Dawn of a New Day (12 page)
Authors: Nick Mariano
Mary Phillips was retired and lived in Ashburn, Virginia, after retiring from the Department of Commerce, where she worked for over twenty-five years. She followed the recent events in Washington, D.C., and feared that the virus would somehow make it way the thirty some miles to where she now lived. She had a nice home in the country and grew her own vegetables and had a few chickens that provided her with enough eggs to last her through the week. She hadn’t heard of any walking dead incidents in the general vicinity of Ashburn but she knew it was only a matter of time before some infectee slipped by everyone and ended top roaming through the countryside there. What Mary didn’t know was that the virus could jump from animals to humans because of an Antigenic Shift. In an Antigenic Shift Type 2, the virus jumps directly from an infected bird back to a human. In an Antigenic Shift Type 3, the bird strain can jump from one type bird to another animal host, such as a pig or chicken, and then to a human. The new strain then spreads rapidly from person to person and, if left uncontrolled, a pandemic results. Unfortunately none of this information was even disseminated to the public by the government for fear that there would be a mass panic and people would start killing every animal and bird in sight.
Also unfortunately, one of Mary’s egg laying chickens had come in contact with a common crow that had become infected as it flew through the Washington area and ate some bits and pieces of a dead infectee. That crow then flew northwest through Ashburn and left droppings in the chicken coop at Mary’s house and, one day while feeding her flock, a infected chicken pecked at Mary’s finger, breaking her skin, and infecting her with a mutated version of the super virus.
Two days after this incident Mary began to feel some minor flu effects and thought it was time to pull out the cough medicine and medicate herself. On Day Three she began to notice some discoloration on her arms, legs, and neck, and having watched TV, she knew that these were the basic symptoms of the deadly virus. She thought, “Please don’t let me have the virus, I don’t want to die.” She also feared that someone would see her and take matters into their own hands. There had been several incidents of card-carrying NRA members shooting whomever they perceived as infectees since the virus outbreak began. Mary thought she’d just honker down and stay on her little piece of land in the country and go unnoticed.
By Day Four Mary was starting to lose all sense of reason and felt pissed off for no apparent reason. There was no one there to make her mad but she felt like she could kick someone’s ass, just for the hell of it. By Day Five, she decided to venture out and wreck havoc on whoever was unfortunate enough to cross her path. There were no other houses close by but she casually strolled down some country road looking to see what she could find. A car appeared on the horizon and was headed in Mary’s direction. As the driver saw Mary, he slowed to a stop and lowered his window to see if she was in need of assistance. Mary grabbed his arm without hesitation and started to bit again and again while he screamed in pain. Five minutes later the driver lie dead, or perhaps just in a suspended state, before he too would begin his stroll down the road looking for new friends and victims.
Mary eventually reached the small town of Ashburn, which besides the gas station/corner grocery, was shuttered and closed. A few people visited the station daily for milk and whatever supplies were still making their way to the store. Several farmers brought local produce and some chickens to the store for sale but most grocery items were gone once they sold out at the store.
Mary entered the gas station undetected, as the owner was working on someone’s automobile in the shop. By the time he realized he had a visitor, it was too late. Mary still had some degree of reasoning even though the virus had killed the majority of her brain cells. She sensed that if she stayed put, she might get more visitors as the day progressed. One by one people came to the station for basic essentials or to get some gas before the pumps went dry. One by one Mary attacked these fine folks and several would eventually turn and become Mary’s assistants in crime.
Night fell and Mary remained in the dimly lit station and waited for new customers. Around midnight, Howard Simpson, a Deputy Sheriff, from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department, pulled in to get his nightly cup of coffee from the all night station. Simpson thought it was strange that the outside lights by the gas pumps hadn’t been turned on yet and so he approached the station with caution. There had been reports of gangs robbing stations in the area and stealing gas and whatever supplies they could find. He opened the door and called out to Robert Booth, the station’s owner, but received no reply. Simpson slowly withdrew his 9mm pistol and scanned the station’s interior as he entered. He heard some heavy breathing to his right and as he turned he spied Mary slowly approaching him. He could tell almost immediately that she was infected, as the front of her face was heavily swollen and pus and blood oozed out from numerous sores. Blood also covered the entire front of the woman’s clothes. Simpson took quick aim and fired two well-placed shots to the frontal lobe of Mary’s head. She dropped instantly. A moment later Simpson heard a second sound and turned to see a bloodied Robert Booth approaching him. Two shots later Booth also was down and out for the count. Simpson radioed his headquarters in Leesburg and requested assistance and a clean up crew. He then sat down and had his evening cup of coffee, although leftover from early morning and quite strong, while he waited for backup to show up. The virus had reached Loudoun County and Simpson knew that he would see more of the same soon.
It was now well into the month of July and the doctors and scientists at the Army Medical Command at Fort Detrick were still sifting through the stacks and stacks of files that the CDC had gotten from German Intelligence. The files provided some clues about how Mengele and his team has engineered the super virus, however, the staff at Fort Detrick was still having problems figuring out how to come up with a vaccine that could stop the virus once it entered someone’s body. Another group was working on an improved version of the X554 vaccine to use as a preventive for the virus but doctors wanted something that could also cure people if they were exposed.
Doctors knew that it is often difficult to overcome a virus and that many viruses could and can survive vaccines, various sulfa based drugs, antibiotics, home made remedies and just about anything the scientists could whip up to fight it. The virus itself is one of the smallest factors a body can react to, and unlike bacteria, a virus theoretically never dies. Researchers found active viruses in Europe from the Middle Ages while excavating some ancient ruins. They just become dormant and then something triggers them back to life. If the wind blows and some virus infected dirt flies up a person’s nose, the virus can interact with the body’s moist membranes and become active again. The result is that the person becomes sick with whatever virus type is involved.
People can become infected with a virus in one of two ways, exposure or injection. Many vaccines are actual live viruses that expose the person to a particular virus in order to prevent that person from contracting that virus and disease. Polio shots are perhaps the best example. Chicken Pox is another commonly encountered virus. When young, many people contract Chicken Pox, but eventually recover and are well again. The virus, however, remains in our bodies and can reappear later in life as Shingles or Herpes Zoster. The disease can haunt seniors and be quite painful if not treated quickly.
The doctors at Fort Detrick began to look at some other drugs that could prevent a certain disease by infecting the person with another virus that overrode the first virus. One of the first such drugs approved by the FDA in the United States, Imlygic, contains an infectious virus, and was used to fight skin cancer. The vaccine contains a live virus that infects and destroys cancer cells and activates the body’s immune system, so it responds to and fights the cancerous cells in a person’s body. One of the major drawbacks of this new drug was that it sometimes could only extend the patient’s life by a matter of months. The research and cost of the drug also make it difficult for many patients to gain the treatment. A similar virus was developed for HIV patients. As recently as March 2015 scientists used a polio virus to help kill a cancer virus. Doctors believed that this was the right approach to killing the super virus. It was just a question as to what virus could knock out the super virus’s combination of influenza, plague and rabies.
Unlike the costly skin cancer drug, the U.S. Government and other governments of the world weren’t worrying about how much a vaccine against the super virus was going to cost. It was a matter of finding a cure or at least something to slow it down, or eventually over half the world’s population could be dead. Some protest groups even cheered this fact, as many felt that the world had become too overpopulated and that maybe a good pandemic was what we needed to get back on track.
Scientists also believed that certain viruses could be killed by shaking them using frequencies. This theory said that vibrations caused by ultrasound could disrupt the outer shell of the virus and cause it to become inactivated. Another theory involved cleansing a person’s blood, as is done with dialysis, and thus removing the viruses and pathogens present in the blood. The blood would be recycled from a person’s body and laser light would be used to eliminate any pathogens in the blood.
Many of the methods the Fort Detrick staff looked at were promising, however, given the large number of infectees throughout the world, the big question still remained to be solved. How do we get this cure out to everyone in the world and clean up this mess?
The scientists finally decided that the virus killing another virus was the way to go. The influenza virus presented no real problems as scientists could come up with a cure for that element of the super virus, just as they had done every year when people get the new and better flu shot. Tackling the plague and rabies was a more serious problem, as so far there was no real cure for rabies once a person becomes infected. Doctors have a vaccine to protect a person against rabies, however, untreated patients, who are bitten and infected, have only the smallest chance of recovering from the deadly disease. Death is almost always certain. The same is true of the plague. Vaccines exist to help prevent an exposed person from contracting the disease, however, once infected the cure becomes more difficult. One current medication, however, is used for curing the plague and has the bonus side effect of curing pneumonia, which would be particularly helpful with the Asian strain of the super virus.
The big question was how to treat the super virus in its entirety and get it to the masses who potentially had been exposed. Scientists considered vaccines, placing some sort of vaccine in the public’s water supply and then people would just continue to drink water everyday or using an aerosol dispersement over a city or rural area. The main problem with the aerosol was that everyone had to be outside when the remedy was sprayed over the city.
The search for the cure continued, but the solution, although appearing very close, was still out of the reach for the time being.
The virus was remaining in check in South America although it had finally reached the continent’s shores. Asia was still the hotbed although that too was coming under control since the governments initiated their curfews and people were no longer strolling the streets. Europe had some cases but was fairing better than the other locations around the globe and the Middle East had relatively few cases there. Many of the Middle Eastern countries had initiated a very strict no fly policy shortly after the Asia outbreak and so very few people who could have been infectees, ever reached there. The scientists also theorized that the extreme heat in most of these countries was very climate unfriendly to the virus and, even if it came in contact with some people, the degree of contagion would be limited.
The CDC continued to monitor outbreaks in countries and cities that had gone virus free until that point. Global Response Teams were sent to cities where the initial outbreaks were bad or where the doctors thought it could get worse. There were still undead roaming the streets of several of the major Asian cities and the military and police were doing a good job in searching out the hordes and eliminating them before they could infect additional people. The American Embassy in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, two of the hardest hit locations, continued to keep Washington appraised of how the virus was progressing there. Both embassies had since gone to a mandatory departure of their employees and most returned home to the U.S. where the chance of contracting the super virus was greatly reduced. Only skeleton staffs of principal officers and security personnel remained. There were continual skirmishes at both embassies as a number of outsiders realized that it was probably one of the safer places in the city and rumors had it that the Americans had adequate supplies of food and essentials on hand. Almost daily people tried to scale the fences but were repelled by the Marine Security Guards stationed there.
One of the CDC Response Teams still remained at German Intelligence Headquarters looking for additional information about the super virus and its deployment to America during the war. So far most of the files with any substance had been recovered, although it was hoped that somewhere in the extensive repository some information might be discovered as to whether Mengele had even developed a vaccine for the virus he produced.
The medical staffs in Asia had recently been in touch with Fort Detrick and, after a number of video conferences; everyone was now trying to come up with a virus, anti-virus. Most medical experts agreed that if a strong enough virus could be identified they might be able to use that virus to override the super virus. The big question was, what virus? They started to look at what vaccinations the average child and adult receives and came up with a list they decided to use as a starting point. Childhood vaccines included measles, meningitis, polio, tetanus, whooping cough, mumps, rubella, pneumococcal, Hepatic A and B, Zoster, Diphtheria and your everyday influenza. Most of the labs had samples of the super virus strain and so researchers began attempting to mutate that strain with one of childhood vaccines in hopes that one of these viruses would overpower it. Everyone knew it would be a long and tedious process but right now it was the only hope anyone had for finding a cure. They also went back to see what anti-viruses the military had developed during the Cold War in anticipation of a biological attack by the Russians.
Despite the fact that a major part of the world was inundated with trying to find a cure for the super virus and patrolling their streets for those who had turned because of it, terrorism as we know it was still in full swing. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Boko Haram and ISIS, were still carrying out attacks around the world. From the start of 2015 until mid-year over 1,000 had been killed outside of Iraq and Syria. Beheadings and attacks on tourist locations were continually in the newspapers and the headlines were divided between the super virus and terrorism. Many of the attacks involved “lone wolves” who decided that they would undertake their personal jihad against the government of some nation or against an individual. Spectacular bombings were shown on the television and people around the world had to worry about two enemies, the Nazi super virus and ISIS and its subordinate groups. Police and the military were split in fighting the two and not only did they have to fight walking dead around their cities, but they had to worry that someone hadn’t planted a bomb somewhere too. The fact that most airlines were not flying to any countries helped to eliminate some of the problem, but most European and Asian cities already had terrorist sympathizers among them. The groups became more brazen as time went on and they knew that they weren’t the primary concern of most governments at the moment. While many of the groups had originally concentrated their attacks in the Middle East, they now directed efforts on targets in Europe, and the United States was also high on their list of places to attack. The population was torn and frightened and didn’t know if they would become infected with the super virus, be attacked by an infectee, or be shot or blown up by a terrorist group or “lone wolf.”
The President of the United States met daily with his National Security advisors to discuss the situation as it applied to these two concerns. After one meeting in August he met with General Sutherland, who headed the U.S. military effort against both ISIS and containment of the super virus. The General discussed how the military had located a lost German U-boat off the shores of North Carolina and extracted a piece of cargo the sub had been carrying. He discussed how the Germans had sent three subs to the U.S. toward the end of World War II, with the intention of launching a biological attack against the Americans. He said that one of the cargoes had been responsible for the New York attacks that had taken place a number of months prior. The second cargo was responsible for the virus that was now spreading around the world and the last cargo was what they had just recovered in July. Sutherland then turned his attention to the present ISIS situation and how they were becoming more powerful and brazen in their attacks and that it was just a matter of time before the U.S. had another attack like the World Trade Center. Even though the President was well aware of what had taken place so far in 2015, the General decided to stress some of the recent attacks worldwide. Many had received front-page news coverage, however, many were small and overtaken by other news. He talked about how Boko Haram had carried out a number of attacks in the African nations with major events taking place in Nigeria and Kenya. Yemen also seemed to have more than its share of attacks and it was a known fact that ISIS had major training centers throughout that country. Early in 2015, terrorists had attacked the offices of the satirical news magazine “Charlie Hebdo” and killed 12 people after the magazine had printed an article against the prophet. In February 2015, Boko Haram had killed at least 90 people and injured over 500 in a town outside of Fotokol, Cameroon. In March gunmen attacked the Bardo Museum in the center of Tunis and killed 21, including 18 foreign tourists. That same month Islamic State militants carried out five suicide bombings in Sana’a, Yemen, and killed 137 people and injured close to 350. In April, gunmen associated with the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab, opened fire on students at Garissa University in Kenya and killed over 150 people. In June, fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq detonated three car bombs in Kobani, near the Turkish border, and killed 146. That same month 27 people were killed and 227 injured when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Kuwait City, Kuwait. Another attack took place on June 26
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when terrorists attacked tourists in the Tunisian town of Sousse. The General said the list went on and on and he and the Joint Chiefs had discussed the matter and believed it was time for the Americans to think about a major retaliatory strike on ISIS and perhaps Boko Haram. The General added that he had several ideas he would like to run past the President, if he eventually agreed to such an attack. The President said he would sleep on the idea and get back to the General soon.
Later that month a man opened fire with an AKM assault rifle on a Thalys high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris. Two U.S. Military members and their friend intervened and stopped the attack from turning into a blood bath. Both the American and French Presidents later honored them for their heroic actions.