When Julio’s son finally pulled his head up from the agent’s neck, he had a large chunk of flesh in his mouth, and the sight of it almost made Joseph sick. It looked as though the child had eaten the agent’s flesh.
Finally, the first remaining agent regained enough sense to draw his firearm and fire three shots into the van. His aim was so bad, due to the adrenaline surge, that his first shot killed the dog, but the remaining rounds hit the child in the neck.
After being struck by the bullets, Julio’s son spun his head around in what unfolded like the insane Exorcist scene. To make matters worse, the tendons in his neck were so damaged from the gunshot wounds that his head almost flopped over at the last point in the unnatural act, when they were stretched to their breaking point.
The Border Patrol agent and Joseph watched in horror as the child leapt off the dead agent toward them, the pair almost unsure of what to do.
The split second of hesitation was all it took Julio’s son to land on the agent as several more shots were fired. This didn’t help keep the agent from being pinned to the ground, only to become the next victim.
Joseph did not wait to see what happened, he turned and ran. He ran as fast as he could, away from the carnage, and certainly away from his van. He knew that if one child had turned into a monster like that, the other might be the same way, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near one child, let alone two. He knew he had to get to safety or this sick, or possessed, or whatever the fuck it was; child would most certainly kill him as well.
Joseph didn’t make it more than ten steps before another Border Patrol agent who had been running toward the shots fired came out from behind a car and clotheslined him to the ground.
Now, Joseph would never escape the evil that lurked in his van.
Joseph heard automatic gunfire erupt from the location of his van, and after what sounded like fifty rounds had been fired, the silence overtook him completely as blood ran down the back of a his head from a wound sustained in his apprehension. His vision blurred slightly at the edges, and his hearing had gone out for good.
As the new Border Patrol agent lifted him onto his feet and hauled him off, Joseph made a mistake and looked behind him. On the ground behind his van lay Julio’s son, riddled with bullet holes, and brains scattered on the pavement. In the child’s mouth was one of the agents’ ears. Joseph couldn’t hear anything to confirm, but he knew that the shooting had stopped. The agents thought they were safe now.
Before Joseph knew what was happening, he was thrown in the back of a car and driven across the border, back into the United States.
Joseph wished he could tell the agents that there was another child and his mother in his van. He wanted to warn the agents of the impending danger.
Joseph tried to speak, but only a low moan came out of his mouth. His voice had been taken away by the events he had seen today. He would never be the same. Today he had seen hell unleashed into the living world, and what was worse, was that he had brought it into the United States.
“God have mercy on us,” Joseph told himself, “because we need it.”
Chapter Two
Pinal County, Arizona
Bryce Sloan sat at home in his kitchen eating breakfast, just like he did every other weekday. In between bites he spoke to his wife, Victoria. She stood at the kitchen counter and fixed breakfast for their son Trystan.
When Victoria turned away to get the milk out of the refrigerator, Bryce admired her from behind. She was a beautiful woman with a slender waist, long brown hair and a gorgeous smile. Her looks had thankfully been passed down to their son Trystan, who even though he was still a toddler, was quite handsome.
Victoria turned around and caught Bryce staring and gave him a look, which he played off and buried his head in his iPhone again.
Bryce had an unhealthy relationship with his iPhone. He worked at a supply redistribution company and he was always emailing suppliers, clients, or other members of the company. It was part of his morning routine to catch up on any emails that had come through during the night. After checking his email he would usually follow up on news, read a book, or check his social media sites. The device rarely left his hand throughout the day.
Victoria finished up Trystan’s breakfast and picked him up to put him in his booster seat. Trystan was pushing three years old and wanted to sit “in a big boy chair.” He protested by whining and complaining until she put him down.
As soon as his feet touched the ground he ran over to a chair at the dinner table and tried to climb up.
“Help me, help me,” Trystan said to Bryce.
“Okay, okay,” Bryce replied, and helped his son into the chair.
“Thanks,” the mighty two-year-old replied.
Trystan smiled at Bryce. Then, all of his toddler attention shifted to the plate of food set down in front of him by his mother. He grabbed onto a chunk of waffle and pushed far too much of it into his small mouth.
“Whoa, calm down buddy, not so much,” Bryce said.
His wife stepped in to take the over-ambitious bite of waffle out of Trystan’s mouth.
Bryce chuckled at the whole thing, to which his wife gave him the same disapproving look she had just given the toddler. Bryce rolled his eyes at her. He tried not to sweat the small stuff when it came to raising their son. Bryce figured his son would have to figure it out on his own soon enough. Trystan couldn’t have mom jump in to rescue him all the time.
Bryce finished his own breakfast and headed into the master bedroom. It wasn’t a long walk, because their house was fairly small. It was only four bedrooms, which at the time was enough for them, but it left a lot to be desired. Either way, it was home and they all loved it all the same.
Bryce walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth and fix his hair, and while he did this he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was of average height, with brown hair, and hazel eyes that were both green and blue, dependent upon his surroundings. He was fairly attractive, but not overly handsome. He had a slightly muscular physique and was not fat at all. Bryce was more than happy that he had been able to maintain his physical fitness level and even run two miles in 14 minutes after leaving the Army.
After he finished his morning rituals, he grabbed his backpack containing everything he would ever need in his daily life: a MacBook Air, an iPad Mini, pens, papers, his wallet, glasses, and his Taurus .45ACP.
He was not sure which possession he valued more, the MacBook, iPad Mini or the .45. Probably the .45 he imagined. The other two couldn’t protect him, but he couldn’t live without them all the same.
On the way out of the house, he stopped to kiss his wife and son goodbye. He gave them each a kiss, told them he loved them and headed out the door to the garage.
Inside the garage were the two vehicles Bryce and his wife shared. They owned a Toyota Corolla and a Mitsubishi Outlander. Bryce regularly drove the Corolla to his job in Scottsdale, Arizona, since it was over an hour one way, and the gas mileage was hard to beat. His wife, on the other hand, drove the Outlander. Bryce liked to call it “the mommy wagon,” because it reminded him of a minivan, minus the sliding door. Altogether though, the Outlander made for a great vehicle when it came to gas mileage and size.
He walked over to the Corolla, hopped in the driver’s side and threw his backpack on the seat next to him. He pulled his Taurus out of the compartment in his backpack and slid it into the holster mounted underneath his steering wheel. He liked to have it within arm’s reach when driving into the city.
Bryce didn’t really have a reason to be so security conscious, but he supposed it was due to his military training. They had taught him to always be prepared and always have a way to defend himself.
He of course had never needed to defend himself, due to his position in the Army. He was according to his Military Occupation Specialty a 92 Yankee, or to put it simply, he was the supply sergeant. His job was to mainly keep track of his unit’s property on base, maintain equipment, dri
ve trucks, and whatever other logistical duties his company needed to get the mission completed.
He was never deployed anywhere, even though he signed up and requested to be deployed multiple times. Instead, he spent his entire military career bouncing around from one base to another. His wife had followed him around during the entire circuit of base changes, but after learning that she was pregnant, it got old quickly. After his six-year stint was up, and shortly after his son was born, Bryce decided to hang up his boots for good and leave the Army full time and convert to the Army Reserves.
His last full-time station had been at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona, which was coincidentally where they were originally from. It worked out for Bryce, because he got to move back home and join the reserves, which operated out of Camp Navajo in northern Arizona.
The Army had taught him a lot over the years, and he didn’t mind taking one weekend a month to learn more and experience greater things. He also liked that it kept him physically fit, well versed on military training, and in the loop on things.
After reminiscing about the past, Bryce opened the garage door and backed the vehicle out of the garage. While he waited for the door to close, he plugged an auxiliary cable into the top of his iPhone.
As he turned the car around and started driving down the road, he turned on his favorite Pandora station. The music started after a few seconds, and he waited until he was out of the neighborhood to turn it up louder.
He followed the long windy road, which led from his neighborhood to the highway. His neighborhood was tucked away a few miles off the highway back against the mountains. It was a nice cookie-cutter community that the builder had decided to plunk down in the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere was what had drawn Bryce and his family to live out in rural Arizona.
That of course and the fact that his in-laws lived six houses down. His in-laws Cindy and Greg Roberts had played a huge part in persuading Bryce and his wife to move out to the remote neighborhood. It was built in baby-sitting for Victoria when she needed to work or run errands, and it was also nice to have family so nearby. Altogether it worked out, and they had been living in their home since Bryce had left the Army.
After making it to the highway Bryce picked up the pace, pushing the four cylinders to 90 miles per hour. The only way he could make it to work in less than an hour was to bend a few speeding laws. He leaned over to turn up the music at the thirty-mile mark as he passed through Mesa and traffic increased.
As traffic started to back up, his phone rang. It was Victoria.
He picked up the phone and his wife said, “Turn on the radio, there’s something weird going on.”
It was not at all normal for her to call him and ask him to turn on the radio, so he obliged and hung up the phone. He tuned into one of the local talk radio stations and caught the tail end of a broadcast. Having tuned in midway through the message, some of the details made no sense to Bryce.
On the radio, the host said, “We’re not sure exactly what is going on, but we have reports coming in from a town called El Centro in California. They are saying there is currently a quarantine in effect on a local hospital. The reason for the quarantine is currently unknown, but details should be coming through shortly.”
Well that is pretty strange, Bryce thought. Why would something like that be important enough to broadcast in Arizona? Who cared if a hospital in El Centro had been quarantined? Bryce had driven through El Centro a few times heading to San Diego, and it wasn’t exactly a large town.
He listened to the radio show for another ten miles before they had anything new to say.
“New details arising from El Centro,” the radio host began. “According to a local source, the hospital had two illegal immigrants and a smuggler who had been detained at the border of California and Mexico. They were brought to the hospital and put under quarantine after the illegals showed signs of a mysterious illness. There aren’t any additional details at this time about what the signs of illness are, or what it could be. Speculation in the area is that it could be a strain of H1N1 or a new type of influenza, due to the strange symptoms the infected patients are showing.”
Suddenly, Bryce was very interested. Normally, he did not get excited about the flu viruses spreading around. After his military service subjected him to all sorts of mystery injections and inoculations, Bryce was a firm believer in saying, “Fuck the flu shot, I’ll take my chances.” The thing that piqued his interest about this story was that it was bad enough to quarantine them. That meant that they had no idea what they were dealing with, and no way to cure it thus far.
Another few miles went by as the radio host recapped the most recent details.
Bryce kept driving toward his job, leaving the radio tuned in, waiting to see if anything else had happened. When nothing else happened before he got to his job, he shut his car off and went inside.
He waved to everyone in the small cubicle dominated office, set his stuff down on his desk, and grabbed a cup of coffee from the coffee maker in the break area, which consisted of two file cabinets that sat side by side with machines for coffee and water on top. He powered up the iMac at his desk and started to check his emails and get ready.
He couldn’t help but think in the back of his mind about the flu outbreak in El Centro. It was so strange that they would announce it without having any hard evidence. Then he thought about it and realized that it was exactly like the media to report stories without hard evidence.
He shrugged to himself and buried himself in his work, not thinking about anything other than the shit storm of supply problems he had to deal with in a hurry. There were all sorts of problems that had occurred, one of which was a shipment not making it to California on time, and Bryce was on the phone with his shipping company trying to sort it all out and it wasn’t going well. He had to yell at three different people to get an answer on when the delivery would be made.
It took another hour to get the issue resolved and by the time he had cleared things up, he was more than ready to be done for the day, but it was only 9 a.m., so he took a walk through the warehouse to clear his mind, and went back to his desk to settle in for another marathon session.
Chapter Three
El Centro, California
Joseph Miller lay in a hospital bed handcuffed to the railing. They had sealed him in a plastic bubble and hooked the bubble up to an air scrubber. Whenever they needed to interact with him inside the bubble they came in with airtight suits on. They treated him like he was some kind of alien species.
Joseph knew it was because they were worried about whatever had made Julio’s son turn into a monster. They must think it was a virus or bacteria, Joseph assumed.
Joseph lay still in his bed until he heard the shrieks. The shrieks came from the room next to him. It was a woman’s cry out for help. He heard footsteps run down the hallway toward the noise.
Then, a man’s voice added to the melody. The man cried out in what sounded like intense pain. Not even ten seconds later, gunshots erupted.
Joseph knew what was happening; he didn’t have to see it unfold to know what had happened.
He knew that Julio’s children would come for him, and he knew that he was next.
No sooner had he finished his thought than the door burst open into his room and a small boy stared at him from across the room. The boy’s eyes were dead; but they told Joseph so many things; how they did not see Joseph in his bubble, but only saw food. These eyes saw a way to help quench the insatiable hunger that the body now needed.
Joseph cried out as the boy rushed toward the bubble and slammed into the plastic only to get tangled up inside its folds. The boy gnawed at the plastic with his blood-soaked teeth, and grasped with his stained hands as he tried desperately to free himself.
Suddenly, another figure entered the doorway. This figure was some sort of law enforcement official. He looked down the barrel of his gun at the boy who was trapped in plastic, and he hesitated.
How could such a small child create so much death and kill all of these people, the officer must have wondered.
The answer stood behind him, in the form of Julio’s wife.
She opened her jaws and growled at the police officer, who tried to spin around and raise his weapon.
It was far too little, and much too late, as Julio’s wife sank her teeth into his flesh. The man went down screaming and thrashed about for several minutes. Joseph watched the entire event transpire, while he kept a close eye on Julio’s son, who had yet to free himself from the plastic.
Joseph didn’t try to escape or call out for help. He simply lay there in bed and waited. He waited for death to take him, and for an end to the chaos that had entered his life so quickly.
A few more minutes passed by and Joseph could hear the chaos revolve around him. The entire hospital had seemed to be on alert as soon as the commotion had begun.
Then, the sound of plastic tearing and shifting snapped Joseph out of his trance, and when he came back into the real world he stared at his impending doom. Joseph looked at the boy, who was covered in blood from head to toe, and knew that this was the end. He closed his eyes, and said a silent prayer as the boy ran to the table and bit him for the first time. Soon, nothing but searing hot pain followed by an endless darkness engulfed Joseph’s mind.
Chapter Four
Scottsdale, Arizona
Bryce spent the morning digging through emails from the evening and sorting out logistical situations that were his everyday nightmares. Today’s particularly fun problem came in the form of a failed shipment. His shipping carrier had delivered two thousand dollars of product to an address in Ventura, California when it was supposed to go to Oxnard, California. It was a simple mistake and the product was only a few miles away, but it had already cost him hundreds of dollars and an aggravated customer.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 2