The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  “They've taken over the whole area encompassing the VA Medical Center, the Children's Hospital, the University and more,” Phil answered while Jake got dressed. “There's a perimeter set up around the whole area and something like three thousand soldiers from various Guard and regular Army units, plus a handful of Marines and some Air Force personnel. They have a transport helicopter and, I think three gunships, a few tanks and armored vehicles. They've withstood everything thrown at them, both by the infected and by organized bands that have tried to raid them.”

  “So, there is at least one safe haven, at least one place where civilization survives,” Jake happily stated.

  “Yes, but it’s very crowded,” Phil continued. “I couldn't even begin to guess how many civilians are packed into that area. The military has armed some of them to help guard the perimeter and keep order within. The whole city, or at least what’s left of it, is under martial law. One can only enter the compound by invitation, and then there must be a compelling reason, something that will be of value to the authorities there, be it information or trade.”

  “This is great! If they're in Cincinnati, there must be other places and other cities where government and civilization still exist! Come spring, after most of the infected have died off, they should be able to start putting the country back in order!”

  “From what I gather, they're in touch with around twenty or so centers in North America and at least thirty others around the world, mostly in Europe with a few in South America and Scandinavia, and at least one in Australia. There has been no communication with Africa and very little with Asia. Understandable, since the disease supposedly originated in Africa and the first places beyond there it spread were, apparently, in Southeast Asia.”

  “So, you know a hell of a lot more than we do about this,” Carolyn observed. “What exactly happened?”

  Dr. Vargas sighed and found a chair to drop into.

  “I can tell you what I know about the medical aspect, but Phillip will have to fill you in on the rest. Mind you, most of what I am going to say is speculation; we will probably never know the whole truth about how this all came about.

  “It seems there was a medical research facility in eastern Africa, possibly in Somalia, though no one is absolutely certain of the exact location, which engaged in enough legitimate research to keep up appearances, but whose real purpose was developing biological weapons. Supposedly, North Korea clandestinely operated the facility, but this is just conjecture and perhaps they were accused only because of the need to assign blame to someone; it really doesn’t much matter now.

  “They manufactured a virus which was intended to destroy the reasoning power of the brain and turn humans into feral creatures and to introduce a hunger that could never be satisfied. Those infected act on pure instinct. They do not understand weapons and don't realize that they are dangerous to them. They have no fear, feel little or no pain and do not sense when they are weary or sleepy. They stop only when exhaustion or injury overwhelms their systems and then collapse and either they die or they sleep, waking up with no apparent idea of what happened to them, and continue to seek out food. They eat meat whenever they can, preferably fresh meat, but even rancid meat if that's all they can find. I don’t know why that doesn’t sicken or kill them; apparently, this is due to some side effect of the infection. They will eat other things, vegetables, fruits, insects, roots, grass, anything, if they absolutely cannot find meat. Even then, they seem turn on each other first. They also seem to have a metabolism that mitigates, but does not negate the effects of injuries; they seem to be able to continue on for quite a while with wounds that would stop an uninfected person immediately. Another effect seems to be a weakening of vision; their night vision is markedly poorer than ours and many of them are quite near-sighted.

  “The virus was designed to be virulently infective, almost with every breath exhaled, with no apparent symptoms for weeks, and to have a very short life span once active; weeks or a couple of months at most, after which time it was supposed to kill the host, presumably once the local population had been devastated. An invading army, properly inoculated, could then easily move in and subdue the survivors. But... The virus was accidentally released before it was ready, before a vaccine was developed. Would you continue, Phillip?”

  “Once the infection manifested,” Phil unenthusiastically took up the story, “it spread up and down the east coast of Africa and fanned out into the interior; you probably saw a lot of this on the news before it really hit the fan. Within a week or so after the first reports, it broke out in India, spreading like a grass fire. No one knew what to do about it, how to contain it, much less stop it. Soon after, South Korea reported thousands of infected streaming across the DMZ from the north, mindless of minefields and barbed wire and automatic weapons fire. The Chinese sealed their border with North Korea and moved something like an additional hundred thousand troops there to enforce border security. Meanwhile, refugees were trying to make their way out of India in all directions. The Pakistani military resisted all attempts to enter their country and it wasn't long before they began to bomb and strafe refugee columns as they made their way toward the border. The Indian Air Force intervened to defend their people and began air strikes against Pakistani bases. The situation escalated from there and, long story short, at least a dozen nukes were exchanged.

  “Pandora's box was now open. The Middle East was hit with waves of infected from the east, the west and from within and, very soon after, a small nuke took out Tel Aviv. Israel responded, unleashing their nuclear arsenal on their Arab neighbors who, of course, responded in kind. Russia and China began carpet-bombing large concentrations of refugees near their borders. Even here, in the U.S., napalm and carpet-bombing apparently took place in areas known to be heavily infested. By the time it was realized that the infection had already broken out in every major city in the world with international travel connections and that military responses were largely ineffective, something like eighty to a hundred or more nukes had already detonated. There was some attempt by the UN to form a collective front to combat the disease, but it was already too late; too many governments had already fallen, too much territory had become irradiated wasteland and half the world was in anarchy. Going on what little communication there is with the rest of the world; best guess right now is that only five percent of the pre-plague population is alive and uninfected.”

  They stared in stunned silence. A five percent survival rate was unimaginably small.

  “That still leaves like, what, over three hundred million people?” Jake finally broke the silence. “Maybe fifteen or twenty million survivors in the US alone? That's enough to rebuild a civilization. It will take generations, but...” his voice trailed off as he realized there might never be another generation of human beings.

  . . .

  The next morning Jake and Vickie awoke to the smell of fried eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes and fresh coffee. Downstairs in the dining room they were introduced to another dozen or more people and sat down to a hearty breakfast. The mood was less than joyful given what they learned the day before, but they answered many questions from the residents of the country club, especially about Jake's bites and the troubles they'd had with outlaws. The story about the women held captive at the truck stop drew looks of horror and disbelief, but Ted assured them that he'd seen things like that with his own eyes before he found his way to Hollington.

  “Are you sure you can't spend a few days here?” Brooke asked as she walked Jake to the Hummer, followed closely by a visibly annoyed Vickie. “We haven't had any new faces here since Ted got here nearly four months ago.”

  “Um, no, we really need to get back before the rest of our friends start to worry about us,” he answered while gently disengaging his arm from hers.

  “For crying out loud, Brooke,” Phil chided. “Leave the poor guy be. Jake, we topped off your tanks and refilled your gas cans. We packed a couple dozen fresh eggs, a side of bacon and a
bout twenty pounds of venison into coolers, too; we cut blocks of ice from a pond over the winter and have an ice-house.”

  “Oh, you don't know how much this will be appreciated back at the farmhouse. Thanks, Phil.”

  “It's little enough. We also put some sacks of seed in the back of your truck. Beans, tomatoes, carrots, some other crops you should be able to grow for yourselves come spring. I take it you have enough corn?”

  “Oh, God, yes!” Pete answered.

  “Anyone seen Eve?” Vickie asked, looking around.

  “I think she's saying goodbye to Owen,” Phil smiled.

  “Owen?” Jake queried. “Who's Owen?”

  “He's a young man here about Eve's age. I gather they found each other last night while Dr. Vargas was examining you,” Phil chuckled. “They seem to have really hit it off.”

  “Oh, good Lord. Young love. That's all we need.”

  “Don't be a grouch, Jake,” Vickie chided him. “He's the first boy her age she's met since the infection started.”

  “You knew about him?”

  “Of course! Eve introduced him to me right after you went up to bed.”

  “Where did Eve spend the night?”

  “You're not her dad,” Vickie reminded him. “Anyway he can't...” she stopped short.

  “Well, yeah. Hell!”

  Eve picked that moment to walk out of the main building, hand in hand with Owen. A year older than she and a couple inches taller, he was a good looking, rather thin blond with a smile on his face that looked permanently fixed. She introduced him to the others and he looked Jake in the eyes when they shook hands and pronounced it an honor to meet him. Jake looked him up and down and had to admit he seemed like a decent enough kid.

  “Good luck to you, to all of you.” Phil shook hands all around, as did the rest of the group that had come to see them off. Brooke threw her arms around Jake's neck before he realized what was happening and planted a kiss firmly on his mouth, inviting him to come back and visit as soon as he could.

  Jake hurriedly got behind the wheel, a fuming Vickie in the passenger seat and a very amused Eve riding in back.

  “One more thing, Jake,” Phil leaned against the open window. “We've run into small groups of people dressed in pieces of law enforcement or military clothing. They've claimed to be the duly constituted authorities in this part of the state, but obviously weren't. All they wanted was to take away our supplies, our weapons and ammo and food, and anything else they could get away with. They particularly offered to keep our women safe for us. I can't tell you not to trust anyone in uniform, but I can advise you to be very careful about whom you do trust.”

  “Thanks, Phil. I'll keep that in mind.”

  . . .

  “So, what's with this Owen?” Jake started in after a few minutes of driving. “What's his story?”

  “What are you, my dad?”

  “Eve,” Vickie rebuked her.

  “He’s just a boy about my age,” Eve answered, sighing dramatically. “His parents didn't survive. Phil found him in an alleyway trying to fight off two infected and doing a pretty good job of it, I guess. He took him in and he's been at the settlement almost since they founded it. He's a nice guy.”

  “Yeah, I guess he seemed okay...”

  “Never mind Owen,” Vickie broke in. “What's up with you and Brooke?” She sure hasn't been shy about paying you a lot of attention!”

  “I can't help being irresistible. Anyway, I didn't do anything to encourage her, did I?”

  “You didn't seem to do a whole lot to discourage her, either!”

  “Geez, we're over a hundred miles apart. It's not like I'm going to be sneaking off to see her on the sly.”

  “Not if you're half as smart as you think you are.”

  . . .

  “So, that's the long and the short of it,” Jake finished after they returned home and he'd briefed the group at the farmhouse on their mission to the Hollington settlement.

  “Five percent,” Tom shook his head. “That's why we've been able to find so many places unlooted, why we've run into so few other survivors.”

  “Seems like half the people we've run into have been outright nasty,” Carolyn added. “Why have so many of them survived?”

  “I don't know. Maybe it’s because they don't care about anyone else, because they're willing to do things to survive that decent people would hesitate to do,” Pete offered.

  ”Yeah, well, I guess we’ve all done things that ‘decent’ people would never do,” Jake sighed.

  “Okay, enough about things we have no control over,” Tom said. “We need to figure out how we're going to clear these fields and plow and plant once spring takes a firm hold. Phil gave us a lot more seed than we're ever going to be able to use, so we should be completely self-sufficient here if we can get a good crop in. I've seen a lot of deer track, rabbit track. It looks like they kept a few pigs here before things went to hell; a couple of them have been nosing around some of the out buildings. Must've noticed people living here again and figured they could get fed here now. It might take a couple years unless we can round up a few more of them, but we should be able to raise enough to put some meat on the table. Lot of good pasture land to the south-east; might be we’ll come across a few cows, too.”

  “Fresh milk?” Susan's face lit up at the thought.

  “Not out of the question,” Tom answered. “Might even be we could talk Phil out of a few of those chickens they're raising come spring and have more fresh eggs, too.”

  “Damn! This place might almost become livable!” Pete enthused. “This is farm country, mostly, so there must be a farm equipment distributor somewhere around where we could pick up tractors, plows, whatever we need to get a crop in, more than what they had at that small TSC.”

  “Be an awful lot of hard work,” Tom cautioned.

  “Can't be much worse than cutting wood,” Pete laughed.

  “You guys easily cut enough wood for at least one more hard winter so don't worry too much about that,” Jake said.

  “Cincinnati's only a few hundred miles away, too. Maybe things will finally start to get sorted out this year,” Vickie said, hopefully.

  Chapter 36: Ray of Hope

  They did eventually find a farm equipment outlet. Tom and Pete managed to get a tractor started, and Tom drove it back to the farmhouse. A flatbed truck there had a plow and some other equipment they hoped they'd be able to figure out later and Pete managed to get its engine started a day later after much sweating and swearing and bruising of knuckles and he got on the road with it just as the snow began to fall. By the time he reached the house, there was a light blanket of snow on the ground and the temperature hovered in the low thirties for nearly a week. Tom and Pete didn't regret a minute of the time they'd spent cutting and splitting all that wood.

  Jake stood on the second floor deck with the powerful binoculars from the island and surveyed the roads and surrounding fields. Not a single track beyond those made by deer, rabbits and other small animals was visible as far as he could see in any direction. A long way off to the south-west he could see an occasional wisp of smoke, as from a chimney, but it seemed too far away to be of immediate concern. Vickie appeared at his side with two steaming mugs of coffee and he gratefully accepted one, sipping carefully at the hot and very strong liquid and sighing happily.

  “So much for the worst of the winter weather being over,” she said.

  “Well, if there were any infected around who somehow made it this long, this should have done for them.”

  “We picked up a little something on the radio a while ago,” she told him. “Couldn't really make it out, there was too much static and it was pretty faint anyway, but it was definitely a voice.”

  “That's good news. Maybe it was Cincinnati. Maybe it was some other enclave of civilization. Anyway, that's the first we've heard from the outside world since Hollington. You're shivering. There’s nothing much to see out here, anyway, let's go back in
side.”

  “I'd rather stand out here with you for a while, Jake. It's so beautiful and peaceful out here.”

  “Enjoy it now, babe,” he said, enveloping her in his arms. “Come spring, when we start plowing and planting, you might change your mind about how wonderful this all is.”

  “Oh, all that hard work is for you big, strong men,” she teased. “We'll wait for you to come back from the fields every day and give you a hot meal and a cold drink and listen to you complain about how tough it is out there and pat you on the heads and say 'poor baby'.”

  Jake turned to her and looked into her eyes for a long moment, then held her tightly and kissed her.

  “As long as I know you're here waiting for me every day, I think I can put up with it.”

  . . .

  Spring finally did arrive; the snow melted away into the ground, leaves budded on the trees and fresh growth began to appear in the fields. The tractor needed a bit of coaxing to get started again and there were some comical moments getting the plow off the flatbed and hooking it up to the big John Deere machine and even more as Tom tried to plow a straight line across one of the fields. He eventually got the hang of it, mostly, and between the three of them, they readied several acres for planting.

  “You know what?” Pete asked Tom at the end of one of the long, hard days, “I think I'd rather be cutting wood again.”

  “I told you it was going to be a lot of work. My folks inherited my great uncle’s farm when I was fifteen. The minute I turned eighteen, I joined the Navy and swore I'd never turn another shovel full of dirt as long as I lived. Look at me now,” Tom chuckled.

  “I can see why you wanted to get away from the farm,” Pete agreed. “This is harder than I ever worked in my life!”

  “Once you see the first crop growing out of land you’ve plowed and sown and tended with your own hands, you’ll see it a lot differently.”

  “Well, maybe I will. Right now, I’m for a hot supper, a hotter bath, a cold beer and a nice, soft bed.”