by Max Danzig
Plague Z:
Outbreak
by
Max Danzig
October House
Publishing
Copyright © 2017 by Max Danzig
Artwork by Michael Bray
Editing by L. Miralles
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For my wonderful loving wife who is my cheerleader, first reader, and teacher, but most importantly my best-friend.
And for my kids who make me proud to be their father.
Prologue
In the dark hours of the cold October morning, an immense field of meteoroids entered earth’s atmosphere. It spanned an area extending from the middle of the North Atlantic just south of Greenland, into Eastern Canada and across the northeastern United States.
As the meteoroids and cosmic debris left the mesosphere and entered the stratosphere, they started to burn and become meteorites. The intense heat activated a dormant virus alien to this galaxy.
Few people saw the incredible show of millions of meteorites streaking silent across the calm ocean and sleeping landscape. It was a meteor storm never seen by human eyes. The density and frequency of the burning meteorites lit up the entire sky for several minutes making it look like daylight.
The small burning rocks left a glowing trail of green dust, carpeting the land like a layer of lethal pollen. Upper atmospheric winds sent clouds of the deadly dust blowing west over Quebec and the Hudson River Valley. It stretched across upstate New York, falling as far west as Toronto and as far south as Hartford, Connecticut, Poughkeepsie, New York and Erie, Pennsylvania.
Similar meteorite events took place in Brazil, India, Northern Asia, Eastern Europe and Southern Africa. In less than six hours, millions of people around the world were dead. Within twenty-four hours, a billion more would die.
It was just the beginning and Jack Walker was one of the first to die.
Jack was glad when the Maine summer tourist season ended because he and his wife now had their Bar Harbor home and B&B all to themselves again. Although there were no guests for him to cater to this morning, he was still up early as always. Jack had been out of bed for less than five minutes when the outbreak began.
Jack came downstairs and entered the kitchen. The room was cold, and he saw the window over the kitchen sink was open. He remembered opening it last night. His wife Allison had been baking oatmeal raisin cookies. The heat from the oven made the kitchen stuffy and hot. He opened the window to vent the heat and forgot to close it when they went to bed.
Jack closed the window and sneezed. “Dammit”, he muttered. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard, stepped over to the fridge, opened the door and took the orange juice carton from the top shelf. A sudden cramping stabbed his gut. He reflexively put the hand holding the glass to his stomach. Then a wave of dizziness made his head swim. He stood there with the refrigerator door open, a carton of orange juice and drinking glass in his hands. Sudden pain lanced through Jack’s head and stomach.
The carton of juice slipped from his hand to the tiled floor. The drinking glass followed and shattered next to it. Broken shards of glass mixed with the spilling orange juice. Mindless of the sticky juice and glass shards cutting into his feet, Jack staggered out of the kitchen and back up the stairs. By the time he reached his wife in their bedroom he was almost dead.
The virus caused the lining of his throat to swell at an astonishing rate. Less than a minute after the infection took hold, the swelling all but blocked his airway. Jack fought for every breath as he stumbled to their bedroom, but before he even reached the bedroom, the swollen lining of his throat split. He choked on a discharge of thick yellow mucus and blood as it ran down his trachea into his lungs. As he lost consciousness he collapsed in the doorway of the bedroom.
Awakened by his choking struggles, Alison jumped out of bed and knelt by Jack’s side. She wanted to help him, but could only hold onto his shoulders as he convulsed on the floor. She watched in horror at the blood spewing from her husband’s mouth and nose. By that time, she too was infected. Her own throat swelled to where the opening in her airway was the size of a sip straw.
Jack died in less than four minutes after the infection took effect. Five minutes later Alison was also dead on the floor next to him. Within ten minutes their entire street and neighborhood grew silent as a tomb. Within an hour the entire city of Bar Harbor became a graveyard—as did countless other towns and cities.
Chapter 1
Steve Marshall and his friend Marcus Wakefield were five miles from home before they discovered what was happening.
The friends spent the night at Marcus's uncle's cabin on Pawtuckaway Lake, in Raymond, New Hampshire, ten miles from East Derry where the young men live. They went to the lakeside cabin once or twice a week since graduating the previous June. They called it their “guy’s hangout”. Steve tried to talk Marcus into letting some girls come over before Marcus left for the Army.
“No way, man. This is my sanctuary, my getaway. I’m not interested in having girls here ruining the atmosphere.” Marcus said.
Marcus stood 6' 2" and had a muscular build from years of high school football. He kept his black hair shaved close to his scalp. Marcus had no problem finding a girl to hook up with, but not at the cabin. It was off limits to girlfriends.
At six feet, Steve was almost as tall as Marcus, with a skinny, but powerful, wiry build. With his tousled dirty blond hair and blue-green eyes, he also had no problem attracting girls, and sometimes women.
That night they hung out in the cabin watching the movie ‘Cloverfield’ and drinking beers Marcus took from his father’s sandwich shop in Manchester.
The next morning they were up early because Steve had to go to work doing machine maintenance and repair at a large landscaping company. Marcus had to open the sandwich shop. They were on the road headed home by eight that morning.
Marcus navigated the twisting back roads in his old Ford F-150 pickup on this clear, crisp fall morning. Trees splashed with the colors of fall, lined the roads. They were a few miles from East Derry when they stopped at an ‘On the Run’ Mobil station to get gas. As Marcus filled the tank, Steve entered the convenience store and got a bottle of Sprite and a bag of corn chips. He waited to pay for his purchases, but nobody came up front to the register. Steve called out, and walked around the interior of the store, but he couldn't find anyone, and nobody answered his repeated calls. Steve shrugged, put two dollars on the front counter and left.
Back on the road, Steve turned on the radio to hear some music, but there was only static. He dialed through the whole FM band, then switched to the AM band, but found only static or dead air. The stereo was an aftermarket unit Marcus installed himself, and they figured there had to be a loose wire or connection. Marcus kept driving while Steve tried figuring out the problem with the radio. Marcus switched his attention between the road and Steve fiddling with the stereo.
The morning sun hung low in the sky and glazed the windshield in light. Between glare and his divided attention on the radio, Marcus didn't notice the sharp bend in the road, and almost didn't notice the oncoming car. Marcus glimpsed the small silver Volkswagen Bug coming at them; he hit t
he brake and cut the wheel causing the tires on the pickup to squeal with the effort. The other driver also seemed as distracted because he or she came right at them. Marcus yanked the steering wheel harder to the right avoiding the other car and causing the pickup to spin around in a one-eighty at the side of the road. They missed the VW by inches.
As the truck came to a rest, they faced the back of the Volkswagen as it continued driving away from them. Instead of following the curve of the road, the VW Bug kept going in a straight line at the same speed. The car left the road, bounced over a grassy furrow, side-swiped the trunk of an oak tree on the passenger side, and slammed head-on into another larger oak. The brake lights never came on.
Marcus and Steve looked at each other in open-mouthed surprise. Marcus drove back towards the crashed car. They both thought the driver of the Volkswagen would blame them for the accident. They imagined all the trouble they’d be in when they explained to their parents what they were doing when the accident occurred.
It didn’t occur to either of them the driver of the VW could be hurt until they saw him slumped over the steering wheel. Marcus stopped the truck on the dirt just off the bend in the road, a few feet behind the crashed car. Steve got out of the truck first. As he approached, everything slowed. It felt like he was walking through deep water. As he got closer, he saw the extent of the damage to the car. The front of the car wrapped around the oak tree from the impact. The doors had buckled, and the windshield shattered.
Steve tried opening the driver's door, but found it jammed shut. Marcus came up to help, and both men yanked on the door until they muscled it open with the squeaking sound of bending metal. The driver looked like he might have been in his twenties, and they didn't need to touch him to know he was dead. His face had smashed against the steering wheel, and his head was bent at an awkward angle. The driver's dead, blood specked eyes gazed up at them in a cold stare as if blaming them for what happened. His shattered, toothless lower jaw hung agape. A syrupy line of thick, dark blood oozed from the destroyed face to a growing pool on the floor around the dead man's feet.
“Holy shit Steve, what do we do?” Marcus asked.
“I have no fucking clue.” Steve said staring at the dead man.
They stood there in shock for several moments, looking up and down the silent road and then back at the battered car in the cold morning air. The only sound was the drip, drip, drip of blood.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” Steve said holding his gut and turning away from the dead man.
Steve looked back at the body again. His stomach lurched, and vomit surged into his throat. He staggered a few feet away, put his hands on his knees and puked a stream of corn chip yellow goo onto the grass.
As he spat the taste out of his mouth Steve heard Marcus’s heaving breaths in full panic mode.
“Steve, what the fuck are we gonna do? That dude’s dead and people are gonna think we caused the accident.”
“No, they won’t.” Steve said.
The nauseous feeling passed. Steve spit a couple of times and walked back to the truck. He reached inside for his cell phone.
“What are you doing? Marcus said.
“There’s nothing we can do for this poor dude,” Steve said. “I’m calling the cops.”
“Yeah, call the cops... Wait are you sure? What if they blame us?” Marcus said. “And remember, I’m a black guy and I was driving…”
“We’ve gotta do something, we can’t leave him here like this,” Steve said. “I’ll tell them we were just driving along when we found this car crashed into a tree. Nobody needs to know we were here when the accident happened.”
“Yeah man, that can work; I mean we didn’t hit each other or nothing. That can work right?” Marcus said pacing back and forth on the road.
“Shit. The phone isn’t working.” Steve said.
“I think it’s too rural to get a signal out here.” Marcus said.
Steve shook the phone, waved it around in the air and even smacked it into his hand but he couldn't find a signal. “This is ridiculous. We’re only a few miles away from town. How the hell aren’t we getting any signal?” Steve said. He tried dialing 9-1-1 three more times but couldn't get anything. The phone kept showing ‘No Signal’.
Steve looked up from his phone to Mark’s expectant expression. “If nobody needs to know we saw the crash, then nobody needs to know we found the car in the first place.” Steve said.
Marcus nodded, “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here before somebody comes down the road and sees us.”
Pangs of guilt nagged at Steve as he pushed the bent door of the VW closed. They got in the truck and drove away. His stomach lurched again, this time because of what they were doing. As Marcus drove, Steve stared off into the distance trying to rationalize everything. He decided he’d call the police when he got home and tell them they’d seen a crashed car on the side of the road. Steve also concluded he didn't even need to mention the body. He felt like a coward.
The guys rode in a silent trance-like daze. As the distance from the crash site increased, Steve felt the truck speeding up. He looked over at Marcus, who stared ahead, his eyes large and dark, his lips a tight, narrow line. There were a couple more bends in the road before it straightened and stretched out for a clear half mile up a hill ahead of them.
At the top of the hill, they saw another car. It was in the right lane but it wasn’t moving. Seeing the car caused Steve to give into mounting guilt and made him change his plans again. He realized that if those people up ahead continued on this road, they’d find the wrecked car. Steve decided they’d stop and tell the driver about what they’d seen and ask them to call for help. There's safety in numbers, he rationalized. He’d get them to come back with them to the crash and report it to the police together.
Steve was thinking everything would be okay.
He was wrong.
Chapter 2
As they neared the sedan Steve saw the car parked at a crazy angle, half on and half off the road. Marcus slowed down and pulled up alongside it.
The driver's door was open, and the seat empty. Three other people were in the car and looked dead. A young woman sat in the passenger seat with her head tilted back in a silent scream, and two children sat strapped in their car seats in the back. Their grey mottled faces had frozen in expressions of agony and fear. On the face of the child nearest him, Steve saw streaks of drying blood had run from its mouth and nose down the side of its lifeless face. Marcus kept the truck moving forward at a creep. A few yards away on the road they found the body of the missing driver. He lay spread-eagled across the double-yellow lines, a pool of blood surrounding his head. Marcus drove up onto the grass on the opposite side of the road to avoid him.
“What the fuck is happening?” Marcus said his lips trembling as icy fear took hold.
Steve only swallowed hard and shook his head.
Bewildered, they didn’t know what was happening, but knew it was bad. This time they didn’t get out of the truck. Marcus pulled back onto the still empty road and headed for home.
Along the way they saw more bodies. They drove along in silence. They passed another twenty dead bodies. Some lay in or around cars. Others lay prone on sidewalks, in driveways or on lawns.
By the time they made it back to East Derry, dead bodies littered the streets and walkways. People seemed to have dropped dead where they'd been standing, doing whatever they'd been doing. Driving around in stunned silence, it was only as they neared their suburban neighborhood when they gave conscious thought about the safety of their own families.
Steve turned slowly staring at Marcus without saying a word. Marcus looked back at him in dawning understanding. His eyes widened, turned his attention back to the road and stomped on the accelerator.
In less than five minutes Marcus skidded to a halt in front of Steve’s house. Steve jumped out of the truck in a run. The passenger door swung closed as Marcus burned rubber up the street to check on his mother, bro
ther and step-father.
Steve made a dead run for the front door of his white, split-level house. His hands shook so bad he couldn't get the key in the lock. Once unlocked he burst through the door and suddenly wished he hadn't. He stood frozen on the landing.
The house was still and silent.
Steve called out first to his mom, then his sister Sarah. They were still sleeping, he told himself. They’re both heavy sleepers. You always have to call them several times to get them to answer. He took halting steps up the stairs to the living room. There was no one there. Not even the cats which were always searching for food or attention. He looked down the hallway to his right, and his heart stopped in his chest. A pair of feet protruded from the bathroom entryway. A sudden dream-like heaviness overtook him. He crept cautiously down the hall to the bathroom where he met his worst nightmare… yet.
Sarah lay face up at the base of the vanity with her feet in the hallway. Her eyes had bulged in shock and pain. Blood had run from her mouth and nose down her face streaking her blond hair a dark crimson. His Mom lay propped in a sitting position against the wall below the bathroom window. Her dead eyes stared at Sarah, and her mouth hung open. Blood covered her mouth and cut a wide swath down her light blue robe, congealing in a puddle on the floor around her.
They were both cold to the touch. Steve shook them and screamed at them to wake up and talk to him. Sarah’s face wore the rictus of screaming horror. Steve backed out of the bathroom in utter shock and wailed in agony. Yelling at the top of his lungs, Steve punched two holes in the hallway wall. He turned and slid down the wall to a squatting position, pulled his knees up to his chest, buried his face in his hands and cried.
