Point Of Transmission: A Post-Apocalyptic Epidemic Survival (The Morgan Strain Series Book 1)

by Max Lockwood

  “Why the ties?” Alec asked, holding up the strips of silk in an array of colors and patterns.

  Will grinned. “You can never be too careful, right? You didn’t appear to be infected, but in case you suddenly hulked out on me, I wanted a little protection.”

  Alec cracked a smile for the first time that afternoon. “That’s pretty smart of you. How long was I out?”

  “About an hour, hour and a half. I was pretty worried that you weren’t going to make it. I’m glad you did.”

  “Me too. Where’s your bathroom? I think I have some more blood to wash off.”

  “Down the hall and to the right,” Will answered, turning pale. “We don’t have running water, so I have a few jugs by the sink for washing up and flushing.”

  Alec padded down the hall in his socks. Somewhere along the line, Will had taken off his boots. He was a sweet kid, but something was just a little bit off about him.

  He tried to get a glimpse of his injury, but he couldn’t crane his neck far enough to get a good look. The back of his hair felt sharp and spiky, like he’d put too much gel in it. Yet, when he dabbed at it with a damp washcloth, he turned the beige linens red. He worked at the spot until it was rinsed clean. It was the most he had washed in days.

  Alec opened the medicine cabinet and rummaged through different bottles of shampoo and soap until he found some rubbing alcohol. He drained the contents on a fresh washcloth, and with a deep breath, he pressed the stinging liquid to his wound. He clenched his jaw to keep from screaming out in pain.

  Once he felt like he had cleaned it enough, he pressed a fresh piece of gauze to his head, which immediately turned red with blood. Tired of dabbing at his head, he took the rest of the roll and wrapped it around his head from crown to chin, and around again. He examined his reflection and knew he looked ridiculous, but the added pressure would stop the bleeding.

  Next, he looked for something to help with the pain. Behind the over-the-counter pain pills was a little orange bottle with a couple of prescription painkillers—the good stuff. He carefully took two from the bottle and placed them in his pocket, just in case he needed them later. He felt terrible stealing from this kid and his family, but he did crack him over the head with a Louisville Slugger. It was the least they could give him.

  Then, he dropped three little red ibuprofen tablets into his mouth and swallowed with a swig from the plastic jug. It would hardly take the edge off the pain, but it would keep him sharp until he was allowed to let his guard down.

  Finally, Alec decided it was best to freshen up while he had the chance. He wiped himself down with a damp towel, rubbed a stick of deodorant under his arms, and squeezed a ribbon of toothpaste on his finger and worked it around for a few seconds. He still looked like he hadn’t showered in a few days, but at least he kept his natural odors at bay.

  Feeling the strong urge to snoop around, Alec crept into the adjacent room, the master bedroom once he finished up in the bathroom. The bed was neatly made, and pictures of two smiling parents and their teenaged son, Will, sat on the dresser. For a home that someone was still living in, it looked just as vacant as the others in the area.

  “Looking for something?” Will asked, popping around the corner out of nowhere. Alec jumped.

  “Shit, you scared me,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry, I was just having a look around. It’s an old habit as a cop.”

  “Always watching your back.” He nodded. “Is there anything else I can get for you? I still feel really bad about what happened.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alec said, waving him off. “It was an honest mistake.”

  “I have a few beers in the fridge if you want one,” he offered.

  Alec squinted his eyes at Will. “Are you sure you’re old enough?”

  Will laughed. “I’m nineteen. Let me guess, you’ve spent a lot of time busting underage drinkers?”

  “A fair amount,” Alec admitted. “But what the hell, it’s the end of the world. One won’t hurt.”

  Will grinned and pulled two beers from a cooler and cracked them open. They tasted a little skunked, but Alec was not one to complain. He had gone a few days without drinking—it was a cause for celebration.

  “Where are your folks?” Alec asked, taking a sip of the lukewarm drink.

  “Gone,” Will said flatly.

  “They left you here?” Alec sputtered. “I’m sorry, man. That’s rough. I wouldn’t take it personally. People do strange things in an emergency.”

  “No, I mean they’re gone. They’re dead.”

  Will’s head fell. His eyes stared fixed on a spot in the floor.

  Alec felt uncomfortable, but he needed to say something to break the tension.

  “I’m really sorry. That’s terrible.”

  “It really is.”

  “Did they get sick?” Alec asked, throwing him an easy question. He could basically guarantee that anyone who died in the last few weeks was a virus victim. It claimed lives so quickly.

  “My mom did,” he said after clearing his throat. “But that seems like a lifetime ago. In reality, it was less than a month ago.”

  Will’s voice sounded thick, as if he were on the verge of tears.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Alec said.

  “No, no, it’s all good. In fact, I haven’t said the words out loud. I think it would help me process some of it if I told someone what happened.”

  “Okay,” Alec said gently. “I’ll listen.”

  “I think my mom was one of the early cases,” he said, his voice steadying. “She was a nurse, so when she started feeling under the weather, she assumed it was something she picked up from a patient. That kind of thing happened all the time. She had a high fever and was really achy, so she called into work and said she needed a few days off. No big deal.”

  “But then she got worse?”

  Will nodded. “She started having terrible headaches and stomach pain. We tried to convince her to go to the doctor, but she refused. She just chalked it up to a virus. She said she just needed rest. My dad was really worried, but he couldn’t stay home with her. I was taking pre-requisite classes at the community college, so I took a week off and came home to take care of her.”

  “How did you stay healthy?” Alec asked, trying to make his voice sound like the question was out of curiosity and not suspicion.

  “I’m kind of a germaphobe,” he answered. “So as you can imagine, being in a home with someone with some strange illness made me very nervous. But my dad was really worried, so I told her I was on a school break, and I watched her from a distance. I disinfected every surface of the house while she slept, and I wore gloves and a mask whenever I was around her. It used to make her laugh that I was so serious about protecting myself. It’s probably the thing that’s kept me alive this long.”

  “Did your dad get sick soon after?” Alec asked.

  Will shook his head. “Surprisingly, he didn’t get sick at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He took a deep breath and clenched his fists. “Come to find out, my dad was having an affair at that time. He said that he had to go on a business trip, but then when we saw him again, he said he had to put in a long night of work and that he’d catch a few hours of sleep at the office. Even when he was home, he was distant. He didn’t get too close to my mom because he didn’t want to catch whatever she had. In reality, he probably didn’t want her to smell another woman’s perfume on him. It was almost the perfect cover.”

  Alec’s jaw gaped open. “Holy shit.”

  Will nodded in agreement. “It gets worse. During this time, my mom was getting sicker and sicker by the minute. I wanted to take her to the emergency room, but the virus was really going around then, and hospitals were packed. No medical staff went into work because it was too dangerous. There was nothing to do but wait. I was trying to keep my mom comfortable because she looked like death.”

  Will took a long drink before se
tting his empty can on the table.

  “Then suddenly, something changed. She still looked ill, but her energy was back. She could sit at the table and eat supper with us again. So to celebrate, my dad made steaks. We figured that the red meat would give her a boost of energy. She had hardly eaten anything but soup broth for the past few weeks. Then, something clicked inside her mind.”

  “She figured out about the affair,” Alec breathed.

  “Bingo. There was makeup on my dad’s collar, much too dark to be my mom’s. Besides, she hadn’t worn makeup in weeks. She asked him about it. At first, he tried to deny it, played stupid. Then she pressed him. She was getting angrier and angrier by the second. My mom was the sweetest woman in the world. I had never even heard her yell before.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope. And I wasn’t the best kid, either. If the cops caught me doing something stupid and dropped me off on her porch, she’d just shake her head and give me a disapproving look, and that would be it. I’d never seen her angry until that night.”

  “Do you think it was the rage?” Alec asked. He had seen that symptom in too many people.

  “I know it was. My dad’s not a good liar. She broke him down. Then, she jumped up on the table and stuck her steak knife straight through his chest.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It was so strange,” Will said, his voice sounding disconnected. “She was a tiny thing, but somehow, the knife went all the way through. Then she kept stabbing and stabbing.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alec gasped. His head was starting to feel woozy. He leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

  “Yeah,” Will said quietly. “The scariest part was that she came after me when I tried to stop her. She was completely gone by that point. It was as if she were a completely different person, a monster even. I ran into my room and barricaded myself in there until she stopped screaming and clawing at the door. I called the police, but they were so swamped that it was hardly worth it for them to come at all. After an hour or so, she just stopped.”

  The two were silent for a moment, Alec focusing on muddy shoeprints on the floor. He thought Will had finished his story, but he continued.

  “I think she had tired herself out,” he said weakly. “She didn’t have a lot of strength left. I think her rage just burned through the rest of the life she had in her. I found her on her bed. Blood was coming out of her mouth. She was just gone. There was no one to tell and nowhere to go. I cleaned the place up, completely sterilized everything, and put everything back in its place. I’ve been trying to keep this place stocked, but it’s been tough. I know I’m not the only one who’s gone through something like this.”

  “Another drink?” Alec offered, walking to the cooler. If he couldn’t keep this young man from witnessing terrible tragedy, then at the very least, he could try to be of some comfort to him.

  “Why not?” Will said, wiping a tear from his cheek. “You know what? It feels good to get that off my chest. Thanks—” he started, realizing that he knew nothing about the man he’d told his story to.

  “Alec,” he said, offering his hand to shake.

  “It’s really nice to meet you, Alec. It’s been lonely here. It’s nice to be around someone who hasn’t completely lost his mind.”

  “Cheers to that,” Alec said, tapping can against Will’s.

  “Have you been out on your own?” Will asked, jogging Alec’s broken memory.

  In everything that had happened, he had forgotten about Elaina and Natalia.

  “Holy shit,” Alec gasped, bolting up from his seat. He stood up too quickly, and little black orbs danced in his vision. “The girls!”

  He fell back to his seat and focused on his remaining vision.

  “Take it easy,” Will warned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was with two girls. One was in her mid-twenties, and the other was in high school. Did you see them?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Will said, looking alarmed. “Are you sure? You were alone.”

  “I’m positive. Lainey and Natalia,” he said, saying their names in almost a whisper.

  “Where do you think they are now?” Will asked.

  “No idea. I hope they’re okay,” Alec said, suddenly feeling ill.

  “I’m sure they’re fine. If you want, I can help you look for them.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I just need you to take me back to where you found me. I need to get to my truck.”

  “I don’t think you should be driving in your current condition,” Will said. “Let me drive. It’ll be easier to find them with two sets of eyes. Besides, I don’t want to be alone. You’re the first healthy person I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “Fine,” Alec said, “but we have to leave now. Is there anything you need to bring with you?”

  Will shook his head. “There’s not much left for me here. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to get the hell out of here,” he said with a smile, his bright teeth on display.

  “That makes two of us,” Alec said, slowly climbing up from the couch. Will handed him his gun from the coffee table, and they left his home and the horrors it contained behind.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Okay, how about Na?” Elaina asked Natalia as they walked.

  “Easy, that’s sodium,” she answered.

  “K?”

  “Potassium,”

  “How about Sn?”

  “Silver?” Natalia guessed.

  “Nope, it’s tin,” Elaina corrected.

  “Ugh, I always forget that one,” Natalia groaned. “When does that ever come up in nursing, though?”

  “Probably won’t, but you have to pass the chemistry classes to get into nursing school. Let’s try Ag.”

  “I’m tired of this game. We’ve been playing for hours.”

  “It’s silver, by the way. Besides, it’s not possible for us to be playing for hours. It’s only been—”

  Elaina looked at her watch.

  “Oh,” she said softly. “It’s been four hours since we stopped at Alec’s house.”

  Elaina turned to Natalia. She could tell that the girl was trying really hard not to complain, but she was exhausted. Elaina was drained too. The running with intermittent walking was physically taxing, but having to look death in the eye every time they made a wrong turn took its toll.

  If the danger were short-lived, it might have produced a euphoric effect. Amusement park rides and haunted houses capitalized on this effect. In the moment, fear is not welcomed. The body sends chemical warnings throughout, preparing the body for whatever it’s facing. But once the brain realizes that the danger has passed, the body feels good.

  With Elaina and Natalia’s situation, there was never that release of stress. Sure, they may be able to run away from one pack of infected, but soon, there would be another. Their world was like being stuck in a horror film, with no hour and a half runtime to contain them. There was no end in sight, no relief on the way.

  “We should turn left here,” Elaina said, stopping dead in her tracks at an intersection.

  “I thought you said you wanted to go east,” Natalia protested. “If we turn left, we’re going to end up further from where we wanted to go.”

  “No, I think there’s a grocery store over here,” she replied. “Let’s see if we can find anything good.”

  Elaina had visited this particular store before, and she had a feeling that it would contain everything they needed. She felt a sense of nostalgia from the past, going to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon with her parents to stock up for the week ahead. She felt peace in her weekly routine. Each item had its place, and that never changed. Week after week, she could grab the same loaf of wheat bread from its home next to the hamburger buns. As a child, she could convince her parents to let her have a candy bar from the enticing racks near the checkout, and when she was older, it was her parents who tried to sneak a treat past Elaina, who had been on a health kick after a bout of
illness in the family. These places offered her fond memories of how she could find pleasure in the mundane.

  The store, with its welcoming green façade, appeared to have undergone little damage. A front door had been pried open, but no windows had been smashed. The parking lot was peppered with stray carts and a few vehicles neatly parked out front as if the owners had just stopped in to pick up some milk on their way home. Elaina assumed the vehicle owners had long been gone, if their bodies weren’t decaying in the front seats already.

  “I’m scared,” Natalia said plainly. High-traffic areas like grocery stores were always a risk in the aftermath of the virus outbreak. It was the perfect place for an attacker to hide, as the healthy citizens would eventually come looking for sustenance.

  “We’ll be quick,” Elaina reassured her. “We should make a plan, though. We need water and quite a bit of food since we don’t know when we’ll be able to stop. But we can’t carry too much with us in case we have to get away quickly.”

  “Got it. We’ll either tire ourselves out with lugging around a bunch of stuff but be well-fed, or be light on our feet and starve.”

  “I know,” Elaina said. “Look for high-calorie, nutrient-dense foods.”

  “Like those milkshakes they give picky little kids who don’t eat their vegetables.”

  “Exactly,” Elaina said. “And plenty of water. Try to get some food and fluid in you while we’re in here.”

  “Why are you talking like you’re not coming with me? Are you not coming inside?” Natalia asked, panic rising in her voice.

  “No, I am. I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page about what we need in case we’re momentarily separated. It’s a pretty big store.”

  “Please don’t leave me alone in here,” Natalia said wearily as they cautiously made their way inside.

  “Don’t worry,” Elaina responded. “It doesn’t look like anyone is in here.”