The Agora Virus (Book 2): Anxiety

by Jack Hunt

  ANXIETY

  THE AGORA VIRUS BOOK 2

  JACK HUNT

  DIRECT RESPONSE PUBLISHING

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  A Plea

  Newsletter

  About the Author

  Also by Jack Hunt

  Copyright © 2017 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.

  ANXIETY: The Agora Virus Book 2 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

  PROLOGUE

  Frank Talbot felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back as he yanked the blade free from the second tire. It hissed hard as it deflated. Fear shot through him along with a great deal of satisfaction. Fair? I will give you fair, he thought.

  A hard noonday sun beat down, and heat waves danced across the parking lot that contained only a few vehicles. The place had become a ghost town. He’d spent the better part of fifteen minutes tracking him down and now he was only seconds away from getting even.

  He shuffled over to the black-and-white vehicle, pressed his back against the door and remained in a crouched position. He took the small red gasoline canister in hand and slid over to the rear door. Rising up just a little to make sure that the coast was still clear, he eyed the men inside the café.

  They had no idea.

  He pulled open the door and slipped inside, unscrewed the top, and began to douse the front seats, the floor, and then the rear. When the vehicle was thoroughly soaked, he backed out making sure to stay low.

  Out of sight. Out of mind.

  Leaving the door open he continued backing up, leaving a thick trail of gasoline along the ground as he made his way back into the nearby tree line. The stench of gas lingered in the air, teasing him to light it.

  He panted, his chest rose and fell and still a smile danced on his lips.

  Once inside the covering of dense trees, he glanced at his watch. His eyes darted to the young kid sitting on a bench across the street. In a matter of minutes, the kid would walk into the café and hand the note to him.

  Oh, he wanted to stick around to see his face when he lit it, but Sal had been adamant. They needed to be long gone by the time he came out. He was right, of course. Sal was right about many things and he usually listened to him — except for this one time.

  When they had stopped on the outskirts of Lowville on the long journey home, Frank had told the others that he needed to pick up some gas and a few supplies but that wasn’t the truth. Sal knew it.

  He’d been giving him the evil eye ever since Frank mentioned it.

  Frank stared at his watch, his mind drifted back to that conversation.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Sal asked.

  “I’ve never been clearer.”

  “We could get tossed in jail.”

  “Look around you, Sal, do you really think society is going back to the way it was?”

  Sal stared at him as he filled the canister with gas. The others lingered around the SUV, chatting among themselves blissfully unaware of what he was about to do. It was criminal but so was what had been done to them.

  “You know, Frank, I get it. Really, I do, but you know he won’t let it go.”

  The gasoline reached the top of the canister and Frank screwed the top back on. A large sign positioned out front of the gas station said, GET GAS WHILE YOU CAN. CLOSING SOON.

  “Listen, just fill up the SUV, and the other canister and I will be back soon.”

  “And if it goes wrong?”

  “It won’t.”

  Sal shook his head in frustration. He ran a hand across his bearded jaw. Both of them were beginning to look like they had spent far too long in the outback. It had been over nine hours since they had left Queens. What should have taken them seven hours to get back to Clayton, New York, was taking far longer because the roads were clogged up with folks trying to escape the city. Now they were only an hour away from the safety of home. The roads were clearer the farther north they went but they still felt like salmon trying to swim upstream.

  “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, you get the hell out of here.”

  Sal let out a heavy sigh. “And what if he’s not there?”

  “Then we leave. Okay? No harm done.”

  “You aren’t coming back in thirty minutes, are you?”

  Frank turned back to Sal. His mind was lost in what he was going to do.

  “Keep the engine running. You have my word.”

  One way or another that asshole was going to pay. It hadn’t left his mind since leaving Lowville the first time around. And now the situation in the country had become even worse, he knew that the boundary line between what was right and wrong had been blurred. Total anarchy had erupted across the United States as barricades had been breached and the Agora virus had spread rapidly.

  He turned to leave and Ella spotted him. “Dad?”

  “Just stay in the vehicle, I’ll be back soon.”

  He didn’t stick around to get into a discussion with her. If anyone might have been able to change his mind, it was his daughter. She had a way of talking him down from the edge. She had been the first one to see him try to take his life. Back when his illness had taken him to his lowest point. She had walked in on him with a gun in his mouth.

  Frank shook his head, focusing back on the task at hand. He watched the young kid mutter something to his friend and they grabbed up their bikes and cycled across the street to the café. Frank held the Zippo lighter, struck it and a blue flame flickered to life against a faint wind. He tossed it down and watched it ignite the trail of gasoline. Like a heat-seeking missile finding its way to a target, the blue and orange flame spread. He turned and began to run, anticipating a massive explosion.

  Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.

  Still nothing?

  He twisted and squinted through the trees. He could barely see the parking lot now. C’mon!

  His head swept from side to side. He remembered what Sal had said. He glanced at his watch again. Eight minutes remained.

  Just leave. Go, get away from here.

  Now, perhaps it was his OCD kicking in, that incessant need to make sure everything was done just right, but he couldn’t let it go. He had to see what had gone wrong.

  He dashed back towards the parking lot.

  Once he retraced his steps to the tree line he saw what had happened. He hadn’t used enough gas inside the vehicle and without it trickling down onto the ground, there was no connection. The trail had fallen short by half a foot at least from the vehicle.

  Shit!

  The flame was nearly out
. He spotted the silver Zippo on the ground; he darted out into the clearing, scooped it up, and raced towards the cruiser. And tossed the open flame into the vehicle.

  Minutes earlier, inside the café, there were very few people seated. Chester was squeezed into a corner, minding his own business with a newspaper in hand, reading the update on the outbreak.

  “All scare tactics. What do you think, Bud?” Chester asked Bud Traymore, the owner of the Shed, a small café that had catered to the locals for as long as Chester had lived in Lowville.

  “I think it’s starting to hurt my bottom line. The past two days have been terrible. Besides you, I’ve only had nine other customers. Everyone is staying away from here. It’s those damn headlines. ‘Avoid Crowds.’ Like, are they trying to kill my business?”

  Chester chuckled. He glanced up at the shrill of a bell above the door. Two young teenagers froze in place.

  “There you go, Bud, things are looking up,” he said.

  Bud snorted and kept wiping down the counter. Chester went back to eating his pie and reading the article when he noticed out of his peripheral vision the kids staring at him.

  “Well if you are going to stand there and gawk, at least tell me why?”

  He put his fork down and the tallest of the two, with a buzz cut, rushed over and dropped a piece of paper in front of him. Chester looked the kid up and down. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen, with ginger hair and more freckles than anyone should have had.

  “He told us to give you this,” the boy blurted out.

  Chester’s brow knit together. “Who?”

  He shrugged and looked outside towards an empty seat across the street. “Some guy.”

  Chester looked confused as he stared down at the torn piece of paper. He was about to turn it over to read what it said, when an explosion of epic proportions erupted outside. Startled, he nearly fell off his chair. He jumped up from his seat, screeching it back, and tossed down the napkin in his hand.

  “What the fuck?”

  His cruiser had gone up in flames. His eyes darted from side to side and then he spotted him — at least the back of him — as he sprinted into a cluster of overgrown oak trees. Chester scowled, snatched up his wallet and keys, and rushed outside. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes as the flames crept higher.

  The paper was still in his hand. He turned it over to see what it said.

  Scribbled in blue ink was the following: Here’s that gasoline I owe you.

  He balled his fists, and immediately got on the radio as he took off in pursuit of the man he thought he would never see again.

  Bastard!

  “Davis, where are you?”

  “Over on the west side dealing with a domestic. Lady is sick, and someone…”

  “Where’s Martell?”

  “He called in sick.”

  “Anyone else?”

  He panted hard as he pushed his way through the trees, and thick brush. In the distance he could see that bastard getting away. He had a good mind to pull his piece and fire off a round but that would only mean a shitload of paperwork and besides, this was going to raise too many questions. He could hear it now. Why did he set your cruiser on fire? What’s this about you and your cousins destroying his vehicle and beating them up?

  Davis came back over the radio. It crackled. “Sorry, boss, we are short-staffed with all this sickness.”

  “Fuck,” Chester yelled as he nearly fell ass over tit trying to catch up. He wasn’t getting any younger and this asshole already had a head start on him.

  When he eventually broke out of the tree line on the other side of the patch of woodland, it was too late. An SUV tore away. Chester placed a hand against a tree. He was huffing and panting hard. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

  “I know where you live!” he shouted. His voice was lost in the sound of the wind. He smashed his fist at the air as if trying to knock out an opponent. “Son of a bitch!”

  ONE

  Dry blood pooled around his head. Frank stared at the body of Bob Riley. Fifty-nine years of age, married and with a family of six, he had operated Clayton Marina Sales and Services for as long as Frank had lived in the area. After making it safely back to Clayton, they were faced with their first challenge. There were no boats. The one they had left behind was gone from the dock, and Gloria wasn’t answering her phone.

  The situation in the small town had become dire and they were only witnessing the tip of the iceberg. Usually the showroom was full of NauticStar, G3, and Skeeter boats and all manner of new and used vessels but now it was stripped bare. Everything was gone from the lot and the showroom. Glass crunched beneath his boots as he backed up from the grisly sight.

  Had he been trying to help someone? The gaping wound on the back of his head left no doubt as to how he had died. Someone had taken what they wanted by force. Frank shook his head, unable to comprehend that someone would have done this to a man that would have given the shirt off his back.

  “Frank, we should go,” Sal said as he tugged at his arm and broke him out of his trance-like state. Frank turned and Sal walked back outside through the shattered showroom window. He tried again to phone Gloria but got no response. Where are the police? The parking lot of the marina was jam-packed with abandoned vehicles. They assumed people had tried escaping to one of the islands in the St. Lawrence River, or had headed into Canada. By the reports on the radio, Canada wasn’t doing any better. The Agora virus was out of control and making its way from large cities into smaller towns.

  Upon entering Clayton, they had immediately noticed how barren the streets were. It was like a ghost town. With no boat to get them across to the island, they had decided to see what still remained. All they saw was the aftermath of looting and rioting. There were burned-out establishments and the road was littered with garbage, glass, and metal shutters that had been torn from the front of stores.

  Driving slowly through the streets, weaving around vehicles and all manner of discarded carts from the grocery store, they decided to see if the police department was still operating. Though Frank wasn’t keen to head over there, Sal knew a number of them as clients and wanted to see what was being done to maintain order.

  “Seems pretty clear to me. Nothing!” Frank muttered.

  Frank wasn’t the only one that was skittish about running to the law. Zach was still reeling from having killed a soldier. Even though they didn’t expect anyone to come looking for him, it didn’t alleviate their anxiety.

  Fortunately, one glance at the police station answered the question about whether or not they were still on duty. The doors had been smashed in. The American flag at the side of the building had been burned, and it looked as though the right section of the property had been torched.

  Frank’s eyes widened. Someone had literally driven a minivan through the front windows. The whole thing was scorched black, nothing but a charred shell.

  “Wait here,” Frank said to the others as he and Sal went in to explore and assess the situation. At the bare minimum, perhaps they could find a weapon. The very mention of it made Gabriel chuckle.

  “You’re wasting your time. Do you really think whoever drove that vehicle through the front window did it just to show their hate for the cops?”

  “Just sit tight.”

  Frank climbed the three stone steps that led up to the destroyed door on the left, while Sal went to the right. They waited at the entrance for a few seconds. Frank glanced over his shoulder at Ella who was standing beside the SUV looking around.

  Both of them crept inside, glass crunched beneath their boots.

  “Wyatt Barnes?” Sal called out, hoping to find the officer they had met before leaving Clayton. There was no answer. In fact, there was no sound. It was eerily quiet. Scattered all over the corridor were folders and papers, lots of paperwork. A gust of wind blew in and some of it lifted in the air. The smell of death reached Frank’s nostrils. It was an odor he was beginning to get used to. The highway h
ad been littered with those who had succumbed to the virus. Wild animals had begun to chew away at the flesh of the unfortunate, while others sat slumped over in their vehicles.

  Covered with face masks, and disposable overalls, Sal ducked into the main office and Frank followed. The smell of death was strong. Tables had been overturned. It was a mess, and yet there were no dead bodies at least that they could see. But there had to be as the place reeked.

  “Split up, I’ll check the back rooms, you search the front offices. Check the desks, cupboards, see if you can find an armor room.”

  “Do you want me to check the basement?” a voice said behind them. Frank spun on his heels to find Tyrell gazing around.

  “Didn’t I tell you to wait outside?”

  “You also wanted me to stay in Watertown,” he replied before walking off and ignoring Frank. The first stop along the way had been to take Tyrell to his home in Watertown. As hard as the journey was with strangers tucked into the back of the SUV, filling it out like a sardine can, he had hoped that Watertown would have been in better shape than it was. It wasn’t. Tyrell found his parents dead, eliminating any chance of leaving him there. Now Frank had more people to think about. He cursed under his breath. It wasn’t just dealing with a lethal virus that bothered him; it was all the mouths he was going to have to feed. He had stocked up well before leaving but that was only enough for Sal’s family, Ella, and him. It was meant to last at least six months, now with four more, they would be lucky if it lasted a month.

  Frank was still glaring towards the spot where Tyrell had been when Sal tapped him on the arm. “Get used to it, Frank.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want to.”

  They made their way through the deserted station, checking different offices, lockers, and cupboards but there was nothing. Whoever had attacked the station had made a point to strip it of anything that was of benefit. No ammo. No guns. Hell, there wasn’t even any tea or coffee.

  Then he heard Tyrell’s voice.

  “Yo! Mr. T.”

  “God, I wish he would stop calling me that,” Frank said.