After the Outbreak (Book 1) Read online

  After The Outbreak

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller - Book 1

  Dave Bowman

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Dave Bowman

  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.

  Prologue

  Almost no one knew why the Hosta virus was developed.

  Even the man who engineered it, Johannes Mäkinen, was unsure why he was working on the strain, or who had solicited his work.

  The Finnish virologist had been contacted by anonymous agents who used obvious pseudonyms. He read the email in disbelief: they wanted him to create a sophisticated and highly infectious virus. He assumed it was a hoax until a sum of two million dollars was deposited in his bank account, along with the promise of much more once he finished the job.

  Johannes was a gifted young scientist, but he had never been good with managing his personal finances. That made him desperate. What was worse, he had never given much importance to questions of ethics. So he accepted the job. He soon found himself on a plane, flying to a laboratory in northern Finland. A pair of tight-lipped research assistants were waiting for him, ready for his orders.

  They worked feverishly for weeks, and finally it was ready. As he gazed at the virus under the electron microscope, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. The structure was beautiful, but incredibly deadly. Its DNA was like a machine – infecting the host cell efficiently and elegantly, reprogramming living cells with its own DNA almost instantly. The viral envelope was impenetrable. Johannes feared he had done his job too well, and he was glad the project was nearing completion.

  The way the proteins rose from the center viral structure reminded him of the hosta plants his mother had grown outside his childhood home. He did not want his own name associated with the virus, so he figured Hosta was as good a name as any.

  He did not like to think about what the virus would be used for. Instead, he thought about what he would do with his millions.

  Johannes sent his assistants home, finished his notes, then quickly locked up the lab. He drove back to the hotel where he had been staying for nearly two months.

  While drinking his vodka cocktails each night after finishing his work, he had come to make friends with some of the tourists staying at the hotel. Northern Finland in late summer was beautiful, and people visited the region from all over the world.

  It was getting late, and he hurried, wanting to join his friends at the bar and throw back a few drinks.

  Miles was from California, and he had been traveling around northern Scandinavia, long a dream of his. He was leaving tomorrow, and Johannes wanted to hear more stories about Hollywood before Miles returned home. Also leaving in the morning were Akemi and Hiraku from Japan. He had enjoyed swapping tales with the Japanese couple, who he knew were leaving early for their long flight home with connections in Helsinki, Hong Kong, and London. Then there were Paolo and Katia, the tourists from Brazil, who would be returning to South America in two days.

  Johannes had been drinking with them all for the past few days, and now that his job was almost complete, he wanted to share a laugh with the international tourists. Unlike many of his colleagues, Johannes had great people skills, and he loved to be the center of the party. He knew not to bore people with talk of his work. He merely told his new friends he was doing research, and left it at that.

  The common language was English, which they all spoke to varying degrees, but the occasional miscommunication just added to the fun, especially when combined with the vodka and beer they all indulged in.

  Tonight there were even more people – a group of young Australians backpacking around the world, a Russian couple, and a family from South Africa. Johannes was boisterous and outgoing, fueled by his victory in the lab. He exchanged email addresses with his new friends, promising to visit them at some time in the future. With his payout for the finished job, he would be able to travel the world, he thought excitedly.

  Around 2 am, he stumbled into his room and collapsed in his bed. As he fell asleep, he had a strange thought.

  Had he properly followed the decontamination protocol after leaving the lab? He had a vague recollection of skipping a couple of steps in his haste to get to the bar, but he couldn't be sure. He pushed the thought aside, certain that he had followed the protocol, just as he always did. Then he slept.

  Two days later, Johannes had to drag himself onto the plane back to Helsinki. His body was weak and fatigued, and he noticed his arms and hands had taken on a strange gray pallor. He resolved to see the doctor as soon as he landed.

  As he walked through the airport, he saw another person with gray skin. Johannes stopped to gawk as the man walked by. He saw two more people with the same unnatural coloring. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, just as it had in the lab.

  He found a taxi and went home. He had gotten weaker in the hour since the plane's arrival, and he wanted nothing more than to rest in his own bed. He couldn't make it to the doctor's office.

  From his television, he fearfully watched the news reports of the Hosta virus outbreak. There had been a handful of deaths in several countries. Mostly those who died were elderly or weak, but even healthy people were starting to catch the virus. Panic began to spread around the globe.

  Rumors about the virus's origin spread almost as quickly. Some claimed it was a weaponized version of the flu from somewhere in Asia or the Middle East. Some were convinced it was the result of an experiment in global depopulation gone terribly wrong. But everyone, once they came into contact with it, knew that the virus was insatiable. In every country, people waited in anguish for scientists to develop a cure or a vaccine.

  Johannes knew their efforts would fail. The virus was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Its uncanny ability to adapt and change, the degree to which it resisted any efforts to counter its attack, was something unknown to pathologists. He had created a monster, and no one could do anything about it.

  Nothing would touch Hosta.

  He was in shock. He spent two days in agony, knowing it was all his fault. He had unleashed this killer on the world. Johannes begged for forgiveness, cursing himself and his selfishness, crying out until he could no longer think clearly enough to form coherent speech.

  He was dead within two days.

  By then, the Hosta virus had spread to every continent.

  1

  September 1

  Nick Redmond was having a very strange day.

  Almost none
of his workers had shown up to the construction site in northern El Paso, Texas. There were a couple of guys there, but they were so confused and disoriented that it was unsafe for them to be working. Their color looked bad, too. He sent them home, shaking his head. It had to be a bad bug to have rendered so many healthy men weak as kittens.

  It must be that virus going around. He knew it was rough, but he hadn’t known it was this bad.

  While he was taking care of some paperwork alone at the site, his phone beeped. His wife Kaitlyn had texted him. School had been canceled for their ten-year-old son Owen. Since Kaitlyn was at work, she had asked her mother to go pick up their son and keep him at her parents' house. Nick imagined Owen was happy to have the day off from school. Nick smiled to himself, recalling how the child would jump for joy at every snow day.

  After a couple of hours, Nick ran out of things to do at the site without the workers, and he left. He had some projects of his own to work on at home, and he could use the day off to make progress on them.

  Stopping at the corner store for a six pack, he gaped at the chaotic scene. Cars filled the parking lot, but inside the store the pandemonium was much worse. In fact, it chilled him to the bone.

  People swarmed the crowded shop, their arms loaded down with food, bottled water, and toilet paper. Customers were panicked and scared as they pushed each other and fought for items on the shelf. But the most striking thing was the way all these people looked.

  Everyone’s skin had taken on an unnatural shade of gray, the skin around their eyes was black, and their eyes were wide and bulging.

  Nick backed up, his hand on the door as he got one last look before exiting. He decided he could go without beer today.

  He climbed back in his truck, the scene still haunting him. That’s not just some little bug going around, he thought. That’s serious.

  His mind immediately flashed to the hunting lodge. Several years ago, he and his brother had inherited a hunting lodge 350 miles north of his home in El Paso. Nick and Kaitlyn had been planning to move their little family to the comfortable house in northern New Mexico next year. Their dream was to escape the city and create a homestead in the mountains – the wild, high-altitude land they loved. Nick's brother Tim and his family would join them eventually, and they would build a second house for the two families.

  The only thing holding Nick and Kaitlyn back was reaching their goal of a certain amount of savings to provide a buffer while they moved toward a self-sufficient homestead.

  But maybe it was time to go sooner than they’d planned. This bug, this Hosta virus as they were calling it, seemed to be much more serious than anyone had anticipated. Nick wasn’t sure if the virus was fatal or not, but he didn’t want to keep his family around long enough to find out.

  He drove along the highway access road, but didn't enter the on ramp. The highway was backed up. It looked like several accidents were blocking traffic. People were driving erratically. In fact, just a few blocks away, he saw a car swerve off the road and crash into a light pole, as if the driver had just lost all control.

  He passed by a supermarket on his way home. It was even busier than the corner store, and the parking lot was pure chaos. Cars swerving, people pushing carts loaded down with bottled water and packaged foods. Weak, sick people stumbling around in various stages of illness and confusion. He thought he saw only a few people that looked like they could still be healthy, but it was hard to tell from a distance.

  He was glad he didn't need anything from the store. There was enough at home for now, and there was plenty more waiting for them at the lodge in New Mexico.

  The closer he got to his house, the more convinced he became that leaving El Paso was the right thing to do. At the very least, they needed to flee the city and take refuge where there was less risk of catching the virus. They could return when things had settled down. He was sure Kaitlyn would agree with him – maybe she was already thinking the same thing.

  He was resolute as he neared his home. Once inside, he’d call Kaitlyn and finalize the plans. She could leave work early and pick up Owen on the way home. In the meantime, he could start getting everything ready and they would be on the road in a couple of hours, arriving at the lodge before dark.

  He pulled into the driveway and clicked the garage door open. He was surprised to see Kaitlyn’s car parked there already, but he figured that the office where she worked must have closed for the day.

  “Kaitlyn!” he called into the silent house as he walked through the door from the garage.

  He walked through the kitchen and living room, calling for her. When he opened the bedroom door, he stopped in his tracks.

  Kaitlyn was in bed, her eyes shut and a pained expression on her face. She opened her eyes to see him, and Nick immediately saw terror in her gaze. His stomach tightened as their eyes met.

  Her skin had taken on the same sickly shade of gray he had seen in the workers and the people at the store.

  He was too late.

  2

  September 2

  Liz Murphy stumbled down the narrow steps that descended from her second-floor studio apartment to her car in the parking lot, yawning and nearly dropping her phone as she tried to stuff it in her purse. Like most mornings, she was only awake enough to slip into her car and get herself into auto pilot to drive downtown to her job as a barista.

  Ironically, she didn't drink coffee. Never had. It made her nervous. But she liked the smell of it, and a job was hard to find in her city, so she didn't mind working in a coffee shop. The early mornings were the worst, though.

  It was a warm day, and she rode with the windows down to enjoy the fresh air. Though she hated dragging herself out of bed at this hour, she had to admit that there was something nice about being out and about while most people were still asleep.

  Except that today, the streets were even more empty than usual. Liz saw just a few cars out on the highway, a fact that only dimly registered in her groggy brain. Must be some bank holiday or other, she thought.

  Since she had graduated from college last year and started juggling service industry jobs, she couldn't keep up with the days off everyone else seemed to have. She had to work nearly every holiday and weekend, so she often lost track of the rest of the world and their schedules.

  She pulled into the parking lot behind the coffee shop, parking her old Honda Civic next to Frank's truck. She noticed Madison's car wasn't in its usual place, which was odd. Liz figured it was the first time she had beat her go-getter co-worker to work.

  The fresh air had revived her a little, and she felt awake and ready to face another day of serving fancy drinks to customers.

  She pushed open the heavy back door and went to clock in at the shift computer, but she noticed it wasn't on. She knew her control freak boss wouldn't want her to turn it on herself, as if she were incapable of powering on a computer. So she went to knock on his office door.

  "Frank?" she called.

  "Come in," he said after a moment's pause.

  "The shift computer's not on," Liz began impatiently, but Frank gestured at her to be quiet.

  "Frank," she repeated, annoyed.

  He pointed at the TV his eyes were glued to, then held his finger to his lips to indicate she shouldn't speak.

  Liz sighed. If she was at work, she wanted to be compensated for her time. Instead of wasting minutes watching TV in Frank's office, she should be clocking in for her shift and getting started on the day’s tasks. But when she heard the urgency in the TV newscaster's voice, she began to pay attention.

  "Albuquerque public schools have all been closed until further notice. Mayor Sykes says this is purely a precautionary measure until health workers can control spread of the virus. There have only been isolated cases of the Hosta virus, but local officials are working around the clock to contain its spread. Mayor Sykes urges citizens to remain calm."

  But the newscaster didn’t seem very calm, with her shaky voice and disheveled hairstyle. The
report abruptly ended, and her image was quickly replaced by an advertisement. Frank turned the television off without a word.

  "They're making such a big deal out of this virus," Liz said after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  Frank sat still, looking down at his hands. Liz stared at his back, waiting for his response, hoping he'd agree with her.

  "I mean, closing all the schools? Isn't that a little extreme?"

  But she knew she was wrong as she spoke the words. She'd heard talk of this virus for a few days and had seen some disturbing images of sick people in other cities. Like most unpleasant things, she had tried to ignore the Hosta virus, but that was becoming harder to do.

  She had to admit she had been a little out of the loop with current events – especially since yesterday had been her day off, and she had spent it disconnected from the outside world.

  To be honest, she had been feeling a little down lately, a little disillusioned with how her life hadn’t turned out the way she had planned since graduation. So she had spent her day off sleeping late, reading, and watching movies. She hadn’t even left her apartment, called a friend, or looked at her email or social media.

  "It's a serious illness," Frank said quietly, bringing her back to the present. "They have to stop its spread."

  "But just a few people have it here in Albuquerque," Liz said, clinging to the hope that the fear was unfounded. "Only a few isolated cases. They just said so on the news."

  "They're lying," Frank said.

  He swiveled around in his chair, and for the first time Liz could see his face clearly. She gasped to look at him.

  His skin had developed an unnatural shade of gray, and his eyes were rimmed in dark circles.

  "Wow, Frank, are you OK?"

  "I woke up feeling a little off today. Let's hope it's just allergies."

  "Yeah, it’s probably all the pollen out now," Liz said, not at all convinced, and feeling fear grip her stomach.