Escape the Virus Read online

  Escape the virus

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller - Last Pandemic book 1

  Ryan Westfield

  Copyright © 2019 by Ryan Westfield

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About Ryan Westfield

  Also by Ryan Westfield

  1

  Matt

  It was just another day at the office for Matt. Another boring day where nothing ever seemed to happen. Another day where Matt had to fight the urge to leave and never come back.

  He'd often wondered how he'd gotten himself into this mess, how he'd managed to let his debt pile up the way it had, putting him in a financial position where he simply couldn't afford to leave.

  Matt needed the job. That was reality.

  “Did you get a chance to take a look at those spreadsheets?” said McGovern, the assistant to the manager.

  McGovern had a way of standing too close to Matt. Matt used his feet to discreetly move his rolling chair a couple inches to the left. But, as if aware of the maneuver, McGovern absentmindedly took another step in Matt's direction, once again closing the gap between them.

  “Uh, I was about to do them,” said Matt.

  “That's what you told me yesterday.”

  “Well, I really mean it this time. Don't worry. Look, I'll pull them up right now.”

  McGovern actually stood there and watched as Matt pulled up the email, opened the spreadsheet, and started scrolling through the hundreds of columns, pretending to really examine it.

  “I'll take it from here,” said Matt, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice.

  McGovern muttered something as he left, no doubt off to breathe down someone else's neck.

  Matt hated it. The whole setup. He hated having a boss like that. He hated feeling like a little kid who hadn't done his chores.

  It wasn't that he hated authority, or had a problem obeying orders. Well, maybe just a little. He had, after all, been a little rebellious back in school.

  But, overall, he'd respect authority as long as the authority figure earned his respect first.

  His current bosses hadn't earned his respect. In fact, it seemed that they'd done their best to prove they weren't worthy of any respect.

  The spreadsheet in question, for instance, had already been looked over by Matt at least ten times. His bosses just kept sending it back to him, asking him to review it, apparently forgetting that he was the author of the whole document. They were just too disorganized, too focused on their own little promotions, to actually get any efficient work done.

  “Psst, Matt,” someone hissed.

  Matt looked up and saw his buddy Damian's face peering at him from down the long desk that they all sat at.

  How pathetic was it that they didn't even have cubicles, or their own private desks?

  “What?” hissed Matt, back at him. He didn't want McGovern to come back over. He didn't need any more shit today than he was already due.

  Larry, an older, permanently disgruntled guy, shot Matt a harsh look.

  “Check your email,” Damian hissed.

  Not wanting to get hissed at any more, risking McGovern's attention, Matt did what his friend told him to do. He checked his email.

  Among the dozen or so pointless work-related emails, there was a message that had been forwarded from Damian.

  Matt opened the email. There was no subject line. And the body of the email contained only a link.

  Matt clicked it. It took him to a news site. Just a regular one. Mainstream.

  The headline was larger than normal. Or so it seemed. Maybe it was just a trick of the eye.

  “H77 VIRUS PROVEN DEADLY IN 85% OF POPULATION,” ran the headline.

  Matt felt his heart start to beat a little faster as he read through the article.

  It wasn't the first time he'd heard of the H77 virus. But it was the first time he'd heard that it was so deadly.

  He vaguely remembered hearing something about H77 in the news a couple weeks ago, while at the barber shop, but then it had seemed as if it would just be another one of the yearly hyped-up threats. Nothing too serious. Nothing to really worry about.

  For a while now, it seemed as if every year there was some new virus that the media outlets made a big deal of. Several years back it had been the swine flu. And there'd been the bird flu, of course.

  For a while, it had seemed like all the viruses would be named after animals.

  And it all seemed as if there was nothing in the world more overhyped than the spread of a deadly virus.

  For instance, Matt remembered the various Ebola scares. That time, the threat had actually seemed more serious. A few healthcare workers had come back from Africa contaminated, making the threat of a spread across the continental US very real.

  But, in the end, it had been contained, and, like the other viruses, it had only amounted to a mild panic, with no real damage to the nation.

  According to the article, the H77 virus was different. For one, it was more deadly. Ebola, often cited as extremely deadly, only killed about half the people who got it.

  H77 was similar to Ebola in some ways. The biological and metabolic mechanisms involved were related. There were increases in nitric oxide, along with intense inflammation, high fever, and also eventual hemorrhaging.

  H77, though, differed from Ebola in the timeline of events. If someone contracted H77, the typical incubation period seemed to be two days. And it was completely symptom-free.

  Then, on the third day, all hell broke loose. That's when 85 percent of the people who'd contracted H77 started bleeding from the eyes and mouth. Less than twelve hours later, they'd died painful, fever-ridden delirious deaths.

  At the bottom of the article, there were two pictures. One was a man before he'd contracted the virus, and one was after. The “after” picture was just a corpse, with blood covering the emaciated face, the eyes bulging out, the jaw set in a strange off-center way.

  Matt gulped when he saw the picture. It was terrifying. It was hard to believe that it was real, that a virus could actually do that to a human body in that short a time frame.

  Momentarily distracted by a loud cough nearby, Matt looked up from his computer.

  It was just Cindy. She was always coughing. Nothing new there.

  Matt realized that his heart was pounding.

  Why had the article freaked him out so much?

  He looked over to Damian, who was grinning back at him. “Freaky!” he mouthed.

  Matt just nodded, somewhat annoyed.

  Why was Damian like that? Why did he revel in weird stuff like that? He liked all kinds of strange things, like videos of car wrecks and reading about serial killers.

  Slowly, Matt felt his heart rate start to slow down. He started feeling a little
calmer, and he remembered that every year, they were always saying that some new virus was the worst virus ever, that this was the one that would wipe out humanity.

  And it never happened.

  This wasn't going to be any different.

  Matt opened up the spreadsheet again. If someone walked by, it'd look like he was doing work.

  “Hey!” shouted someone. “Come here! Everyone!”

  Matt jerked into the upright position, his head spinning around, trying to see what was happening.

  It was rare that someone shouted. Rare to have such a disturbance at the office. Even when the bosses were mad, they hardly ever raised their voices.

  People were looking around sleepily, apparently unsure what the loud voice meant.

  “Everyone!” shouted the voice again.

  It was coming from the break room, a little square room in which people ate their sad snacks and sad lunches in attempts to punctuate the horribly mundane office days.

  Matt stood up, his swivel chair rolling backwards away from him.

  “Wasn't that article crazy, man?” said Damian, who was already pushing past him, headed towards the break room. “What the hell is going on in there anyway?”

  “Don't know,” said Matt, following Damian quickly into the break room.

  In the break room, there was just one person. Someone who worked on another floor. A man that Matt recognized but didn't know. Maybe he'd exchanged a few words with him once or twice.

  The man was standing right in front of the TV, which was mounted high in the corner of the little room. He was gazing up at it, completely transfixed.

  “What's all this shouting about?” said McGovern, stepping into the room behind Matt and Damian. “People are trying to work in here. There are spreadsheets to look over. Clients to attend to!”

  “Remember that H77 virus?” said the man who'd shouted, without taking his eyes off the TV.

  “What's that got to do with anything?” said McGovern. “You're disturbing the peace and calm. People have to work, you know. Just where do you get the nerve...”

  “I never thought it would actually happen,” said the man, completely ignoring McGovern. “I always thought these stories were silly... but they said that an entire 747 from Beijing, arriving at JFK, was contaminated...”

  “Contaminated? With what?” said Matt, his mind jumping to the article he'd just read.

  There'd been details in the article that he'd just skipped over. The country of origin of the virus, for instance.

  The news anchor answered his question for him. “The H77 virus,” she was saying. “Is considered by experts to be have characteristics that make it especially threatening to our national security. The reports we've been getting indicate that the virus has a completely silent incubation period of two days. That means that before any symptoms show up, the virus will have time to spread, because during those two days, it is highly contagious.”

  The room had filled up. It seemed as if the whole office had packed themselves into the little break room.

  Matt was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people he didn't immediately recognize.

  The room was deathly quiet except for the TV news anchor.

  “We have here an expert on the subject of viruses... Dr. Jacob....”

  The TV announcer seemed a little flustered, and things weren't moving as smoothly as they normally did on the news.

  Matt got the impression that they were sort of throwing this program together on the fly.

  The view suddenly shifted to a different camera, showing a close-up of the face of a man in his late fifties. He had gray, wavy hair that was swept back, a short goatee. He wore a tweed sports coat with patches on the elbows. He looked every inch the professor.

  “So you were saying that it's as if this virus was designed to be lethal to the largest number of people possible?” came the anchor's voice, off camera.

  “They really screwed up this shot,” muttered Damian.

  A couple of people shushed him somewhat violently.

  “Yes, that's right,” said the professor. The camera was zooming in even more. On the flat-screen TV, each of his oversized pores was clearly visible. “What we're looking at here is a perfect killing machine... As far as we know, there are absolutely no symptoms during the two-day dormancy period in which the virus happens to be highly contagious... and I should mention that we don't know everything we should know about this virus. It's entirely possible that symptoms in some people will show up earlier, rather than later...”

  “And how exactly is the virus transmitted?” said the off-screen female voice, cutting off the professor's explanation.

  “We're not yet sure, but it's highly likely that the virus is airborne...”

  “This is crazy,” Damian was muttering.

  Matt silently agreed. It definitely was crazy. He tore his eyes away from the TV screen and looked around the room.

  His coworkers were typical office workers. Many were out of shape and overweight. Their eyes were completely fixated on the TV screen. Their faces showed rapt attention mixed with fear and terror.

  Matt didn't know whether they'd understand the full consequences of this or not. Somehow, he doubted it. Just because their faces showed fear didn't mean they understood.

  Matt's own mind was racing as he put the pieces together. There were so many possibilities. So many ways it could all go wrong.

  He needed to be alone. He needed to think. To figure this out.

  He knew that this was extremely serious, but he had already heard enough from the TV. He knew what he needed to know.

  Matt turned around, and began pushing his way through the crowd.

  Everyone was so close, so packed together. It was difficult to push through them. People gave him nasty looks as they stepped out of the way for him.

  Elbows jostled him. Someone stepped on his foot. Someone heavy.

  Matt had never feared tight spaces or crowds. But now, with the threat of a deadly virus on his mind, the density of the crowd seemed almost intolerable.

  “Sorry, coming through,” Matt kept saying, over and over again.

  Finally, he was almost to the door.

  “We've had some reports that this could be a weaponized virus, but as of yet this is still unconfirmed. I repeat, this is unconfirmed...”

  There was only one more person to push past before Matt was out of the break room.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered.

  Then he saw her.

  Jamie.

  She looked just as good as she had on their last date, one month ago.

  They'd been quite the pair in the office, flirting over the course of a year, before he'd finally asked her out. People like Damian had asked him what had taken him so long. Matt hadn't responded, but his real reason was that he hadn't wanted to mess up the office environment if things didn't work out.

  But he'd eventually caved and asked her out anyway.

  And, now, after their third date had ended in what could only be called a quiet disaster, he realized his fears had been well founded.

  Since those dates, they hadn't spoken. In fact, they hadn't even looked at each other. It was safe to say they weren't on good terms.

  Jamie didn't meet his gaze, and she stepped to the side, giving Matt a wide berth.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, knowing she wouldn't respond.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he got through the doorway, finding himself back in the regular office space.

  OK, it was time to do some quick thinking.

  Matt pulled out his cell phone. Opened the calculator app.

  How many people were there on a 747? About 400 or 500, most likely. The exact numbers didn't matter so much.

  If the virus was as contagious as they said it was, maybe they were right about everyone being infected.

  So 500 people arrived in New York. Then they dispersed. Some of them went home via taxi, private car, or subway...

  How many people would
someone contaminate on the subway? Matt tried to imagine the last time he'd been on the NYC subway, thinking about how many people he'd been up close to. It had been rush hour. He didn't know the answer, but it had been a lot. A lot of people.

  And what about those people who got on connecting flights?

  Matt's office was in Albuquerque, where he'd lived for the last five years. He knew that there had to be at least a dozen daily flights from JFK to Albuquerque.

  So what were the chances that someone had gotten off that Beijing flight and arrived in Albuquerque?

  They seemed pretty high to Matt. After all, Albuquerque was a major hub for business in the western states.

  And if someone hadn't made that particular trip? With two asymptomatic-yet-contagious days the virus would spread fast enough to get to Albuquerque in no time. And not just Albuquerque. It would spread all over the United States.

  But, wait, what if he was overreacting?

  What if they'd already rounded up everyone who'd been on that plane?

  “And the passengers on flight J832 have not yet been notified?” came the anchor's TV voice from inside the break room.

  “That's correct,” came the expert's voice. “To the best of my knowledge, none of them have been notified.”

  None of them had even been notified? That sounded completely insane. They should have been quarantined, not just notified.

  Matt's heart was beating much faster than usual.

  His mind was racing.

  He'd always been a practical-minded man, and with just his own common sense, he knew that this was going to be bad.

  Very bad.

  If he wanted to live, he had to act.

  And soon.

  Matt knew that whatever the people on the news told the public, it wouldn't be enough. He'd seen it time and time again. Whoever was in charge always managed to screw it all up.