Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) by Victor Methos Read Free Book Online Page A

blood work-ups, biopsies , everything that could be tested, primarily from the military. They were the de facto police force, and the number of arrests and shootings to maintain order had skyrocketed. They thought something new had been introduced, but they knew even less than we did. Military intelligence thought that a radical terrorist group had infiltrated all facets of society and was attacking in large numbers. That’s silly to even think about now. Why would a terrorist group use their bare hands, when weapons that could kill a hundred times more people were available? That was just one example of the flaw in their logic, but they had even deeper problems. Soldiers were not immune, and the biohazard suits barely seemed to help. They were exposing themselves to the infected and, in turn, becoming infected themselves.
    “In one episode, a soldier had turned on his comrades in the middle of a patrol. Patrols went out in parties of six, and a single soldier had killed all five other men. When they found him, he was riddled with at least ten bullets. They shot him everywhere—the head, heart, kidneys, legs—but he hadn’t given up. All he cared about was killing those soldiers, and he did it before he bled to death. So the military was thinking they would make great weapons. We’re in the middle of the worst epidemic in history, it’s not even close to over, and they’re thinking, ‘Gee, we can turn these monsters into weapons to fight the North Koreans.’ So now the military has an interest in figuring out what’s going on, and that’s when the numbers hit, the numbers of all the people who had attacked others and were required to be killed. The FBI’s Hazardous Material Response Unit had at least four thousand samples taken from around the country. They had known about this effect for five weeks and kept it to themselves. They said they didn’t want panic. But I don’t think that’s the truth.
    “The truth was that only a handful of giant corporations own the media and dominate the markets. When there’s a crash, they’re the hardest hit. They were just trying to prevent another crash, hoping this new behavior induced by the virus just went away on its own.” She shook her head. “They were willing to let people die if they could just prevent losing any more money, as though money meant anything anymore.
    “Anyway, once we determined what it was , a degenerative disorder of some kind brought about by the infection of Variola , where only certain regions of the brain were affected, we could see what was happening, the sheer destruction of it. Even in Atlanta, you’d see people dashing from place to place on the sides of the roads, screaming, blood raining out of them. But they wouldn’t really attack each other. I noticed that almost immediately. Luther decided to stay and help at the CDC. One night we were running samples through the spectrometer and he said, ‘This isn’t found in nature. This is engineered.’ The statement took me by surprise. I’d considered it, of course, but Luther had never intimated that his thinking was going down that path. ‘That’s the problem with man’s arrogance,’ he said. ‘It destroys itself, too.’
    “I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but I do now. Whoever engineered the virus didn’t prepare for its devastation. Maybe they had an antidote they thought would save them, or they just didn’t realize how quickly it would spread, I don’t know, but a biological attack is not like a nuclear attack. A nuclear attack is a precision instrument by comparison. A virus, once released, spreads everywhere. The country of origin isn’t immune. I think the engineers just didn’t realize it would come back to haunt them so soon.
    “One thing we couldn’t figure out , though: Why was the violence showing up now? Was it a new strain or a different virus entirely? Once we had completed a full analysis of Ryan and Eric’s blood, we sent the results to Dr.