Viral Misery (Book 1) Read online

  VIRAL

  MISERY

  Book One

  .

  THOMAS A WATSON

  TINA D WATSON

  Copyright © October 4, 2017

  THOMAS A WATSON

  TINA D WATSON

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Credits

  EDITED BY SABRINA JEAN

  www.fasttrackediting.com

  COVER ART BY NICHOLAS A WATSON

  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.

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Thank you for acknowledging the hard work of this author. If you didn’t purchase this book or it wasn’t purchased for you, please go purchase your own copy now.

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  Viral Misery Cast

  ^Arthur Steele (poppa) – 44

  ^Wendy Steele – 43

  Joseph Steele – 24 Naval pilot

  Kit(M) and Kat – Black labs.

  Donald and Daisy – Rottweilers.

  Mickey and Minnie – Persian cats

  Gloria – Wendy’s baby sister

  Alicia – Wendy’s friend

  ^Shawn (14) & Beth Byrd (5) Lucas (4mo) - neighbor of Shawn

  ^Kirk (10), Pat (8), Jim (6) Willis –had older sister and younger brother.

  ^Andrea Fox (dirty blonde) 18 Shelia Meyer (red head) 13 Betty Owens 10 Tony Johnson 11

  ^Nicole Bryant (blue eyes, very blonde) 2 months first with Arthur

  Tammy & Ted- Sara’s parents

  ^Vicki (10 Little Momma) Jodi (7) Robin (brown hair) (2) ^Pam (6mo)

  ^Joann & ^Sally Payne (8) twins

  ^Ryan (7 months) Wendy pulls info sheet in nursery

  ^Noah- (2) Wendy finds searching houses.

  All kids: 8 Boys – *Tony (11) *Kirk(10) *Pat(8) Jim(6) *Shawn(14) Noah(2) Lucas (6mo) Ryan(7 mo)

  11 Girls- *Andrea(18) *Shelia(13) *Betty(10) Beth(5) Joann & Sally(8) Nicole(2mo) *Vicki(10) Jodi (7) Robin (2) Pam (6mo)

  Rudy – neighbor

  Starlie & Jack Wright – closest neighbors

  ^Dr. Scott Sutton – CDC assistant director

  Winston Vander- secretary of commerce

  Surgeon General – Jackson

  Secretary of Defense – Kenner

  Secretary of Treasury – Temple

  Secretary of Labor – Kasich

  Secretary Homeland- Paterson

  Secretary of HHS- Ginger Stringer

  Director CDC – Ernie Ostimer

  Leading Virologist- ^Dr. Richard Skannish.

  ^Sarah- intern assigned to Sutton.

  Kercher Farm- where they hide road

  Logan Lancaster LL-

  Dean-16yo evil kid that tried to join

  Dedicated to the Memory Of

  This book is dedicated in memory of Larry O. Watson and Starlie Dyer. The world is a little darker without these two in it.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to all of you that helped with this one: Dana Rice, Sabrina Jean, Leslie Bryant, Yalonda Butler, Denise Keef, William Beedie, Jim Broach, Leora Kipmio, William Allen, Deb Serres and Cora Burke. Tina has helped with all my books in one way or the other, this one we did together. I’m so proud of her.

  Viral Misery

  Chapter One

  Unleashed

  March 27

  Climbing out of his BMW over a hundred miles north of Hong Kong, Zhang Wei smiled to see his father walking out of the small farm house he’d grown up in. Zhang was under no illusions. He knew how much his parents had sacrificed for him to go to school. Walking over, Zhang noticed his father’s eyes were red. “Hello, father,” Zhang said, tilting his head and then engulfing his father in a hug.

  His father, Lei, pushed back, “No, son, I just came from the fields and your suit is too nice,” his father said, dragging his forearm across his nose. Looking hard at his son’s gray suit, Lei grinned. “Silk, very nice.”

  Reaching in his suit, Zhang pulled out an envelope. “Here is money for the family; don’t tell mom,” Zhang said, shoving the envelope into his father’s hands.

  Trying to push the envelope back, “No, son, you keep this,” Lei said, but Zhang pulled his hands away.

  “Father, I got the promotion,” Zhang cried out with a big grin.

  Lei froze, holding the thick envelope. Slowly, a smile filled his face as he lunged forward and hugged his son tight. “We are so proud of you,” Lei said, fighting back tears. Realizing he was dirty and hugging his son, Lei stepped back. “I don’t want to get your suit dirty, sorry.”

  “Please,” Zhang laughed. “I can afford more and now you can. The others can fix up the house.”

  Looking down at the envelope stuffed with money, Lei gave a sigh. “I always knew you would make it, son.”

  Looking at the ducks in the rice fields, Zhang nodded. “I learned everything I needed to know from you and mom on this farm.”

  “Let’s go tell your mom,” Lei said and Zhang put his arm over his father’s shoulders.

  When his father tried to pull away, Zhang held him tight. “I know you love to farm, but now you can do it as a hobby,” Zhang said, watching his father wipe his nose again with his wrist but paid it no mind.

  Working in the rice paddies with the ducks, Lei had contracted a visitor. From the loving embrace of his father, one of the deadliest viruses ever dreamed of had latched onto Zhang’s hand. This invisible killer was known to science, but had never been transmitted human to human. But like viruses do, a small change had occurred to HAPI A (H5N1) or in other terms, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus Type A H5N1. All the right changes had been made to the small piece of genetic material that would unleash misery on the world as never seen or dreamed of before.

  Lei would find several of his chickens and ducks dead the next day, but would brush it off. As the virus multiplied slowly in his body overloading his symptoms, Lei would continue to work and interact with his family and neighbors. It would be over a week until he felt sick. When Lei started coughing on the eighth day after getting infected, he would be dead before the sun rose on the ninth day.

  Neither father nor son knew of this killer in their midst as they walked into the small farm house to share the joyous news.

  On the other side of the globe in Arkansas

  Wendy Steele stepped out the back door, giving a sigh. “He made another trip,” she mumbled, looking at her husband’s pickup truck. The bed was loaded with junk to her. To her husband, Arthur, it was free work material. She could see half a dozen computer towers and then, a stack of laptops. Then in two neat rows were electric motors of various sizes.

  Since they had bought the land they were living on over eighteen years ago, Arthur made one trip a week to the landfill near Clarksville, over twenty miles to the south. “He could just buy the stuff,” she groaned but knew it was a lost cause.

  Arthur was a tinker. He loved to build stuff and that’s what had gotten him several patents. None of the patents were earth shattering, but the royalties let them live in reasonable comfort.

  She had met Arthur at a party when she’d been in high school. One of her friends had snuck a group of them into a college party at the University of Arkansas and Wendy had fallen head over heels for Arthur. At the time, Arthur ha
d been in his first year of nursing school.

  When she’d graduated high school in the fall, Wendy had enrolled in nursing school and the two were married a year later. They had only worked as nurses for a few years before Arthur had filed his patents and sold them to industries. They’d moved from Little Rock to the land they lived on now for almost two decades.

  Walking around the swimming pool, Wendy heard music coming from Arthur’s shop. Coming to a stop, Wendy looked around at the wooded backyard. Oak and cedar trees dotted the area behind the house with the only real clearing around the swimming pool. The house was set on a steep almost one hundred-foot cliff, overlooking the valley floor and in front of a saddle between two small hills that barely rose fifty feet. Arthur’s shop was dug into the hill on the right, or west side.

  Originally, they had bought three hundred acres but four years ago, they had bought two hundred and fifty more acres that bordered their property to the south. The first property had come with a two-bedroom house that now served as Wendy’s studio and office. The second had come with a bigger brick house, but nobody had lived there in thirty years so Arthur had torn it down, salvaging everything he could. Now, they had pallets of bricks.

  Also on that property was another barn. It had been overgrown, but they’d cleaned it out and rebuilt it. That barn was where they did a lot of their textile work. They produced silk, hemp cloth, cotton, and wool. Not in large scale, but the quality was very good. In truth, the farm produced for them a nice living by itself, but they had to carefully itemize so the government didn’t take everything that they loved to do.

  They had lived in the small two-bedroom house as Arthur, over two years, had built their dream home where they lived now. Granted, it was much bigger than they needed, but they were hinting to their son that they had room for grandkids; even though Joseph had only been twelve when they’d moved into it.

  Thinking about their son, Joseph, Wendy smiled. He was twenty-four now and in the Navy flying transport planes, waiting for his chance to fly jet fighters off aircraft carriers. Joseph had been ten when they had moved and the hills, creeks, and ponds on the land had become his playground. Many times, Wendy had had to send Arthur out to collect Joseph for supper. And long ago they quit counting how many times he ‘fell’ into the creeks on the property.

  Glancing over to the east hill, she saw the windows of the greenhouse that was buried in the hill. That greenhouse was their year-round garden. There were two more greenhouses that were massive just behind the two small hills, but those were more orchards. “That man can build anything,” Wendy chuckled, then turned back to the swimming pool. When Joseph had been in junior high, Wendy had told Arthur she wanted a swimming pool, since Joseph was constantly swimming in the creeks and ponds.

  She’d handed Arthur a sketch of what she wanted and in three months, it was done and only the concrete had been bought. Everything else had been salvaged by Arthur. The pool was kidney-shaped with a hot tub near the shallow end where water flowed out over rocks and into the pool.

  In truth, Wendy didn’t mind the ‘salvage’ because it had saved them tons of money and Arthur always kept the land neat. She could almost set her watch that by tomorrow, the truck bed would be empty and all the junk neatly stored in bins in the shop until needed.

  The whole reason they had moved to the middle of nowhere was that they hated being raped by the government. What the government called taxes, they called rape. They made more money now than they had when both were nurses full time, but when working as nurses the feds had taken over forty percent of their earnings.

  Now, with Arthur’s royalties from his patents and the books he had written, her crafts and selling vegetables at the farmers markets, and other goods grown on the farm they were using an accountant that had them paying thirty percent taxes. Granted, they didn’t like that, but it was better than forty plus. Of course, there were many times they forgot to file cash payments. Their whole goal of moving here was to see just how self-sufficient they could become and so far, they were doing pretty damn good.

  They generated their own power, made their own material for clothing, and grew their own food. It had taken awhile, but they had achieved their dream: becoming totally self-sufficient. The only thing they had ever wanted more of, were kids. But that wasn’t in their deck of cards. When Joseph was born, Wendy’s uterus had ruptured and she and Joseph were lucky to be alive. That had been the end of her childbearing years.

  When Joseph was in high school they had tried to adopt, but were turned down the first time because there were guns in the house. It made no difference that all the guns were in safes. Arthur loved guns and Wendy loved shooting guns with him, so they’d given up. Then three years later, they had tried again and were turned down because they lived too rural.

  Walking into the bay door of the shop, Wendy saw Arthur in his metallic suit, guiding a four-foot sheet of steel with long tongs that were glowing red. This was one of the first things Arthur had built, an induction furnace to melt metal.

  When the sheet of metal hit a bar on the rollers, Arthur pulled a lever to shut the flow of metal off and hit a button. She could hear the hum of hydraulics as a thick metal blade slowly extended, cutting the glowing metal. Moving down the conveyor roller line, Arthur lifted the stop and pushed the glowing sheet down the line rollers on the table until it hit another line of rollers that moved perpendicular to the first.

  As Arthur moved back up to the furnace, Wendy looked at the three sheets of glowing metal and was guessing it was half an inch thick. She knew it was four-foot-wide and eight-foot-long. “If he builds a tank, I’m going to throw a fit,” Wendy vowed.

  Looking at the far wall, she saw the entrance into the machine shop. Glancing back and seeing Arthur rolling out another sheet of metal, Wendy moved over to the door walking past the metal sheets and felt the heat radiating off the glowing sheets. Stepping into the shop, she grinned at seeing the rows of shelves that held the assorted junk, or as Arthur had put it, ‘merchandise we can get for nothing’.

  Everything was neatly organized in bins around the machine shop. Glad to see the machines silent, she moved down and passed the small area Arthur had set up to work on electrical components. The last room was his woodworking area and was sealed off from the machine shop by a door. Two years ago, Arthur had put a small bay door in for the wood shop because he was tired of wood dust getting into the machine area.

  Again, glad to see the wood area not set up to do work, Wendy moved back to the furnace room and closed the door to the machine shop. The only reason she could stand in the room was two huge fans that were sucking the hot air out. Seeing Arthur cutting the sheet and then move back to the furnace, Wendy knew the vat was near empty.

  Confirming her guess, Arthur opened a slot and the molten metal poured out like syrup into a stone cistern. Grabbing his tongs, Arthur guided the sheet of metal down the line as Wendy saw the flow of metal slowly stop several inches from the top of the cistern. “One day, he’s going to miscalculate,” Wendy mumbled as Arthur turned around, taking the helmet off.

  Wendy couldn’t help but smile as Arthur grinned at her. Even at forty-four, he still looked good, making her heart skip a beat. “You done?” she yelled over the vent fans.

  Not hearing her but reading her lips, Arthur nodded and pointed out the bay door. Taking the silver fire jacket off as he headed for the door, Arthur hung it up as Wendy stepped outside beside another building and when she glanced at it, couldn’t help but laugh.

  Inside that building was the largest saltwater battery Arthur had ever built. The reason she laughed was his first try had been in the power house fifty yards from the house. The battery Arthur had built was six feet tall, seven feet wide, and ten feet long and when he had filled it with water, the two-inch slab he had poured busted. Wendy had chuckled for a week, but never when Arthur was around because she had told him that was going to happen.

  The battery he’d built for the machine area was twice t
he size of those for the house. When he had set up the power building for his shop, Arthur had poured a ten-inch floor. “What’cha got, gorgeous?” Arthur asked, coming out of the shop. He looked Wendy’s five-foot-six body over with a grin.

  Turning around, Wendy laughed to see the mischief on Arthur’s face. “Daniel called to make sure we were coming to wire up the new fellowship hall,” Wendy said in-between chuckles.

  Reaching back and pulling his sweat-soaked ponytail off his neck, “I told the pastor, my ass was going to be there at noon, it’s not even nine,” Arthur huffed.

  “Hun, everyone we know has come to realize when you get into a project, you forget the time,” Wendy said, watching Arthur wipe his hand over his sweat-soaked brown hair.

  Dropping his hand to his beard and stroking it, “Not when I give my fucking word,” Arthur mumbled.

  Giving a long sigh, Wendy overlooked the only flaw she had with Arthur. He was a potty mouth no matter who was around. “So, we are still going?” Wendy asked.

  Pointing past Wendy, “I have my stuff in the work truck,” Arthur answered and Wendy glanced back, shaking her head.

  The ‘work truck’ was a massive International 4300 that used to be owned by a power company. Arthur had bought it wrecked and even though it was over a decade old, it looked brand new. It had taken Arthur six months to rebuild it. Gone was the yellow paint job and it was now black. Painted on each door was a huge muscle-bound man, strangling a donkey in one hand and an elephant in the other. Below the painting in bold letters read, ‘No Politics Construction’.

  When Arthur had asked her to paint it, Wendy had laughed so hard she’d wet her pants. They loved their country, but not those that ran it. Wendy didn’t consider herself an artist, even though she sold painting and crafts. All in all, they were over five different companies and hadn’t made a profit, according to their books, in the last decade.