Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1)

by Jason LaVelle

  The man was only about ten yards in front of them now, walking in a slow jerky way down the center of the road.

  “I bet he’s drunk,” her mother said.

  The man was wearing dark jeans and no shirt, he was tan and obviously fit, judging by the muscles of his back. He had dark shoulder-length hair that looked wet, the way the strands were stuck together. The jerky movement of his body looked pained, as if he had been hurt badly and never quite healed.

  “Maybe he’s hurt,” Abbie suggested from the back seat. She was also watching with interest, the ear buds having been removed from her ears.

  Kala took her foot all the way off the accelerator. Now the car slowed to a crawl as they approached. She pressed the button that activated the driver’s side window, and it shuttled down into the door.

  “What are you-” her mother began.

  Kala did not answer. The man was right in front of the slowly rolling car now. Kala leaned her face out of her window and called to him.

  “Hey! Hey, are you okay?”

  The man’s footsteps faltered a little. His head twitched slightly, and then he continued on, without turning.

  “Kala-”

  “Hey!” she shouted again, more forcefully, as they pulled alongside the man. “You’re in the middle of the road!” The car pulled up so he was right outside her window. The man stopped walking. Kala froze and Abigail started to scream.

  The man turned to them. His face looked like a horror movie villain. Eyes that were mad and dancing with rage bulged out of his skull. His breaths were coming in ragged heaves from his bare chest. His mouth was open, a black pit, dripping with sticky blood. His cheeks were smeared with an awful reddish-black substance. His neck and chest had been dripped on and splattered with blood. It looked as if he had tried to tear into raw flesh with nothing but his hands and mouth. In the side of his muscled abdominals was a large, dark, hole the size of a half-dollar, which also dripped a thick red ichor. It must have come from a gunshot.

  “Oh my God,” Kala gasped.

  Then the man let out a gruesome yell and hurled himself at the car. He was only a few feet away and his big right hand, covered in drying blood, grappled for Kala.

  “Hit the gas!” her mother screamed.

  Without another thought, Kala slammed her foot down on the pedal. At first, it landed on both the brake and accelerator pedals. For a terrifying moment, the car lurched but went nowhere. The man’s bloody hand clamped down on Kala’s bare arm. She cried out and gripped his arm with both hands, trying to free herself, but his grip was like steel.

  “He’s got me!” she shouted.

  Abbie was bawling loudly in the backseat. Kala’s mom reached over and jerked the steering wheel to the right. Kala was crying and staring down at the bloody hand on her arm. The man reached his head in through the window.

  “Get your foot off the damn brake,” she yelled into Kala’s ear.

  Kala was in shock but her body finally responded and she slipped her foot off the brake and onto the accelerator. The car shot forward, its sturdy V-6 roaring in low gear. The bloody man’s head cracked against the window and then they were free, leaving him quickly behind. Kala was nearly catatonic. She was panting and wide-eyed. The car veered over into the right lane and jumped the curb. Steering from the passenger seat, her mother guided the swerving sedan back onto the road. Their attacker quickly receded in the rearview mirror. He was knocked over when they took off, and her mom could not tell if he had been able to get up.

  “Holy shit,” her mother said. “Kala, take the wheel and pull into the Circle K up there.”

  Her mother pointed to the small convenience store, the last stop before Miami. Kala could not comply. She was shaking violently and hugging her arms against her chest.

  “Take your foot off the accelerator, Kala.”

  Kala did, and her mother guided the car over to the shoulder, where it slowly rolled to a stop.

  “Now, put your foot on the brake.”

  She did, and her mother used the gearshift to put the car into park. She leaned over Kala to examine her arm. It was bloody from the man grabbing her, but she was not injured.

  “Thank God,” she breathed, and then pulled Kala into a tight embrace. Abbie was still whimpering in the back seat.

  “Mom,” Kala said shakily. “I want you to drive home.”

  Abigail used the remote control to turn off the small television on the kitchen counter.

  “So, when is your dad gonna be home?” Abigail asked Kala.

  The three of them, Abbie, Kala, and her mother, were all sitting very still at the Wolfgang’s kitchen table. One-half of the table was covered with drawings Lukie was working on. He held one up to examine and then put it down, added some color, and moved on to start another. He could be a poster child for creative ADD; cute little blonde boy with the attention span of a gnat.

  Kala mouthed, I don’t know, then glanced over at her mom.

  “Jack will be home pretty soon,” she said, her voice unusually flat. She had not snapped out of the state of shock she had been in after their driving adventure. The news report hadn’t helped either. Instead, it had made things even worse.

  The police didn’t have an exact timeline of the events, and the FBI wasn’t talking, but from what the reporter said, over forty Miami residents had died violently in the last twenty-four hours. In Southeast Miami, residents had reported crazed neighbors stalking the streets like zombies, attacking anything that moved or made a noise.

  SWAT had been stretched to its limits dealing with these violent offenders, so now the National Guard had moved into the city to help. At first, they had attempted to capture and arrest these zombies, but then two National Guardsmen were killed. Now, as unbelievable as it was, the Guard had been ordered to shoot on site. Shoot on site! On American soil! The crap was truly getting deep.

  Kala cleared her throat, “Should we start getting something ready for dinner?”

  No response.

  “Let’s order a pizza, Kal. Would that be okay, Mrs. W?” Abbie asked.

  “I just don’t understand what’s happening. This can’t be real.”

  “Just call the pizza place, Abbie; I’ve got some cash in my room.”

  Abbie nodded. She got up from the table and pecked away at her phone as she walked into the other room.

  “Order from Gino’s, Abs,” Kala called after her.

  “I know, I know, you and your glutarded tendencies!”

  Kala shook her head, she was used to Abbie’s ribbing about her gluten intolerance. She reached over and put her hand on her mother’s arm.

  “It’s going to be all right, Mom. Dad will be home soon and he’ll know what we should do.”

  With a terrified glance at Lukie, her mother said, “But what if one of them is in our neighborhood? What if they try to get into our house?”

  “Hey,” Kala said, “don’t get freaked out. Nobody’s going to try to get into our house.” She looked pointedly at Lukie and whispered, “Plus, you’re going to scare him.”

  Her mother flushed a little. “Of course, you’re right. Guess they would have mentioned it if those things were trying to get into our houses, wouldn’t they?”

  Kala nodded. “Looks like most of them are busting out of houses and killing people on the street. They’re all headed for open air or something.”

  “But what’s wrong with them, Kal? Do you think it’s contagious?”

  Kala answered with no hesitation.

  “No way, Mom, no way.” But her heart was like a stone, she had no idea what the heck was going to happen. Thankfully, Jack Wolfgang walked in the door just then, startling and relieving them at the same time.

  When he walked through the door, his wife jumped up immediately to greet
him. She flung her arms around his shoulders, gripping Jack tightly with trembling arms.

  “It’s okay honey, I’m home.”

  She started crying and shaking her head. “It’s not okay, Jack, it’s not.”

  Jack said nothing but stood in the doorway, holding her, while Kala watched awkwardly. Kala offered up a weak wave. Jack mouthed, are you okay? Kala held her hand up, palm down, and tipped it from side to side, indicating that she was so-so, then shrugged and nodded. She was obviously doing better than her mom was.

  Kala left the room to find Abbie and they both returned a minute later. Jack and her mother were both just sitting down at the table. Luke jumped up to give his dad a hug, then proceeded to give him a detailed run-down of every figure he had drawn in the last hour. Jack smiled and nodded at the boy, obviously not interested, but feigning it for his son’s sake.

  “Hi Mr. Wolfgang,” Abbie said.

  “I keep telling you to call me Jack,” he responded with a smile.

  “Nah, I’m far too polite for that,” she said, giving Kala a wink.

  “So, Dad,” Kala began.

  Jack raised his eyebrow at her, making him look like a younger Jack Nicholson.

  “How was your day?”

  Jack chuckled and her mom rolled her eyes. Kala smiled, it was a good sign.

  “Well, Kal, it was actually pretty scary.”

  “Did you see any of them? The zombies?”

  “I didn’t, but I heard a good deal of commotion and many stories. I thought they were all contrived at first.”

  “They aren’t fake,” Kala blurted.

  Jack gave her an impatient look. “Well, I know that now, of course. I’ve been listening to the news. Also, I had a meeting with the FBI tonight.”

  Her mother gasped and a startled Abigail dropped her phone.

  “It turns out Marc was only the first of what may end up being many who were infected.”

  “It’s already lots, Dad. The news report said at least forty people are confirmed dead so far.”

  “Honey, forty people in a country of three hundred million is not a lot. However, I think this is only the beginning.”

  Kala sat back in her chair, feeling stunned by her father’s statement. Of course, that seemed obvious, but it still smacked her in the face when she heard it.

  “What did the FBI want?” her mother asked.

  Jack started in on the story, how he had been going to the Hispanic woman’s house, met her son, and sent them off to the hospital. He mentioned the spider in the jar and that it was the same strange species he had discovered on board the mystery ship. His wife had held her hand up to her chest when he told them how he had battled with the strange arachnid on board the Darwin. Kala was leaned forward over the table, immersed in his story. His phone had rung just as he was about to exterminate the offending spider.

  “This is Jack,” he said as he answered the phone, a little frustrated by the bad timing of the call.

  “How are you feeling, Jack?”

  “What? Who the heck is this?”

  “This is agent Marlon Grey, head of FBI operations at the mobile command post in Miami.”

  Great. “Fine, agent, I’m feeling fine. Though I’ll be a little peeved if you’ve interrupted me at work to ask me that.”

  “Of course not.” There was a pause. “Were you hired by Emily Brisbane to treat a ship for insects?”

  “And spiders,” Jack began, then stopped. “Actually, I can’t talk about that, I signed an agreement with the woman at the Coast Guard station, Brisbane.”

  Jack thought he heard a chuckle.

  “This is far above Lieutenant Brisbane’s pay grade, Mr. Wolfgang, and those NDAs don’t really apply to us.”

  “Uh, okay,” Jack responded, unsure of the situation now.

  “Were you hired to treat a ship on the Coast Guard base?”

  “Y-yes, I was. I treated it for bugs and spiders.”

  “See anything?”

  Jack hesitated.

  “Mr. Wolfgang, do you listen to the news?”

  “I do.”

  “So you know there is a bit of a crisis going on right now don’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t really know much about any of that. I heard there had been some arrests; I don’t know much about them, though.” Jack remembered the woman’s words. “Is there something going on in the city?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, Jack. We are the ones trying to pick up the pieces. Therefore, if you lie to me, or try to withhold information from me, I will come over to your house and shoot your balls off. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, crystal,” Jack said with resignation. “I saw a spider on the boat. It was large and it tried to attack me. I’ve never encountered the species before.”

  “Were you bitten?”

  “I said it tried. I escaped the ship’s hold without being bitten.”

  “So the hold was never treated then?”

  “I threw in some aerosol bug bombs.”

  “I’ve been told by our arachnologists that those are pretty ineffective on spiders.”

  Jack did not respond as there was no adequate response he could give. He had chickened out. He knew it, and now the agent did, too.

  “The spiders are off the boat now, Jack. They’re out in the city. We need to know anything you might be able to tell us about their behavior. You owe us at least that much,” the agent said. Because you failed, is what he didn’t say.

  “Well,” Jack said, glancing down at the glass jar on the floor. “You may be in luck.”

  “And why is that, Jack.”

  “I have a live specimen of one of the spiders in custody right now.”

  A pause, in which Jack could hear the agent talking to someone else.

  “Give me your location and don’t move.”

  Chapter 13

  “My God, Jack, what did you do?” Martie asked.

  “Well, I stayed there, of course. When the FBI tells you to do something, you do it, right?” Jack wiped his forehead with a hand towel. Their house was air conditioned but he was still dripping perspiration. His face was ashen as well.

  “Gross Dad, you need a shower.”

  “I know honey, right after dinner. I’m actually going to turn in early; I haven’t been feeling well all day.”

  “Come on honey, finish your story,” Martie urged.

  “Right. Well, since the FBI wanted it, I couldn’t just kill the thing.”

  “Oh God, Jack, you didn’t try to get it out of there, did you?” Martie pinched her thumb and forefinger over the top of her nose, as if to release pressure there.

  Abigail snort laughed, was given a sharp look by Martie and shut up.

  “So it actually wasn’t very difficult. Really, at that time I didn’t know that there was some kind of disease they carried. I just thought people were getting some nasty bites. Even though I was a little nervous because a trip to the ER for antivenin would be expensive, I wasn’t really scared, not like it was. I mean, it was stuck in the jar.”

  Martie had closed her eyes and was shaking her head. Kala was grinning broadly, still leaned over the table listening.

  “So, I took a thin cutting board off the counter and slid it under the mouth of the jar. It was easy, actually. Then I reached under the cutting board and while holding the board to it, flipped the jar over. After that, I just had to find a lid for the jar and I swapped out the cutting board for the lid. No problem.”

  “Is that why you’re so late getting home?” Kala asked.

  “No, well, actually that was early this afternoon.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, once super-agent Marlon Grey got there, they forced me to come with them down
to the Coast Guard station.”

  “Whoa!” Kala exclaimed.

  “Yeah, they had a whole command post down there. You should have seen it, Kal, there were guys in full hazmat suits, doctors, as well as tons and tons of FBI agents. It was pretty crazy.”

  “What happened next?” Abigail asked. Martie was still sitting with her eyes closed, shaking her head.

  “What’s an FBI, Dad?” Luke asked.

  Jack tousled the boy’s hair. “They are just like the police, Lukie, only they wear suits instead of police uniforms.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “So I had to sit at the command post for hours. They made me go over exactly what happened when I went to treat the ship, over and over! I was so sick of those people. Then an old doctor, in a white coat and everything, came over to talk to me.” Jack took a break and got up to get a glass of water. “Ugh, I’m not feeling well at all. When is dinner coming?”

  “Pizza should be here in just a few minutes, Dad.”

  “Pizza, I love pizza!” Luke exclaimed.

  “Everybody loves pizza, Lukie.”

  “Mariah hates pizza,” Abbie said quietly. “She used to anyway.”

  There was a minute of awkward silence as the family remembered that one of them here had experienced a real traumatic tragedy in the recent past. Kala put her hand on Abbie’s arm. A shimmering tear formed in Abbie’s eye, but it never fell.

  Jack cleared his throat. “The doctor was really appreciative that I had caught the spider for them and everything, so he was really nice. He told me the live spider could be the key to figuring out everything that’s been happening.”

  “And what’s happening exactly?”

  “Right now they don’t really know any details. What they’re reporting on the news is all speculation. The spiders are a mysterious undescribed species.”

  “That means no one has officially discovered them yet,” Kala interjected.

  “Yes,” he continued, “they carry an extremely toxic venom, one that would be capable of completely incapacitating a small mammal like a mouse or a squirrel. In addition, the venom caused extreme necrosis, where the tissue around the bite dies and turns black, like a venomous snakebite would. I saw it for myself and it’s pretty disgusting. Based on the spider’s size, the FBI scientists think that its primary food is probably lizards and small mammals, which is pretty huge.”