The Last Blade Of Grass by Robert Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

supplies and maintain law and order. We will not be searching for hostiles or dealing with enemy combatants. We will be the force behind local police to ensure the men and women of our country don’t all kill each other, and these injections will make sure we don’t get killed while we are doing that job.
    “What I have been told about this drug is this. You are supposed to develop a fever in six hours when your body is saturated with the drug, so be prepared for a difficult afternoon. Also, we are supposed to get the whole base inoculated today. You are the first group getting it, so go through quickly, and then you’ll get situated in your barracks.”
    *
    This particular military base houses a battalion of six hundred forty-three men and women split into three companies and twelve platoons. The efficient med techs at the base clinic are able to inject ninety-three people with Zeus in the minutes before any symptoms occur. The first of the symptoms are extreme twitching tremors which start hitting five minutes after injection. They are similar to epileptic fits, but the body goes more rigid than flailing.
    Private Hernandez was the first man through the line for injections this morning. He was happy to be stateside again. His wife gave birth to their new baby girl three weeks ago and this re-deployment means he gets to be with them and his two year old son. He sits down on his cot in the barracks to go through his duffle bag when the dizziness hits. He can feel his muscles start to tense and lies down quickly to try to stop the room from spinning. It starts out feeling like a night of too much drinking and the onset of a leg cramp, but the cramps move all over his body. It quickly turns into seething pain, and he starts to convulse, with his eyes open, and a painful grimace etched on his face.
    Several of the other men with Hernandez notice something is wrong with him when his tremors make him fall off his cot onto the floor. They see what is happening with him, but with each person realizing that something is wrong, that person too soon drops due to their own dizziness and start of tremors. Several of the soldiers make it outside of the barracks to try for help, but they also drop from dizziness and convulsions before they can get a warning out.
    In the ten minutes after the first injection was given, and after the first groups came and went, the med techs inject another one hundred twenty-four soldiers with Zeus.
    Nine minutes and forty-two seconds after his injection of Zeus, Hernandez gets up from the floor, and looks around the room, in a jerky and dazed manner. There are shaking bodies on the ground everywhere. What is left of him sniffs the air, listens, and walks toward the open door. He pauses every few feet to sniff the air near one of the shaking bodies but moves on to the exit without completely stopping.
    As Private Hernandez reaches the door, just outside the barracks are two civilian contractors that are on break. They have just run over to several soldiers that are collapsed on the ground.
    Lucinda Thompson and Charlie Brand are two hardworking people with families of their own. Lucinda is trying to dial the base clinic on her cell phone and Charlie is bent over one of the men with the most severe convulsions trying to keep him from thrashing against the concrete.
    Neither one of them notice Hernandez until he grabs Lucinda, bites into her shoulder, and she screams. Lucinda struggles to get away from Hernandez, and while she easily breaks free from his weak grasping arms, his teeth and jaw are set firmly in her flesh, so he gets pulled off balance as his head is attached to her shoulder. Hernandez falls to the ground ripping the chunk of meat from her shoulder, and she passes out from shock.
    Charlie is frozen on the ground for a few seconds, watching Lucinda fall. His mind jumps right to his wife and kids and that he will never see them again. The thoughts, Nerve gas, Bio-Weapon , flash in his mind as he