After Days (The After Days Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

of progress every part of the continental United States will be affected within the next twenty-four hours. The CIA is now calling this a terrorist attack, although no one has yet claimed responsibility.”
    All hell broke loose in the conference room. The microphone caught the sound of women and men crying as dozens of reporters rushed for the exits. The more hardened veterans clamored closer to Dr. Ackerman yelling more questions, while to the left of the podium I noticed the man who had delivered the awful message coughing into his hand.
    Ackerman only answered one more question, a high pitched and panicked, “…what do we do!?”
    “Stay in your homes…and pray to God…”
    I switched off the television and went to the kitchen. Picking up the phone I dialed Eleanor's cell number and waited impatiently as it went through to her voice mail. “Eleanor, I just saw on the news that the Pyongyang Flu has come to the country... they are saying that terrorists are spreading it around or something. Are you and Alan okay?” I managed to stammer out before the phone beeped again, ending the voice mail.
    Not sure what else to do, I hung up and then immediately dialed the number for Margaret, the social worker that had placed me with the Fosters. Once again it rang through and I got a message saying that she would be out of the office until January second.
    Hanging up the phone I went back to the fridge to cut off a bit more ham. I felt lost and alone. All I could think about was the grainy video of the feral children in North Korea and hoped that it wouldn't get that bad here. Looking back now, I know that hope was nothing more than a child’s wishful thinking.
     
    Eleanor and Alan returned early that afternoon. She had not been able to get him in to see a doctor at all; the emergency room had been swamped long before they had arrived. I helped her move Alan, by this point weak and delirious with fever, to their bedroom, where she laid him down and covered him with warm blankets.
    “Run to the freezer and bring me the ice pack,” Eleanor said. “I'm worried that his head's getting too hot.” When I returned with the ice pack she placed it in a pillow case and set it across Alan's forehead. “Oh, Alan,” she whispered. “Please don't leave me.”
    She sat by his side for a while and then, after he'd fallen into a fitful sleep, she went to the living room to watch the news. If anything the news had gotten even more horrific since I had turned it off that morning and we learned that the Chinese government was now admitting responsibility for the attack and claiming all of North America by right of conquest. The other nations of the world were protesting mightily, but the threat to them was obvious and they appeared afraid to make any real moves to help America for fear of the H3J2 virus being turned on them as well.
    Watching the sniffling and coughing reporters w e did learn a bit about the virus though. The disease affected nearly all adults exposed who were not of ethnic Chinese origin and its fatality rate was a staggering ninety-six percent. Those few that did survive were generally left as vegetables, with permanent brain damage as a result of the prolonged, high fever that was associated with the infection. It seemed that the body could produce a previously unknown anti-body to fight the disease, but it only did so from a few specific locations, all of them yet to be fused areas of bones such as the tibia and the humerus. By about age sixteen though, all of those areas had fused, and the body became incapable of producing the specific antibodies. 
    Those who had been exposed to the infection at a young age would have the anti-bodies and be forever immune to the virus. Those who had not faced almost certain death. The professionalism and bravery of the reporters, reporting while sick, knowing that they were most likely going to be dead within the next few days, left an indescribable impression on me. I plan to