by B. T. Wright
Uncivil War
Wright & Dudycha
Contents
Newsletter
Title
Also by Wright & Dudycha
Author’s Note
UNCIVIL WAR
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
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Sample
Sample: Uncivil War: Infected
Sample
Acknowledgments
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Also by Wright & Dudycha
Newsletter
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Also by Wright & Dudycha
The Uncivil War Series
UNCIVIL WAR
UNCIVIL WAR: INFECTED
(available - 7/30/19)
UNCIVIL WAR: EVOLUTION
(available - 8/13/19)
UNCIVIL WAR: TAKEOVER
(available - 8/27/19)
UNCIVIL WAR: RECKONING
(September 2019)
UNCIVIL WAR: AFTERMATH
(October 2019)
Copyright © 2019 Holcomb & Shaw Publishing LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Holcomb & Shaw Publishing LLC
www.wrightanddudycha.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead,
or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Design by DDD, Deranged Doctor Designs
UNCIVIL WAR/Wright & Dudycha -- 1st ed.
ISBN - 9781079287813
For Jon Dudycha
The first time we spoke a couple of years ago I had no idea it would lead us here. I couldn’t be happier that it did. I not only found a good writing partner, but a great friend.
Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.
Hunter S. Thompson
Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.
Jacqueline Novogratz
Author’s Note
Uncivil War is an episodic six novel series where you’ll follow two brothers into the apocalypse. What makes our story unique is that I, B.T. Wright, will be writing Jake Maddox’s story, and Jonathan Dudycha will be writing Colt Maddox’s story.
The advantage this gives us as co-authors is that each brother will truly have his own unique voice, because the authors have theirs. We believe the stories of the different brothers are much more authentic because of the way we have split the storytelling duties.
As the reader, you get to see the apocalypse from two different perspectives along the same timeline. Jake lives in Kentucky and Colt lives in Colorado. They both confront their own obstacles along the way while trying to fight their way back to each other. Each novel in the series is from one brother's perspective, battling through a world that all of a sudden is nothing like it used to be.
We hope you enjoy the ride. It has certainly been fun for us to write.
Book 1
by
B.T. Wright
Prologue
“What the hell is so dire that you dragged us to the PEOC in the middle of the night?”
President of the United States John Miller was disheveled. His silver hair was a mess, his clothes half on while hanging from his lanky frame, and his mind remained in the fog of sleep. The Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker-like structure below the White House, was the most secure place to put the president on such short notice. He and his wife had been rushed there from their bed by secret service at the behest of George Armstrong, the secretary of defense.
“And what the hell are Jerry and Will doing here? What’s going on?”
The president was referring to Jerry Wesley, the director of the CIA, and Will Dunning, head of the FBI.
“Have a seat, Mr. President,” George said. “Please. We don’t have a lot of time.”
George was a broad-shouldered man, big by anyone’s standards. The gray in his hair matched his beard, and his uniform was finely pressed as always. There was fear in his voice. And he had a look of worry that President Miller had never seen his old friend wear before. It was hard not to fear the worst.
George picked up a remote from the table behind which he, the president, and the first lady were seated. The large television on the wall in front of them came to life. Jerry and Will looked on, standing against the wall behind them.
George cleared his throat. “Remember the outbreak we’ve been monitoring at the US Army base in Syria? The one that’s progressively gotten worse?”
The president let out a sigh of relief. “Good God, George, the way you all are acting I thought someone had shot off a nuclear bomb. Don’t bury the lead next time. Can’t we do this in the Oval Office? Can’t Melissa go back to bed?”
Though it didn’t seem possible, George’s face had grown even more worried.
“Fine, then, spit it out already. Yes, I remember the outbreak.”
George toggled something on the screen. “In the last forty-eight hours, sir—”
“Cut it out, George. Call me John. And can someone get me some coffee?”
A woman in the corner of the room made a move for the carafe on the table and began to pour coffee into a mug. “And who the hell is she? She cleared for this conversation?” the president said.
“John, I’ll introduce you in just a second. She’s the reason we all are in here. This is bad. Real bad.”
“Well all right then, get on with it.” The president rolled his hand, motioning for George to proceed.
“The last forty-eight hours,” George continued, “the same outbreak that has been getting worse in Syria has spread. John, it’s everywhere.”
“What do you mean it’s everywhere? The whole base caught it?”
“No, sir, every base caught it.�
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The president’s face scrunched in confusion. “Every base? We only have one Army base in Syria. You okay, George? You feeling all right?”
“Not just the Army base, John. And not just Syria either. Every base, every single one we have in the entire world.”
“What?”
The room was quiet. George punched a couple of buttons, and a flat map of the Earth appeared on screen. Red dots were everywhere, all over the map.
The woman moved in and set a cup of coffee in front of both the president and his wife.
“John,” George said, “this is Doctor Emily Fraser.”
“Mr. President,” Emily said. “Mrs. Miller.”
The president simply nodded. He was still trying to process what George had started to say. Emily was a good-looking young woman, late twenties, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She was dressed in a business suit, the only thing left in her wardrobe fit for the occasion of meeting with the president.
George continued, “Emily was the doctor at the Army base in Syria who started working with the outbreak patients when this whole thing first started. I’ll let her explain as she knows more than any of us at this point.”
“Mr. President,” Emily started right in, “these red dots represent every US military base on the planet. And every single one of them has now reported an outbreak. They had all been warned to watch for symptoms, but most had full-blown cases before word even got around.”
“Word of what, again?” the president said. “What is this thing?”
Emily looked to the map, then back to the president. “We . . . We don’t know, sir.”
“Don’t know? Haven’t you been testing it?”
“We have. I’ve personally not stopped working on this since the first sign of it two weeks ago.”
“And?”
“And . . . we have never seen anything like it before.”
“Who’s we?” the president asked.
“Humanity.” Emily said bluntly. “No virus, no disease, nothing has ever been seen like this before.”
The president took a moment and looked up at the map. “And you’re saying that all of these military bases are infected with it?”
George interjected, “Most of them have gotten so bad they are no longer responding to our attempted communications.”
“Okay,” the president said, “so quit beating around the bush. It must be worse than just this if I am sitting here in the PEOC.”
Emily nodded to George. He hit a button, and a video began playing.
Emily said, “Sir, this is video from Fort Benning in Georgia. We have countless more videos just like this from other bases around the world.” Emily paused for a moment, then looked to the first lady. “Mrs. Miller, you might want to look away. I promise you, you can’t unsee this.”
The first lady held her head high, defiant. “I’ll be just fine, thank you. Go on.”
Emily gave her a moment to reconsider. When the first lady didn’t look away, Emily did as she was told and pushed play. On the screen in front of them, the video started in night vision, showing the sleeping quarters inside of an Army barracks. There was an open aisle running down the middle of a row of cots on both sides of the room. Before the president could ask what the problem was, the video showed the door farthest away from the wall-mounted camera bursting inward and people flooding inside. The soldiers sleeping on the cots sprang from their beds, but it was too late. Dozens of people rushed into the room, attacking them, the soldiers were overwhelmed. The glow of the night-vision camera didn’t pick up the gory details, but it was more than clear that whatever came into that room was tearing away at the soldiers’ throats––not just with their hands, but with their teeth.
“What the hell are we watching?” The president was appalled.
The first lady turned her eyes away. “Turn it off! For God’s sake, turn it off!”
The president said, “What was that? What were those things? I know they look like people, but clearly they aren’t. No human being would do that.”
Emily didn’t know any other way to say it, so she just stated the truth. “Their fellow soldiers, sir.”
“What?” The president turned to George. “What the hell is she talking about? What’s happening out there?”
George just looked down, hit a button that brought the map back to the screen, then looked over at Emily and gave a nod. She worked the remote in her hand, and multicolored dots filled the screen overlapping with the red dots.
“Those were infected soldiers who broke into those sleeping quarters and killed every last one of those men.” She looked back up to the screen. “These other dots you see here are the military bases of other countries all over the world. All have similar stories as the video you just watched.”
The president was flabbergasted. “I––I don’t understand.”
Emily walked over right in front of him. “Mr. President, we have some sort of pandemic on our hands, but it shows no signs of anything we have ever dealt with.”
“How . . . how do we fight it? Do we have any information on how to stop it? Anything at all? You were there, how are you not infected?” Then he turned to George, “How could you have brought her here? She could infect all of us!”
“Well, that is actually why I am here,” Emily said. “Several other bases that were able to report found the same thing I did. I along with three other soldiers at our base in Syria were not infected. And everyone who has been able to report around the world shares one thing in common with us. They all were on Beritrix.”
“Beritrix?” the president asked.
“A daily injection for the disease known as WD17,” Emily said. “Anyone like me who has this disease, we are stripped entirely of our immune system. Beritrix restores it completely and often puts one’s immune system in hyperdrive. About one percent of the world’s population has the disease, and there is no cure. As far as we know, Beritrix doesn’t do anything to reverse the symptoms when someone is already infected by whatever this new thing is. But I don’t have evidence to support that. Not yet. But it apparently works as a vaccine. At least for now.”
“Then let’s get word to our military to find more of it, fast, before it’s too late.”
There was a silence in the room. Everyone but the president and the first lady knew what George was about to say. They still didn’t understand the situation, but they understood how bad it was.
George said, “I’m sorry to tell you, it’s already too late. We no longer have a military to speak of. And neither does anyone else.”
“Dear God,” the first lady gasped.
“And I’m sorry to tell you even worse news—”
“Worse news? How can it get worse than . . .”
The president didn’t finish. He already knew how it could get worse.
“Sir,” Emily said. “All we can do is try to inform the people who aren’t infected to stay inside, which is already being coordinated. But it’s spreading so fast that those who aren’t already on Beritrix like me are in danger every moment they breathe. We have some here for you and are administering it to everyone we can at this very moment.”
The president could hardly speak. He looked over to George. “What are we talking about here, George? How bad is this?”
George had to keep his emotions in check. “John, it’s worst-case scenario. The infected will total in the millions before morning. The world as we know it will never be the same.”
1
The crowd let out a roar that echoed across the little league baseball field. Another inside-the-park home run. The sun was high in the deep blue sky, a beautiful day in Lexington, Kentucky. As everyone applauded the young man who rounded third base and headed for home, Jessica Sanders and Jake Maddox were sitting on the bleachers, preoccupied in their own little world. She hooked her arm around his and hugged him.
“It’s so good to have you home, Jake.”
Jake gave her arm a squeeze and became lost in
his own thoughts. Even though it was great to see Jess—he’d really missed her—and it was great to be back in his old stomping grounds, he felt bad he couldn’t say it was great to be home and truly mean it. Being back felt different than he’d thought it would. He knew he wasn’t the same man that had left for the Army ten years ago, but he was surprised things felt so different since his last visit home twelve months ago. It had been a hell of a year in Delta Force. Maybe that was why.
“You all right?” Jess asked as she patted his hand. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Jake gave her a smile and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m fine. Just having a little trouble adjusting.”
“Yeah, my dad told me to be sensitive. Said he had a hard time being a civilian after serving so long. He said you can talk to him if you ever need to.”
“Thanks, Jess. But I’m fine. And unfortunately it doesn’t much matter if I adjust here or not.”
“I can’t believe they want you to come back so soon. I know being Delta Force is different, but you need time with your loved ones. With me.”