Extinction Level Event (Book 1): Extinction

by Newman, AJ

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  Extinction Level Event

  ☣　Extinction ☣

  Book 1

  Pandemic Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Survival Fiction

  AJ Newman

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  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to Patsy, my beautiful wife of thirty-six years, who assists with everything from Beta reading to censor duties. She enables me to write, golf, and enjoy my life with her and our mob of Shih Tzu’s.

  Thanks to Patsy, Cheryl, Richard S, Cliff, and Richard C, who are Beta readers for this novel. They gave many suggestions that helped improve the cover and readability of my book.

  Thanks to Sabrina Jean at Fasttrackediting for proofreading and editing this novel.

  Thanks to WMHCheryl at http://wmhcheryl.com/services-for-authors/ for the great final proofreading and suggestions on improving the accuracy and helping me to tell a better story.

  Thanks to Christian at Covers by Christian for the fantastic cover.

  AJ Newman

  Copyright © 2020 Anthony J Newman. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. All events, names, characters, and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used as a fictitious event. That means I thought up this whole book from my imagination, and nothing in it is true.

  All rights reserved. None of this publication may be copied or reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher.

  As they say on TV, don’t try anything you read in this novel. It’s all fiction, and stuff I made up to entertain you. Buy some survival books if you want to learn how to survive in the apocalypse.

  Published by Newalk LLC.

  Henderson, Kentucky

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  Table of Contents

  Key Characters

  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

  Books by AJ Newman

  About the Author

  Key Characters

  Jon Stone – The main character of the series. A regular guy who was severely injured in a plane crash years ago, only to find himself in an apocalypse caused by a pandemic.

  Bo – A golden retriever who became Jon’s dog. Bo found Jon during the early days of the pandemic and adopted him. Bo’s owners were killed by the virus.

  Barbara Payne – Jon’s new girlfriend and ex-CDC research scientist. She left the CDC when she found out about their horrible plans.

  Jill Scott – A policewoman from Nevada who saved Jon from the CDC bounty hunters and joined him to survive. Jon and Jill become best friends.

  Samantha – Jon’s Artificially Intelligent companion and is an advanced robotic controlled vehicle that has a sassy attitude.

  George Ball – A CDC research worker who works with Barbara at the CDC in Atlanta. George is fixated on Barbara and has plans for her.

  Doc Green – Head scientist in charge of developing a vaccine to combat the virus. Lost his family to the virus and becomes demented.

  The Virus – A new strain of Coronavirus with Ebola DNA spliced into its genetic makeup. It was developed in a Russian bioweapons laboratory. The host was contagious after three days and started hemorrhaging at two weeks. Blood flowed from their eyes, ears, and mouths until they die at about four weeks.

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  Pandemic – A pandemic happens when a new virus emerges, which is highly contagious and is spread from person to person quickly and in a sustained way.

  Chapter 1

  The Rogue River Trail – June 2038

  A man’s body hit the side of the ledge on the way down the twenty-foot high ledge above Jon. Raining rocks and blood down on the trail below, the man plunged to his death. Jon looked up just in time to see the man careening past him and then heard a woman’s scream. He snapped his head around just in time to see the blood running down the woman’s face before she crashed into him. His grip on the side of the rock face was lost, and the weight of his backpack threw off his balance. Falling out of control, he saw the rocks and certain death below him when his fingers grabbed at the narrow ledge. They held barely long enough for him to secure a purchase on the rocky trail. His one hundred and eighty pounds dangled above the rock pile twenty–five feet below him. He was alive, but his bloody fingers screamed in pain. With strong determination caused by sheer terror, he lifted his head back above the edge only to look into the face of the woman who had knocked him off the trail. Jon gasped when he saw the blood oozing from her eyes, nose, and mouth. She could only be in her mid-twenties and had been beautiful before the sickness. Her face was movie star quality, and she had bright red lipstick. She was a petite black haired Japanese tourist he’d talked with when she and her husband passed by his campsite. He wondered why she had so much blood on her face.

  The trail along the Rogue River was well traveled, but Jon was at a section where the trail clung to a sheer rock wall and was about halfway up a fifty-foot vertical cliff. The path was only four feet wide at its widest section and two feet wide in its narrowest part. The shallow river ran below and was barely deep enough for the rafts and canoes that were frequently seen during the tourist season. Jon had been up since the ass crack of dawn. The air was crisp and a bit cool that morning with air flowing down to the valley from the mountains above. Jon had enjoyed his vacation until the bloody faced people crashed his party.

  Jon knew his ass was about to die a horrible death if he fell. Jon strained and lifted himself enough to get his elbows on the ledge when the woman opened her eyes, saw Jon, and mouthed, “Help me.”

  She tried to lift her head and shoulder, but before Jon could speak, she collapsed and rolled off the ledge. She screamed an ear splitting shriek for a few seconds before he heard the dull thud of her body when it smashed into the rocks below. He didn’t know what had happened to her but knew he would soon be lying beside her broken body if he didn’t get his ass back up on the trail above him. Every muscle strained, and his injuries screamed at him, but he soon lay on the rocky path, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  Jon knew he’d just escaped a horrible fall to the unforgiving rocks below but wondered what had caused the grisly and bloody demise of the cute couple.

  Jon thought, God, I know I haven’t been a perfect person, but if you save me, I’ll try to be better.

  He thought for a minute, Now don’t expect me to stop drinking. I’ll stop cussing. How’s that?

  Jon struggled to catch his breath when he felt the sticky liquid under his shoulder. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed. He shoved away from the blood, almost falling off the cliff but caught his balance and looked at his extended hands. His hands and arm were covered in her blood. He wiped his arm with his handkerchief and found several cuts and scratches. His heart sank, and he felt punched in the gut when he realized her blood covered his injured arm. Jon frantically dug into the side of his backpack to find his first aid kit. He wiped his hands and arm with alcohol-soaked towels and prayed they killed whatever bugs had kille
d these people.

  He knew the woman crashing into him hadn’t caused the blood to run from every orifice on the woman’s head. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to see the woman had some kind of horrible disease. That scared the piss out of him. He looked on the path in front of him and saw the puddle of crimson liquid hadn’t coagulated yet. It had the outline of his shoulder and forearm in the middle of the blood.

  Jon had a snotty nose, and his eyes itched for over two weeks before the two died in front of him. He felt a little under the weather but otherwise was in good health. Jon laughed and said aloud, “That would be a bitch to survive sure death from a plane crash and then die from a fall caused by a woman with Ebola or some other crappy disease.”

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  This was almost as scary as when he heard he might not ever walk again. He had been scared when he lay in the hospital after being in a coma for several weeks after the plane crash several years back and heard his doctor speaking to his mom and dad.

  He heard the doctor say, “He will live. The rescue team saved his life with the synthetic blood transfusion, but his left leg was crushed. There have been several advances in treating this type of injury thanks to the great work by Army doctors over in the war in Europe. The Russians supplied the insurgents with land mines designed to maim our soldiers' legs. This caused so many destroyed legs that we had to develop solutions to give our men and women a chance to walk again. That and the synthetic blood are probably the only good things that came out of this damned war.”

  He’d never forget seeing his mom collapse in his dad’s arms and have to be attended to by a nurse to calm her down. She cried for several minutes before they ushered her from his room. Jon felt sorry for himself for the rest of the day and wouldn’t cooperate with the nurses. He even thought about ending his life in a weak moment but knew it would only make matters worse for his mom and dad.

  The thought of being in a wheelchair and having his mom or dad forced to help him get dressed or take a dump shook him to the bone. He mulled it over and over the next few days but gave up thinking about suicide when the pretty blonde therapist started working on his leg. That was the moment he shelved suicide as a way out and wanted to live again.

  He balked at first, but she was persistent and made him let her move his leg. He cursed her a couple of times but then felt guilty when she hissed, “Cuss me all you want as long as you move your leg. I’m a big girl and can take it.”

  Jon broke out laughing because she was only about five feet, four inches tall, and a little over a hundred pounds. With her help, he gained his strength and could soon walk on crutches, albeit stiff legged. He had two sessions a day for a month with her and then three a week after they sent him home. He tried to work up the courage to ask her out, but she beat him to it. They were inseparable from then on, and she announced her intention to marry him. He really cared for her but wasn’t ready to marry anyone. She had moved down to a cottage close to his parents on Dauphin Island, and they spent their spare time on the beach or on his dad’s sailboat. Cindy Dame became his mom’s best friend, and he didn’t have the heart to break up with her when he realized he didn’t have strong feelings for her. He thought that maybe he’d been so grateful to her for saving his life that he went along with her wishes.

  Jon’s two-week trip to Oregon and the hike on the Rogue River were intended to honor his two friends who died in the crash of the bush plane, taking them to a remote lake in Montana for a fishing trip. They always took a two-week trip every year to hunt or fish, and had a trip to Oregon on their bucket list. Cindy was pleased he planned the trip to honor his dead friends but thought he would be uncomfortable during the several flights from Mobile to Oregon.

  She was right.

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  Jonathan Lee Stone was born and raised in the burbs around Nashville, Tennessee. He’d been the typical red neck kid fishing and camping with his dad and loved the outdoors. He played football, but his passion was running track. He stayed home after high school to attend MTSU studying chemistry. His grades weren’t the best due to his lack of focus and a couple of bad choices of girlfriends. He partied too much and studied too little. His dad stopped paying for his college, so he dropped out of college and went to work at Nissan, installing door panels on SUVs for a few years.

  He and a friend started a small business repairing phones, tablets, and laptops. They added debugging software and restore lost files the next year. His friend was a genius, and Jon supplied the hard work and management skills. With his friend’s brains and Jon’s work ethic, they expanded the business and soon had shops in Murfreesboro, Smyrna, LaVergne, and Nashville.

  They had several successful years and prospered before the plane crashed. His two best friends and a business partner were killed in the crash. He’d wanted to die with them until Cindy came along and saved him from despair and alcohol. He tried to go into one of his shops but couldn’t focus because he kept seeing his dead friends' bodies. He sold the business and moved in with his parents while figuring out what to do for a job. Cindy spent as much time with him on the Gulf as she could spare from her career. She wanted to get married, but Jon planned to start a business on the ocean. He thought he loved Cindy, but he didn’t feel the urge to marry her. Too bad, the plague interfered with both of their plans.

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  He sat there with his feet dangling and trying unsuccessfully to block old memories for what seemed to be an eternity because he was afraid to stand up. He made the mistake of looking over the ledge at the bodies below and saw the woman’s bloody femur sticking out of her jeans, and the man’s skull had split open like a watermelon dropped from an overpass. His stomach rebelled, and he tossed his breakfast down on the unlucky bodies on the rocks below. He wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve and started to rise to his feet when he saw a rat staring at him.

  It was a gray Norwegian rat with beady black eyes and yellow teeth, not fifteen inches from his nose. The rat lunged at him, and Jon moved his body to swat the rat with his right hand. This was a huge mistake since it caused him to lose his balance and bang his arm on the sharp rocks. He knocked the rat through the air but hit his head on the ledge. He took a deep breath and thanked God for not falling to his death.

  He thought. Jon, you idiot don’t look down. Just turn around and walk back to camp. We have to report this to the park rangers.

  The rat scurried on down the path in the direction Jon had to travel back to the Foster Bar boat ramp where his rental car was parked. Jon waited long enough for the rat to be long gone before taking a shaky step. His left leg buckled and he fell against the wall.

  The thoughts about his family concerned him when he remembered this unknown disease might have spread to lower Alabama where they lived. Then he thought, I’m being silly. This has to be a one off local illness. Hell, they could have eaten some poison. Don’t worry about Mom, Dad, or Cindy. This will be a bad memory in a week.

  He didn’t think about his own safety once his parent’s safety came into question. He tried to call them on his cell phone, but there wasn’t a signal. With renewed strength, he inched his way along the narrow trail while keeping his face close to the rock wall. He soon cleared the rock face without stumbling. Walking away without looking down, he didn’t stop until he was far away from the ledge and on much flatter ground along the river. A swig from his water bottle washed the disgusting taste from his mouth, and he lay back in the grass, chewing on a piece of Teriyaki Jerky.

  “I’m never going to do anything that could even possibly cause me to fall off a cliff again. I’ll need to change my underwear when I finish eating,” he said aloud to himself.

  He looked up at the sky, watching the fluffy clouds float by in the slight breeze. The pine scent was heavy in the air and smelled green to him. Then it came to him, there wasn’t any smoky odor on the breeze. There had been too many people in the Rogue River valley communing with nature while burning hotdogs over a campfire. The smoke was always present fr
om the flood of tourists and pissed him off. Where had it gone?

  The sun was high in the sky, but the cold air flowing down from the mountains felt good on Jon’s face while he walked along the river. Something across the river caught his eye. It was a bag of potato chips swirling in a jetty between some rocks. This was odd but not rare. Some campers were lazy and wouldn’t chase their trash down when it fell from a boat. Then he saw what boaters called ‘a yard sale’ floating down the river. He laughed because some unlucky boater had tipped over and lost all his food and gear.

  Things turned for the worse when an upturned red canoe collided into some rocks, bounced around, and went on downstream. Jon’s eyes were glued to the boat when a body wearing a bright yellow lifejacket floated in front of him and stuck in a brush pile. The lifejacket kept the body floating, with the dead woman’s face upward. Blood oozed from her mouth, and the pink-colored water swirled around and mixed into her brown locks. Jon upchucked again and quickly walked away. Now he was beginning to panic. His brain went into overtime, and he thought, Perhaps I’ve got the disease and will die in a few days or a week.

  Jon panicked and walked as fast as he could. He soon noticed his previously injured leg began to throb. He knew the pain would follow, so he forced himself to rest for fifteen minutes before heading out again. He hadn’t walked a few yards when he saw a small child float by face down. The infant had the same type of yellow lifejacket and bounced around, hitting rocks and bobbing up and down in the water.

  Jon’s mind wandered to how bad this situation could be. He thought I don’t feel sick. I just have a friggen cold. I wonder how long the bug takes to kill its host. Could this bug kill hundreds or billions of people? Is it only here in Oregon or worldwide? Then he remembered it could be some kind of poison. The thought poison might have caused the deaths made him feel better because he just had to not eat or drink anything that wasn’t a hundred percent safe.