Plague: Death was only the beginning! (17 page)

End of Book 1

To be continued in Book 2

-Fall 2015

Now for an exciting look into Invasion: 2016, Book 2 of Invasion.

Invasion

Keep the Faith!

“Hell has found us and we despair as death walks over us.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 1

Mike’s eyes were gritty and filled with pain as he walked the dry deserted streets of a small town in southern Missouri. The last week had been nothing but hell as he walked through one plague town after another. The smell had forced him to finally resort to homemade masks covered in Vicks to keep out the odor of the decomposing bodies. The walk itself was like a trial by fire with many areas burning as lightning struck the ground and issued flames that reached greedy hands for every bush and tree. As he looked about, he was given a vision of hell itself. Burning homes, cars, and melted tires cast black heavy smoke across the low ground in a choking screen that blocked out the fresh air his lungs desperately needed.

Reaching Second Street, he looked at his map and took a left that should head him east again. The need to travel over bridges and cleared sections of land had forced him to take detours sometimes miles out of his way. By doing so, he was able to make up the time lost by moving quickly through open highways and byways. He had tried a number of times to find a car and drive, but always lost time because the traffic would be jammed up just ahead. So, he just walked for now until he reached a point where the prior population densities were low. And here and there, he found the leftovers from the vampire bats as smeared dark red and black areas covered small sections of the pavement. Sighting the shadows growing as the afternoon died, he made his way into a store or house and spent the last hours reinforcing the windows and doors to keep out the bats. His face and arms were already covered with bite marks and scratches from an incident two days before. He had failed to find a small unused dryer vent that the bats could crawl through and had been seriously attacked before he could force it closed and kill the bats inside. Just as with Tommy, he had a raging infection that was only allowing him a few hours each day to search for food and shelter before dragging back down into a terror-filled sleep.

Finding a house with a basement, he pulled a shovel out of the open garage and began piling dirt against some side windows. Bats were flyers, not diggers. He pulled two interior doors, placed them against the large exterior basement door, and nailed them securely to the frame. Leaving a small side window as an entrance, he wiggled inside and nailed a four-by-four-foot sheet of heavy plywood against the interior window frame to secure it.

At last, he could relax for a short time and prepare a can of soup or vegetables, depending on how lucky he was that day, and eat it from the can with a spoon he kept in his shirt pocket. After being locked in a storeroom without a can opener or spoon to eat with, he had learned to always carry both.

Tommy sat in his recliner and watched the view outside as reflected on his closed circuit TV screens. The weather had gotten stormy and dark, and he welcomed the change, as the bats couldn’t fly in such weather. Even so, everyone was on alert for the first signs of their return. The last week and a half had lost them two head of cattle and six sheep that had failed to return to the enclosure quickly enough from grazing during the day. Even worse, the animals were thought to be too disease ridden for eating and had to be buried with the use of Tommy’s backhoe. The bats sheltering inside them had flown about until they were burned alive by Jim’s homemade flamethrower. This task was necessary after the victims of the initial attacks had contained living bats inside the chest cavities.

Still too weak to do anything to assist outside, he could only sit at the radio and call out to any survivors who were still alive. But, so far, he was unable to find anyone from the American southwest to answer his calls. Sharon, Simon, and Marsha were fine up in Bangor, Maine and were settled in for a long winter of heavy snow and frozen temperatures. He had heard a weak signal coming in from Seattle a week ago, showing a handful of folks had survived there for now. Even calling on the pre-set frequencies that Tony had arranged, his party of travelers had not called and checked in. Unknowing that their flight had crashed after takeoff weeks before in southern Missouri, Tom called every hour on the hour on a number of pre-selected “prepper” frequencies that many preppers had agreed to years before. Some from northern Idaho had been active prior to the plague outbreak but had since dropped off the air. It was the same for some of Tommy’s prior contacts in Europe and Asia as well. The plague had erased country borders and major sections of the animal population along with the human beings. Vast areas of the rain forest were now silent as the tree-loving monkeys and great apes fell to the plague along with the poachers who hunted them.

Switching on the overhead lights, Tommy pulled out his paper log and began adding pages of observations since his attack had caused him to lose track of the days. Now that he was getting stronger, he decided to keep his records up to date so that whoever survived would understand the issues that had befallen them and mankind itself. Maybe years from now, one of the compound’s descendants might find it of interest.

“Sorrow fills the eyes as we look upon a troubled land.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 2

Sharon and her small band of survivors sat in front of the living room fireplace and listened while Marsha read to them from a book of children’s stories. This had started one night when Simon said he was bored of board games and looking at the snow falling over the driveway. Marsha had found a storybook that was suitable for children and had read to him in a slow and wistful voice that had carried them all into a wonderland of adventure. Since then, Marsha continued reading from the book, and others, as a way to spend the quiet evenings in peace. Marking her place in the book with a finger, she looked over at Sharon and smiled. Simon had laid his head in Sharon’s lap and gone silently to sleep. Sharon could only look down in pride at the little boy who had come into her life at a time when little was left to live for. Now, she awoke each day with a happy spring in her step and couldn’t wait to see what Simon might discover that day for the first time.

Today, it had been the sight of blood-red cardinals and brightly colored blue jays sitting in the evergreen trees in the back yard. Looking like Christmas ornaments, they filled the snow-covered branches and seemed to make a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting of northern Maine. Simon had run to tell them both it was Christmas again, and they all laughed as the birds fought each other for the handful of bread crust and uneaten cookies.

As night approached, they listened on the radio as Tommy and a handful of others told of the bat invasion as it swept by their locations. The leading edge was now reaching Arkansas and points east as they continued to expand the reach of their territories into new lands. Afterward, smaller, possibly weaker, bands settled into the newly conquered building and caves and pushed out any normal fruit bats and other vermin that had lived in them prior to their arrival.

The night still saw vampire bats streaming across the darkened lands, and they found pickings that had escaped the initial attack only to fall now as prey. That is what Tommy had reported as happening to his sheep and cattle, as they had been released after two nights of quiet clear skies. Now, all livestock was chased home and locked up by late afternoon to ensure they would survive until the bats starved. Starvation of the bats was also being reported as some dead bats had been found where all life had either taken cover or died and had left no food sources behind. This was what Susan found as she too made her way toward what she hoped was safety. The last week had seen her traveling the empty freeways of northern Texas, sometimes on foot and sometimes by car. As Mike up north of her had found, the traffic was a mix of long open stretches and jammed interchanges that went on for many lonely miles. One night, she stayed at an RV park just outside of Denton, Texas in a beautiful Class A motorhome. She had found the owners sitting outside in lawn chairs with a note that invited anyone to share their former home. The water tanks, propane, and batteries were all topped off, and she stayed a number of nights with the lights on and the TV blaring an old DVD movie on the popup big screen TV. The heavy glass had no problems keeping out the bats as long as the vents stayed closed and locked down. After spending the night, she had dragged four people to an impromptu gravesite and buried them. She told them of how much she enjoyed the RV and how the hot shower had been the first she had enjoyed in weeks. She also told them of her own story, how she had struggled against the terrible kidnapping, survived the bats, and her hope that maybe she could find others somewhere and start to rebuild a new society. Finally, she lay on the cold ground and cried her heart out at the world that had overtaken her future and left them fighting to survive against disease and bats. Terrible blood sucking bats. Damn, that was bad.

She sat with her feet up on the leather couch and ate a bowl of Dinky Moore beef stew while watching a black-and-white movie about a creature at an arctic research facility that wanted blood for its babies. What the hell was the blood bit all about? Really?! But, she got a blast as they dumped kerosene on the monster and lit it on fire. Cool, the place exploded with flames everywhere! This one was really good; how had she ever missed it?

I hope you liked the view forward. Please post a review for this book on Amazon and Goodreads!

-Continued in Book 2 coming Fall 2015!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I have been a number of things in my life to include USAF Security Police Officer, Photo Intelligence Specialist, Nuclear Weapons Targeteer, and Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) for the State of Minnesota, American Red Cross Disaster Services Instructor/Mass Care Specialist, NRA Firearms Instructor and BCA Minnesota Permit to Carry Instructor to name just a few. But through all of this I have been a prepper and I have used my skill sets to actually survive a number of life challenging situations where my only hope of survival was saving myself. (I once self-rescued myself with a broken neck from the Northern Woods of Minnesota.) Having said that I hope you can learn also how to survive with a little luck and learning not to panic.

I currently live with my wife and too many cats and dogs off grid in Mountain View, MO. I can be reached at
[email protected]
My Facebook page at DonaldFranckBooks. And on Twitter at @dfranck1.