Contagion

Chapter 1

Yea, though I Walk through the Valley of Death

London

Present Day

John Watson

John never thought that there would come a day when he would miss the afghan desert, but now, looking back, the war had been child's play. He wondered, not for the first time since this whole thing began, if he would have been better off bleeding out in the desert during his last tour of duty. How had it gotten to this point? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Another lifetime. Another reality. How had he gone from a wounded solider in Afghanistan, to an A&E physician working in London to supplement his army pension and finally, to one of the few survivors left in London?

John's head snapped around as the sound of a lone howl broke the silence in the distance. He ducked low behind an empty skip before cautiously peering out on the lookout for any type of movement. Anything could draw them out. John took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. Most animals were immune and were therefore useless as carriers, but infected were opportunistic eaters. John's stomach cramped as he waited for them to come searching for the source of the noise. The city appeared abandoned, nothing left but death and decay, but John knew better. It was a concrete jungle and some things lay hidden just beneath the surface, the things that nightmares were made of. Then, moments later, another break in the silence came in the form of a shot. John looked around wildly breathing in deeply as his nostrils flared. His tongue slipped out from between his lips and tasted the air. Nothing, nothing close anyway. John continued to scan his surroundings finding no signs of life. Perhaps he had imagined it. Sometimes he heard things that he couldn't explain. Was he going mad? Sometimes he felt like it. Prolonged isolation could do that to a man. Make him question his own sanity, but John didn't have the luxury of self-doubt anymore. Treat everything as reality until proven otherwise; it was that thought which had kept him alive more than once. John looked around once again, his eyes skimming the deserted streets littered with dead bodies.

John stifled a gag as the smell of rotting flesh surrounded him. John always considered himself to have a strong stomach, something that was practically a requirement in the medical field, but ever since he had been exposed to the virus, his sense of smell wasn't the same. John wasn't the same. His senses were more acute, particularly his sense of smell. John couldn't bring himself to complain though. After all, it was his newly acquired acute senses that had saved him more than once. Once he had learned to properly harness them, it had taken time for John to pinpoint the meaning of all the significant smells and to learn to differentiate between them. John grit his teeth and forced himself to breathe in deeply and catalogue it. He now knew that the infected possessed a scent signature that he could detect at close distances. Once he was sure that there were none in the immediate area, he breathed through his mouth in order to minimize exposure to the stench of death and decay.

All of his senses were now more acute. Why remained a mystery; perhaps it was a side effect of the exposure and his body's immune response to fight off the virus. There were other changes as well. When John had first awoken from the coma, his muscles had atrophied significantly leaving him weak and vulnerable. He had been lucky to make his way out of the hospital and find shelter before nightfall. Then something strange began to happen. What should have taken months of intense therapy to regain his strength had only taken a couple of weeks. John's body recovered at an unnatural pace. He was now stronger than before he was exposed, gaining both strength and muscle mass. But along with increased strength and sharpened senses other less desirable traits had also appeared. Mood swings and aggressive tendencies, which were brought on by what John guessed were surges in testosterone. It left John confused and more than a bit concerned and afraid. Was this a new mutation of the original virus or simply a by-product of immunity?

Immune, John was one if the few people who were naturally immune. John didn't know whether to consider that to be a blessing or a curse at this point. London had fallen. John moved quickly back to his temporary home eager to escape before the infected hunted down whatever poor animal had produced that mournful howl. John rubbed the base of his neck trying to soothe the near constant ache that had settled there. He winced as he massaged swollen and tender lymph nodes and large nodule at the base of his neck, which were still swollen over a month after his initial exposure to the virus. The cervical nodes were enlarged on both sides of his neck, but more concerning to John, was the large nodule at the base of his neck which had appeared after his exposure. It wasn't a lymph node, the placement was wrong. It was yet another mysterious change within his changing body that he couldn't explain.

John thought briefly of Harry and what had become of her. He had made his way to her London flat a few days after he had awoken. It had been empty, and clearly looted. John hadn't found any trace of his sister, but still held out hope that she had gotten out of the city before it had fallen. London was a wasteland now, a pale shadow of its former glory. It had become a breeding ground for infected. The virus had been merciless. As John made his way back to shelter he looked around the streets for anything of value that was worth scavenging. He was careful to stayed hidden in the side streets and alleys, always mindful that there were infected looking for an easy mark.

John's hand moved to the small of his back tracing the outline of his browning. He was running low on ammunition and he did not want to use it unless left with no other alternative. His immunity gave him more leeway than most. He could risk exposure without fear of infection, but just because he couldn't catch the virus didn't mean that he couldn't be killed. The infected would eat anything, even each other. The virus affected the nervous, endocrine as well as the musculoskeletal systems. It caused brain damage, shutting down the frontal and temporal lobes as well as portions of the limbic system, leaving the parietal lobes and cerebellum damaged and leaving only the brainstem fully intact. The virus also wreaked havoc on the adrenal glands and eventually led to renal failure and death. The virus killed the host, but it was a slow death and the infected were able to cause massive amounts of damage until their bodies finally shut down. They couldn't feel pain and were very difficult to kill. Their bodies were capable of producing massive amounts of adrenaline giving them almost inhuman strength.

John licked his dry lips as he mentally reviewed the few facts that he had been able to piece together. It had spread like wildfire. It was a pandemic the likes of which the world had never seen. The NHS and WHO had been powerless to stop it. It had mutated quickly, so quickly that a viable vaccine had been more of a dream than a reality. The infected lay dead in the street. Immunity was rare and as a consequence, nearly everyone exposed to the virus became infected and died eventually, but not before they turned into something inhuman; something feral and bloodthirsty. John shuddered as he recalled the first time he seen one fully turned. The day he was first exposed. It was in the ICU at St. Bart's, ironically. The patient had initially come in for a bite wound that had become infected. Looking back, they should have questioned him. If they had, they may have suspected something and, at the very least, had the man quarantined, but they treated it as routine. The patient had been admitted to the medical ward for IV antibiotics. When the condition worsened to fully blown septic shock, the patient had been transferred to the ICU and put on a ventilator. It was then that it had happened. The PA system had requested a code team and security. John had been in the covering the A&E at the time, so it was he that had responded to the code.

What he saw when he had gotten there had stolen his breath. John had seen death in different forms, both natural secondary to disease and man-made as a result of war, but he had never seen anything like what he had seen that day. The patient had been bucking against the restraints, drooling with bloodshot, dilated eyes. He was completely feral. The sedation had no effect and soon the patient had broken free. With an inhuman scream, the patient had lunged at the nurse taking a bite out of her arm. They had no choice but to killed him, but not before the patient had bitten everyone in the room, John included. They hadn't known what it had become at the time and had no idea what was coming. John looked down at his left forearm. The silver scar was a near perfect dental impression of the patient's teeth. It served as a constant reminder of that life-changing day.

He hadn't been the same since that bite. John had gotten deathly ill as his body fought the virus. His immunity eventually won out. He was one of the lucky ones. Even the rare individuals who had a natural immunity to the virus were not completely safe. Fighting the virus required the body to mount a massive immune response and those whose bodies were not strong enough died fighting the infection. At first, John had thought that he would be one of them. The fever had raged unabated and no drugs could help to fight the infection. He his organs began to shut down and he had slipped into a coma. The virus had nearly taken his life. When his body finally fought it off, he had awakened from the coma to find the hospital abandoned.

John took a deep breath as he recalled the panic that he had felt as he roamed the halls of St. Bart's finding nothing but dead bodies in various stages of decay. The hospital had been boarded up, it now resembled a prison, designed to keep things in rather than keep them out. To this day, John wasn't sure how long he had been comatose, but it must have been long enough for the city to have fallen prey to the virus. Looking back, it was a miracle he had survived those first few days. He had been comatose as the virus had spread and remained blissfully unaware of what was awaiting him when he awoke. John's medical and military training had been instrumental in saving him. He had been forced to learn the hard way. He had been able to gather a few facts from the notices posted throughout St. Bart's, but they had only contained minimal information regarding transmission. Blood and bodily fluids, most often through a bite wound as well as signs and symptoms of infection in regards to the physical and neurological deterioration seen as the virus progressed. Nothing was mentioned about the infected weaknesses or any type behavioral patterns.

John had learned that through trial and error. Fully turned infected were the most dangerous; feral scavengers without higher brain function or pain response, but deadly and nearly impossible to kill. The freshly infected could be deceiving, there was a window period between initial exposure to fully turned infected of about a week where the infected individual appeared normal except for the wound which served as the point of entry for the virus which would not heal. Though they were not feral, they were still contagious and were carriers of the virus, ticking time bombs, so to speak. He had been surviving by scavenging and moving constantly around the city, never staying in one place for long. It had been just over a month since he had awoken from his coma and he had never felt more alone. He had yet to find anyone who was not infected.