Intro

Although I am a Pre-Med student, one of my dreams has always been to write. I figured that if I were to write, I might as well have people enjoy (or not) what I do- Hence my reasoning behind this blog. Please excuse the horrible grammar, improper sentence structure, and any other disregard on my part to conventional literary methods- Doctors aren't supposed to be amazing at writing right?
I'll be posting a short chapter once a week.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"What i wouldn't do for some fresh meat!"

"Find a wild chicken out there and I'll kill and prep it for you"

"If we found them we shouldn't eat them right away. We should breed them first. That way we'd always have chicken. And eggs. Oh man, eggs sound great too."

I look at the three figures huddling around the table, faces glowing in the candlelight. It's the same conversation they have every night, although the meat source in question changes depending on the day.

Food. Water. Shelter. You didn't survive unless you had all three.

Our house was far enough outside the town that the water lines didn't reach us. Luckily, we lived in the northwest. My dad had paid to have a well be built out back. Even on the mountainside the ground was so moist that the well did not have to be dug very deep. We would never run out of water as long as we stayed put.

Us boys would sneak outside as kids and open the hatch at the mouth of the well. We would entertain ourselves for hours throwing various things down the dark hole and hearing the splash far below. One day mom had caught us throwing firecrackers down the well. We did the yard work for a month after that stunt. She was the disciplinary in our family. She was also the teacher, taxi driver, medic, and cook of the family. She did everything. Although I can hardly remember my dad being around, my mom was right there in every memory of my childhood. When I was 12, my mom lost her sister and dad in a fishing accident. They were all she had left of her family. Sinking into depression and using alcohol as her flotation device, she rarely left her room after that. I stepped into the role of parent to my three brothers. She had packed and left by the time I had gotten home on the day of the quarantine. We hadn't heard from her since.

"Finish up your food guys. We've got a long day tomorrow and still have to lock up tonight." I prod them to finish their scanty meal of canned tuna and homemade biscuits and start to make my way though the dark house. I methodically check all of the boarded windows as I make my way through each room. I click the deadbolts on the back door and make my way back to the boys to make sure they are getting ready for the night. I smile at the thought of me, the parent.

Before all of this I was the quiet older brother who would drive them to and from school and make them dinner. Other than that interaction, I was pretty detached from my three brothers. I was four when the twins, Tanner and Ammon, were born. They were Identical in every way physically, although in recent years they became very distinguishable due to personality. Tanner was the wild one. He was loud, hilarious, and at times more courageous than I was. Ammon was more of an introvert. He was the reader in the family. He would happily lay aside all of his toys as a kid and lose himself in a book instead. The twins were best friends, regardless of their differences in personality. Bryce came along a year after the twins. He was the most like me- a thinker. Bryce could beat anyone in a game of chess or checkers. Anyone but me. We had an ability to think through things. We were always thinking three or four steps ahead, anticipating the consequences of each action and the different paths each choice could lead us to. We planned meticulously. Bryce was only 13 but, like the rest of us, had hit a growth spurt early on and was the same height as me.

I find the three of them in the basement getting ready for bed. The basement has been the safest spot for us. We could survive weeks down here if needed. My dad had never gotten around to finishing the basement. It was a large empty room with the occasional beam holding up the floor above. The only finished room was a small bathroom underneath the stairs leading down from the main floor. For some reason my father had built the basement with only one window. We had covered the window well with bars to prevent anyone or anything from falling into it.

Over the last month we had managed to stockpile canned foods, bagged grains, and bottled water from various trips to town. We had pulled cots from our camper trailer and blankets from our room and had arranged all of that in a corner where we slept. A mess of radio parts, police scanners, walkie talkies, and phones take up a table on the far wall. All attempts to contact the world outside of our small town had been in vain.

Ammon had begged and begged until I had ran into town and grabbed a carload full of books from our small one roomed library. Those sit next to our old couch in the center of the room- A feeble attempt at making our shelter feel a bit more warm. The large room is pretty much empty other than that.
After checking in on the boys, I head upstairs and out the front door to the porch. With my dads old hunting rifle in my lap, I sit on the porch swing and look out into the darkness. You used to be able to see the town lights glowing far below, see the headlights from cars as they drove through town and down the highway. The ocean stretches off in the distance, a dark mirror to the clear skies above it. Everything is so peaceful and still. Although it is the middle of November, it is still warm enough outside for me to go without a jacket. Sitting in the swing and feeling this peace, I start nodding off, dreaming about better days.
A bright flash brightens the inside of my eyelids and I snap up out of my seat. As I locate the source of the light- an explosion down in town- The boom rings throughout the area, echoing off the mountains. In the darkness I cannot tell which building in town is on fire, but as I look through the rifle's hunting scope I see two dark figures making their way across the street in front of the building. They move slow, one figure visibly hunched over and leaning against another. They make their way to a pickup truck across the street and speed off, taillights disappearing in the trees to the north of town. I do not take my eyes from the scope and the fire below, but hear my brothers come out of the house behind me. They soon join in and watch as the fire grows, engulfing the building.
Tanner grabs the rifle from my hands and looks through the scope, "What happened? Did you see anyone down there?"
"Yeah, I saw a couple people driving away after it happened. One of them looked hurt. They headed north," I reply, quenching all of their fears that they were coming our way.
"Every sleeper for miles around would have heard that," Ammon starts as he heads inside, "Ten bucks says that the town is crawling in corpses by tomorrow morning."
"I wonder if it was someone we knew? Maybe we'd be able to find them and join up?" Bryce. Always the optimistic one.
"Yeah we'll see. Can't do anything about it tonight though. We'll make a run into town tomorrow to see what's up. Lets get some rest guys." I usher them in with these words and lock the door behind me.
Experience has taught me not to get my hopes up, to stay cautious. People have changed since the quarantine. Humanity has taken quite the ugly turn in the last months. We worry about the dead now but many times forget that the living can be just as, if not more, dangerous.
I lay down in my cot with the rifle on the floor next to me.
The image of the burning building in town is still burned in my mind as I start to drift into unconsciousness. I fall asleep replaying the scene in my mind, seeing those two get into the truck and drive away.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I remember the first time I ever saw one of them. Tyler Lewis, the most popular guy in school, was sitting in the back corner of the classroom with the usual flock of admirers crowded around him. The period hadn't begun yet and this is when he usually fulfilled his daily ritual of showing off videos from the internet that he had found. I didn't hate or blame him for being the cool guy. Tyler's dad owned half of our small town in different fleets of fishing vessels  He was also the only kid in our high school of 60 people to own a car made within this decade. He was an attractive, confident guy and couldn't help but humbly receive the attention given to him every step he took.

I threw my backpack down and slumped into my spot up towards the front of class. I wasn't nerdy enough to sit in the front row, but knew I'd learn more here than back with the sleepers. Sleepers. That's what they started to call the infected around the time they were shutting down New York.

As I situated myself at my desk, I realized that the usual squeals and giggles from Tyler's crowd weren't annoying me like they usually did. I looked in their direction and realized it wasn't his usual crew at all, but that the whole class was gathered around his computer screen in solemn silence.

Easing myself towards the back corner of Mr Thompson's classroom, I heard the twangy voice of a news anchor being pushed through laptop speakers, "At least 30 new cases have been reported so far in lower Manhattan. Pathologists have yet to classify this illness, but believe that it is viral and that it is blood borne."
That newscast was aired in February. Manhattan was cut off in the first days of March. That was due to the discovery that the epidemic was caused by a retrovirus much like HIV. It was the long hypothesized super virus that the CDC had been dreading and praying would never arise. It entered the body- usually through a bite or scratch, and would follow the neurons- your body's neurological highway- back to the brain where it would start it's work. The virus masked itself in the bodies own proteins- a stealthy advantage that it allowed it to go undetected by immunizations and the bodies defenses. Chances for finding a cure were slim. It would take years with a modern laboratory. None of those existed anymore.
"The Center for Disease Control has isolated these patients in an attempt to quench the growing numbers of citizens being taken by this illness," continued the news anchor. I was slowly inching closer to the screen, making my way though the small crowd of classmates. I situated myself behind the prettiest girl in class and had to refocus my perfume-intoxicated mind back to the newscast. If it were at all possible, the newscaster turned even more grim as he continued his explanation of the illness, "We have obtained footage taken at the hospital where the first known patient was observed. We warn viewers at home that the following footage is disturbing and graphic in nature."
The video was being shot from a surveillance camera set at one end of a small rectangular brick room. The walls were a sterile white and devoid of any decoration except for the two way mirrors lining all but one of the walls. It looked more like an interrogation room that you would see in the old crime solving TV shows than a hospital room. The room was empty except for a rolling gurney situated in the center of the room being occupied by a teenage girl that looked about our age. She would later become known as Patient X. She was the first known case of the illness. Nobody knew who she was or where she had come from. An NYU student by the name of Ethan Potts had found her unconscious on a subway and had brought her in to the hospital. Ethan became the second infected patient observed. From there, the list of names grew too long too fast to remember the individuals.
"That chick looks just like James!" muttered one of the kids behind me. It was true. With the zoomed out, fuzzy picture of the camera we did look alike. Her hair was the same dirty blonde color, but not as curly as mine. My hair was not tamable  It drove my mom nuts to see me walk out the door everyday without brushing my hair, but she knew it made no difference whether or not I did it in the morning- my hair was going to be a mess by the end of the day anyways.
The camera view changed to one facing the bed directly, the camera focusing on the patients face. The resolution was higher with this camera and the room had been mic'ed, allowing us to hear everything going on inside.
Her pale face glistened with sweat. A heart monitor whirred on a stand next to her bed. I knew very little at that time about human anatomy, but I knew enough to know that her heart rate was way too fast. Her hands gripped the sides of her bed in panic as her eyes darted around the room as if looking for relief.
Again the camera view switched- this time back to the surveillance camera. We could still hear what was going on in the room as we watched a team of doctors working in a frenzy to revive her lifeless body. The heart monitor was still on and the constant wail of the flatline was drowned out by the head doctor taking notes. "No Pulse, hemorrhaging of the mucous membranes is apparent in both the oral and nasal cavities..." He continued rattling off medical information. I have watched that video countless times. How little they knew. I wonder what actions they would have taken if they would have known they had just brushed up against the first fatality of a plague that would decimate two thirds of the world's population in just a matter of months.
The scene jumped ahead and the room was again empty. The lights had been dimmed, the observation room no longer in active use. Her corpse lay there covered, the single light in the room directly over her. The picture went unchanging for a whole 12 seconds. From the detailed medical records that were released to the public at the height of the CDC's investigation, I learned that patient x was immobile for a full three hours after the moment of her death.
The group around the laptop screen had grown silent, huddling even closer together than before. There was a soft sigh, a twitch of the leg, and patient x started moving underneath the plastic sheet. Lights flared back to life in the small room and a staff of stunned doctors rushed in to her bedside within seconds.
What came next would define the future of humanity as we knew it. Patient x lurched from her bed. Her hair fell in front of her face and she stepped towards the nearest doctor. He moved as if to encourage her to lay back down, but before he could, a grating his came from her mouth. The hiss made my hair stand on end. It was almost like the sound that my grandma's cat would make when we poked at her, but fuller and more violent. Before the doctor had said a thing, she had grabbed him.

One by one they were bit, and rushed out of the room by supporting doctors. Dead within the hour. Reanimated and killing a half hour after that. The hospital became ground zero, Manhattan was overrun soon after.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The radio signal is faint, but I can still hear the announcers voice through the static. I close my eyes and imagine him standing there in front of me- I know this isn't a live newscast. This announcement started transmitting three months ago and had repeated itself on every frequency in the state four times a day since.

I will never forget hearing it for the first time. I was driving in my beat up old Honda- an attempt by my parents to make up for the years of not being there. It would take a lot more than a heavily used pile of garbage to do that. It hadn't helped me win over friends or gain popularity points at Neah-Kah-Nie High School, but I had become famous for the plume of exhaust trailing me out of the parking lot after class each day.

It was raining. When people think of the northwest they think of rain as coming down sideways, flooding your basement, and cute girls in rain boots. The coast was nothing like that- where I lived it was a constant gray mist so thick you couldn't see across the harbor kind of rain that clung to your clothes. It was a rain so persistent that it permeated even the sturdiest raincoats. I loved it though, loved driving the misty highways that wound through the mountains east of town. The windshield wipers kept steady rhythm as i drove south on the main highway that cut through our small coastal town of Nehalem. I was rounding the third curve past the city heading home from school when the radio cut out. Noises similar to those we would hear when a tsunami warning was sent out via the local news station started sounding and were followed by an announcement-"Citizens of the Northwestern Region of the united states, this is not a test of the Emergency Alert System. The United States government has announced the immediate quarantine of the following states: Washington, Oregon, Idaho..." I pulled over, the rest of the announcement a buzz in the back of my head. It had happened. The CDC and WHO, acronyms I had never heard of before the first outbreak, had told us everything had been contained on Manhattan.

From our small town nestled in the Cascade mountains of the Oregon Coast, we had watched in horror from afar as the initial Manhattan outbreak slowly slipped out of the controlled hands of authorities and into chaos. In an attempt to quench the outbreak, bridges had been destroyed, tunnels full of fleeing citizens flooded, and about the half of the population of the island had been left behind. Those abandoned who were not already infected lasted about a month before they were overrun.

"We encourage you to gather what supplies you can, find your families, and await further instruction from your local authorities." The faint signal fades and I am left listening to a throbbing buzz of static. I cant believe it has only been three months since the broadcast. I think of the unprecedented traffic in the hours and days following the announcement. My siblings and I watched from our porch as thousands poured down from the north following highway 101 south. Out of gas, many were forced to abandon their cars, turning highways into a clogged mess of broken down automobiles. It was better to walk anyways- You had a greater chance of sneaking past the army at the border if you were on foot.

I look up from the cracked dashboard and notice the sun is nearing the tops of the evergreens, their shadows growing longer on the road ahead of me, and I know I must stop my search and return home. With nobody on the roads and no traffic signals to obey anymore, I weave down the old familiar highway and through town with ease, passing dads shop along the way.

My dad was a strong man and took pride in the small shop that his tan muscular hands had built from the ground up. As a kid I loved going to the grungy brick building in the middle of town and learning at his side. I would hand him the tools he would shout out for from under the chassis of an old sea-worn pickup from the wharf or would help detail the interior of the mayor's wife's Cadillac. Over the years he taught me his trade. By the time I had turned 15 I had learned to completely assemble an engine. My dad's small business quickly grew and we saw less and less of him. My mom called his successful business his wife and children. My Honda had been abandoned at the shop by a family that couldn't pay for repairs. By that time, my love for the shop and its smells of grease and transmission fluid had turned to loathing. The shop has stolen my dad from us.

I pull off the highway and start up the long gravel driveway winding up the mountain through the forest. After  minutes of mounting uneasiness, I pull up to the house. To my relief everything appears untouched- Still safe. 

My dad had built our house. My earliest memories are those of me sitting on the concrete slab that he had poured for the house's foundation and watching him work away on the framework high above me. My parents both grew up in Portland and had met their senior year in high school. I can't remember much of their earlier years- the spark that brought them together had faded around the time my youngest brother was born. Hearing their story never seemed important. I'd imagine my mom was drawn to the boisterous native american boy with his dark complexion, oval face, strong jaw line, and slicked back hair. My dad wore his hair the same way every day of his life- Slicked back on top and drawn up into a long thick braid that ran down to the middle of his back. We had all inherited my moms curly brown hair and lighter complexion.

After graduating high school, my parents had moved out to the coast. My dad was hired as a deckhand down at the wharf and my mom made souvenirs from random items found on her long walks along the sand. I was born a short time later. They named me James, after my mom's dad. I had never met him. With his new family and increased wages as first mate, my dad bought an acre of land outside of town and built our house. I remember looking out of our front window and watching my parents on the porch swing. They were so happy then. The house was my fathers gift to my mom. The single story cedar shingled house had very few of the large windows like most coastal homes. Looking up at our lot from the road below, it almost appeared camouflaged into the trees behind it. My dad had built on the side of the mountain just high enough to look over the evergreens. The highway could be seen below. Beyond that the ocean extended to the horizon.

Looking over the old home, I am suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude as I realize what I owe my dad- My knowledge of cars and this house. Those two things have kept me alive these last three months. 

Have kept us alive.