Plague of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

people were down, clutching bloody wounds caused by the scratching, thrashing limbs of the carriers or their bloodied, gnashing teeth.
        A couple of the carriers stumbled about quietly, as if in a daze. Most flicked their heads about, spraying blood and bits of flesh from their mouths as they growled and ran after the surviving refugees with fevered speed. The cameraman zoomed in, trying to capture the action as closely as he could. One refugee was tackled hard by a carrier, and his head was pulled up by the hair as the carrier sank his teeth into the back of his neck. Another’s back was flayed as a carrier dragged her nails across the refugee’s skin.
        “More carriers were coming to the site than the refugees expected. Most were cut off and infected before they made it to safety. The death count is estimated at twelve thousand,” Julie said.
        The video cut to a new angle. The sun in this tape was lower in the sky and the clouds were beginning to turn red in the early evening hours.
        “Four hours later, the destruction was complete,” said Julie.
        On the tape, the survivors on the shore had vanished completely. There was a new mob standing on the beach, waist-deep in the water.
         Carriers .
        Thousands upon thousands of them.
        They pawed at the sky and each other, a teeming mass of infected humanity. Here and there, the carriers turned on each other, snarling and grabbing one another, falling into the water and rolling as they hissed, scratched, and bit one another. Most, however, stood fixated by the boats offshore. Their heads turned back and forth as if they were looking for some path that would lead them to the survivors onboard. They seemed reluctant to try their hands at swimming. One or two plunged into the water, but quickly resurfaced and dragged themselves back into the shallows.
        The tape cut out and Julie took over the screen again.
        “U.S. government officials have authorized aid to be sent to the survivors of what is being called the Cape Town Slaughter . The USS Ronald Reagan left home berth today to set sail for South Africa, acting as the flagship of a task force that will rendezvous east of Bermuda. There is still much to be decided in the matter of containing the Morningstar Strain, and fighters on the aircraft carrier are on standby, waiting for an order to destroy contaminated areas. Joining us now via satellite link to explain the threat of the strain in greater detail is Lieutenant Colonel Anna Demilio from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease. Colonel, welcome.”
        The studio supervisor split the screen into halves. Julie’s smiling face occupied one half, and the other half showed the grainy image of Anna Demilio. She was in her early forties, still attractive, wearing BDUs. She, unlike Julie, was not smiling.
        “Thanks, Julie.”
        “Colonel, the spread of the disease has reached epidemic proportions. Is the speed of contamination something that could have been predicted, or prevented?” Julie asked, shuffling sheets of notes on the desk in front of her.
        “Well, Morningstar is one sick puppy, if you’ll excuse the expression. It has the potential to transmit itself in an amazingly short period of time, under certain conditions. It is likely, however, that we’ve seen the fastest period of the epidemic already. In nature, the disease would take over a week to incubate within a host before symptoms first appear. The zero case, or the person who originally contracted the disease at the beginning of the outbreak, probably walked around for that entire period of time, spreading the virus to people he or she encountered, before he or she took ill. Then, a week after that, all the carriers that were infected by the zero fell ill. The second generation is probably responsible for the minor outbreaks in Kinshasa and Mombasa we saw earlier this month, but they had