The Tide: Breakwater (Tide Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

people prowling the streets, attacking each other with all the ferocity of starving wolves, abandoned cars and the odd military vehicle, some charred. Trash strewn about and the occasional pigeon picking through the refuse of a fallen society.
    Whatever it was that had spread through the people of Boston had struck with the unexpected force of a tidal wave. He rubbed his eyes as he inched past the empty desks of his colleagues. He and Abby had stayed in the graduate student office while the other researchers ran for home.
    Their one-bedroom apartment was only a couple of miles away over the Charles River. Most of the time, Navid took the subway system, the so-called T, straight to work. Abby always biked. Home was so close, but he’d been too scared to risk the short journey through the madness he’d seen in the streets. Judging by the conditions of the area around the hospital, he doubted many of his colleagues had been lucky enough to take the T home to Cambridge, Fenway, or Beacon Hill.
    Still, he wasn’t certain he’d made the right decision to stay at Mass Gen with Abby. Trying to get home might not have been safe, but was staying in this hospital any better?
    He trudged toward the office door. He and Abby had pushed a desk in front of it to create a barrier between them and what lay outside. The desk had been Brian’s—another grad student. Next to the computer monitor on it sat three plush toys. Each was a cartoonish rendition, complete with eyes and a smile, of a deadly pathogen: Ebola, E. coli, and salmonella. Navid brushed the toys aside and leaned over the desk to glance through the small window in the door. The window was made of frosted glass that prevented Navid from getting a good look at what lay beyond this meager barricade. The only thing he could see was the persistent flash of the hospital’s crimson emergency lights.
    A dark, blotchy shape flitted in front of the window, momentarily blotting out the flashes of red. He ducked down, willing his hammering heart to slow, and tried to control his breathing. He and Abby had avoided contact with the zombies or crazies or whatever they were so far, and he didn’t intend to tempt fate now.
    He returned to Abby’s side and sat on the floor against the desk. He couldn’t fall back to sleep. The adrenaline from the distant explosion he’d heard and the possibility that someone—or something—might be outside their office kept him from nodding off.
    His cell phone sat on the surface of his desk, which was still littered with scientific papers he’d printed off and marked up in a bevy of highlights and pen marks. All of it was useless. What good was science in a destroyed world? Navid’s doctoral thesis was going to be on delivering drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases. His twenty-some years of education were worthless now.
    He picked up the cell phone and rubbed his thumb over the black screen. Technology was just as useless. The charge in their phones had long since been used up during their desperate efforts to contact their friends and family.
    His parents had emigrated from Iran to Canada during the Iranian Revolution. They’d feared the consequences of the burgeoning theocracy. It was almost forty years ago that they had run away for a better life. Now, Navid figured it didn’t matter whether they were still in Iran or Canada or anywhere else in the world. There was no running away to safety. He hadn’t been able to get a call through to either of his parents or his younger sister, all of whom he prayed were somewhere safe near their Toronto home.
    Abby had spent the same fruitless efforts trying to reach her family in Springfield, Illinois. None of her calls had resulted in anything more than a prerecorded message stating, “This number cannot be reached.”
    As far as they knew, it was just the two of them against the world. Since the outbreak, they’d been sheltering in the small, seven-desk office space alone, surviving on the food and