W.O.R.M.S. (On the Run Book 1) Read online

  W.O.R.M.S.

  J.J. Alston

  Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Alston

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  1

  Where they came from or when they got here, nobody knew. But the first case of the condition that would come to be known as W.O.R.M.S. began in Portland, Oregon at Sunrise Public Hospital.

  It was one of the largest hospitals in the state. The perfect breeding ground.

  The man, who history would come to know as Patient Zero was overweight. It was no surprise to the medical staff when he came into the emergency room that evening, complaining of sharp stomach pains or that his chest was tight. They assumed it was indigestion at best, heart attack at worse.

  But it was worse. Way worse.

  The medical staff was overwhelmed that night, too busy to address whatever was wrong with the man immediately. He would have to wait, they decided. A bad bus accident had happened earlier in the afternoon and their hands were full.

  By the time they were ready for Patient Zero, he was gone.

  Nowhere to be seen.

  The nurses who were supposed to supervise him and the lobby-filled with other patients only assumed he had left on his own accord. It was well-past two o'clock in the morning after all. Perhaps it was indigestion, maybe a little gas. Nothing a pepto bismol pill couldn't handle, but then they got word of a disturbance on the third floor.

  The labor and delivery room.

  Forty to fifty newbies were born in that hospital every week and the floor housed a good hundred of them that week.

  By the time the security got to the delivery room, the damage had been done. All the babies had been infected. With what, they weren't sure at first.

  All they could be sure of was the thin layer of red liquid. The overweight man had vomited all over them or so they thought it was vomit, until they realized he wasn't wearing any pants.

  Thick red liquid trailed out of the man's behind as he ran out of the room, too slippery and filmy to be blood. It was something else.

  Something more devastating.

  The dim neon lights flickered in the dark floor. Only the night nurse stood watch, likely sleeping in the back office. It was the security cameras that had alerted them something was wrong and had the security guard been out on his smoke break like he normally was at this hour, it could have been a lot worse.

  "Jake, we got a problem here," whispered the security guard into his CB radio. The way Patient Zero foamed at the mouth was disturbing enough, as was his cat-like reflexes scaling the walls like a spider.

  The response was barely audible at first until, the security guard fixed the frequency. "Don, if this is one of your jokes," said the voice on the other end.

  The security guard's heart pounded so hard in his neck that he could barely speak at first. "No joke, need backup immediately," said Don, stuttering.

  There was a pause at first, then a bang as if the security guard watching the monitors, Jake had sat up in his desk too fast and taken a look at the monitors.

  The camera swung in Don's direction, then the direction of the creature, whatever it was, crawling on the walls and foaming at the mouth. "Backup? How many?"

  Don's lips quivered as he said, "Everybody."

  By the time the rest of the team had gotten there, Don had been killed. Somehow he thought it was a good idea to corner Patient Zero in the stairway. He'd always wanted to be a hero, now he'd died trying to be one.

  The creature's eyes had glossed over from flesh colored to stark white then all black and vomited on him. Not just the red liquid that he'd defecated on the babies with, but something else far worse.

  Worms.

  Some would later categorized the thousands of creatures that infected their victims as parasites, others called them a form of bacteria, but they were more, so much more.

  If the victim wasn't lucky enough to die immediately, they were plagued with the worst disease that ever hit mankind.

  The security guard, Don was dead long before he fell back on the stairs and busted his head open on the concrete stairs. Lucky bastard.

  There was no sign of the Patient Zero when they found what was left of Don; just the blood and slime-stained fingerprints of what remained of him on the exit door and the shattered window on the third floor.

  Nothing of his body remained to be examined just piles of thousands of worms which were promptly burned with gasoline until they realized this only spawned more.

  They froze them in below zero temperatures and held in a research lab underground, hundreds of miles below.

  According to sealed medical records that would be found decades later, the decision was made by both the medical director and the F.B.I. that the babies who were infected would be cleaned up and nothing would be said. The mothers had been sleeping after all, as late of night as it was.

  No need to cause unnecessary panic.

  Medical tests showed nothing was wrong with the babies, anyway.

  Not at first.

  2

  March 18, 2017—35 years later

  Private Island off of West Coast of Africa

  They were virtually extinct—one of the few elephants of their species left in the world—and in seconds, they'd be dead.

  Lt. Jeff Davidson watched through his binoculars, focusing on the men wearing camouflage and hiding in the bushes like the cowards they were.

  Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. It was a comfortable 70 degrees, but the strain of running at a crouch made it feel much warmer than that. Jeff shifted his focus to the bush elephants at the watering hole.

  The poor majestic creatures wouldn't have a chance at a fair fight. Jeff couldn't allow the poachers to win.

  The hunters would become the hunted.

  These rich pompous bastards liked to kidnap the poor animals from their homeland and ship them to their private island.

  Here, these billionaire poachers were free from the press and those pesky PETA advocates, free to lurk and commit their despicable acts.

  Jeff stored his binoculars and retrieved his tranquilizer gun, unrolling a belt of pre-filled hypodermic-tipped darts. The air gun wouldn’t kill the bastards, unfortunately, but it would knock them out. It’d give him enough time to tie them up and take the photos he’d send to the right journalists.

  These rich playboys’ days of fun were about to be over. He’d be in and out of this makeshift savannah and off the island, diving off the cliff surrounding it, before they even knew what hit them.

  Jeff loaded his tranq gun and took out the two in the Jeep first before they could raise an alarm. Ten others were focused on the group of elephants at the watering hole, so they didn’t even notice.

  He could only load and shoot one dart at a time, though, so the next few seconds would mean success or failure. He had to take out all ten of them before they fixed on his location.

  Taking a deep breath, Jeff turned his sight to the nearest hunter, slowly released the breath, and calmly squeezed the trigger. He loaded another dart and aimed at his next target while the first guy was still reaching for the dart sticking out of his neck. He fired another dart as he released another exhale, methodically loading, breathing, and shooting one after the next.

  He only had two left when someone pressed
a pistol to the back of his head and cocked the hammer.

  Had they allowed him a phone call to his attorney, he would have been out of here by now. Unfortunately, this wasn't exactly prison, nor was he being held legally. Judging from the state of his ‘cell,’ he couldn’t even begin to guess where he was being held.

  The room looked like a cave carved into a mountainside with wrought iron bars exposed during excavation rather than installed. Jeff kicked at the bars—it was worth a shot—and a shower of rust flakes rained down all around him. But the bars themselves didn’t so much as vibrate. They were square shaped and as thick as his wrist, and Jeff wasn’t a small man by any definition of the word.

  Other than the bars on one side, the room had no other openings or even cracks. A torch sputtered on the wall across from him, burning his eyes and nose and throat. Three days in that hell hole without food or water had left him severely dehydrated and weak. He wasn’t sure of their plans, but Jeff was certain that they’d likely lead to him being shot and buried somewhere no one would ever find his corpse.

  He could only see about sixteen feet of the wall surrounding his cage. It ended abruptly to the left of his cell and turned a corner around the right. From around that corner, he heard a voice. A familiar, unlikely voice.

  It can’t be.

  He cracked his eyes open in the dim light to see her standing in front of him.

  Victoria.

  She looked better than she had ten years ago when he last saw her. Curvaceous, her custom-fit designer glasses dangling on her perfect nose.

  He rose, trying to hide how attracted he still was to her. After all, she was his best friend's fiance.

  "I see you've gotten yourself into another jam," Victoria said, stepping up to the bars as he rose to his feet. She plucked a fleck of rust off of the bars between them.

  "Just a minor setback," Jeff said, cracking a smile and rubbing his head. He approached the bars—they were only eight feet away from the opposite side of his cage—but hesitated a step away from her. He could smell her from there. Flowers and clean linens.

  She whispered just loud enough for him to hear. "I only have a few minutes with you before—"

  "Before what?" Despite himself, he stepped closer to the bars, closer to her.

  "Before they hunt you down like the poachers they are," she said, her eyes locking with his.

  "That's not going to happen," he said, lowering his voice.

  "You didn't think that nearly extinct animals were the only things they hunted on this island, did you?"

  Jeff swallowed hard. She wasn't joking.

  "Wait 47 seconds after I leave, then duck down in the northwest corner of this cell," she said.

  "What—why?" he said.

  "Just do it if you want to survive the explosion." She walked away without another word.

  3

  Jeff had expected some resistance after the explosion and their escape on the motorcycle she'd arranged to be there, but four jeeps shooting at him seemed excessive.

  "I hope you have a way off this island," said Jeff, looking back as she clung to him for dear life.

  "No, I'm just winging it." Her sarcasm rang over the buzz of the motorcycle as they dodged bullets.

  He took a sharp left turn through the woods where he hoped the jeeps couldn't follow. A bug smacked him in the forehead, then tangled in his hair. He couldn’t afford to take even a second to flick it away.

  Large blades from low-hanging limbs battered and slashed his exposed face and arms. The foliage to his left was too thick to dart into, and all he could see to his right was a cliff that lead to deadly rocks hundreds of feet below.

  One wrong move would mean their end. "Which way?" he asked, weaving in and out of the trees, careful to stay on what passed for a trail.

  "Straight ahead," she said, buckling some kind of harness around his chest.

  "Are you out of your mind?" he said, but he nearly lost his breath as she squeezed him tight and they were lifted up into the air by a robotic parachute.

  The sudden pull almost jerked his shoulders out of their sockets, but he managed to let go of the handlebar before he ripped his own arms off.

  "Holy ..." said Jeff as he looked back at the Jeeps. Several would-be guards were shooting up in their direction.

  "Just hold on, the GPS will lead us to our ship," said Victoria.

  He noticed she didn’t have a parachute. She simply held onto him. He wrapped his arms around hers, gripping her at the elbows just in case she lost her hold. Jeff couldn’t lie to himself: it felt good to have her arms around him.

  The rush of excitement added a layer of thrill to the whole experience that left him feeling guilty. This was his best friend’s girl. She was off-limits.

  "Now's probably as good time as any to ask," she said, yelling over the rush of wind.

  "To ask what?" said Jeff, hoping she was ready to admit her feelings to him, as wrong as it was.

  "It's about Bradley," she said. "He's gone missing and I need you to help me find him."

  "Missing? I don't think he wants to see me again. Have you forgotten he tried to shoot me in my sleep the last time—"

  "He's your best friend. You've known each other since you were five. He became obsessed with finding a cure for WORMS and—"

  "For what?" asked Jeff. Trying to have a conversation while the wind roared at them was impossible.

  "You really have been living like a hermit, haven't you?” she yelled. He could feel her shaking her head. “ We have a lot to talk about," she said as they nose dived toward a little dot in the ocean which he hoped was a ship and not a Great White shark.

  Almost every surface in the control room was a flat gray color, the only exceptions being the screens and monitors and machinery, most of which Jeff had no clue about. So he focused on those he did recognize.

  The images on the satellite television flooded Jeff’s mind. He'd never seen such devastation. A timelapse display to his left showed the progression over a thirty-five year span. The disease had spread across the country like a juggernaut, threatening to turn America into a wasteland.

  After being burned by the government's health care system and treatment of veterans, Jeff had done whatever he could to escape the world as he knew it.

  But it was the ugly divorce that had separated him from his daughter that had been the last straw that made him become a hermit. Still, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t at least heard of this before now. Was he really so out of touch with reality? He’d become obsessed with delivering justice, but what had it cost him?

  He hoped his little girl was safe, at least. He hadn’t seen her in, what, three years? She was twelve now, almost thirteen. Probably growing like a weed. She was tall, like him, but thin like her mother. He missed Natalia terribly.

  He cleared his throat as he turned to Victoria and asked, "How long has this been going on?"

  "Six months ago, the first serious case was reported. The media kept portraying it as if it were the bird flu or something. But Bradley believes this has been going on for much longer. He says ‘Patient Zero’ was responsible for the start of this ‘plague’ back in ‘82, in Oregon.”

  Jeff gave her an incredulous look. “He’s still trying to explain what happened to the other babies born the same week as us. Victoria, he’s going through some kind of survivor’s guilt or something. His conspiracy theories are part of the reason we don’t talk anymore. I can’t handle it, especially when there are real problems in the world he could help solve.”

  “I know how you feel about that, Jeff.” She gently placed her hand on his arm.

  He suppressed a shudder of pleasure. It had been too long, and she was too... her.

  Perhaps sensing his discomfort, she removed her hand but continued. “ You have to admit that it’s extremely odd we’re the only three babies born in that hospital that made it to adulthood. There’s something really weird about that.”

  “Maybe, but we’re getting off-topic. What
do we know?” He had to put some distance between them. She was too near for him to focus. He paced away from the control panel and pretended to examine some instrument on the opposite wall.

  “We know the government has been hiding it. A state representative from Illinois made a public apology when this virus or whatever spread in Chicago. It seems to have evolved.”

  “What do you mean? How would you know that?”

  “Well, if Bradley’s right—”

  “Stop it, Victoria.” He spun around to face her, confident that his anger would shield him from his feelings for her, at least temporarily. “Give me the facts, not what you think happened, and not what Bradley believes. I don’t have time for this crap. If you don’t get to the point, I’m leaving. I’ve got shit to do."

  She crossed the room in three strides, determination written all over her face. He should have known better than to push her. Victoria was a force to be reckoned with, when she wanted to be.

  "These parasites eat the body from the inside out, and they reproduce at lightening speed. When they’ve consumed their host, they escape from any orifice they can: the nose, the mouth, ears, even skin pores. They are highly infectious."