The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction

  AFFLICTION

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  AFFLICTION

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  © Tom Abrahams 2018. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson

  Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  AFFLICTION

  THE TRAVELER POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  THE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLERS

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL STORY

  MATTI HARROLD POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  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

  Acknowledgements

  For Courtney

  In sickness and in health

  “It is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.”

  —William Osler, physician and founding professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital

  CHAPTER 1

  January 9, 2026

  DAY 14

  San Francisco, California

  Derek Hoover was awestruck. He was frozen, fixated on the scene outside his high-rise office, which was straight from a horror movie in some far-off land clinging to civilization by the barest of threads. But it wasn’t a movie. It was unfolding on the streets of his hometown, San Francisco, stories below the gleaming tower that housed Interllayar Holdings and a dozen other Bay Area technology companies.

  He planted his fingertips on the glass. His breath bloomed and evaporated in puffs. His mind spun; his head hurt; his chest was tight. His eyes couldn’t focus on the countless dramas playing out beneath him. From his vantage point on the top floor of the glass and steel monument, he was a giant watching Lilliput and Blefuscu from above. He was Gulliver straddling the islands with his boots barely wet in the South Indian Ocean.

  He couldn’t decide which of the elements on the dark tableau was more surreal. Was it the police in riot gear and gas masks? Was it the Cal Guard troops outfitted in bright yellow Tychem TK Level A protective hazmat suits? Was it the thunder of the tanks rolling along Folsom Street , which he swore he could feel in his bones? Or was it the hordes of sick and dying people, coughing and vomiting blood onto others who littered the street in protest?

  Yes, he thought to himself. It is that. It was the people that was the most unbelievable of all. They were the collateral damage.

  But aren’t they always?

  Derek’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He jerked with surprise, unaware cell service was viable. He’d assumed it wasn’t. Given that all communication was out across either radio or encrypted satellite phones for the last ten days, he hadn’t given it much thought.

  He fished into the deep, heavily lined pockets of his linen pants and grabbed the device with his fingers, flipped it over, and blinked at the name on the display. LOVING WIFE. He exhaled and cursed under his breath. Now was not a good time. He noted there were six unread text messages and four hundred nineteen emails he’d failed to open.

  There were emoji hearts on either side of the caller identification Derek’s wife had given herself in his phone. It was an assurance she’d given him. She had, after all, left her first husband for him. There was something in the back of his mind, no matter how much she reassured him, that he might be just her second husband, nothing more. As in the second that precedes the third. Or the second she found something shinier, she’d bolt like she had from the poor schlub who was reduced to minimum wage down the coast.

  He swiped the screen and drew the device to his ear. His eyes drifted back to the silent movie sixty-five stories below.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you?” she asked. “I’ve been texting you.”

  Recognizing her voice was laced with concern, not accusation, Derek sighed. He thought he saw a pair of protestors pry the shield from a riot officer and attack him.

  “Derek?”

  “I’m at work,” he said. “In my office.”

  “Did you get any of my texts? There must have been five or six of them. I’m worried.”

  The riot officer was beneath a heap of people now. Other officers were trying to beat back the attackers. It looked like someone had dropped a cube of sugar and the ants were piling on.

  “I didn’t get them,” he said. “Or I didn’t notice them. Sorry.”

  “What are you doing?” A hint of accusation seeped into her voice now. “Why are you there? You said you’d be home by now.”

  A large truck was spraying a high-powered blast of water at the pile of protestors, knocking some of them loose from their perch. More black-clad officers were encircling the mound of protesters now. They were armed. Smoke ejected from a couple of their weapons. Bean bags? Rubber bullets? Real bullets?

  “You’re not listening to me, Derek,” said his wife, irritation resonating in each word. “What. Is. Going. On?”

  “I can’t talk right now,” he said. “Things have gotten out of control again. Just stay in the house. Keep the doors locked. Turn off the air-conditioning. I love you.”

  “What? Turn off the air-cond—”

  He ended the call as a knock at his door drew his attention from the growing number of lifeless bodies on the street below. Was that blood? More blood? There was too much blood. The yellow Tychem suits converged on the bodies.

  The man standing in his open door was wringing his hands, his face grim. “We think we have it isolated.”

  Derek waved the man into the room, and he moved silently across the room to a waiting chair. Derek motioned for him to sit down as he sank into the plush leather chair that dominated the space behind the desk, the whoosh of air escaping as the cushions broke the silence.

  “Go ahead,” said Derek.

  The man across from him wore deep furrows in his brow. They looked like the nouveau logo design for a river retreat, a quartet of wavy but parallel lines that ran the length of his forehead. His eyes were perpetually puffy from what Derek imagined was both a lack
of sleep and water retention. He’d never seen anyone add as much salt to food as Dr. Robert Chang. Then again, given what he’d suffered this time, every time, he couldn’t blame the man. If ignorance was bliss, intelligence was a curse in his case.

  Chang pinched the bridge of his nose. He puffed his cheeks and exhaled. Derek noticed the wedding band still on his swollen finger. It looked like it might be cutting off circulation.

  “How’d the call go?” Chang asked.

  “Inconsequential,” said Derek. “They’ve got their orders. Nothing we can do about them right now. By the way, the radio’s not working. It’s all sat phone now.”

  Chang nodded. He sank a little into his chair and placed his palms flat on the narrow arms. “The tests are complete. The labs confirm some of what we suspected. Other elements we can’t explain except to say the disease is mutating.”

  Derek leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on Chang, who glanced away. “Mutating? What do you mean? When we looked at it less than a week ago, you said it was stable. You’d identified what was happening. You were ahead of the CDC.”

  Chang kept his gaze on the desk. He didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular, just some vague point to avoid Derek.

  There was no denying that Robert Chang was a genius. He was Ivy League and Cambridge educated. He was a neurosurgeon who also held degrees in epidemiology, biochemistry, and had done the last of his three fully funded fellowships at Stanford. His day job was in Los Angeles, fixing people’s brains and spines. In his spare time, what little he had, he worked with Derek. He was, by a magnitude, the highest paid consultant among the many employed at Interllayar. When he spoke, people listened, and they took his direction without question. Yet for some reason, some alpha-male dynamic neither man could fully understand, Chang cowered beneath Derek’s glare.

  Chang looked at his hands and ran his right thumb across the thin gold band on his left ring finger. He shook his head. “I mean mutating. I’ve checked with Dr. Moss. The cellular composition is changing, adapting. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I can’t explain it beyond the simple explanation I’ve already given to you, Derek. Even Moss hasn’t gotten further than that. And he’s…well…he’s Moss.”

  “Guy’s a genius,” Derek acknowledged.

  “His first name is Albert for a reason,” said Chang. “He’s the Einstein of diseases, you know.”

  Derek nodded. He knew. He’d hired Albert Moss personally, as he had Chang. But Moss hadn’t lost what Chang had. Not yet.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and swallowed hard. Chang still wasn’t looking at him. “Bob,” he said, “I know how difficult this is for you. I do. But we need you on this one maybe more than any of the other—”

  Derek stopped, considering the next word carefully. It was an important word and he didn’t want to undersell or oversell what it was they were doing. Chang knew the stakes already. He was one of the few who did, the few who really knew. There was no need for hyperbole that stretched either way.

  “—projects,” Derek finished. “This project is as critical, maybe more critical, than the others.”

  Chang looked up. His narrow gaze tightened, if that was possible. He spun his ring with his thumb and forefinger. “I understand, Derek. That’s why I haven’t even buried her yet. She’s been in the lab. I’ve been in the lab. It’s not something…it’s not normal.”

  “What’s normal nowadays?” Derek asked in all seriousness. “Every single time we think we have it figured out, we don’t. We…”

  The thought hung in the air like the invisible disease that was ravaging California and Arizona, Oregon, and the western edges of Colorado and New Mexico. Both men understood what they were doing. They knew their roles. They’d weighed and measured the stakes.

  “Go ahead and bury her,” said Derek, choosing to shift course. “You and Bobby deserve that closure. Take a day. Then come back and get to work. We’re running out of time.”

  “Again,” said Chang.

  “Again,” Derek agreed.

  Chang stood from his seat, his knees cracking, and nodded at Derek. It was almost the start of a genuflection, but he stopped it as soon as it started. Derek offered a weak smile and spun his chair to look out the window. Chang silently soft-shoed his way from the office.

  Derek’s view from behind the desk, seated, was so much better than the one standing against the glass. From here he could see out into the bay. The sun was shining. There wasn’t a hint of rain.

  CHAPTER 2

  DAY 6

  West Carson, California

  Clint Anthony felt like he was going to die. Part of him half-jokingly wished for the end. His head was pounding; his mouth was dry; his stomach grumbled. He felt like he might soil himself if he coughed again. He hadn’t been this sick in a long time, if ever.

  He’d long ago convinced himself that he was bulletproof. He’d suffered from so many different types of colds, been exposed to such a variety of communicable diseases, that he believed his immune system could fight off anything.

  This was different though. This was more than a passing bug. The ache in his neck and the heaviness in his chest told him that. Not to mention that this headache was different from the ones he’d been having on and off for months. Those were dull annoyances that felt like weak migraines, accompanied by an odd sense of déjà vu. There was no sentimentality with this headache. It was throbbing. Every beat of his quickened pulse shot a zing of pain across his forehead. His eyes burned, but he kept them open.

  Outside, he could hear the commotion of the late morning from the dozens of other squatters who’d taken shelter beside him in tents along the railroad tracks at West 117th. There were men arguing, laughing, and talking amongst and to themselves.

  Clint didn’t like it here. He wasn’t much for camping in a tent, let alone living in one. He’d almost have rather been back in prison. There he had a mattress and three meals a day. Access to drugs was easier too. On the inside he could barter for a fix. Out here on the streets everything was cash. If it wasn’t hard cash, the price wasn’t something Clint was willing to pay.

  He stared at the orange nylon ceiling of his tent. Through the fabric he could make out the bright smudge of the sun high above the Los Angeles sky. He debated getting up to go to the bathroom, but his headache suggested he lay there a while longer.

  There were portable bathrooms and sinks at the homeless camp in the area called West Carson. The government had set up the hygiene stations after a hepatitis outbreak years earlier. Rather than do something to curb the homeless population, city and state leaders had acquiesced to it. They’d actually made it worse instead of better by initiating programs to make life on the streets tolerable.

  This sickness, whatever it was, was not tolerable.

  Clint coughed, winced against the bolt of pain in his chest, and rolled onto his side. Traffic rushed by on the ramps high overhead. He listened to the whoosh and rumble of the late morning push. Despite the noise, this spot was better than the camp closer to the freeway some three miles farther down Figueroa. Clint had tried that one first. It was too crowded and backed up to legitimate houses. Looking at the homes, the glow of the lives inside, amplified the depression he fought to control. At least here under the freeway and beside the tracks there was no reminder of the kind of life he could have had in some alternate universe.

  He cleared his throat and rolled onto his back. Outside his tent, someone was yelling now. He assumed it was Crazy Barry or Colonel Mick. Both of those men had a penchant for loud discussions with the voices in their heads. People tended to ignore them, and neither Barry nor Mick ever hurt anyone. It was best to let them rant.

  Then the zipper that kept his tent closed slid open, and a familiar face popped his mop of hair through the hole. His eyes were wide. “Hey, you gotta see this. Somebody out here is puking up blood. It’s like they got some bad gravel. It’s disgusting. You gotta see it.”

  Clint leaned up on
his elbows and faced his friend Filter. That was his nickname. He and Clint had done time together at San Quentin. Filter, whose real name Clint had never bothered to ask, got the moniker because he was one who always seemed to have the latest information from the outside world. From sports to news to whose appeals were getting denied, all news was filtered through him.

  “Bad gravel?” asked Clint. “Is that what you’re calling it now? Gravel? Isn’t that a bit old school?”

  He tried laughing. It came out as a wheeze, which brought tears to his eyes. He grabbed at his chest and cleared his throat through his gnashed teeth.

  “I could just call it crack,” said Filter, his long, narrow face stretching into a yellow smile. “But where’s the fun in that? C’mon, dude. You gotta see. It’s worse than that time in the Q when—”

  Clint waved off the invitation. “No, thanks. I’m not feeling so good.”

  Filter unzipped the tent a little more and slid inside through the bright wash of light that shone into the tent from the outside. The yelling was louder now. Clint thought he heard someone call for an ambulance.

  “I don’t feel all that good neither,” said Filter. He was crouching inside the tent now and slapped Clint’s foot with his long bony fingers. “I got a fever, I think, and I could probably dump a load every five minutes. Seriously.”

  “Maybe you got some bad gravel.”

  Filter laughed. His Adam’s apple slid up and down along his neck. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn for the last week: baggy, faded jeans, a braided leather belt that cinched the gapping pants at his narrow waist, and a worn T-shirt that read SORRY I’M LATE. I DIDNT WANT TO COME across the front of it.

  “Seriously,” he said, scratching an old scab on his forearm, “I gotta go to work in a minute. Come outside for a sec and take a look. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Clint doubted that, but he also knew that unless he agreed to pick himself up and follow Filter outside, his friend would keep hounding him. Filter was nothing if not persistent. It was what made him so good at getting information from people. He was like water; he always found a way to get where he wanted to go.