The Chronos Plague (Book 1): No Time Left

by Talluto, Joseph

  “Makes sense. Anything else?” I asked. It was late and I was looking forward to going home again and having another extended conversation with my friends from Kentucky.

  “One thing. We came across a journal entry that mentioned the contribution of a Dr. Helio Martinelli. Ring a bell?” Steve asked.

  I sat up in my chair. “Give me that name again,” I said.

  “Dr. Helio Martinelli. The entry was vague, but it mentioned him as a resource for a process that was giving them some trouble. Is that relevant?” Steve asked.

  “Only if he’s still alive. Thanks, Steve,” I said.

  I grabbed my notepad and wandered down to the IT department. It took about fifteen minutes to find an address, and I couldn’t believe my luck when it was listed in Williamsburg, Virginia. I didn’t even have to book a flight. I could head down there, find the doc, spend the night, and get him back to Langley. It was as close to a plan as I’d had in two weeks. Which of course meant it was going to go horribly wrong.

  Langley had spent the last month trying to convince Congress that they needed to act, that Jester was a threat that we needed to focus more resources on. But it was an election year and they weren’t about to do anything that might alarm voters. So we were on our own, as usual, and had to clean up the mess their lack of interest was going to cause us.

  I rolled out of Langley and caught 64 East. It was only an hour drive, so it shouldn’t be all that bad. Of course, I hadn’t been through this stretch of Virginia in a while and I had forgotten how bad the drivers in this state were. A rain had begun to fall, and people either drove too fast or drove too slow. I passed two cars that had spun out into the ditches; one guy was still texting as his car tried to drive up a tree.

  I slowed to a safe pace and just let the craziness pass me by. A forty-minute drive became a sixty-minute drive, and the road was crowded with people making their end-of-day commute. The trees lining the road just became a bed for the river of cars heading home.

  I pulled off the highway, slipping onto a separate highway which brought me to the outskirts of Williamsburg. I never understood how they did it in Virginia. The highway went through the woods, away from any populace, then you had to take a separate road to get into any populated area, which was still hidden by the woods. I think I liked Ohio better. You could see the towns from miles away.

  I followed the GPS and it took me to a subdivision right off the main road. The homes were nice three-story affairs, with large yards and tall trees. It was the kind of neighborhood you moved to when you had made it in the world, or at least wanted to make it look like you did.

  A left, two rights, and a small quarter-mile put me in front of a white house with a long stairway to the front door. I drove past the house, just taking it in, and noticed a couple of cars that didn’t seem right in the neighborhood. A little too old for area, as it were. There were two men sitting in each, all of them illuminated by their phones. That was really not normal for this neighborhood.

  I suddenly got a bad feeling about the health of the doctor, and I realized he was likely already dead. And if the men in the cars had already done the deed, then they were here for only one other reason.

  Me.

  I drove up the street and pulled into a house that looked dark. I hopped out and then slipped around back. I crossed three backyards, trying to stay in the shadows as I saw families moving around in their houses. I never had that kind of life, so I couldn’t feel any nostalgia for it.

  I reached the doctor’s house and went up to the back windows. Everything was dark, but I could just make out some details in the gloom. There wasn’t anything out of place until I looked over in the windows that made up the sunroom. There was a pair of legs twisted underneath a coffee table, and the amount of blood I could see told me it was a struggle. I left the house and went back the way I came, getting back into my car. I thought about what to do next and decided I would make a call instead of dealing with it on my own. I was good with two to one or even three to one odds, but four changed the game.

  I called a friend over at DC Police, who then made a couple of phone calls to some local law. I relayed what they were dealing with and be ready for a fight. If these guys were Jester, they weren’t kidding around.

  Fifteen minutes later, three SWAT vans came from two different directions. By the time the guys in the cars realized what was going on, they were being yanked out from all side and thrown to the ground. No one tried to fight a fully automatic AR when it’s pointed at your favorite head.

  The clowns were zipped up like chickens for the slaughter, and I came walking up a minute later. I spoke with the command officer and he let me have a few moments with the guy who looked like he really wanted to go home. After ten minutes and a very graphic description about what I was going to do with him if he didn’t talk, he confirmed what I suspected and my heart sank when I turned over all the evidence in my head and found it to be too coincidental to be true.

  I handed the man off to the authorities and they were headed off, likely to be buried in a deep hole in some Homeland Security dungeon. Good riddance, says I.

  I spent the night in Williamsburg at a very cozy bed and breakfast, but I didn’t sleep much. I had to be very careful with my next moves.

  On the drive back to Langley, I made three phone calls. One was to the security detail, the other was to the IT department, and the last was to the assistant director of Clandestine Affairs. I needed to have everything in place when I made my move, because I didn’t know who to trust or what could happen.

  I met with security in the parking garage and we went into the lab. No one was there yet so they waited in a car in the garage and I waited in Steve’s office. While I was there, I thought again about my course of action and everything that had happened up to this point.

  People started to trickle in and Steve was the fifth man through the door. He walked into his office and started when he saw me.

  “Jesus! Mac! What the hell are you doing here?” Steve blustered.

  I wasn’t buying it.

  “How long have we been friends, Steve?” I asked.

  “What? I don’t know…Why are you here?” Steve was wide-eyed and started to back out the door.

  “Sit down!” I barked at him I emphasized my command by putting a hand under my jacket on my pistol.

  Steve looked at my hand and sat down quietly. He hung his head for a second, then he looked up at me.

  “You’d threaten me, Mac?” he asked quietly.

  “You know me, Steve. I’ve killed men for less than what you did. You set me up. You called Jester and had them kill that doctor and then wait for me. You’ve been tipping them off so they could kill the doctors responsible for creating the virus. The one group of people who might be able to turn it around. So yes, Steve, I am threatening you,” I said.

  “You can’t stop it, you know. You can kill me and it won’t make any difference.” Steve said.

  “I know. You think you have nothing to lose, right?” I asked.

  Steve seemed like he regained his nerve. “So I go to jail. What can you prove?”

  “I think I can get attempted murder to stick,” I said. “IT found the calls you made to one of the men we picked up at the doctor’s house. They’re going up for murder.”

  We were silent for a moment. Then Steve spoke.

  “You want to know why, don’t you?” he asked.

  “It would help, but I don’t know if it will make any difference at this point.”

  “Humanity has had its run. We reached the end of our evolution and all we are doing to ourselves is sinking further and further into a hell of electronic reality. We do nothing for the planet except take, and we kill each other off at alarming rates. Hell, by the time—”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just shut up. I really don’t need whiney excuses for trying to commit mass murder,” I said sharply. Steve glared at me, but I ignored it. I called secur
ity in.

  Steve looked at the four me team and back at me. “You’d do this in front of my team?”

  “You don’t have a team anymore. You lost it the day you decided to be a criminal,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “My family is safe from what’s coming.”

  “You mean the family you tried to hide away in Pennsylvania? Yeah, they’re on their way home. I had some agents go up and tell them you wanted them back home,” I said.

  Steve lunged at me. I caught his wrist and twisted, slamming him face down onto the desk. I gave his arm a wrench and held him there.

  “You bastard! You’ll get them killed!” Steve roared.

  Everyone in the lab froze, and that’s when the security detail came in. They cuffed him and dragged him off the desk He was still trying to get at me and pushed his face close to mine.

  “They’ll get you. They know your face. They’ll get you,” Steve said viciously.

  “Not without you tipping them off. And with the help of your computer and phone, I’ll find them,” I said.

  They took Steve out without another word.

  I grabbed his phone and his computer and took it over to the IT department. They’d tell me what they found.

  A week later, I met with the AD and we went over what had transpired. I figured we’d make a lot more progress now that we were not actively being fought against. I got new orders and they were finally the ones I wanted. I was going straight after Jester, no holds barred.

  It took me three days to find actionable intelligence, two more to get the resources. We were ready to move when a different call came in.

  The world had let out its breath.

  And it was a scream.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Plague War: Outbreak

  Chapter One

  Harry rested his chin on one hand while reading a set of medical notes. The text slipped out of focus before eyes blurred by fatigue. He rubbed at them before checking the time and yawning. 12:30am. He felt like shit. It was his last of seven night-shifts at Randwick Emergency Department, and he was struggling to stay awake. Insomnia had stolen daytime sleep, leaving a soul-destroying exhaustion that blunted his mind and sapped all enjoyment from life.

  He stood from the stool and stretched, his lower back cracking. Harry desired wakefulness like a junky lusted for a hit. He pulled out a battered satchel from beneath the bench. Two large cans of energy drink, brimming with unhealthy levels of caffeine and guarana, lay within. He cracked the lid of one, sculling half of the lukewarm contents on the spot. A few drops spilled free onto his chest, soaking into the word “Doctor”, sewn into the threadbare scrubs top.

  Only another eight or so hours to go, then he’d be leaving for his next contract ‒ a job in Milton on the state’s south coast. Harry hadn’t completed the exams to qualify as an Emergency Specialist, stalling any chance of career progression. Instead, he’d worked agency contracts between stints abroad with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). With MSF, Harry had provided aid in the aftermath of natural disasters, and treated injured civilians during the Afghan war. Most recently, he’d spent three months in Liberia during the Ebola epidemic, working in clinics and occasionally with a “rapid response team”, tracking new cases to remote villages. The time there had stretched him physically and mentally. Delivering care in 40-degree temperatures, knowing that any mistake could mean exposure to a virus with an eighty percent mortality rate, was exhausting. He had returned to Australia completely drained, so much so, that he was glad of the enforced twenty-one-day quarantine at home alone.

  He’d struggled to adapt back to Sydney, feeling claustrophobic in the city. When the hospital had retrenched his job, he’d been glad for the push, seeing an opportunity for escape to a place where he could breathe more freely. The town of Milton fit the bill perfectly. The village straddled a ridge surrounded by farmland, and had a small Emergency Department that serviced the local population. His application for the role had been approved four weeks ago, and Harry had found himself a rental on the town’s northern approach, a house set two hundred meters from the road, and surrounded by green paddocks. On the highway at the front of the property was the landlord’s business, a heavy machinery hire service. The previous week, he’d picked up the keys to the property and carted most of his stuff down. All he had to do now, was move in.

  With can in hand, he headed to the staff base. It was dim, with most lights in the department turned off to keep a semblance of night. Only essential staff were present, and while Harry took another swig of Red Bull, the ambulance phone started to ring. He cradled the receiver against his shoulder as he grabbed a scrap of paper and pen.

  ‘Randwick Emergency, you have something for us?’

  Harry scribbled down the information provided by the dispatch operator, then read it back for confirmation prior to hanging up. Kate, the nurse working in the resuscitation bays with him, was looking over his shoulder at the pad.

  ‘What’s coming in?’ she asked.

  ‘A retrieval from the airport, sounds like septic shock.’

  ‘No worries, are you going to run the show on this one?’

  Harry looked over his shoulder to see what other doctors were around. The roster had been short of late. For senior doctors, there was only himself and another Registrar.

  ‘Yeah, might as well be me.’ Harry pushed himself from the chair and followed Kate into the resus area.

  By the time the paramedics arrived five minutes later, the resuscitation bay was ready to go. Harry waited at the bedhead while the paramedics hurried towards them. The patient lying on the trolley looked awful. Her breathing was rapid, and skin pale. While one paramedic relayed the clinical history to Harry and Kate, the other ambo slid the patient across on the sheet. Kate cut up the centre of the t-shirt with trauma scissors, then applied an oxygen mask, blood pressure cuff and monitoring equipment for heart rate and oxygen levels.

  ‘This is Beth Hazelwood, a 28-year-old woman with sepsis from the airport,’ said the paramedic. ‘A call was made by the flight crew requesting an ambulance on arrival. During the flight from Cairns, Beth became unwell, notifying the airhostess of her condition when the plane was thirty minutes out of Sydney. During the remaining descent, she rapidly deteriorated. There’s a bite mark on her left forearm that appears grossly infected. Before she became confused, a bat was mentioned – not sure if that’s what caused the wound.

  ‘Since picking her up, she’s continued to crash pretty quickly. As you can see,’ he said, passing across a chart with vital signs on it. ‘Her pulse is racing and her blood pressure’s bloody low. Her conscious level’s also dropped; she’s not responding to much now. Any questions?’

  Harry shook his head, ‘No. Thanks, mate. Make this the last one for the night though, yeah?’

  The paramedic gave a half smile as he backed the trolley to the ambulance bay. ‘You can always hope, I guess.’

  Harry started to run through a rapid clinical assessment. The patient’s airway was clear for the moment, with reasonable air entry to both lungs. Her heart was beating irregularly, between 130-150 beats per minute, and her blood pressure was so low he couldn’t feel a pulse at her wrist.

  Harry shoved a cannula into an arm vein, then twisted on a syringe to obtain a blood sample for pathology. The blood he drained was almost black. Oxygen depleted. Kate attached a line for the intravenous saline and started pumping it in by hand. The latest blood pressure result flashed up on the monitor; 65/35mmHg. Both Kate and Harry grimaced at the poor reading; things weren’t looking good.

  Two small puncture wounds, possibly from the incisors of an animal were present on the inner aspect of the patient’s left arm. As Harry touched the edges of the wound, rank brown pus oozed to the surface. The surrounding skin was a swollen, virulent shade of red. Trails of crimson tracked up the inside of her arm to the armpit.

  Beads of sweat sat upon the patient’s exposed skin, running in tiny ri
vulets to the bed sheets below. Abruptly, it was silent. Harry looked up from the arm wound ‒ the patient had stopped breathing. He placed two fingers below the line of her jaw for a pulse. Nothing. Harry felt a spike in his own heart rate, as adrenaline surged in response to the situation. He turned and pressed the emergency button while yelling out to Kate.

  He commenced chest compressions. On the third one, he felt a rib snap under hand. Blood misted from her mouth, falling back in a maze of fine, crimson droplets across the patient’s face. Kate appeared at the head of the bed, placing an oxygen mask over the patient’s mouth and defibrillator pads to her chest. At the thirtieth compression, Harry paused while Kate delivered two breaths. Another doctor and two more nurses arrived to help. Harry stood back from the compressions, allowing one of the nurses to take over CPR, and filled the team in on the situation as they worked. After two minutes, he called for a pause in compressions to view the cardiac rhythm; a wavering flat line extended across the defibrillator screen – asystole. A non-shockable cardiac rhythm.

  ‘Restart compressions. Suz, give her some adrenaline, please.’

  Harry’s voice was calm. The team worked quietly, intensely focused on the job at hand. After thirty minutes, it was apparent they weren’t making progress. Harry finally recommended to the team that they stop.

  ‘Time of death 0130 AM.’

  The other doctor and nurses removed their gloves, and drifted back to their own patient loads. It always sucked to have an unsuccessful resuscitation, significantly more so when the patient was young like this lady. Shortly, it was just Kate and Harry again. Harry grasped the body, one hand on a shoulder, the other on her hips, and rolled it towards him so that Kate could push a body bag underneath. A stream of blood-stained drool slid from the corpse’s mouth, soaking into his scrubs while the eyes stared sightlessly ahead. The unnaturally pale skin was still damp, leaving an oily residue on the fingers. Harry paid it scant attention. He was running the events of the arrest through his head, mentally re-checking each step to see if he had made the right calls, while ignoring the blood and saliva oozing through the cotton of his top.