VIRAL STORM
By
Skyler Rankin
***
PUBLISHED BY:
Woodland Media Creative Services
Viral Storm
Copyright © 2019 by Skyler Rankin
This ebook is licensed for the purchaser’s personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination.
Dedication
As always, I’m thankful for the support of my family and friends and for the constant companionship of my fur babies.
To my readers, I appreciate you for giving your time to this series. To those of you who’ve left reviews for my books and shared my posts on social media, I can’t thank you enough. Independent writers shoulder all the work and financial responsibility associated with writing, publishing, and promoting their books, and those little extra things you do allow them to continue bringing you the stories you love. Thank you for your part in keeping the stories coming and making it possible for me to continue the work I love.
There are many individuals and groups who have helped me in many ways. I’d like to express special thanks to:
Woodland Media Creative Services, my publishing house, for making this work possible, with formatting, covers, and promotional graphics.
Tamra Crow, my editor, who never fails to deliver at a moment’s notice.
Reanimated Writers, who’ve taught me a lot about the difficult work of promotion and have been an unending source of information and support.
The team at Owl and Pussycat Promotions, for going the extra mile for their clients.
My Sidhe Squad, for their unwavering support.
Chapter 1
Harley
CARVER HIGH SCHOOL EVACUATION - FOUR DAYS AGO - The sores forming with unholy speed on Harley’s arms and legs confirmed the infection was spreading. Its poison surged through her veins with such momentum that she could feel its sting in the current of her pulse. Unrelenting pain seared every cell, and she struggled to maintain focus, despite the fever raging in her blood.
A soldier that everyone called Fox, and Larry Whitlock, one of the evacuees from the high school, lifted Harley’s stretcher and rushed it out of the helicopter’s fuselage. Their steps were clumsy and awkward as they lugged the cot, jostling her as they walked. With each bump, pain reverberated through the teen’s body like a hammer to her bones.
“Arghhh!” Harley cried out. “Can’t you be more careful?”
“Sorry, hon,” Fox apologized. “We have to hurry and get you inside the safe zone fence. Never know if there are zombies in the area.”
Harley’s resolve disintegrated into sobs as she grabbed the sides of the stretcher, straining to brace herself against the impacts. “It hurts so bad…” Her words trailed off as her face contorted in agony. “Just let me walk. It can’t be worse than this.”
Fox shook his head. “Sorry. You have to be on a stretcher if infected. It’s protocol.”
“Easy, Harley. Just try to stay calm,” Larry urged. “You’ll see Casey again soon. Think about that.”
Fox gave her a reassuring smile, the corner of which drooped, almost imperceptibly, betraying that he knew the teen’s condition was very likely hopeless. “You are one lucky girl to have a friend like her. She made it all the way to the safe zone and sent help to you and everyone else. She must be tough.”
A dollop of mucous strung down from Harley’s nose. She sniffed and wiped at it with her arm. “Casey is amazing,” she responded. Her voice broke as her spine throbbed with each jostle. “I was so worried about her.”
“But everything’s going to be fine now,” Larry assured Harley. “You’re going to get the treatment you need here.”
Harley struggled to raise her head, to see where they were going. Before them, a militarized compound loomed. She could see several plain semi-trailers parked inside a tall chain-link enclosure. Between the nondescript vehicles, Harley caught a glimpse of row upon row of olive-green tents beyond the fence.
“Stop there!” a voice called out. “We are authorized to use deadly force if you do not comply with every instruction. Don’t move, or you will be fired upon.”
Larry, who carried the foot end of the stretcher, stopped and lurched backward in defensive instinct, causing Fox to ram the litter’s front end into Larry’s spine. Harley shrieked in pain from the impact. Larry stumbled, nearly dropping her.
“Son of a bitch!” Larry swore. His voice was a shrill gasp.
A line of armed gunmen closed in on the three, blocking their way to the front gates.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Fox spoke. “They won’t shoot if you remain still. There’s no reason to panic. This is only their security procedure for incoming carriers with infected on board.”
The soldiers fanned out around them, keeping their weapons drawn and trained in their direction. One of the troops, who appeared to be in command, addressed Fox, “What’s the status here?”
“This civilian,” Fox nodded at the infected teen, “is Harley Evans. She was bitten just before takeoff, approximately one hour ago.”
“You,” the commander said, staring hard into her face, “do you know who you are?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Fox just told you, I’m Harley Evans.”
“Watch it, Harley, just answer his questions, okay?” Fox’s tone was calm, but the raw tension in his eyes made Harley’s skin crawl as she realized that a wrong move from any one of the three could result in them being shot dead. “All right,” she responded. “I’m Harley Evans.”
“Do you know where you are?” the commander asked.
“Um, no. Actually, I don’t know where I am. What is this place?” She glanced around and saw that other evacuees from the high school were being taken toward semi-trailers a distance away.
“Shh, just answer the questions,” Fox reminded her. “There’ll be time for details later.”
“But how would I know where I am? Nobody told me,” Harley’s voice trembled. “Is this some kind of test?” She wondered what the purpose of these questions was. Her gut told her they were evaluating her, but why?
“What day is it?” the commander asked.
The teenager thought for a moment and then shook her head. She knew they had been sheltering at the high school for maybe a month or so since the outbreak, but had no clue what day it was.
The commander stepped closer. “Don’t move, or my team will interpret you as a threat and respond accordingly,” he ordered.
Harley’s head bobbed, verifying she understood. As she lay motionless, an uncomfortable pressure grew in her stomach. She gasped at the realization her abdomen was beginning to swell before her eyes. Her muscles seized in response. It took all of her self-restraint to resist wrapping her arms around her midriff to ease the cramp. She struggled to stifle a sharp inhale.
The commander walked around her stretcher and examined any exposed skin, pausing at each of the lesions forming on her flesh. “Unit C,” he called out.
Two figures wearing amorphous, hooded biohazard suits emerged from behind the armed soldiers. They maneuvered a strange-looking gurney with fat wheels toward Harley and parked it a few feet away. As they came forward, she watched their movements. Judging by their size, she thought they were men. “Where are you taking me?” she asked them.
“First, we’re going to a pre-treatment area, and then you’ll be taken to a medical facility inside the safe zone,” one of the suits
responded in a male voice. “We’re going to put you on this all-terrain cart to make the transport more comfortable.”
Harley glanced down and noticed the field they were in was deeply rutted in spots. She recognized the patterns in the dirt as tractor tracks and doubted the cart’s balloon-like wheels would make much of a difference.
“You just need to relax and let us lift you. Don’t move.”
“I can probably get on the cart myself,” Harley said. “To be honest, I think it would be less painful to walk.”
Metallic pings sounded, and she noticed every soldier’s gun sights were at eye level, and their barrels were aimed directly at her. An ice-cold dagger of fear shot down her spine.
“Damn it, Harley! Just do what they tell you, and stop over-thinking this,” Larry cautioned.
“Exactly what the soldiers tell you. They won’t tell you again,” Fox added. His gaze darted back and forth. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek, and the bulge at the front of his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
One suit grabbed Harley’s legs at the knees. His vinyl-gloved hands moved and repositioned several times in an attempt to get a secure grip on her limbs. Her legs kept slipping from his hold. Thick, wet pus drained from her sores, rendering her flesh slick and challenging to grip.
A light breeze drifted over the infected teen, bringing the odor of her own festering wounds to her nostrils and causing her to gag. The other man moved behind Harley and looped his arms under her back, taking hold of her armpits and resting her weight against his chest. They lifted the girl from the stretcher and moved toward the wheeled cot. As they positioned her above the gurney, the man at her knees kept readjusting his grip and fumbling with her legs.
Harley felt her weight sliding from his grip as the fluid from her lesions coated his gloves. Unable to maintain his hold, the man dropped her lower half onto the bed of the cart. The impact jarred her entire body, and she felt her cheek split open as she cried out from the torture. Cool air seeped into her mouth through the gaping tear.
“Careful there,” the commander called to the suits. “They’re fragile at this stage.”
Harley moaned and instinctively reached up to touch her cheek to apply pressure, but the man who’d dropped her caught her wrist and pulled it down to her side. He pushed her back with a firm hand on her chest and forced her to lie flat.
“What are you doing to me?” Her voice cracked as he and the other man pinned her to the mattress pad and fastened Velcro-lined bands across her.
“It’s mandated protocol before transport,” the suit explained.
“Yes,” the other man’s words followed. “In your condition, we can’t have you falling off the gurney.”
And they can’t have me attacking them, either, she suspected. Of course, she realized, they could see she was already turning after the zombie’s bite she’d received only a short time ago. The skin at the site of the bite had become encrusted with oozing sores, surrounded by once healthy skin. It now appeared mottled, slimy, and gray, like mushrooms left too long in the refrigerator. The pain wracking her body intensified with every passing second. It was clear what was happening to her.
It seemed impossible to the teenager that, not long ago, her biggest worry was getting over the ex-boyfriend she’d had to leave behind in Texas when her family moved to Ft. Wayne. Although Zack was more than a thousand miles away, he remained in her thoughts. She wondered if he was still alive, or worse, something less than alive. It was ironic, now, that Harley had once thought her world ended when her family moved. She couldn’t have imagined that losing Zack would become one of the smaller problems she faced. No, turning into a zombie hadn’t been on her agenda, not even in pencil. But here she was, stuck on her way to zombie triage.
The suited men rolled Harley’s gurney over the bumpy ground toward a semi-trailer, where they wheeled her up a ramp. Inside the truck, more workers dressed in hazmat suits were waiting for her, and the men left the teen in their care. The staff in the trailer converged on Harley. Shears snipped as they cut her clothing and eased it off her skin in strips, working in and around the restraints. She realized this was probably necessary for them to treat her wounds, but she felt her body impulsively resisting and cringing from their touch.
“Wouldn’t this be easier and faster if you just loosened these straps?” she asked. “I could undress and change into whatever you need me to wear.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” one of the suits said in a female voice. “We’ve done this hundreds of times.”
Somehow, that didn’t make Harley feel better. The team of workers continued removing clothing, and one snapped a photo of her face and took several shots of the many festering lesions on her body. Working with care, another suit slipped a hospital gown over Harley’s arms and tied it around her neck, leaving it draped over the restraints like an odd, over-sized bib.
“Is all this really necessary?” the teen asked. She questioned them about the restraints and the photos they’d taken, but no one answered her.
A hazmat suit approached. It carried a clipboard and pen in its mittened hands. A woman’s voice came from behind the figure’s black mask as it peered down at Harley. “I’m Nurse Kennedy, and I’m in charge of your records. We need your consent for treatment.”
Harley glanced at the pen and then down at her own tethered arms. “Shouldn’t we have done this before I was strapped down?” she snapped. Even as the words came out of her mouth, Harley recoiled at her own sarcasm and the anger in her tone. It wasn’t like her to talk to a grownup like that. Perhaps it was the pain. Maybe she felt so violated and miserable she couldn’t help herself.
“It’s a verbal consent form,” the nurse informed Harley, seemingly unconcerned about the teen’s attitude. “Rita, can you witness this one?” Another suit made its way toward them and peered over the nurse’s shoulder.
“Nurse,” Harley interrupted, “could I please have some pain medicine? I’m miserable, and it’s getting worse.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait until they transfer you to the treatment facility.” Her mask cocked to the side, and her vinyl-encased hand patted the teen’s arm. “I know it hurts, but we’ll get this over quickly. It won’t be much longer.” Reading aloud, she ticked off a list of several possible complications Harley might experience after receiving an experimental antiviral injection.
Harley listened to the advisory with concern welling in her gut. Another suited worker, carrying a caddy of test tubes and syringes, moved to her side. “I’m just going to take some blood samples,” a different female voice said. She slipped a rubber tourniquet around Harley’s arm and instructed her to make a fist. She leaned in close to the teen’s body and probed her inner elbow with her gloved fingers, in search of a vein.
Harley felt a fresh wave of nausea as the nurse pressed on her flesh. Eventually, the technician appeared satisfied and readied to draw the blood.
“Have you ever given blood in the past?” the tech asked.
Harley nodded.
“Good. This procedure is basically the same, but, well, because of your infection, you may feel a bit more pressure than you experienced before, but I need you to stay completely still, okay?”
Great. Pressure. Harley knew all too well that word was a doctor’s euphemism for this is gonna hurt like hell. The needle pierced her skin with a searing fire, unlike anything she’d felt before. With every cell already functioning in overdrive, the teen swore she could feel each millimeter of movement the metal hypodermic made as it progressed through her tissues. Her eyelids stung, and she was sure that if she’d had anything other than zombie gunk flowing through her body, she’d be crying. Real tears. Not slimy mucous.
The phlebotomist struggled with the syringe as she pulled the plunger backward in the barrel. Harley’s nerves exploded in agony. The rubber tourniquet was removed, and she felt the movement of her thickened blood as it was suctioned into the syringe. The torturous cramp in her arm was
nothing she could have anticipated, and she cried out, begging them to stop.
“I know, honey,” Nurse Kennedy cooed in a futile attempt to soothe the teen. She laid a hand on Harley’s head, as if to reassure her. “Almost done. Just hold still. You’re doing great.” She leaned over and examined the phlebotomist’s work. “It’s thicker than usual, isn’t it?”
The technician’s hood gave an affirmative nod.
The possible implications of the nurse’s words swirled in Harley’s festering brain. When the venipuncture process was finished, the tech held up four vials of black fluid. She lifted one toward the overhead light and shook it. From Harley’s viewpoint, the blood seemed to have the consistency of hair gel and not normal bodily fluid.
The technician finished her work and placed a Band-Aid over the needle’s puncture, despite the fact that no blood seeped out. The pungent odor of alcohol wafted through the air as Nurse Kennedy dabbed Harley’s bite wound. She placed a dressing over the festering skin and taped it in place.
Despite the pain, Harley found herself marveling at the utter pointlessness of applying bandages to the decomposing mess that was her skin.
Nurse Kennedy continued explaining the potential complications. “I know all the potential side effects sound dangerous, but the serum is your best chance at recovery,” she said.
“My only chance, you mean,” Harley corrected her. She stared at the nurse’s mask, wondering how long it might be before she could see a human face again without fear of spreading infection.
“Try not to worry,” Nurse Kennedy continued, “we’ve treated everyone from people like you, who were just recently exposed to others who were in more advanced stages of disease when they arrived.” She shifted the forms around on her clipboard. “Of course, I must disclose that the mortality rate for this infection is high, and your chances of fighting off the virus are poor, even with the antiviral injection.” She went on to explain that other outcomes were more likely. Harley could possibly die, or the disease would get worse. Much worse. It would be difficult, but infected people were living on the compound with the disease. They were being cared for as they waited for the development of additional vaccines. Some had even achieved partial improvements in their conditions, but were not yet “releasable.”
The Viral Series (Book 2): Viral Storm Page 1