Blood Scourge: Project Deadrise

by Siara Brandt

  It was the ultimate nightmare, a combination of technology and politics in corrupt hands. Orchestrate a catastrophe, declare martial law and make a power grab. With a population a fraction of what it once was, and the surviving population in a state that left them more susceptible to control, it was easy to see that disaster was looming ahead. Disaster on a scale that had never been seen before.

  A strong military force would be needed to enforce a new world order. The military, of course, the ones loyal to those who had set this all up, would get the right vaccine first.

  “And who gets to play God?”

  Colmes looked at Ellis blankly.

  “Who gets to choose who lives and who dies?”

  Colmes sighed as he nodded amusedly. “There you go with your God talk again. When are you going to get over the brain washing of your early years?”

  “When will you stop disbelieving what you couldn’t possibly understand?”

  “The inescapable truth is,” Colmes folded his arms across his chest. “That even your precious Bible is full of plagues. From Moses to Revelations. Your fairytale God wiped out the entire planet when he didn’t like the way things were going. So don’t preach to me on that subject.”

  “And how will you ensure that you don’t become infected yourself when this thing gets out of control.”

  “I have complete faith in Vaccine B.”

  That was where Colmes was going to put his faith? “We haven’t run enough tests,” Ellis pointed out something Colmes should already know. “You’re willing to have faith in something that hasn’t proven to be safe in the long run?”

  “We don’t have any choice. We’re out of time. Since the vaccines will be mandatory, it’s going to take up precious time to mass produce and then distribute the vaccine worldwide. Project Deadrise is a program on a scale that has never been done before.”

  “Project Deadrise? If that’s supposed to be some kind of inside joke, Colmes, it isn’t a very funny one.”

  Colmes did allow himself a small smile. He had thought the name up himself.

  “You’re OK with letting the whole of humanity be your test subjects?” Ellis went on. “You might find that this doesn’t run as smoothly as you think.”

  “The people are like sheep. If we tell them to get the vaccines, that’s what they’ll do. An aggressive media campaign will convince them that it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Not if they begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with the vaccines.”

  Colmes laughed. “You’re wrong there, Vaden. And you know it. There is plenty of evidence that vaccines cause anything from autism to MS. People die every year from getting vaccines. But has that stopped people from running out to get the latest recommended injections? You know the answer as well as I do. Frighten them enough and they’ll stand in lines to get their shots. Besides, by the time anyone begins to question things, it will be too late.”

  “And as a side effect, they’ll end up more controllable even if they do begin to suspect something is wrong,” Ellis finished flatly.

  “I prefer the word content.”

  “You’re talking about making slaves.”

  “Whole empires have been built with slave labor.”

  “And your efforts on the part of this New World Order will make you a lot of money?” Ellis asked.

  “Beyond your wildest imagination.”

  “Will it be enough to wash your hands of the blood of millions of men, women and children? Just how far does this go?” Ellis asked, suddenly hit by the global impact of the whole thing.

  “Well, if you were meant to know that, Vaden, you would already have your answer.

  You won’t be allowed to leave. We realized, of course, that your inflated sense of ethics would be a problem. Eventually.”

  The door opened and three soldiers in combat fatigues stepped into the room.

  “Dr. Ellis Vaden?” one of them said to him. “You will have to come with us.”

  As the doctor was taken into custody, he realized the world was about to be brought to its knees. And at the moment there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it.

  Chapter 2

  Druson Conner shrugged into his only clean shirt. His only half clean shirt. The shirt was badly wrinkled and there was a pizza stain on the band name emblazoned in white letters across his chest. He definitely had to make laundry a priority this coming weekend. Not that he actually had weekends. This job required him to work seven days a week without a single day off.

  It had been harder than usual to get out of bed this morning. He’d stayed up late, talking on the phone to Katelyn last night. He yawned again and sat down on the couch, leaning over to tie his shoe laces. What did it matter what shirt he had on anyway? No one was going to see it.

  The TV was on though the sound was turned down. The blue screen was the only light in the dark apartment. The news was on as usual. His roommate Tyler watched the news more than he watched anything else. Ty was still in bed asleep. Just like Dru wished he could be, too.

  Dru straightened and sat back with a sigh. He looked at the clock. Five minutes left before he needed to be out the door. He’d taken this job out of desperation. Both he and Ty had lost their jobs when the plant they worked at had closed. Delivering papers wasn’t the worst job in the world, though it sure seemed like it for the first hour or so. But it would pay the bills until they could find something better. Ty had a job interview set up for both of them later in the day. Dru wasn’t going to get his hopes up. They’d been on countless interviews already and nothing had panned out. There were always a hundred other applicants standing in line with them.

  He frowned as he stared at the TV screen. A red and yellow alert message was moving across the bottom of the screen. He picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV and turned the volume up.

  “Hey, Ty, you might want to turn the TV on when you get up,” he said over his shoulder. “Something’s going on. Looks like something big.” His voice trailed off as he yawned and continued to do a zombie stare at the screen.

  Ty was a dedicated doomsday prepper. He’d be interested in breaking news. Ty was always following what was going on. He had spent everything in his savings account to stock their little apartment with what he called “essentials”. Food, water, medicines, whatever he thought they were going to need for what he vaguely referred to as the day the shit hit the fan. Terrorists, a government takeover, climatic shifts, super volcanoes, super earthquakes, super pandemics or maybe a major economic meltdown. It could be anything.

  Every unused inch of space. including closets and cabinets, and even the space under their beds, was crammed with emergency supplies. You could barely get into the spare bedroom because of the stacks of toilet paper. Ty had also carefully packed two bug out bags. One for Dru and one for himself. They’d been best friends since the second grade, so Ty’s apocalyptic obsession didn’t faze Dru in the least.

  Personally, Dru thought that if it was going to be anything, it was going to be a financial collapse which would lead to temporary food shortages and riots. So having some extra food in the house wasn’t such a bad idea. And it kept Ty relatively pacified. Ty said that being prepared was the only thing that gave him peace of mind.

  Ty wasn’t crazy exactly. He was just a little overly cautious. But when there were entire shows devoted to prepping, you had to wonder how crazy Ty really was. Dru just hoped the preppers didn’t know something the rest of the people didn’t know. Anyway, with everything the government was up to lately, what really was crazy was trusting an increasingly-corrupt government with the future.

  Dru looked up. Ty stood in the doorway in his underwear, barely able to keep his eyes open. “So what’s going on?”

  Yeah, Ty would get up for this.

  Ty opened a can of soda and sat down on the sofa as Dru stood up.

  “I don’t know. Something about a breakout of murders. Must be more than the usual amount.”

  Ty picked up the r
emote and turned the volume louder. “Look. That’s not too far from here.”

  The TV screen was flashing from one news report to another. There were crowds of people running. And reporters who looked confused. Camera images were shaky, and blurred, panning out to treetops and grass.

  Dru paused to yawn again before he picked up his car keys. “It really sucks getting up this early. This schedule is going to kill me.”

  Dru gathered up the cooler filled with the drinks and snacks that he had packed last night. “Let me know if the shit hits the fan,” Dru said as he straightened. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Don’t stuff yourself with too many donuts, DruMan. I’ll have breakfast waiting when you get back.”

  Dru heard Ty muttering behind him, “Oh, man. People attacked in New Mexico. Texas and Arizona, too. Looks like the world is exploding along the border. Probably drug-

  related violence.“

  As the door closed behind him, Dru could hear the volume going up on the TV. And then he heard the sirens.

  The fog was thick in the predawn darkness. It drifted like flat layers of smoke across the road in the moonlight.

  “Creepy,” Dru muttered to himself after he picked up his two heavy bundles of papers and settled back into his SUV seat. He cranked up the heat. It was a chilly morning. And damp.

  He rubbed his hands together to warm them, then situated his coffee cup and box of donuts so he could easily reach them and eat while he was driving. It hadn’t taken him long to get into a routine. A box of day-old donuts, a thermos of coffee and he was ready for his morning. And his sunglasses were in position on the dashboard for when the sun came up on the horizon.

  He took a sip of coffee. Searching through the donut box he took a bite out of one. “Mmmm, honey-glazed.” A sugar rush. That should help wake him up.

  He had finally learned his route by heart. Which made things a whole lot easier. A month ago, he didn’t think he would ever learn it, but now he didn’t have to stop and check the list anymore. He pulled up to another mail box and got rid of another paper.

  Eight down. Only two hundred to go, he muttered to himself.

  It wasn’t a forever job, he reminded himself. He had been tossing around the idea of starting an online business with Ty. Where they could work from the comfort of the apartment. And choose their own hours. He already realized that he wouldn’t be able to keep this delivery job if the price of gas kept going up.

  And winter wasn’t that far off. He didn’t look forward to hitting the road in the middle of the night on icy, snow-covered roads in the middle of nowhere. Get stuck out here and you could be stranded for hours. Who knew what kind of psychos might be lurking out there in the darkness.

  He wondered what Ty would have to tell him when he got home. Ty proudly called himself a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists, Ty insisted, were the ones who could put the pieces together and have them make sense. Because they tuned in. Because they could read between the lines. Because they knew their history.

  That was true enough. Ty had always been a history buff. He could tell you just about anything about the past. In America or anywhere else in the world.

  History sure hadn’t been Dru’s best subject, but he supposed he’d learned a lot from Ty over the years. Playing with toy soldiers and reenacting Civil War battles had been a passion when they’d been younger. Ty didn’t just worry about a government takeover. He also worried about what he called chemtrails and government concentration camps. Name a conspiracy theory and Ty probably knew all about it. And believed it.

  Dru had watched a few of those doomsday programs with Ty and some of the things they had talked about had made him think. Of course, he was never going to be as paranoid as Ty, but he couldn’t help but question some things.

  The truth was that at this point in his life, Dru didn’t want to have to think about catastrophies or any kind of major upsets right now. He didn’t have time to think about them. He had enough to worry about.

  He heard a familiar ringtone and flipped his cell phone open. He listened and then said, “I don’t care what you heard. Ty told us not to get the vaccine. I think we should listen to him on this one. Anyway you’re pregnant. How do we know it’s safe?” Apparently Ty’s worrisome ways were rubbing off on him. But he had a family to think of now, and his protective instincts were kicking in.

  “We’re having a baby, Kate. It’s not the end of the world. Try to go back to sleep. It’s too early for you to be up. I’ll come over after work and we’ll talk about it.”

  Dru hung up the phone, then opened the window to let in some cold air, hoping it would help wake him up. The heat blowing on him was making him feel drowsy. You had to be halfway alert to drive in the dark on country roads. Some mornings there were deer everywhere.

  He delivered a paper to a farmhouse and heard a rooster crowing, the same one he heard every morning. At least he thought it was the same rooster. The next stop was another farm house. The box was next to the road, but the farmhouse was at the end of a long, winding driveway. He could barely see the house through the trees. He turned on the radio, thinking it might help keep him more alert.

  “Reports of wide spread violence are coming in from . . . ”

  He lost the channel and adjusted the radio to another station. He frowned as another fragment of a news report came on. “ . . . in Paris and London which at first were thought to be isolated cases. No one seems to know . . . ” Then, “ . . . chaos in the Middle East . . . ”

  “There’s always chaos in the Middle East,” Dru mumbled as he passed the familiar sign which read: SETTLER’S GROVE WELCOMES YOU. HOME OF OLD-FASHIONED HOSPITALITY.

  The town looks dead was Dru’s thought. Like always. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. Not even a stray cat.

  He turned the knob on the radio. The knob came off in his hand. He let his breath out in an impatient sigh and pushed it back on. The damned thing was brand new. The knob shouldn’t be coming off. There was static and then more information.

  “ . . . a special report later on the alarming increase in murders in New York. We are also receiving news of violence in Chicago, San Francisco and dozens of other major cities. At 9:00 we will have Dr. Evans from the Center for Disease Control as our guest. He will be discussing his opinion whether we are seeing the results of some sort of bio weapon.”

  Bioweapon? That sounded serious.

  “Officials are also looking into the possibility that these incidents may have something to do with the recent worldwide flu epidemic. However, the CDC is maintaining that these reports are false.”

  Dru scoffed and said to himself, “CDC. More like, Can’t Do Crap.” Ty’s influence again. Ty had a lot to say about the CDC.

  He turned the volume up, careful with the loose knob. “There is some concern that these may be some kind of coordinated terrorist attacks.” And, “A curfew is in effect for . . . This late-breaking story . . . We are receiving reports from small towns across the nation. We advise . . . ”

  What the heck. The station went out again. Maybe terrorists were interfering with communications in some way. He was starting to get worried.

  Dru shook his head. “There’s never anything good on the news anyway.”

  But Dru’s curiosity soon had him surfing channels again. Religious channels had their own version of something major that appeared to be going on. “ . . . prophesied in revelations . . . ” But he lost that station completely and started getting frustrated because he had just installed the new radio. It should have better reception. He’d saved his receipt. He should take it back in and demand a new radio that actually worked.

  He went back to turning the knob and finally found a station with some rock music. “That’s better.”

  He was listening to Bed of Roses when he glanced up at the flu shot sign at the health department as he drove through the town.

  He passed the sign that said: YOU ARE NOW LEAVING SETTLER’S GROVE. HAVE A GREAT DAY.

&
nbsp; “Where’s that road,” he muttered under his breath. Without a sign, the road was easy to miss in the dark. “There it is.”

  He delivered eighteen papers in a small subdivision, then made a short loop back to the highway. He followed it for a few miles and then headed down another narrow, tree-lined country lane. It was still dark. And the fog wasn’t going anywhere. In fact it seemed to be getting thicker.

  He reached for his cup of coffee. To his right the trees hung over the road for a long stretch. The fog made him feel isolated. Like he was on another planet. Like he was all alone in the world.

  He hit a rough patch of road and his hot coffee splashed over the rim. Distracted for a moment, he just caught, from the corner of his eye, the shadow of something run out in front of him. He slammed on the brakes and the coffee cup went flying. The box of donuts hit the floor.

  And then he hit something. Hit it hard. Right before the SUV screeched to a heart-stopping halt.

  The headlights probed the darkness in front of him. Damn. It was probably a deer as big as it had felt. The woods were thick around him. A likely place to hit a deer. You wouldn’t even see one until it was right in the road.

  “Sonofabitch,” he breathed, shaking from the effects of the adrenaline now coursing through his veins. He watched the slowly-drifting mist in the headlights. He couldn’t see anything in the road.

  He put the SUV in reverse and slowly backed the vehicle up a few feet. He still couldn’t see anything, but he had felt a definite thump that wasn’t just because of a rough country road. He was sure he’d backed up over something. He hadn’t meant to do that. He felt a sick, queasy feeling rising up inside him. That honey-glazed donut wasn’t sitting too well right now.

  He didn’t want to have to get out and see a suffering animal. Please let it be dead, he prayed. He had no idea how he would put a suffering animal out of its misery. All he had was a baseball bat under the seat. He’d never killed an animal before. He’d never even hit one.