Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  Petra solicits the help of a nurse, Cassie, to sit with Midge and Betsy then she and Jim take off for home. Cassie’s hand is bandaged. She was the nurse Petra saw entering the hospital when the burn victims were admitted.

  Back at the compound, there’s a gun battle. Mimi is hit but Jim and Petra kill the intruders.

  Cassie calls to say the hospital is going into lockdown. Petra tells her to leave the parking lot immediately and drive back to the house slowly so Midge isn’t injured.

  Aggie, who has been MIA since she killed Arthur Foss, returns home. She has visited the salt mines their father, Bill, had marked on his maps and believes she has found a place for them to hide out until the crisis has passed.

  Realizing just how sick Midge is, and worried that the job may prove too much for Nurse Betsy, Petra solicits another nurse to come and help them.

  Sean, whose folks are rich, agrees to foot the bill.

  When Cassie, Midge, and Betsy arrive home, Petra kills Nurse Cassie. There’s an infectious agent out there; they don’t know how it’s spreading; the hospital is on full quarantine; she believes Cassie was infected. Unlike Aggie, who was plagued with misgivings when she shot Arthur, Petra has no such qualms. She has been transformed from a nervous Nellie to a “shoot first, ask questions later” warrior.

  BOOK FIVE: RAZE

  Alice Everlee is evacuated to Charles Sullivan III’s Red Hook, NY mansion, where her husband Bill is being treated for his life-threatening wounds.

  When Pete, who’d made it through the collapse of the New York Subway system, dies of his MELT-related infection, Charles and his entourage decamp to yet another mansion further north. Charles’ fear of germs is so profound that when they depart Red Hook, they blow the mansion and everything in it to smithereens.

  As soon as she has access to a working phone, Alice calls everyone she knows. None of her children respond. She decides they must have rid themselves of all plastics, per her instructions, which would mean they no longer have their phones. She eventually reaches her assistant, Fran, who’s thrilled to hear from Alice. Fran and Professor Baxter urge Alice to return to help them with the effort to halt MELT. Alice demurs. Bill and the kids need her more than K&P.

  Now at a “safe” distance from Manhattan, Alice nurses Bill. When he wakes, he asks Alice where their son Paul is. Alice is furious that Bill left their upstate cabin and put their son in danger.

  Charles Sullivan, while extremely rich, is developmentally delayed. He insists his staff cater to his every whim. When Alice refuses, he puts her under house arrest. She reveals that their pilot has a lesion on his hand; MELT might have followed them to the new house. Charles and his retinue decamp once again, leaving Alice and Bill to their fate. The next morning, Alice watches as another of Charles’ houses explodes, loads Bill into a van, and heads for home.

  Klean & Pure’s Manhattan complex has been decimated. The remaining K&P team have relocated to a New Jersey laboratory. Convinced Michael Rayton is the saboteur who meddled with MELT, Professor Baxter has banned him from all meetings.

  Michael, who in addition to his duties at K&P is a CIA operative, recruits FBI Agent, Jo Morgan, to be his eyes and ears during K&P briefings. Over time he comes to suspect that Jo isn’t keeping him in the loop. He charges his lover, Fran (Alice’s assistant) to find out all she can about the professor’s movements. If fully briefed, Michael believes he’ll be able to solve the highly-technical puzzle that this new version of MELT poses.

  The K&P team have samples of MELT-infected fish, rats, and human cadavers on site for investigation. Professor Baxter wants to assess the action of MELT on the body. It is, after all, eating human flesh as well as the buildings across the water.

  The lab that houses the specimens goes into meltdown and the team are evacuated. Michael returns to the lab to conduct some ad hoc experiments, hoping that his show of bravado will yield answers, return him to Professor Baxter’s good graces, and secure him a place on K&P’s science team.

  During the course of Michael’s experiments, he discovers an unmanned computer terminal and is able to reach out to his colleague Xiao-peng Zhang of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, to brainstorm possible reasons MELT has gone off the rails. Zhang suggests there’s been a structural change made to MELT, but their conversation is interrupted by a soldier who attempts to make a citizen’s arrest. Michael reveals that MELT is a biological weapon that was created overseas, but at the behest of the United States government. Fran disables the soldier and she and Michael race to catch Professor Baxter before she leaves K&P’s New Jersey compound.

  Jim Asher, Alice’s elderly neighbor, and his wife Betsy have taken the Everlee children—Midge (who’s in a coma), Petra, and Aggie—into their home, following the destruction of the Everlee’s cabin. Petra’s boyfriend, Sean, is still in the picture.

  Sean, whose parents are richer than rich, has offered a team of local doctors and nurses double their annual salary to come to the Asher home to nurse Midge. Furthermore, Sean claims he knows how to procure large quantities of prescription drugs, which will be useful once New York has gone into a post-SHTF freefall.

  Jim and Sean go to a drug buy. They score a massive duffel bag of opioids. On the way back home they’re stopped at a police checkpoint. The authorities are looking for anyone who might have been infected with MELT. There’s a state-wide quarantine being enforced. Sean’s stitches have opened and bleed onto the road during the police stop. Jim covers for Sean, claiming the blood is his. Sean takes off. Jim’s arrested and removed to a “health camp.”

  The health camp is a rustic affair: nothing more than a few wooden huts and several thousand feet of razor wire. The main gate is manned by soldiers, the perimeter is patrolled, and there are snipers in the surrounding trees. Food—in the form of expired MREs—is airdropped in, daily. There’s no running water or latrines.

  In the health camp, patients are divided into three groups. There are the “Healthies” (name says it all), the “Sickies” (those with obvious signs of infection from MELT), and the “Specters” (a group that is neither healthy nor sick. They are “(ex)-s’pected” to fall ill and are in partial quarantine). Jim is adjudged healthy and joins the Legion of Protection, a group of men who maintain order in the camp.

  Jim’s duties include burying the Sickies who’ve died overnight. He’s rewarded with real food, served in the Army’s private galley, which is housed in a sanitary encampment a few thousand feet west of the health camp.

  While collecting the dead, Jim spots Paul Everlee in the Specter’s zone. He promises he’ll find a way to get Paul upgraded to the Healthies’ end of the camp.

  Jim’s supervisor, Eddie the Enforcer, is a brutal man who maintains order by bullying and beating the inmates. Jim gradually comes to learn that the Legion isn’t only maintaining order but starving the Sickies and hastening their end. When Jim witnesses a guard removing a Sickie before their death and wheeling them to a nearby grave, he quits the Legion, claiming that his time in Vietnam has left him with an aversion to violence and gore.

  Wanting to make himself useful and ingratiate himself with the head of the Legion of Protection so he can spring Paul from his limbo-like prison, Jim decides to create working latrines. He pulls together some reluctant volunteers and begins digging.

  When he turns in for the night, he overhears a brutal assault on a young woman, Hedwig, whom he met when first being transported into the camp.

  Unable to stand by while Hedwig is assaulted, Jim sets Eddie’s hut on fire, grabs Hedwig, finds Paul and races to the camp perimeter.

  Hedwig is in deep shock and unable to fend for herself. Between them, Paul and Jim get her under the fence to freedom.

  A guard spots the commotion by the fence but rather than allow his friends to be recaptured, Jim lies in the dirt and feigns sleep. Paul and Hedwig are freed, but Jim remains a prisoner of the camp.

  BOOK SIX: PURGE

  Radio personalities Widget and Goobz host a show calle
d The Raw Truth. The show is a mix of prepper tips, conspiracy theories, interviews, and reports on MELT’s progress. During the show, Widget interviews people who’ve been trapped behind the newly-created “line” which prevents those infected with MELT from moving out of the hot zone. The line is held by armed soldiers who’ve been given the order to shoot to kill.

  Widget recruits some of his listeners to take their drones and film what’s going on inside the line. As a result of his efforts, at least one couple are freed, and we learn that Barb—who helped Alice and Bill escape the subway and Manhattan—has made it out of the zone with a pack of 37 dogs. Barb remains convinced she’s been called by God to save the animals who’ve been left behind.

  During the show a caller, who identifies herself as “Ella,” claims to have the inside scoop on the release of MELT. She says the release was no accident. Goobz, Widget’s technician, analyzes Ella’s voice, and finds she’s using voice-masking software so they’re unable to determine whether their insider is a man or a woman.

  Widget breaks the news that the Indian Point Nuclear Power Station is on fire.

  Aggie Everlee hears Widget’s broadcast claiming that Indian Point is compromised. She urges the family to move from Jim and Betsy’s cabin to the salt mines, which Bill had marked on the maps he was studying before he left home. No one listens to her.

  She beats a retreat to her hideout in the horse loft, along with Jo’s yellow Labrador, Reggie. She struggles with her conscience. She’s convinced her older sister, Petra, should not have killed Nurse Cassie, even though Cassie was infected with a disease Petra believes would have killed them all.

  While in her loft, Aggie spots a couple of invaders on the property. The two girls, who are in camo, dig up a couple of Jim’s gun stashes.

  Aggie rushes to their root cellar to find it has been ransacked; as has Jim and Betsy’s.

  Aggie tracks the girls, unseen, but Jo’s dog Reggie is apparently their BFF. The thieves have been coming to their property for long enough to befriend the dog. The girls allow Reggie to tag along with them for a while, but eventually leave him tied to a tree, frantic and howling. Aggie can’t abandon Reggie like the girls did, so she allows him to come with her on her reconnaissance mission but he eventually blows her cover and Aggie is captured, thrown into the trunk of a car, and driven to Wolfjaw Ridge’s secessionist compound.

  Aggie’s held prisoner. Reggie’s given free run of the compound. Aggie is tried for trespass and possible spying by the compounds’ elders during which time she discovers her mother is known to them. She doesn’t understand what this means or when it might be useful, but she holds on to the hope that they at least won’t kill her.

  When the compound is invaded by a rival group, who claim that Wolfjaw have been ransacking businesses and homes throughout the area, Aggie makes her escape.

  When she returns home her moral qualms have been all but banished. She knows she has to defend her family and their remaining possessions with deadly force if they’re to survive in this cruel new world. She leaves Petra at the front of the house with a bag of Jim’s guns and orders her to keep them safe.

  Paul Everlee lies outside the health camp where he and Jim were held as prisoners. Having freed a young woman, Hedwig, with Jim’s help, Paul is determined not to let her be captured by the approaching guards. Hedwig—hysterical and unmoving—does nothing to protect herself, so Paul has no choice but to remove her to safety by force.

  Paul knows he has to return to the camp to free Jim. When they’re surprised by a stalker, Hedwig kills him and dumps his body in the undergrowth.

  Eventually Hedwig takes the navigational lead and takes them to the south end of the health camp where the sickest of the sick are housed. Though guards patrol the perimeter, Hedwig claims they have created a blind spot where they step away from their designated patrol route because they’re afraid of contracting the flesh-eating disease that’s ravaging those in the south of the camp.

  Hedwig leaves Paul to survey the lay of the land.

  Travon, the head of the Sickies, spots Paul lying in the underbrush and tells him to enter the camp via the escape tunnel they’ve been digging.

  Travon has a plan to overthrow the guards and liberate the health camp. He sends the preschooler, Bryony, towards the guards followed by the sickest of their members. His theory is the guards will be too terrified to touch any of the Sickies and will abandon their posts.

  Paul, so hungry and thirsty he’s now hallucinating, is barely able to tell fact from fiction. Eventually he accepts a drink from a Sickie and is partially restored to his senses.

  The battle does not go as planned and when Bryony is beaten by a guard, Paul rushes to her rescue. He and Bryony hide in one of the guard’s small huts by the gate. Hedwig eventually finds them, binds Bryony’s broken arm, and the three leave the camp with a battered and bruised Jim.

  Hedwig steals a Humvee and takes Paul back to the Army camp to collect supplies. While they’re loading up their vehicle, Paul passes soldiers who are trussed and held captive. Hedwig challenges him to imagine what their crimes might have been and Paul finally has to face the horrific reality that war makes monsters and rapists of some men.

  Paul, Jim, Bryony, and Hedwig drive through the woods and towards Paul’s home. When they reach the highway, it’s impassible. People have abandoned their cars. Paul and Hedwig agree to walk the last few miles back to the house.

  As they approach, Paul is shot.

  BOOK SEVEN: FLEE

  Alice’s neighbor, Jo Morgan, flees K&P’s infected laboratory in New Jersey, under military escort, with Professor Christine Baxter, Alice’s assistant Fran, and the man Christine believes is responsible for the release of MELT, Michael Rayton.

  Michael, who’s both a CIA Agent and a senior scientist at K&P, breaks cover, explaining he was working for the United States government on a highly-classified project. He claims part of his job was to ensure that the weaponized version of MELT was never released on American soil. He has handlers who will back his story and is confident he’ll be able to clear his name, get back on the K&P team, and help Christine conquer MELT.

  Fran reports a conversation Michael had with a Chinese operative, making him appear doubly guilty.

  When it becomes evident that Michael’s contacts at the White House, the CIA, and the State Department are either MIA or not returning Jo’s calls, Michael dishes the dirt, laying bare the secrets of his handlers in hopes he can make them talk.

  Jo and her FBI colleagues have to decide how to use the leverage Michael has given them to pry information loose from Michael’s handlers.

  General Hoyt, who has been escorting Jo and her colleagues to safety, contracts the flesh-eating disease brought on by MELT and segregates himself and those soldiers who have similarly fallen prey to MELT.

  The convoy is ambushed by snipers. Jo—convinced that the shooters are from Wolfjaw Ridge (the secessionist camp she’s been visiting for years)—climbs on top of one of the army vehicles screaming that they surrender.

  Alice’s neighbor, Betsy, works with Nurse Nigel and Doctor Fred to save Paul who’s been shot in the gut. The surgery to remove the bullet is successful, but Paul develops a bleed and they are forced to remove his spleen.

  Betsy elects not to tell Nurse Nigel that his colleague, Nurse Cass, lies dead in her garage. Nigel is so competent and skilled, she doesn’t want to risk losing him. She allows him to think Cass ran away.

  Petra announces she’s pregnant. Betsy has to battle her grief and jealousy. She lost a full-term baby and was never able to conceive again. She reminds herself she will not give into her lower impulses, including not drinking. She’s been a teetotaler for 20 years, she’s not going to give in to the demon drink now.

  Midge wakes and seems fully engaged and functional for several minutes, but then has a petit mal seizure and is once again unconscious.

  Hedwig, who arrived with Paul, heads off to collect Betsy’s husband, Jim, and little B
ryony, both of whom are back at the vehicle they abandoned in parked traffic on the roadside.

  As the situation at Indian Point, a nuclear power station a couple of hundred miles south of them, worsens, Doctor Fred declares he’s going to leave. He requests payment in form of a blister pack of potassium iodide. Mimi, the Everlee’s grandmother, refuses on the grounds that he’s leaving and they might need potassium iodide for many months to come.

  Dr. Fred absconds with a van filled with stockpiled medication.

  Hedwig returns with Jim and Bryony, hears of Dr. Fred’s treachery, and charges off to find him.

  Nigel discovers Cass’ body in the garage and challenges Betsy. She admits she lied and he, disgusted and outraged, leaves.

  Devastated at the devolution of all her plans, Betsy hovers over the gin bottle until Mimi intervenes and returns her to her duties.

  Bill and Alice Everlee are on the road, heading home. Bill wakes from his coma but requires a great many painkillers to keep the pain from his newly-cauterized stump even close to bearable.

  Alice talks to Professor Baxter on the phone, eager to find out whether they might have been spared the ravages of MELT-plus because they have a genetic resistance to the compound. When Baxter says that might be a possibility, Alice suggests they—and their children—should lead the charge against MELT. Bill is vehemently opposed to putting his children in the line of danger. When news breaks that the hurricane has turned towards New York, Alice changes her tune and declares the stakes are now too high for any of them to head into the hot zone.

  Bill and Alice arrive home only minutes before Alice’s assistant, Fran, shows up. Fran reports the K&P team are up the road at Jo’s house and asks Alice to go with her and catch up with the team.

  Fran is altered, staggering. Bill believes she’s taken an overdose and together he and Alice make the young woman void the contents of her stomach.

  Alice races back to the house to get Nurse Betsy to help them. While she’s gone, Fran confesses she’s the daughter of Mateo Hernandez, the man who assaulted Alice as a child. Before Bill has a chance to ask her any questions, Fran draws a gun and shoots herself in the head.