Infected Poppy Fields

by Alathia Paris Morgan

  Infected Poppy Fields:

  A World War One Disaster

  Alathia Paris Morgan

  My family for putting up with my love for history and the fact that I can’t help explaining all the things that happened in the past.

  This is a work of fiction and in no way is meant to portray the actual historical event. People, names, places, events or situations are all fictional with the exception of the actual historical names, but the events in this book are truly fictional and have no factual basis. The ideas were from the author’s own imagination, and any resemblance to people living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright: December 2019

  Written By: Alathia Paris Morgan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of quotations for articles and reviews.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  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

  A Note from the Author

  More Books from Alathia Paris Morgan

  Against Zombies Series

  Moms Against Zombies Book 1

  Military Against Zombies Book 2

  Co-Eds Against Zombies Book 3

  Churches Against Zombies Book 4

  Geeks Against Zombies Book 5

  Governments Against Zombies Book 6 – Coming soon

  Infected History Series

  Infected Waters: A Titanic Disaster

  Infected Poppy Fields: A WWI Disaster

  Infected Storm Troopers: A WWII Disaster

  Also Writing as Paris Morgan:

  Murders of the Zodiac

  Aquarius Book 1

  Pisces Book 2

  Aries Book 3

  Taurus Book 4

  Gemini Book 5

  Cancer Book 6

  Leo Book 7

  Virgo Book 8

  Libra Book 9

  Scorpio Book 10

  Sagittarius Book 11

  Capricorn Book 12

  Writing Romance as Pepper Paris:

  Carter: Summers of Love 1

  Kelly: Summers of Love 2

  Wade: Summers of Love 3

  Jay: Summers of Love 4

  Dear Reader,

  When I began to work on this book I seriously thought I was just going to add a few facts about World War One mix in zombies for some alternative history fun and be done. Alas, I was taken off guard when after several hours of research in, I had a new character that is rooted in the history of our country.

  The Hello Girls have recently come into the foreground as one of the most important pieces of WWI and without them the war could have had a far different ending. I’ve fallen in love with these brave women who work only short distances away from the actual front lines. Their heroism and courage are the things that bring stories to life. I’ve take small amounts of facts and worked them into my story in the hope that you will want to find out more about them on your own.

  I love history and take adding it into my stories very seriously, but know that a certain amount of writer’s license must happen because I am writing fiction. Hours of research have been done and I’ve tried to accurately portray the feeling and emotion of being involved in a war far from home. While there weren’t zombies during the Great War, I hope that you are able to enjoy this alternative version and overlook any inaccuracies that might have happened due to author error.

  I’ve listed the main resources that I used during the research stage of this book in the back. Any and all mentions of historical people are from their names only to give context to the story. This book is a work of fiction and is in no way meant to portray their actual words, thoughts or deeds beyond what can be gleaned from historical fact.

  From one history lover to another, I hope you enjoy the story.

  Alathia Morgan

  Infected Poppy Fields

  Chapter 1

  JosephJune 15th, 1917

  The ship pulled slowly out from the wharf. The moment was finally here and it wasn’t anything like I’d expected it to be. I was leaving home to go to war. Something I never thought I’d do when I’d planned out my future.

  I gazed around at all the others who appeared to be excited as they left their families and homes for some great adventure. It was all a big thing game to them. Who was I kidding? It was a big deal to me. I’d never been further away from home then New York where I’d attended medical school for three years. Even living in the largest city, I had ever seen couldn’t compare to being on a ship that was sailing away from home.

  As the shore moved further away, an entire ship full of men, who were stuck together for the next six to eight days until we reached our destination in France, moved restlessly around trying to find their bunks.

  When the call had gone out that men were needed to help drive back the Germans and keep them from attacking our ships. I’d been just weeks shy of graduating from school and would have started my rotations in the hospital for the last part of my training. I had all the training and book knowledge on how to perform a surgery, but the army had insisted that I would get all the hands on practice I needed.

  That is if we made it there in one piece or at all since the Germans were known for blowing up ships. It was going to take everything I had to think about something else and keep my mind occupied.

  There was a package of stuff my mom had brought to me as I was boarding the ship which might be just the thing I needed to distract me from bombs I envisioned blowing us up.

  Falling into the lines of uniformed soldiers trying to get below decks, I finally made it the bunk they’d assigned me. Thankful, that mine was on the bottom and I didn’t have to climb up or deal with a hammock.

  As one of the few doctors on board, I was going to earn my keep while crossing the ocean which gave me one of the actual rooms with built in bunks. Some of the beds were only hammocks swinging above the cots that had been put into the cargo hold. It was a huge space and no one had any privacy. My only comfort was the fact that I didn’t have to sleep hanging in the air.

  I put my stuff on my bottom bunk, and took a seat curling my legs up onto the bed with me so that others could continue to move through without stepping on my toes. With so many people still milling around, it felt like everyone around me was watching. I knew it wasn’t true, but this feeling wouldn’t go away as lines of people moved past the doorway of our small bunk area.

  With a glance around, I gave a shrug and decided that it wouldn’t matter if someone saw me open my package from home. It wasn’t like it was a precious commodity and I wasn’t going to be alone again for a while.

  Untying the string that held the brown paper, I caught a whiff of my mother’s perfume and I could just imagine the care she’d taken to pack this for me.

  A note written in her flowing penmanship sat on the top of what looked like a shaving kit.

  Joseph,

  While it breaks my heart that you are going far away from your father and I, it’s with a proud heart that I send you off. You are doing a great thing and many other mothers will have their sons come home because you are there to heal their wounds.

  I understand that you might not need any of the things I put in this small shaving kit for you, but it would bring me great joy to know that you had something from your uncle and his voyage on the Titanic.

  Seeing as I’m no doctor, I put everyt
hing that looked important along with his journal for you to read and think of home.

  I along with all of the other mothers will be saying prayers daily that you and their sons will return to safely to us.

  Your loving mother,

  Margaret Fitzgerald

  “Oh, mother.” I sighed. She really thought that Uncle Michael or Doctor Hughes as his patients always referred to him. There wasn’t much that I would need or be able to use on the battle fields, but it couldn’t hurt to take a look at what she’d thought was important.

  “Uncle Mike’s stethoscope.” I pulled out a few other small items, but it was the carefully wrapped vials that surprised me. As I unwrapped them, I was curious what could possibly need to be packed that carefully.

  Several vials of blood were labeled, but the names didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe if I read the journal it would make more sense, but obviously these had been important and I didn’t want to just throw them away without knowing why he’d kept them. It wasn’t like they would be good for much since they hadn’t been stored properly.

  I placed them back in the layers of cloth to keep them from breaking and put it back into the small black bag. The journal was sitting out still and I knew that I would use my free time on this voyage to find a way to read it. Since the bag was little, I was able to slide it into my knapsack that I placed at the foot of my bed.

  We’d all been given the same amount of uniforms and army issue boots, but our personal belongings were kept on our person so that no one could steal our most beloved pictures or cash.

  In the throngs of men that were on this ship, I was certain that there were a few unsavory characters. Even though they might wear an army uniform the same as I did, it didn’t make them upstanding citizens that wouldn’t help themselves to things they thought were valuable.

  With a glance around at the other men settling into their bunks, I slid the journal under my pillow for later perusal.

  A head leaned down from the bunk above me as a deep voice spoke, “Hey, you Fitzgerald?”

  “Yeah, what’s it to you?” I really hate that there was so little privacy and space, but I’d joined onto this and there wasn’t really any way to back out now.

  “Sarge said to tell all the other doctors there’s a meeting in half an hour in sick bay.”

  “Great, it’s going to take me that long to find sick bay.” I groaned not looking forward to wandering around trying to find it on my own.

  “I’ve already been down there a few times. They got my group here early so I explored things before it got so crowded.” He stuck out a hand, “Trevor Stevens, medic.”

  “Joseph Fitzgerald, surgeon in training.” I responded with my own hand, “Isn’t hanging upside down making you dizzy?”

  “Nah, I’ve got a little bit of monkey in my blood and like doing stuff like this.” He sat up carefully so that he didn’t hit his head on the ceiling. “Ready to go?”

  “Guess so.” I looked at our small space and decided that I wanted to see more of the ship than just my bunk. “Lead on.”

  ------

  The meeting lasted two hours and consisted of handing out pails for those that were sick due to the motion of the waves. After, things had settled down, the doctor or rather the officer in charge gave out the rotation schedule to medics, doctors, and surgeons alike. Most of the things that happened on ship board were simple fixes, but we were supposed to look for signs of sickness that could spread among the men.

  I made my way back to my bunk because my shift started at midnight and I wanted to at least try to get a few hours of rest. It was difficult because the other guys were all awake and comparing stories with each other. Frustrated, at the amount of light and sound, I took the blanket and hung it up to block out as much as I could.

  Once asleep, I’d missed dinner, but the cook had made sack lunches for those on the night watch. I snagged one as I made my way to the sick bay quarters, journal gripped in one hand to read during my down time.

  It should have been a quiet night with little activity, but so many men were away from home for the first time and couldn’t find a way to sleep with the massive amounts of people around them.

  The first ten men had excuses for all types of illnesses that didn’t exist. After that I would only look at them if they were showing signs of being sick. Word passed along the line of those waiting and many left because there wasn’t a real reason for their symptoms.

  Hours after most of the ship had been asleep for a while, I was finally able to sit down and take a few bites of my sandwich.

  To keep myself from succumbing to sleep, I pulled out the journal from Uncle Michael hoping it would explain what those vials of blood were from.

  April 10th, 1912—HMS Titanic

  Arriving on the ship seemed to be a breeze and I was so looking forward to our journey until I met the doctor that was supposed to be taking care of the passengers.

  There is no nice way to put this—he is a drunk. I’m hoping that by writing down my thoughts it will help me get over the anger that I have toward our employer for not making sure about the people they hired. It was the biggest and most expensive ocean liner of the day, but the only doctor they could manage to scourge up was someone who even the nurses could do a better job than.

  “Hold on a minute, I thought this was the journal of my uncle.” I muttered, flipping the pages rapidly as I tried to find a name of who it belonged to.

  The last page held the answer, but it wasn’t the one that I’d wanted.

  April 14th, 1912

  I don’t have long because the virus has spread so quickly that I don’t think we’re going to make it. The captain is preparing to evacuate the ship, but there isn’t a way to stop this many of those dead things from killing us all. If someone finds this journal, I hope that you’re able to let others know the real reason that the Titanic sank was because of a virus that was spread by transfer of blood.

  A bite will take longer to infect the person, but when they have passed, they will rise up and try to eat anything that is living. Scratches may also cause the person to become infected. Don’t let yourself be bitten.

  Anyway, there’s not much time left and I hope we survive. I’ve enclosed samples of the first few infected’s blood to be tested and see what is causing this infection to spread so quickly.

  Nora Ryan

  “Wow!” I’d had no idea that my uncle was a drunk. After his brush with death, he hadn’t picked up a bottle again. We’d always wondered if he couldn’t bear the guilt of what had happened. Now, I knew part of the truth. He hadn’t helped those on board when he’d taken an oath to preserve life.

  Someone walked in the door and I had no time left to wonder about the story written between the pages of that journal until I was flat on my bunk again.

  Breakfast had been a hard decision because I wanted to sleep so badly, but my stomach had grumbled winning the war. It wasn’t until I was drifting off that I remembered I wanted to find out what could have happened on that fateful voyage.

  Sleep consumed me easily as I blocked out all the sounds around me.

  It wasn’t until days later as we heard the ship’s horn sound that I realized I still hadn’t had a moment to look at it further.

  ------

  There was a flurry of activity as the entire ship gathered their belongings and began to form lines to make their way to shore. Each company and unit were divided and loaded into trucks, but those of us in the medical core were taken to the local hospital for a little extra training before being shipped out to the front.

  Chapter 2

  I’d thought that we would be going to England first, but our convoy continued around and to France. The President was determined to have as many Americans on land as possible. It was his way of sticking it to the Germans for blowing up our merchant ships on the way to support the war effort.

  Evidently, our ship was one of the smaller ones compared to a few of the others that held closer to five thou
sand men. That was simply beyond comprehension because the thousand men on our ship had been overwhelming.

  Men began singing to pass the time until they were supposed to start marching to the convoy trucks, “Over there, over there…” It was contagious and I found myself humming as our group of medics were split up to join their units.

  Trevor waved as he joined his group and I was one of the few left standing that didn’t have a unit to join.

  A jeep drove up and a French officer hopped out of the front seat leaving the driver to keep it from being stolen or requisitioned by someone else.

  “Are you three the doctors they sent over with this bunch?” The man spoke in a heavily accented English.

  “Yes, sir.” I replied when the other two standing next to me didn’t respond.

  He glanced at my stripes indicating I was a Captain. “Are you the highest rank?”

  I shrugged and looked to the others for confirmation, but they were doctors and not surgeons so they had been brought in as Lieutenants instead of Captains.

  “It would appear so.”

  “Guess, that makes you the one in charge.” He waved toward the jeep.

  “Gentlemen our ride has arrived.” I walked over and threw my bag into the small trunk area. There wasn’t much room for three grown men in the back of the jeep, but we squeezed in and held on for dear life as our driver took off.

  I’d never ridden with someone who drove as if something was chasing them, but I guess I was going to have a lot of new experiences while over here in France.

  An hour later, we arrived at one of the larger troop encampments, where British, French and now Americans were gathered.

  “You’ll need to check in with the hospital here before they decide if you’re being sent further in toward the front.” He saluted and we hurried to return it. “God Speed.”

  “It’s gonna take a while to get used to being saluted all the time. I had no idea that I was going to be given such a high rank when I signed up as a doctor. Fitz, how come you’re a captain while we’re just lowly lieutenants?” Freddie Kellogg questioned.