Copyright © 2020 by Amanda J. Baker.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under international and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
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CHAPTER 1
Lana gasped at the horrific sight in front of her. She’d wanted to get out of there the moment she ducked under the flap of the tent. She wanted to run away and never come back. She wanted to avert her eyes from the horrendous happenings in front of her. It was truly gruesome, and despite all she had endured—the war, the poverty, the oppression—she had never seen anything as terrible as this.
The tent stretched for what seemed like miles, so much so that she could barely see the end. Rows of beds and cots lined the sides, creating a little aisle down the center. The beds and cots were not professionally made, and some of them could barely be described as pieces of furniture. As Lana began to walk deeper into the tent, she saw some beds. Most of them were nothing more than planks of wood balanced on bricks. While they would normally be uncomfortable, she doubted the poor, suffering souls could even experience such discomfort.
The pain and suffering around her were indescribable. She donned her mask and ventured deeper into the tent. She was forcing herself into the lion’s den, into the face of hell, just to ensure she would not have an easy escape. As much as it pained her to be here, she knew she could help, and she knew she couldn’t back out now. Lana was so preoccupied staring at the people writing on the beds, she tripped over a nurse and fell to the ground.
“Are you alright?” The nurse immediately helped her up.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Lana was distracted, and the nurse could sense it. She put her hand on her shoulders, drawing Lana’s gaze.
“Honey, is this your first time?”
Lana took her eyes off the people dying around her and looked into the nurse’s eyes. She was an old woman; about the age her grandmother had been when she passed away. Lana could only see her eyes, as the mask covered half of her face. She stared deeply into them, hoping that if she focused enough on them, she would no longer be there.
“Um ... yes,” Lana responded, the question finally processing in her mind.
“Are you here to help?”
“Not quite,” she explained. “I’m trying to help, but not by volunteering or anything. I have some equipment, and I’ve been doing some reading. I’m here to get some samples and do some research.”
“Oh.” The nurse seemed disappointed for a second, but chippered up. “Okay then, you be careful now. And if you ever feel like coming and volunteering, don’t be shy.”
The nurse turned away from Lana and tended to the bandages strewn about the floor.
“Erm,” Lana hesitated. “Excuse me, uh”
The old lady turned to her. “It’s Ingrid.”
“Ingrid, hi. I’m Lana. Do you need a lot of help around here?”
“I’d say so,” the nurse laughed. “I’m not laughing at you, honey. Just at our situation.”
“And what situation would that be?”
The old lady grunted and stood up. She reached out to Lana for support and pulled herself up.
“There simply aren’t enough people to help the sick. It’s that simple. We don’t know what this disease is. All we know is that it causes all of this,” she said waving her arms around.
Lana looked around and saw the pain and suffering she hoped never to endure. She kept this thought to herself as she tightened the straps around her mask. A man right behind her was throwing a coughing fit, and she turned reflexively. It was a young boy, about her age, maybe even a little younger. He’d shot up in his bed and was coughing into the sleeve of his already bloody shirt. When he finally lay back down, there was a fresh patch of blood on his sleeve. He faded into unconsciousness as Lana approached him and looked him up and down. He was most certainly a teenager, no older than 16. And yet, he looked to be on the brink of death. His face was covered in boils, and although he was fully clothed and covered by the blanket, the trail of boils creeping down his neck told Lana his entire body was probably painted that way. His face was bloody and it seemed as though blood had been pouring out of his nose, his ears, his mouth, even his eyes. There were locks of the boy’s hair that were strewn about the bed and the floor, as if they had fallen off for no apparent reason. As he lay unconscious on his bed, he started convulsing. A series of mini seizures were slowly frying his brain.
“Shouldn’t someone be helping him?” Lana turned to face Ingrid, who was behind her trying to hold back tears.
“We can’t do much, dear. All we can do is keep them comfortable. And even then, we can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” Ingrid said, taken aback for a moment. “We don’t have the resources for starters. The government doesn’t care about what we’re going through, and they’re the ones with the money and the big scientists and the doctors who take care of these things. We also don’t have the manpower to help these people, and even if we did, there is no way we could give them the equipment necessary to keep themselves safe. No one wants to do this, trust me. Every time it happens, it’s the same deal. People are too afraid, and you can’t blame them.”
“Wait,” Lana interrupted her. “Did you say every time it happens?”
“Yes?”
“So this has happened before?”
“Well, not this exact thing, dear,” she responded. “But a similar pandemic of sorts did occur back when I was still a young girl, about your age.”
“Can you tell me about it?” Lana asked. For some reason she was curious.
“Well, there isn’t much to tell. It was when I was twenty or so, about thirty years ago. And we had an event like this.”
“An event?”
“A mysterious illness. No one knew where it came from, but one day, there it was, and … ”
Ingrid trailed off.
“And?” Lana pushed.
“And it was terrible,” she gasped. Tears began freely rolling down her face. “It was almost as bad as what’s happening right here, if not even worse.”
“Worse than this?”
“Yes.” She wiped her tears away and forced a smile. “I try not to think about it, but it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. I helped out in the medical tent back then too, and we saw all sorts of people come in, from babies to children to adults. It impacted everyone. It didn’t discriminate, and worst of all, it killed.”
“Was it anything like this?”
“Kind of,” Ingrid responded. “It was similar in the sense that we didn’t know anything about it. It was unusual. Not natural, almost. It wasn’t the cold or the flu or
a stomach bug, it was just … a killer.”
“How so?”
“You mean how did it kill?
“Yes.”
“In one of the most horrendous ways possible. First, it would cause you to lose all control of your muscles. You would be paralyzed, trapped in your own body. Then, it would cause your internal systems to attack themselves, essentially making you a ticking time bomb. You’d be stuck waiting for your own body to deliever the fatal blow to one of your important organs. But people usually didn’t get that far.”
“What do you mean?” Lana asked.
“It was the symptoms that killed the people. The most common was bleeding through every orifice possible—the eyes, the ears, the nose. Most people died due to blood loss when we didn’t even realize they were dying. Others died a far more violent death.”
Ingrid paused. Tears welled up in her eyes again.
“Sometimes they choked to death on their own blood. They couldn’t do anything about it, they were paralyzed. They couldn’t move or even scream for help. They just lay there quietly, surrounded by people, slowly dying, unable to prevent their own fate.”
Lana was at a loss for words. The mere thought of what Ingrid had just described shook her to her core.
But there was something else she found more interesting. Both diseases—the one that shook the world three decades ago and this current one—exhibited similar symptoms. Bleeding through the orifices was an unusual symptom, too, and it nagged Lana in a way she couldn’t quite pin down. She was brought back to reality when the child behind her went into another coughing fit. But this time, it did not stop.
Ingrid rushed over to him when he collapsed into his bed. Instead of fading away into unconsciousness, he began to seize. She slowly turned him on his side and allowed for the vomit and blood in his mouth to drain out, making sure he wouldn’t choke on it. Ingrid was calm and collected as she held the boy. Nobody batted an eye, no one rushed over to help them, nobody even looked in their general direction. This was a frequent happening which no longer surprise anyone. Not to mention most of the patients were busy tending to their own needs.
The boy finally stopped seizing. As he shifted onto his back, Lana noticed his eyes had begun to bleed once again, profusely this time. It was as though he was crying thick tears of blood. The blood ran down his cheeks and joined the flow from his nose, dripping down to the bed. Lana slowly approached him and knelt to the ground beside him. She tried to keep her tears at bay. He looked oddly at peace now that his violent seizure had passed. His breathing was slow and shallow, she noticed as his chest rose up and down. From afar, one could easily mistake him for a boy taking a nap after a busy day. The image of his bloody tears was almost serene compared to some of the other horrors she’d witnessed. She reached out with a trembling hand, intending to wipe the blood off his face, when his eyes opened and startled her. She drew her hand back to her chest, her heart racing. The boy stared at her with lifeless eyes.
“Hi,” she said, wondering if he could hear her.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he stared at her coldly. She waved to him, looking for any indication that he could hear her. But he didn’t offer her much.
“Can you hear me?” she asked as she moved her hand in front of his face. He barely blinked. She inched towards him, wanting to feel close to him for some reason. Perhaps she just wanted to provide him with some comfort in his final moments. Perhaps she wanted to see if he was aware of her presence and his existence. She did not know what pulled her close to him, but something did.
Something did, at least—until it didn’t. She flew back as his back began seizing up. He was violently whipped from his side and pulled up by his muscles, which were working against him. His back flexed and arched painfully, ripping the tiny fibers that muscles and tissue are made of, and he screamed in pain. He collapsed, but it wasn’t done yet. Lana bore witness to the most violent and gruesome seizure she had ever seen. His head whipped back against the pillow, rocking the bed and everything around him. Bottles of medications and strips of gauze placed on a table next to the bed flew off. Nurses rushed to the boy's aid and tried to turn him on his side. Lana had landed on her back and was too shocked to pull herself back up. She watched as they shouted at one another to hold him down, to cushion the back of his head, to turn him on his side. The nurses and a doctor were worried he would bite down on his tongue, so they tried to administer some sort of medicine to calm him down. But the boy's violent movements knocked the syringe out of one of the professionals’ hands and it skittered to rest against Lana’s foot. They were now trying to wipe away some of the blood on his face, but there was too much coming in too fast. Then, suddenly, there was nothing.
It was as though a storm had passed, leaving behind death and destruction in its wake. But after the storm always came a calm. It was the same feeling Lana had experienced during the bombings. It would always come unexpectedly. They never knew when they would be attacked, and when they finally were, it was the most horrendous thing in the world. Bombs would explode inches from them, shrapnel digging into their skin; entire buildings would collapse, sometimes trapping people underneath. If you were lucky you would get killed immediately, and if you weren’t, you would wish you had. The one weird thing Lana always noted in her youth was how, after the bombs had exploded and after the planes had disappeared into the clouds, there was always a sense of calm and quiet. It would take everyone a moment to analyze their surroundings, to see if they were hurt, and then it would take a few more minutes for the crying and screaming and yelling to begin. Right afterward, there was peace.
Lana experienced the same kind of peace when the boy stopped seizing. They checked his pulse, although she already knew what they were going to find. His face was covered in blood and turned towards her. His eyes were wide open and stared into her soul as tears of blood slowly inched down his face. Nobody tried to revive him. Nobody tried CPR or brought over a defibrillator. Lana wasn’t even sure they had one. He was gone, plain and simple as that. And with him, a part of her died.
Lana slowly stood up and turned to exit. She didn’t even realize what she was doing. She had yet to process what she had just seen. Although Lana had walked in here with the intention to study the disease and potentially cure it, she wasn’t so sure she could anymore; what’s more, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to anymore. Her walk turned into a jog, and eventually a run. She darted by the obstacles in front of her and exploded through the tent flaps into the open air. The man from before stared at her with sympathetic eyes, but she did not notice him. She just ran as far as she could. And she didn’t stop until she was sure she had escaped what felt like the clutches of death, slowly wrapping around her the longer she had stayed in that tent.
CHAPTER 2
"What do we have so far?" Jeremy asked the people in the room. He was in a high-level meeting with his team, the smartest people in all of Lax, and yet he was having trouble getting anywhere with the vaccine.
"We’ve been reviewing the data and the samples of the virus that were sent over to us," said a young scientist.
"We’ve been doing that for quite some time, haven't we?"
"Yes, sir."
"And have we gotten anywhere?"
No one answered him, which Jeremy supposed was an answer in and of itself.
"Allow me to get this straight," he said, standing from the head of the table starting to pace. "A few weeks ago, we received the samples of the virus as well as detailed reports on how it advances. After that, we also received a very generous sample size for testing. For a week now, you have observed the healthy and the sick, and we have seen about sixty people die within the past two days alone. This is an incredibly deadly and dangerous virus, and you have been given access to anything you could possibly need to develop a vaccine. And yet, we’re no closer than we were seven days ago?"
Jeremy looked to the room for confirmation. The young scientist who’d spoken earlier replied in a meek voice, "Yes, sir."
"What was that?" Jeremy asked, staring him down.
"Yes, sir." He didn't dare make eye contact.
Jeremy sighed and took off his glasses. He rubbed his temples and gently set his lenses down on the table. He looked up at the room. They stared back at him with nervous expressions. Jeremy sighed, and then he explosively slammed his palms down on the table. His glasses flew up in the air and landed with a soft thud on the ground. A glass of coffee on the far end of the boardroom table tipped over, brown liquid staining the marble white. A few people even jumped in their seats.
"What the hell are you guys doing here?" he yelled. "This is the deadliest virus we have ever seen. Hell, this is the virus that will either make or break your careers. You all received the best education in the world. You are the smartest scientists of your generations, and you mean to tell me that two dozen of you cannot solve this issue? There are two dozen of you, for crying out loud!"
Jeremy paused to take a breath. He sighed, regaining his composure. He bent down to pick up his glasses and took a seat.
"Figure it out," he said quietly, his voice dripping with disappointment. "People are dying. I need you all to do your jobs. That's all."
His team gathered their things and filtered out of the room, leaving him by himself. He was tired and running out of ideas. Jeremy had realized this assignment was taking a toll on him over the past few days, and he was beginning to take his own frustrations out on others. He knew deep down that it wasn’t his team’s fault they had not yet succeeded. He had tried to move forward with the first step of development. He had tried to analyze the vaccine and classify it into one of the common domains, with hopes that the process would then provide a framework as to how the vaccine should be developed. Even he had come up short.
As much as Jeremy hated to admit it, it seemed to be a truly impossible task, and that wasn’t a word he liked to use. Impossible.
Broken - Broken Alpha Series Book 2 Page 1