closed to incoming international flights. Even the private jets were being turned away. He was trying to work something out with a smaller airport near Halifax, but they weren’t getting back to him.
I grabbed the cold wet towels I had put in the refrigerator earlier for Mia and made sure to tell Mr. Harper that there may be a problem with the landing. He told me he already knew and just got off the phone with his business partner who was making arrangements for them to land at a private airfield close to the compound they were going to. Mr. Harper jumped up front with Nathan and they worked everything out because Nathan yelled back to me that we would be landing in twenty minutes.
I helped make Mia as comfortable as we could, but she was getting worse by the minute. She was burning up so badly that I could feel the heat coming off of her. I cranked up the air conditioning as much as I could to help and Gwen was thankful, but I don’t think it did much good. Just as we were landing, Mia fell unconscious.
Gwen was in hysterics, yelling at her husband from her seat and Mr. Harper kept repeating that he already had people in place to take Mia and help her as soon as we landed.
Sure enough, as soon as we opened the door out onto the tarmac, a private medical team came in with a backboard and loaded Mia up and out of the plane.
Gwen grasped my hand as she was leaving and thanked me for everything I did to help them. It was a small gesture, but it meant the world to me.
I just hoped that Mia was going to be okay.
Chapter 3
It was a whirlwind of activity, but the Harpers were gone within minutes of us landing. I was left with Nathan as he frantically made calls to be sure we were going to be allowed to land back in Sussex. He said we were cleared but we needed to get fueled up and head back out as soon as possible.
We pulled into a hangar to refuel and there was a woman and a man waiting for us with a large trunk. The woman was small in stature, but she seemed almost wicked. She just had that look about her. I knew women with resti
ng bitch face, but this woman seemed almost malevolent.
The man with her could only be described as a lap dog. He only moved when she moved, and he never spoke unless he was spoken to.
The woman walked up to Nathan and I, introducing herself as Dr. Constance Brigantine, her assistant was Dr. Stuart Peters. She said Mr. Harper and his associates told her that we would be flying back to New Jersey and she was looking to catch a ride with us, seeing as all of the other flights were canceled.
Nathan agreed as she handed him $20,000.00 in cash. The money was twenty strapped thousand-dollar bundles, just like Mr. Harper had given him previously.
I didn’t have a good feeling about this woman.
Dr. Stuart Peters didn’t look like he could hurt a fly, but Dr. Constance Brigantine looked like she would run you over with her Panther De Ville as she skinned puppies. That woman seemed like she was most definitely bad news. I didn’t like the thought of serving her on a two-and-a-half-hour plane ride home, but it is what it is, and Nathan never turned down a job. Especially not one for $20,000.00 and when the passengers were going to the same airport we were traveling to anyway.
Money talks, right?
Nathan walked away from the conversation to get the plane refueled and told me to be ready to be in the air in fifteen minutes. I showed the doctors to their seats and did everything I could not to shiver with disgust at the woman’s evil, yellow smile she flashed at me every time I spoke to her. She didn’t need anything other than a bottle of water, so I made sure she had it and was seated.
I left her to stow the trunk she had with her in the bottom of the plane.
The trunk was even questionable. It was large, black and it sounded like there was nothing in it. I assumed its contents were all securely stored inside because nothing moved in it as I lifted it into the storage part of the plane.
