Slow Burn Box Set: The Complete Post Apocalyptic Series (Books 1-9) Read online

  I nodded.

  “Fever?”

  I nodded.

  The thermometer beeped. She yanked it from my mouth and looked at it. Her shoulders sagged. She was disappointed.

  “What?” I asked.

  She looked to the soldier and nodded. The soldier turned and called for someone.

  “What?” I asked again.

  She turned to me. “I’m sorry, you’ll need to go with your friend to the quarantine ward.”

  The quarantine ward. That didn’t sound at all like a good place to be.

  “I’m fine. I just need some antibiotics.” I raised my voice. “What’s going on?”

  The soldier’s rifle came up and pointed at my chest. Another soldier hurried over, as did a few orderlies.

  “Calm down, please,” said the nurse.

  “I am calm,” I told her in a not calm voice. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “Please,” she said, “just go along with the orderlies. You’ll get all of your answers in the ward. I need to see to other patients.”

  “What?”

  “Please,” she begged.

  One of the soldiers pushed the barrel of his rifle against my chest.

  “Look.” It was my turn to beg. “I’m not sick. I don’t need to go to a ward. I’m fine. I just need some antibiotics.”

  The nurse looked at me. She seemed torn between choices. Nobody moved. Finally, she said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  She walked across the tent and approached another nurse. They began talking in hushed tones, casting glances my way. They were not in agreement, that much was clear. The conversation came to an end and my nurse came back over, with her head hanging a little lower, and her shoulders sagging a little more.

  “I’m not sick,” I said, as she walked up.

  “You’re symptomatic. You’ve got a low-grade fever. Your pupils are fixed and dilated.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They don’t contract when I shine a light on them.”

  “Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” I asked. “I’m not sick.”

  “Tell me about your stepdad. Was he sick?”

  “I…”

  “Was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But he bit you. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I stammered. “There was something wrong with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “He attacked me.”

  “Were you having an argument?”

  “No, he was just crazy. I––”

  “I understand. What about after? What did he do after he bit you?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? He just left you alone?”

  I said, “He’s dead.”

  That stopped the conversation.

  The nurse took a moment to recover. “What happened?”

  “The police shot him.” It was the first lie I could think of that seemed plausible.

  “Because he was attacking you?”

  I nodded.

  “And this happened on Sunday?”

  “What about you? What happened after?”

  “I…I guess I passed out.”

  “You fainted?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I think I lost a lot of blood. But I’m okay now.”

  “Your fever; have you had this ever since the bite?”

  I nodded. “It was higher at first. I felt pretty crappy. Now…I didn’t even know I had a fever. I thought it broke.”

  “Look, Mr…”

  “Zane.”

  “…Mr. Zane. Let these men take you to the ward. I’m sure you’ll be fine, but we have to follow the protocols.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “For everyone’s safety.”

  “So this is that flu from Europe that I saw on TV?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Mr. Zane. Please, let them take you to the ward.” She turned and walked away.

  The orderlies grabbed me by my elbows and guided me out of the same doorway through which Murphy had gone a few minutes earlier.

  Backed up outside the tent was an enclosed military truck the size of an ambulance, but with benches along the sides like a paddy wagon. Four people were seated in the truck. Murphy lay on the floor on his face, looking like a dead man.

  A half-dozen soldiers stood by, ensuring that all of us quarantine patients made it from the tent to the truck without wandering off.

  I was guided into the truck, ordered to take a seat, and told quite firmly not to get back out.

  I felt angry and defeated, caught again in a net of rules backed by the force of guns, in the hands of people who prejudged me as guilty of something I wouldn’t even understand until it was probably too late. A glance up at the soldiers with their murderous weapons assured me that it was already too late.

  I put my head in my hands and looked down at the floor. Murphy was moving slightly with each unconscious breath. How long would he live without medical attention?

  I started second-guessing my choices: calling the police from my mom’s house, telling the police the truth, escaping the prison, and dragging Murphy to the hospital. They had all seemed like the right things to do at the time, but each had just led me further and further down a hole that seemed to have no bottom.

  “Mr. Zane.”

  I looked up. The nurse who’d examined me stood a few feet away.

  One of the soldiers was immediately beside her. “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out here.”

  “I need to give this patient some medication.”

  “Ma’am, our orders––”

  In a very stern tone she said, “Sergeant, this is a hospital. I am a nurse. It is my job to care for these people, no matter what is going on. Now, I’m going to give this patient his medication. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you talk to your commanding officer who can talk to my boss. But until you do that, you need to let me do my job.”

  That was that. The soldier backed off.

  The nurse came over to me and pushed a pill bottle into my hand.

  “What’s this?” I asked. “Antibiotics?”

  “No,” she answered in a hushed tone. “The bottle is empty. My name and cell number are written on it.”

  “What?”

  “Listen. You shouldn’t be going to the ward.”

  “So I’m not sick.”

  “Yes, you are but…listen, Mr. Zane. You have the symptoms. You caught whatever this is, but you seem to be recovering.”

  That seemed like a curious thing to say. I asked, “Are you saying that most people aren’t recovering from this?”

  She shook her head.

  Crap.

  “Mr. Zane, your blood probably has the antibodies that might help in making a vaccine, but nobody here wants to hear that. Avoid the ward if you can. Slip away if you’re able, but don’t lose my number. Call me. I need to see what I can do about getting you hooked up with a real doctor. And for God’s sake, please stay away from people if you do get away. We don’t know all the ways this can spread. You might still be contagious.”

  “Why should I stay away from the ward?”

  “Just avoid it if you can.” She turned and walked away.

  “The other truck is back,” I heard one of the soldiers outside say. Without another moment’s pause, the doors of the truck slammed shut.

  I looked around at my companions inside. None looked well. Two sat with elbows on their knees and faces in their hands. One stared at me with wide, fearful eyes. The last had passed out and fallen over sideways on the bench. All showed signs of recent, bruising struggles. Each of them wore the bloody evidence.

  Not good.

  Chapter 11

  The engine started and the truck rolled across the grass. We bounced over a curb and accelerated away from the hospital.

  In the dim light inside the truck I looked down at the empty brown pill bottle.
“Steph G.” I memorized the number and stuffed the pill bottle into my pocket.

  The link between the European flu and the insanity everywhere crystallized in my mind. Was I immune? Really? Or was it just a matter of time before I went nuts like Dan did, or like the men in the jail? I shuddered to think about it. Could there be a worse fate than losing one’s mind?

  I flexed my left hand. My forearm felt stiff. I looked at the crusty scabs and surrounding puffy red flesh. I pressed a finger into the puffiness near one of the big scabs. I felt no pain but disgusting yellow pus oozed out. I felt sure it was only a matter of time before I lost my arm to infection.

  I shook my head. My situation was dire. I was powerless to alter it. Despair washed over me, but my eyes stayed dry. If there was one thing that Dan and the dead harpy did for me, it was teaching me how to shunt away troublesome emotions before they caused me more problems.

  I took a deep breath to clear my head. I needed to think. Steph said I needed to avoid the ward, and that’s what I intended to do. I needed to focus on escape.

  The truck slowed. It bounced over another curb and maneuvered through some turns. It came to a stop and went into reverse, then stopped again.

  The clink of metal on metal announced the opening of the doors.

  Outside were more soldiers in protective gear, with guns either at the ready or pointing into the truck.

  “Let’s go,” one of them ordered.

  My quarantined companions who were able made their way to the rear of the truck.

  I kneeled down to wake Murphy. His skin was hot to the touch—really hot.

  “We’ll get him,” a soldier told me.

  I looked at him, but ignored the order. “Murphy, c’mon. Get up.”

  “Out of the truck, sir,” The soldier said harshly, pointing his weapon at me. Another stepped up to the open door and did the same.

  I nodded and slowly stood. “You’re the boss.” I refrained from adding a vulgar aspersion.

  Outside the transport truck, soldiers formed a corridor that led into a pair of open doors. There would be no escape at that point.

  I walked through the doors and into an old, familiar-looking building. I quickly realized that we were on the university campus, which neighbored the hospital campus. They walked us through the entrance to a very old basketball arena. The soldiers herded us toward a pair of double doors that I knew to be one of many entrances to the main gym floor. They put us up in a tight line right at the center of the pair of doors.

  One soldier spoke loudly to us, “Because of the infection, I’m going to open this door, and I need to close it as soon as possible. So, as soon as it opens, all five of you need to hurry through. Medical personnel in the quarantine area will take you from there and give you the medical attention that you require.”

  Before anyone could ask a question or protest, the soldier ordered the door opened.

  I was last in line and was roughly pushed forward by several strong hands on my back. I fell into the guy in front of me and we went down like walking dominoes. I bumped the edge of the door as they pushed me past and I tripped on a pile of bodies and fell. The door slammed shut behind me, locking us in.

  Wicked thoughts blossomed with my anger and spilled out of my mouth in a long string of curses at the soldiers. I pushed myself up off of the guys below me and was silenced by what I saw in the gym.

  Chapter 12

  Gregory Gym was eighty years old but had been renovated nicely. The gleaming wooden floor had space for three full basketball courts. With the collapsible wooden bleachers pulled out and along with the upper level seating, the gym had room for a few thousand fans. With the doors locked and with platoons of soldiers ringing the building, it was a makeshift asylum for several thousand infected inside. More infected were being shoved through the door at discouragingly regular intervals.

  Most of those in the gym were frenetic and aimless. They were noisy. They sniffed and prodded one another as though looking for a meal. They scuffled. They screamed. Most couldn’t remain still, though a good number sat catatonically or lay like corpses on the floor and benches. A few rattled on in nonsensical streams of words like crazed meth heads. More than a dozen ran around the gym, attacking and fighting with whomever they bumped.

  It was a madhouse.

  At one time, I guessed, hundreds of portable beds had been lined up in rows on the floor. By the time I arrived, they were in disarray. Random pieces of hospital equipment were scattered about. More than a few of those locked in the gym wore scrubs or hospital lab coats.

  Very disturbing were frightening smears of blood and bits of meat in perhaps a dozen spots on the floor. More disturbing than that were the infected, who appeared to be licking at those spots or chewing on things I preferred not to look at too closely. It reminded me of Dan’s meticulous attention to the harpy’s carcass.

  Many around the floor had bloody injuries, torn clothes, and quite often, bite marks. Many were unscathed, but all had dilated, crazy eyes. The same dilated, crazy eyes as me.

  Having helped Murphy across the gym after the soldiers dumped him inside, I sat on the floor next to him. He’d since passed out on a cot next to a wall. He groaned and stirred. I reached out and felt his forehead. No change. He was still burning up with fever. The same fever I’d had that first night, I guessed.

  Some guy with shaggy hair, a beard, and hippie sandals very suddenly came sprinting at me out of the crowd. I stood just as I noticed him, immediately on the defensive.

  He made no effort to slow as he neared me, a fact I didn’t realize until it was too late. He hit me at full speed and slammed me into the wall, his face stopping at kissing distance.

  “They’re gonna kill us all.” he screamed.

  I put my hands to his chest and started pushing. “Get off me.”

  He grabbed my shirt to pull himself closer.

  I got the full stench of his hot, slobbery breath. His spit splattered my face.

  “Get off me, motherfucker.” I pushed harder.

  “Slaughter. Slaughter. Kill all the zombies.”

  I knocked his hands free and pushed. The crazy guy fell on his back but bounced right up and ran off to accost someone else.

  “Christ.” I looked around and saw a guy walking toward me in a bloodied lab coat. He seemed calm, normal even. I took a defensive stance and got ready to punch him in his glasses.

  His palms went up in front of him and he said, “It’s okay.”

  I relaxed a tad, but prepared myself for another kind of crazy.

  “It’s okay,” he said again. “I’m like you.”

  “What? What do you mean, like me?” I asked.

  “Slow burn,” he responded.

  “Back off, crazy man,” I told him.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m not like them.”

  “Just keep your distance,” I warned.

  He stopped about five feet in front of me and put his arms down. “I’m Jerome, Jerome Barnett. I work for the CDC.”

  I was taken aback. “The Center for Disease Control?”

  Jerome nodded.

  “The one in Atlanta?” I asked.

  “The very same.”

  “Okay.” I lowered my arms, then pointed out across the room, indicating the madness around us. “What the fuck?”

  Jerome looked around, “Yeah. Kind of overwhelming isn’t it?”

  “Overwhelming? Not my first choice of words,” I said.

  Jerome said, “I guess your first choice was ‘fuck,’ wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “You gotta admit, Jerome, this is pretty fucked up. Do you know what the hell is going on?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got nothing but time, unless you believe that crazy dude that was just here.”

  Jerome said, “I’ll talk quickly.”

  That concerned me.

  Jerome grabbed an upturned cot and pulled it over near the one Murphy laid on. He sat down in front of me. I found a bit o
f room on the corner of Murphy’s cot that wasn’t covered by Murphy and sat down to face him.

  “This is a disease caused by a virus.”

  “A virus?”

  “Yes,” Jerome answered.

  “Okay,” I prompted.

  “There was an outbreak about two months ago in Africa at a refugee camp in Kenya, just across the border from Somalia.”

  “What kind of outbreak?” I gestured around. “This?”

  “Yes. You probably saw something in the news about it.”

  I shrugged, “Bits and pieces I guess. I don’t really pay much attention to the news anymore.”

  “I hear you,” Jerome agreed. “I work for the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Services Officer.”

  “Say what?”

  “I’m an epidemiologist.”

  I was impressed. Jerome didn’t look much older than me. He was clearly not the slacker I was.

  Jerome continued, “I work in the field for the CDC. When there’s an outbreak of some disease somewhere, especially if they’re having trouble identifying it, they send me.”

  “You’re the guy who actually does the identification?” I asked.

  “No, there are doctors who specialize in that. I’m more of a response coordinator. When we don’t have a defined protocol, because we’re not sure what we’re dealing with, I usually get the call. Most times, it’s something run-of-the-mill, H1N1, Hantavirus, things like that, that aren’t getting identified correctly in the field. We rarely come across anything new, widespread, and deadly. I mean, we come across new strains and variants all the time, but nothing that meets all those criteria.”

  “Widespread?” I asked. “Deadly?”

  “I’ll get to that.”

  I frowned.

  Jerome continued, “So we started getting reports of something weird out of Kenya six or so weeks ago. It doesn’t take much to raise the CDC’s interest. A few cases of unusual symptoms is usually enough to get on our radar. So when this popped up, it was a few cases the first day, then a few dozen, mostly in refugees coming across the border. We realized immediately that something was happening in Somalia. But that place is pretty lawless, and we don’t go in there. Before you know it, I’m on a plane to Kenya and thirty hours later, I’m at the refugee camp. By the time I arrive, the cases are numbering in the hundreds, and it’s not just Somalian refugees fresh across the border anymore. Refugees in the camp are infected.