The Reaper Virus Read Online Free PDF Page A

around the hospital to people
calling out sick, they needed all able-bodied units to keep this
chaos to a minimum.
    I figured that I might try and catch up with
Lance later to make sure he was alright and maybe see what I could
find out about what was going on. Hopefully it wasn’t what I
suspected it to be. We’d been friends for years so if anyone was
going to be straight with me over what had been happening I should
hope it would be him.
    I was still checking the news. There were a
lot of rumors, media speculation and propaganda, the usual stuff
one gets used to, but the key was to look for a common thread in
rumors, where you could often find a hint of truth. I didn’t know
what to think though, everything was such a jumble of information
that simply didn’t make any sense and when it did make sense, it
wasn’t making me feel any better.
     
    * * *
     
    0615 hours:
     
    I bumped into Lance for a second in the
read-off room. He wouldn’t say anything in the station, but he did
mention quietly that I should meet him at the Third Street Diner,
which was about a mile away from headquarters, for breakfast and a
beer. For most people, a beer at seven in the morning is a telltale
sign of an alcoholic, but graveyard shift workers could never be
classified as “most people.” Everyone should be sleeping in at home
today so I doubted my being late would be noticed.
    When the shift was over I hustled up the
street to meet him. I wanted to look closely at my surroundings
along the way in case there were signs of the chaos I’d dealt with
over the radio. Instead, I found myself distantly lost in my
thoughts, moving along on autopilot. Anxiousness over what my
friend might reveal kept me focused on the destination rather than
what passed by the car window. Entering the diner I saw Lance
immediately in a corner booth. I sat, wincing at the shriek of my
vinyl upholstered seat.
    Before even starting to talk Lance looked at
me very seriously and said, “I’m not just here because we’re
friends, but because I know that you have a family to look out for.
They told me that if I talked to anyone about what I saw that they
would have my badge, so I’m risking my ass talking to you.”
    I nodded, speechless, because in the back of
my mind, imagination whirling, I almost knew what he was going to
say.
    “The homeless guy who attacked the kid was
definitely infected with the Reaper virus. His veins were dark all
along his hands, neck and face. When I got to him he was already
down. The kill shot, at least what I assume was the damn kill shot,
went right through his left eye. It didn’t go all the way through,
but it definitely made its mark. What came out of the wound was
thicker than normal blood. It was dark crimson, nearly black
liquid, and didn’t spurt blood out the way a wound should. The guy
got nailed with rounds around his body, easily six to eight other
entry wounds. He was wearing a lot of dark colored layers –
probably because of the cold. His jacket and outer shirt just
looked thick, like it was soaked in Jell-O. It was pockmarked with
bullet holes, several of which should have
stopped him in his tracks.”
    He paused, took a deep breath, and continued.
“The kid was a different story… obnoxious hippie student type;
looked like a real asshole. The bum fucked him up pretty bad. But
the thing is that he didn’t beat him, didn’t stab him, didn’t do
any of what you would expect…”
    Pausing again, he looked down at his beer for
a second and after a moment he regained his earlier pace. “The
bastard bit him. And not a nibble, a bite .
He had a chunk taken out of his arm the size of a small steak.
There were other bites all over his exposed skin. The shirt on his
left shoulder was torn; it almost looked like a big dog had bit
him. Even the tip of his fucking nose was gone. His nose! Probably
in the stomach of the bum’s rotting corpse. It was an ugly scene.
Hippie kid was screaming, the kind of scream I