MADNESS (Madness Chronicles Book 1)

by M. L. Banner

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  The following is a chapter from PARASITIC: MADNESS Chronicles II

  Fifteen Years Ago

  The dog came from out of nowhere, completely silent, rather than the usual vicious pooch announcing its terror long before it reached you. It crashed into her right side like a freight train. She only heard the briefest sound of the monster gulping one last bit of air, before it struck.

  When she hit the ground, she heard the animal grunt from their impact and then growl as it attempted to get a better grip on her side, so that it could set itself to ripping her flesh.

  If she had any time to think about her situation, she would have probably panicked. This was where her training kicked in. Her gun was already unholstered, and so she quickly fired off a shot. But it was from the same side as the mutt. She missed. Quickly, she switched hands and shot once more from her left.

  A long moment of quiet passed. Not more than maybe twenty heartbeats.

  They both lay in a heap, but only she was panting.

  Upon quick inspection, she concluded this was not your back-yard, shit-bird variety of pit bull; this was a pure-bread Vizsla: slick, muscular, and very powerful. The Bureau already knew that the dog’s owner had bought a half-dozen over the years from a breeder in Jackson, about ten miles South.

  Of course it never occurred to her superiors in the FBI, who put together this raid, that the dogs might be a threat; only their owner.

  Well, they screwed the pooch on that one, she thought.

  “Sitrep, people,” blared her earpiece.

  “Taggert here... Wren here... Anderson here...”

  With some effort, TJ pushed herself onto her knees. She lifted her mangled shirt edge to inspect the wound. It looked pretty bad.

  “Sitrep, Williams.”

  Her black FBI jacket came off—damned thing was too hot anyway. She pulled off her shirt with a grunt and groan, thankful she was wearing her sports bra and not one of the frilly Victoria-Secret-things Ted bought her. Folding it length-wise until it was a long thick strip of fabric, she wrapped it around her side, making sure both ends of the wound were covered enough. Holding the ends of the jacket arms, she spun it around, turning it into a cord, with most of it bunching up the middle. It too was placed over the wounded area. Finally, she tied the jacket’s arms tight around her other side, cinching it down to hold the field dressing, and hopefully stem the flow of blood.

  It would have to do, until this was done.

  “Williams, report,” her earpiece hollered at her, again.

  “Williams here. Damned dog fricking bit the shit out of me. Had to shoot it. I’m good to go. 10-76.”

  “Roger.”

  She should have called in 10-52, Ambulance Needed. But then she’d have to walk ten times as far back to their mobile base, and she really wanted to get this sonofabitch, especially after now learning he was training vicious dogs.

  She drew her weapon again; it had been holstered, while she’d rendered herself aid.

  Each step forward elicited a painful grunt, and she could feel a warm trickle of blood drip down her backside.

  Worse yet, she felt a building anxiety giving way to a constant need to check her twenty for another crazed animal.

  The ranch house was only a hundred yards away, and no doubt, their perp would be looking out his window, in her direction. So she had to approach it covertly, which was damned hard to do without much natural cover. With any luck, he’d think her gunshots were from a hunter, illegally shooting on the Yellowstone National Reserve property, contiguous to his. He had often called in complaints to Game and Fish about this.

  The worst case scenario, would be the guy coming out, guns blazing, and then they’d have another Waco on their hands. And that they did not want. The guy may have been a murderer, but they didn’t want his dozen-member family hurt too. They were the reason TJ had to keep going.

  It was because the kids hadn’t been seen for several weeks, and all of them missed the first two weeks of the fall semester, a couple of deputies from the Jackson Sheriff Department were dispatched to check on the family. Upon arriving on the scene, there was a single panicked radio broadcast from one deputy. The dispatcher claimed the caller said only, “He’s crazy.” Nothing more. An hour later, the FBI stepped in as they were not coincidently investigating two missing hikers from Prague, who were last seen wandering in the same direction as TJ was now.

  She stopped to regain her breath, and to readjust her field-dressing, which was already coming loose. She was sweating like it was ninety out, when it wasn’t much more than sixty. She pressed her palm to her bicep. Her skin felt cool. Do not go into shock, she told herself. As if one could coax one’s self into not doing so.

  She cinched her jacket-pressure-bandage even tighter, moaning at the pain, while she trudged forward the last few steps.

  The moaning continued, but this time, it wasn’t her.

  “This is Williams,” she whispered. “I’m at the South-West corner of the corral fence-line, about fifteen yards from the home. I’m hearing some sort of... moaning. Going to investigate.”

  “Hold up Williams. Wait for your team.”

  The rest of her advanced team reported in, but much further away. She would be there long before the others, which meant no backup. Yet, if the moaning was from an injured family member or the hikers, waiting longer might end up killing one of them. To buttress her argument for moving forward, she was feeling queasy. It occurred to her, she’d have to finish this pretty quick, before she passed out. The last thing she wanted to do is blow the whole operation passing out before they got ‘em. She’d rather accept a verbal tongue lashing, if it meant they could catch this SOB.

  Maybe I could claim delirium from the dog-bite. It wasn’t too far off, she thought.

  She’d press forward, moving along the back fence line.

  Within a minute, she heard the moaning-sound again, only it was more of a groaning. It was coming from the dark opening of the barn, diagonally across from the corral.

  TJ slipped in between the rough slats of the split-rail fence and yelped when she saw where she stepped. She thought for a moment, it was another dog. But it wasn’t.

  Below her foot and against the fence, lay a dead horse. Practically gutted. A dark stain circled the carcass, the blood had mostly seeped into the corral’s soft dirt. There were multiple small-round-puncture wounds and deep gashes in its throat and sides, like it had been mauled by a wild animal.

  Her head pivoted, searching around her twenty for the wild animal that did this. Her breathing accelerated, to the point of hyperventilating. The perp had more dogs. What if they were just as vicious as the one that attacked her. She felt a chill shoot across her spine.

  TJ bent over to catch her breath. It was either the blood loss or her hyperventilating or both: her dizziness turned to double vision. At any moment, she felt certain she’d either panic or pass out. Touching the lower edge of the bunched up shirt against her side, her fingers came away very wet and dark red. She was losing too much blood. She needed to call it. Losing any more blood, she’d surely loose consciousness, maybe even die.

  A low growl, like a dull echo, pulled at her. Her head drew up, attempting to find the sound, and she instantly saw it.

  Or rather him.

  Their perp, Jim Tanner. Father of ten. Multi-millionaire, ranch owner. Perhaps, even mass-murderer. Was the one growling. And running.

  He was running toward her. In his hand, he brandished a metal rod, like a piece of rebar.

  “Subject is running toward me, yelling,” she warbled over their comms.

  More like screeching, at her. He sounded and looked like some crazed wild animal. An insane thought hit her: maybe their perp, and not one of his dogs, mauled the horse.

  “Mr. Tanner. FBI. Freeze!” she demanded, but it came out a weak croak. Her Glock 29 raised. He was sighted in, with only the slightest of twitching. Good thing, there were at least two of him coming at her.
<
br />   He kept coming, only faster.

  “Mr. Tanner, I’ll shoot you,” she hollered, her own voice sounded distant, like it was someone else’s.

  TJ dropped to her knee, not just to keep her gun hand steady: she was seeing three of everything now.

  “Stop!”

  He didn’t.

  She fired. Three times. One for each of him.

  Then she tumbled to the ground, her strength leaving her.

  “Subject down. Officer needs assistance,” she whispered over her comms, and then passed out.

  To read PARASITIC: MADNESS Chronicles II

  Go to

  http://mlbanner/madness2

  Madness Fact vs. Fiction

  Science fiction is a wonderful genre because it takes science and adds layers of fictional what-ifs. Storylines are crafted around scientific precepts, and set upon a foundation of reality. At least that’s how most science fiction should be. Unfortunately, it’s often more fantasy than reality, where the foundational world is almost entirely made up, or the science is bent to the point of breaking. I prefer fiction that sounds and feels real.

  I’m not saying that there isn’t creative license built into every sci-fi story. This is often necessary when trying to track a story’s narrative around the science. But such license—think warp-drive technology in Star Trek—is still completely different from ignoring scientific facts. I offer zombie-apocalypse (zompoc) fiction as one such example.

  The preponderance of zombie fiction involves the reanimation of the dead, often giving these ghouls super-human powers they’d never had when they were alive and setting them on the unending course to eat the brains of the surviving humans, unless of course you’re able to “kill” the already dead zombie by puncturing its brain (doesn’t matter where), at which time the reanimated zombie dies, losing all animation forever. This whole concept is utterly ridiculous and for me, makes it hard to accept the rest of the story. And that’s because the whole zombie-thing is scientifically impossible. Every part of it. I won’t go into the whys because others have done a much better job at debunking the whole zombie concept, in scientific and medical terms, and in all the major flaws of the zombie world narrative. Yet, I’ll admit to you that I’ve garnered a love for some zombie fiction. Some.

  Let it be known, I have been a closet Walking Dead fan. At least the first few seasons. Yes, I know this flies in the face of what I’ve just said, making me a zombie hypocrite (would that be a zombocrite?) of sorts. But I haven’t spent endless hours watching TWD because of its zombies. My enjoyment was in spite of its zombies, and bad science. It’s the characters and their constant struggles to survive that captured my attention. The zombies are often a storyline after-thought. I also love the story concept that everyone (in TWD’s case, when taken by death) will eventually become a potential monster; when each person’s internal “evil” is released upon the world.

  It’s that concept of internal “evil” that you’re starting to see in the pages of the Madness Chronicles.

  But I’m jumping ahead of myself, as I’ve only hinted at this at the end of this book, MADNESS. You’ll have to read PARASITIC (MADNESS Chronicles II), and of course, the finale, SYMPTOMATIC (MADNESS Chronicles III), to really understand this. The real question I want to explore here and my purpose for giving you this additional back-of-the-book segment is... how much of what I wrote in MADNESS is science and how much is fiction?

  I’ll explain it this way, just about everything in the book describing the T-Gondii protozoa is absolutely correct. Walk into a room with nine other people, and most likely half of you are already infected with T-Gondii. Where this room is located in the world will determine the numbers more precisely: in Paris, probably eight out of ten; New York, maybe five out of ten; in other places, it may be even ten out of ten. This infection is truly wide-spread, and scientists are only just now starting to understand what the T-Gondii does to peoples’ brains. Some say that the current wave of aggressive behavior we see around us (think road rage, school shootings, etc.) is directly related to T-Gondii’s reprogramming your brain to be more angry and aggressive. Have you been feeling angrier lately? You might be suffering from toxoplasmosis, where the T-Gondii puppet master is actively pulling your strings. Scary stuff, huh?

  It’s worse for mammals.

  Some estimates have nearly three-quarters of the mammal pollution infected with T-Gondii. Google news stories about recent wild animal attacks. Some say that’s the T-Gondii. I’ve highlighted some of the latest and most interesting stories on the website dedicated to the Madness World: http://madnessworld.info.

  The creative license I took in giving you the MADNESS Chronicles is the introduction of a thermophilic bacterial infection, which I have flipping the switch on the T-Gondii’s reprogramming. Thermophilic bacteria do exist around volcanic vents. But could they actually cause this reaction to T-Gondii-infected hosts?

  Anything is possible.

  Thank you for reading!

  Find out how the madness of the Rage Disease spreads around the world and on the Intrepid when the MADNESS Chronicles continues in PARASITIC: MADNESS Chronicles II (http://mlbanner.com/madness2).

  Want to get more involved in the storyline and the whole Madness world? Join the Madness World Club and get updates on new releases in the world, along with free Madness World materials, not available anywhere else:

  > The Intrepid’s deck plans.

  > More details about Toxoplasmosis and T-Gondii.

  > True stories about actual animals and humans infected by the Rage Disease, chronicled in MADNESS.

  > Weekly email updates with the latest real-life stories, MADNESS updates, and one recommendation for that week’s best new or discounted apocalyptic horror book.

  > Much more.

  There’s no cost. Just enter your email address and you’re in. You’d be mad not to.

  Did you like MADNESS?

  Please leave a Review

  http://mlbanner.com/madness-review

  Reviews are vital to indie authors like me. If you liked this book, I would really appreciate your review.

  Thank you!

  Want to join in discussions about MADNESS?

  Positive or negative comments, it doesn’t matter. Join the discussion here:

  http://MadnessWorld.Info/Madness

  FREE BOOK

  Sign up for ML Banner’s Apocalyptic Updates (VIP Readers list) and get a free copy of one of my best-selling books, just for joining.

  In addition, you’ll have access to our VIP Reader’s Library, with at least four additional freebies.

  Simply go here:

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  Who is ML Banner?

  Michael “ML” Banner is an award winning &

  international best-selling author of apocalyptic thrillers.

  Four of his seven books were #1 Amazon best-sellers in one or more genres. Highway won the 2016 Readers Favorite Gold Medal in Thrillers and was 2016 Finalist for Kindle Book Review’s Best Sci-Fi Novel. His work is both traditionally published and self-published.

  Often his thrillers are set in far-flung places, as Michael uses his experiences from visiting dozens of countries—some multiple times—over the years. His last two transatlantic cruises were the foreground of the MADNESS Chronicles, his newest series.

  A serial entrepreneur, having formed multiple businesses over the years, he founded and still runs SmallBiZ.com, which helps small businesses create and maintain entities, forming almost 100,000 entities over its 18 years of existence.

  When not running a business or writing his next book, you might find Michael hunting, traveling abroad, or reading a Kindle with his toes in the water (name of his publishing company) in the Sea of Cortez (Mexico). That’s because he and his wife split time between their homes in Arizona and on a beach in Mexico.

  Books By ML Banner

  For a complete list
of Michael’s books, and his upcoming books,

  go to MLBanner.com/books/

  MADNESS CHRONICLES

  MADNESS (01)

  A parasitic infection causes mammals to attack.

  PARASITIC (02)

  The parasitic infection doesn’t just affect animals.

  SYMPTOMATIC (03)

  When your loved one becomes symptomatic, what do you do?

  HIGHWAY SERIES

  Highway (01)

  A terrorist attack, sends siblings onto a highway and an impossible journey home.

  Endurance (02)

  Enduring what comes next will take everything they’ve got, and more.

  STONE AGE SERIES

  Stone Age (01)

  The next big solar event separates family and friends, and begins a new Stone Age.

  Desolation (02)

  To survive the coming desolation will require new friendships.

  Max’s Epoch (Stone Age Short)

  Max wasn’t born a prepper, he was forged into one.

  (This short is exclusively available on MLBanner.com)

  Hell’s Requiem (03)

  One man struggles to survive and find his way to a scientific sanctuary.

  Time Slip (Stand Alone)

  The time slip was his accident; can he use it to save the one he loves?