by Jack Hunt
PHOBIA
A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL THRILLER
JACK HUNT
DIRECT RESPONSE PUBLISHING
CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Synopsis
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
A Plea
Newsletter
About the Author
Also by Jack Hunt
Copyright © 2016 by Jack Hunt
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.
PHOBIA is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For my Family
SYNOPSIS
For reclusive germophobe, Frank Talbot, dealing with his crippling fear of contamination and germs has always been a challenge, but now he may have no choice.
After a mysterious outbreak of a highly lethal virus ravages the globe and hundreds succumb to the contagious illness, the U.S government instigates a cordon sanitaire in major cities to contain it from spreading rapidly around the nation.
At the onset of the epidemic, his ex-wife, Kate, an epidemiologist for the CDC, warns Frank and their daughter, Ella to prepare for the worst. The only hope of survival is retreating to their cottage on one of the isolated islands in the St. Lawrence River. Easy for Frank, he’s already there but when his daughter suffers a major setback, Frank is forced out of his comfort zone.
As riots ensue and electrical fences are breached, the H9N3 Agora Virus is unleashed and becomes unstoppable. Transportation systems cease, grocery stores are looted, hospitals become infectious morgues, and chaos erupts.
Now his greatest fear is about to become his reality. Frank must embark on a dangerous journey into the heart of an infected country, to rescue his daughter before society collapses.
Will ruthless men stop him, or his own fear?
PROLOGUE
He cupped his hands over his ears to silence the torment. They called out his name, creeping towards him like venomous snakes. Let us in. Let us in. This was how Frank Talbot would die, cowering under a desk like a pussy, surrounded by an army of them.
They wanted to slide through his veins, destroy the heart and end his pitiful existence.
One bullet. That was all it would take. His hand trembled as he lifted the muzzle of the gun to his temple and prepared to squeeze the trigger. Will I feel anything? What if I miss? I would be laying here with half of my brain seeping out, and then there would be no escape.
He swallowed hard. His eyes flitted around the room.
Squeeze it. Do it. And this nightmare can all be over.
This is no life. You know it’s the right thing, Frank.
Do it for Kate. Do it for Ella.
They don’t deserve to suffer. You would be doing them all a favor.
Flashbacks of scrubbing raw hands until they bled tore through his mind. Hearing them cough and sneeze all around him. Seeing the look of death in their eyes. Dwelling on the thought of sickness taking over his body made him break out in hives.
Enough.
No, it doesn’t end here. Put that gun down, you fool.
Every few seconds another spark of hope.
Get up and get out there and face them like a man, you pussy. You are so much more than this. Don’t let them get the better of you. Seventeen years in the army, staring down the barrel of guns, seeing your friends’ heads get blown off and you can’t handle this? What has happened to you? Are you even a man? The faint voice of his drill sergeant berated him.
He squirmed beneath the desk. Out of view. Out of mind, he reassured himself. They won’t find me here, will they?
The creak of a floorboard. They were getting closer. Oh god, no. He began to feel hot around the collar. It was choking him. The heaviness in his chest, it was too much. I need to breathe. I need to breathe.
The buzzing sound of a phone rattling on the desk above startled him.
No, it’s a trick. It’s a trick. They want to draw me out.
He slammed his fist against the floor. He was tired of running. Tired of the taunting and the anticipation of pain. He didn’t want to go through it again. Over and over, it was a sick carousel.
The rattling ceased and it was peaceful again, if only for a few seconds.
Okay, okay. You can do this, Frank. Crawl out, get to your feet, climb out the window and sprint to the car. You still have time. You’ve got this.
Slowly but surely he clambered out from beneath the solid oak desk and peered over the top at the opaque glass that surrounded the office. His heart skipped a beat. A shadow passed by on the other side. It was nothing more than a silhouette. An icy shot of fear went through him. He’s found me. I don’t know how he got in, but he’s found me.
A door handle rattled, and Frank swallowed hard.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at the window. Slide it open and get out. He reached into his pockets and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves. He snapped them on. Just the feel of them against his skin made him feel a burst of confidence.
“Frank!” A gruff male voice called out to him. “I know you are in there.”
“Go away.”
“Just let me in.”
The handle continued to rattle and panic crept up in his chest.
Frank crawled his way over to the window and snuck a peek outside. The sky was gloomy, and overcast. It had rained all day yesterday. The earth was soggy. The thick, dense woods that surrounded the property looked ominous, making him feel even more on edge.
Damn it! He couldn’t do it.
But he had to. The alternative was too painful.
He couldn’t endure it. No one could.
He glanced back down at the gun again, and brought it up under his chin, making sure that it didn’t touch. He needed to get it at just the right angle. Slightly to the left and he was liable to end up spending the rest of his days sucking down food through a straw.
He shivered again at the thought of making a mistake.
A thud of a foot slamming against the door made his eyes flick to the window.
“There’s only one way this ends, you know it, Frank.”
“I’m going to do it this time. I will.”
“Just put it down.”
Every part of him was shaking. Terror filled his being that at any moment they would come bursting through the door and it would all be over.
How has it come to this?
He took a deep breath and rose to his feet. He slid the Glock into the small of his back and turned to face the sliding window. He squeezed his eyes shut and unlatched it. Then, he pulled back the window and felt a sudden gust of wind steal his bre
ath. He forced away the thought of them scurrying down his throat and infecting him. All that mattered now was getting out of here, getting far away. Go. Go! He screamed inwardly as he climbed out of the window and looked below at the nine-foot drop to the flowerbed. He had to do this right, or… before he could finish his thought, his shoelace caught against the window latch and he slipped and found himself dangling precariously out of the window. His body slammed hard against the paneled siding and he knew it was over.
“Son of a bitch!”
He groaned, and then heard the sound of boots making their way around.
“I told you, you’re making progress.”
When he glanced up and saw him, he rolled his eyes.
“Fuck you, Sal. Now help me get down from here.”
Sal chuckled and pushed his way through the dense vegetation that surrounded his home. He reached up and lifted Frank so he could release his foot from the hellish contraption that had practically cost him his life.
“You forget to take your anxiety meds?”
“No. I dropped them.”
“And let me guess, you didn’t pick them up?”
“They’re covered in germs.”
“What did I say about the five-second rule?”
“You know what you can do with your five-second rule.”
Sal grinned.
It was the middle of Friday afternoon. Frank’s psychologist Sal Hudson had arrived to give him his weekly counseling session and once again Frank had failed miserably.
“Did you wash your hands?” Frank asked as he made his way back around to the front of his home feeling tainted by the very air around him.
“Does it matter now?”
He grumbled. “I guess not,” he said brushing the dirt from his body and feeling every strand of hair rise as his pulse hammered.
Sal patted him on the back as they went inside.
“There’s always next week, Frank.”
Frank stopped on the porch, and tossed him a puzzled look. “How did you get in?”
“You left the back door unlocked.”
Frank shook his head and went inside as Sal roared with laughter.
ONE
A Year Later
“Stay right there, you dirty bastard.” Frank slid forward petrified of what lay before him. He raised his arm up slowly, avoiding any sudden movement. Once satisfied that it wasn’t going anywhere, he thrust the swatter forward, slapping the counter with all his might.
“Got you!” he yelled victoriously.
He pulled back the orange flyswatter only to discover that the winged monster had escaped yet again. He balled his fists in rage. The blue bottle fly buzzed around him triumphantly, taunting and threatening to land and lay eggs. Before he could react, it was out of sight but not gone. It was never gone. He often wondered if the flies came from the same family, and held a vendetta, as they seemed to know exactly when he would arrive every year. He gritted his teeth and surveyed the area like a hunter seeking its prey. Yet in his case, he felt like the prey. Since arriving at the cottage, he’d spent the last two hours trying to get that filthy beast.
It was a ritual he went through every time he arrived.
His entire life was a ritual, including visiting the cottage every summer. If he had his way, he would have lived there all year around. It was his safe haven, an isolated property that was hard to reach, located on one of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River, straddling the border of the U.S. and Canada. His parents had owned it, and his grandparents before them. Kate would tell him to rent it out when he wasn’t using it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It wasn’t that he didn’t need the extra cash, it was the thought of strangers lounging in the chairs, leaving behind hairs in the bed and contaminating everything they touched. It gave him the willies just thinking about it.
He wasn’t always this fearful.
Frank began to notice the strange behavior sometime around the age of eleven. He wasn’t entirely sure what had brought it on. His upbringing hadn’t been filled with any horrors. He was born in to a middle-class family. His father was in the military and by all accounts, he liked to run a tight ship. That meant every day was filled with tasks that involved cleaning: vacuuming carpets, wiping down counters, sweeping behind ovens and making sure that the house wasn’t full of clutter. There was nothing his father despised more than coming home to find a shoe out of place. Perhaps that had been the catalyst, and yet it seemed there was more to it.
What started as cleaning the same spot on a table soon turned into a compulsion, a deep inner urge to wipe a second, third, fourth, even a fifth time, followed by cleaning his hands with hot water and ample amounts of soap before drying off with an untouched towel. By the time he was thirteen, his OCD about germs and clutter had spilled over into his relationships with others. Visiting homes for sleepovers was unheard of, not because his parents prevented him. No, it was because he chose not to go. He couldn’t bear to step into a stranger’s home, even though most of his friends’ houses were spotless. In his mind, it was like walking through a minefield. Soon, friends no longer asked him, so his mother would encourage him to invite them to his home. But that was even worse. It meant they would have to sleep in his room, use his family’s bedding and share the home’s only bathroom. His mind couldn’t process sharing it with anyone else except his own family, and even that he had a hard time with.
The strangest part of it all was throughout the entire time, he knew that what he was thinking was ridiculous but he couldn’t stop it. By the time he was fifteen, he came to learn that he wasn’t alone. There were millions that were like him. Others out there who had the same disorder. He wasn’t the only one obsessing over thoughts about unseen germs, or feeling the compulsion to wash his hands for hours at a time until they were raw.
Once Frank left home and joined the military at the prompting of his father who firmly believed Uncle Sam was the cure for all manner of disorders, his obsession grew to new heights. Though at times it benefited him to be perceived as a top-grade soldier for keeping everything clean and orderly, it also caused him untold anxiety as he struggled to hide his obsession and keep his compulsions at bay. That’s when his need for prescription pills began. They helped. They really did, at least when he remembered to take them.
It was when he met Kate that things began to turn around. Back then she was working for the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch as a junior epidemiologist. She was the first person that he’d opened up to about what he called his hidden disorder. He figured that someone whose job dealt with infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response would understand better than anyone. He was right but that didn’t mean it was easy. Twenty-one years into their marriage, she packed her bags and told him it was over. She cited irreconcilable differences but he knew that he had worn her down with his incessant need to live a life free of germs. It had cost him his marriage, and though he still had his daughter Ella, life somehow felt empty without Kate.
Frank had received a text from Ella that morning. It had become a daily ritual of theirs. She would check on him, and he would badger her about only dating guys who washed their hands. She was studying to become a police officer down in Queens, New York. At nineteen, not only had she grown into a beautiful and confident young lady but she was doing okay for herself.
Though he had been apart from Kate for years they still remained close friends. She understood him better than he did, or even Sal for that matter.
She was now working for the CDC in Atlanta. It had been one year since he’d last seen her at Ella’s eighteenth birthday party. It was awkward and they nearly ended up having an argument but they managed to hold their tongues for the sake of Ella.
At the sound of ticking, Frank glanced at the clock on the wall. It was getting close to midday. Sal would soon show up and he would spend the next hour being questioned and pushed to the edge of his comfort zone. He’d told him not to bother coming as he was going to be at the c
ottage for the rest of the summer but Sal was as stubborn as he was. It didn’t matter that he would have to make the forty-minute trek from Watertown to Clayton harbor and board a boat to reach his tiny little island — Sal was committed to their weekly sessions, even if Frank wasn’t.
Frank had been seeing a psychologist ever since his marriage had fallen apart. Kate had urged him for years but he refused to accept that his condition was out of control, and she hadn’t made it clear that it was affecting her. That was just her way, she bottled everything up and when the day came for her to leave, it blindsided him. It was a wake-up call. Like being slapped in the face with cold water. Even though he knew he would never get her back, he still entertained the thought.
Frank squirted more sanitizer over the surface of the counter that the fly had landed on. He had practically gone through an entire bottle over the past few hours. It didn’t matter as the cottage was stocked up with more than enough to get him through several months. Unlike some who might buy an extra bottle when they saw a deal, or someone who was fearful about the future collapse of society, Frank’s reasoning for stocking up was simply because of usage. While an average family might take six months to get through a bottle of liquid cleaner, he could blast through it in a matter of twenty-four hours.
The phone rang, and Frank glanced at it, expecting it to be Sal but it wasn’t. It was Kate. He eyed the fly from across the room as he pulled the white surgical mask down off his face and answered the phone.
“You couldn’t have called at a worse time.”
“Blue bottles?” she replied.
“I don’t know how the hell they get in here. This place is sealed up tighter than Fort Knox. I check it at least ten times before heading out and yet every time I show up the following year… here they are.”
“What time did you get there?”
“Two hours ago.”
“I keep telling you, you should sell the property. There are probably more germs in the rotten wood than there are carried by those darn flies.”
“Don’t. You’ll give me nightmares,” he said chuckling a little. Over the past year, Kate had tried to help him see the funny side to his quirky behavior and while it had become a habit to make light of it, inside, his mind was screaming for relief.