Omega Pathogen: Despair by J. G. Hicks Jr, Scarlett Algee Read Free Book Online Page A

vertigo began immediately to take hold and he closed his good eye again. He heard Royce say his name several times, each time sounding more distant than before until it faded to nothing.
    Jim next felt the sunlight through his closed eye. Even through his eyelid, the pain from the sun was burning through to the back of his brain. Was he infected? Had he been bitten? Was this what it felt like to be taken by the SCAR virus and be turned mad? Or was this a concussion, a traumatic brain injury? It felt similar to what he’d experienced after an IED had blown up his vehicle in Iraq.
    His mind registered feeling wet and cold for some indeterminable amount of time, then warm and dry. He heard someone yelling nearby but couldn’t make out the words; he couldn’t tell if they were directing the shouting at him or someone else. The voice sounded like someone he should know.
    He regained consciousness suddenly. At least he knew that he was now aware of his surroundings. He awakened in a state of fear and panic. He rose to a seated position from the bed of the pickup truck and was immediately reminded of his head injury. Reflexively he reached for the left side of his head. He felt the bandages around his head and his left eye.
    “How do you feel?” he heard Royce ask.
    He turned his head to the left, where the voice came from, and felt pain in his neck, and then nausea with it. He saw Royce squatting on his left side and looking into his good eye. “I feel like shit. Thank you, Royce,” Jim answered.
    Jim saw daylight seeping through the gaps in the steel. “Help me up, please,” he asked. Royce voiced opposition, but helped Jim to his feet when he continued to try to get up on his own.
    “While you’ve been sleeping your ass off, I’ve been busy,” Royce said with a grin. Royce told Jim that while he had been unconscious, he’d dressed his wounds, though Jim had figured that out. Royce had removed Jim's blood-soaked clothes, cleaned him off and put on fresh clothes.
    Royce reassured him that he hadn’t seen signs of bites while he had taken care of him. Royce said he had talked to Jim’s family in the MRAP, after he convinced them he was helping Jim and not trying to shoot him. He’d also taken his truck to the ranger station and brought back the semi-tractor tow truck. Royce had just finished checking the airboat to make sure it was operational when Jim had come to.
    Jim learned from Royce that the former owners of the truck also had two large propane cylinders in the floorboard of the truck with a long hose and nozzle, a homemade flamethrower. Memories of charred pavement and shattered glass in the parking lot where the MRAP had been went through his mind.
    Jim looked at his watch but, after taking a second or two to focus his good right eye, he noticed the watch was shattered. Jim fumbled around getting his watch off and tossed it aside. “What time is it?” Jim asked.
    “It’s quarter after nine,” Royce answered as he stepped out of the bed of the truck and onto the ground.
    Jim followed; he reached up and touched the ceiling of the steel box to guide his unsteady walk. Royce helped him down from the truck bed to the ground and then over to the airboat that was now off the trailer and on the dirt beside the road.
    Jim looked around at the bodies nearby and noticed the legs lying on the ground behind the oak tree. It was the woman whose body he’d dragged there after killing her last night. He saw the gigantic man that had nearly killed him. He wasn’t sure yet, but the fight might have blinded him in his left eye. Around the large man was dark, almost black dried blood that Jim had bled from him. He saw the man he shot off the roof of the truck. All three of the bodies had been a meal for the infected that had gathered around after he and Royce had made it safely inside. There were the bodies of the infected that he and Royce had killed also littering the area.
    “Jim, can I ask you something?” Royce