Chapter 1- Of Sniffles and Colds
A/N: Reviews make me write my stories faster.
A rooster crows loudly at dawn as the sun rises from the east. The sun outlines the beautiful trees of Delhi, India and underneath the shade of a tree sits a woman begging for help for her sick daughter. People bustle about concerned with their own lives completely ignoring the plea of a mother. They had no place to stay, they slept in the only clothing they had and they had no water to drink but from the polluted river filled with Shiva know what.
Cough! Cough! The coughs turn into harsh hacking, shaking the small frail eight years old body as she takes in an uneasy breathe and sniffles loudly only to nearly choke on the copious mucus backing up into her mouth. She spits out the blood tinged mucus on the ground not bothered that someone stepped into it a minute later.
"I'm cold, mother." The daughter shivers as if the floor was covered in snow. Her skin is cool to the touch but her forehead was raging hot. Sweat dribbles down the back of the child soaking her mother's once dry clothes.
The mother chews at her lips in despair knowing full well that the nearest clinic was miles away from her location and her daughter could not wait in the long lines for medical attention, she needed it now. A sob breaks through her stoic mask. "It's okay, I'm here… I… I… got you." The mother hugged her only child to her chest knowing full her daughter wouldn't make it during the night. Hours later, a tear slips down the mother's cheek as she holds the dead body of her daughter tightly.
Hospital in Delhi
It's been a week, her temperature was high yet she felt so cold. What worried her was her daughter had the same exact illness before she passed and before she buried her daughter in a land field where her body hopefully wouldn't be disturbed. She walked into the clinic, coughing harshly into a piece of cloth staring in horror at the amount of blood that soaked the cloth. She rubs her right forearm against her mouth hastily but effectively wiping off the existence of the blood from her lips. She goes to the front desk asking to see a Doctor, the receptionist ask the woman about her issue but before the receptionist can hear the answer. The woman once a mother coughs right into the receptionist face, the ex-mother turns her head rapidly from the receptionist's direction but the ex-mother doesn't stop coughing until blood begins to gush out of her orifices. The once a mother drops dead at the feet of the receptionist.
"Doctor!" The receptionist yells terrified at the scene while trying to desperately wipe the bloody secretions from his face.
An Asian man of fifty four steps out from his office to the scene not at all surprised that the woman was dead. This was his second time this month witnessing this scenario; the first was behind the safety of glass windows that protected him from the secretions that the CDC is now calling a virus of some kind. The first time he was allowed to go back home to China, but now his organization Doctors Without Borders insisted every Doctor or healthcare provider stay in the facility to make sure the virus wasn't brought back to their home countries. "Quickly we must burn her body."
The administrators were careful to follow protocol to a T and made sure their employees did so as well. Otherwise another epidemic like the one with Ebola several years back could arise again and the CDC refused for that scenario to come to past.
The receptionist looked at the Doctor in shock, "What?"
"Now! We don't have much time." The receptionist rushed into gear calling for the coroner to be ready for an ill prepared autopsy to rule out the virus or not. The receptionist heads towards the decontamination room. Hours later he is cleared to go home.
Receptionist's Home
"Daddy! Daddy!" A blonde haired girl rushes to meet her dad from the table her mom and her were currently working on.
"Ally?"
"She's been asking all day when are we going back to London? I keep telling her when Daddy says so." His wife hugs him and gives him a chaste kiss.
"I want to give you a better kiss than you just gave me, but I got to take shower. I feel disgusting."
"What happened?"
"A patient coughed on me multiple times." He looks at his wife to see concern on her face. "No worries honey. The CDC reassured us the virus is just contact based."
He heads upstairs to take a good hot shower and his vision swims for a bit. After a couple minutes the odd sensation goes away, but a strange red discoloration appears on his left cheek and he just brushes it off as a pimple.
Hospital Morgue
The morgue itself was filled to the brim with dead bodies of patients dying before they received any type of assistance. The coroner ran around with her assistants determining what the cause of death was or wasn't. Many of the patients died from the virus the CDC was now calling HIN1-2, the virus was contact based but it didn't stop any of them from donning a full PPE gown along with a face shield/ mask, cover boots and more. The virus stayed on objects for days on end able to contaminate someone else if he/she touched the object.
While the coroner and her assistants are busy with the new patient. A figure shuffles to where the procedure is taking place. The figure of what used to be a handsome male some weeks ago rounds the corner of the medical room. Fluorescent lights reflecting how pale even against the white walls he was, and his hair laid matted on his head. He stops to sniff his surroundings and a rumble from his stomach makes itself known as a gnawing pain calls him forth.
He hits his left leg against an edge of a medical table creating a deep nasty gash and he groans not from pain but from hunger. His arms reach towards the object of his interest.
A young Caucasian woman tilts her head at him, "Sir, are you okay?" She touches his shoulders in surprise at how a patient got passed into the morgue without security deterring him from doing so. "Sir, I'm going to ask you to step out of this room. Unless you have permission to be here, do you?"
The man cocks his head at her, his glassy eyes see nothing but he hears the woman's throbbing pulse and smells the alluring aroma of something underneath the pink elastic barrier of skin. Intrigued he prods at her neck with his finger feeling her carotid artery.
Said assistant glares at the man in disbelief, Sexual harassment anyone? She removes his index finger from her neck to only have him yank her close to her, his face now etched into the crook of her neck sniffing for the scent that called him. She begins to struggle in panic and in doing so, the action ignites a primal desire in the man to hunt, to kill and to eat.
His teeth were not sharp as of yet but he opened it nonetheless and bit into the neck of the still struggling woman whom screamed her displeasure. Her screams echoed beyond the double doors of the morgue, the coroner turned her eyes for a second from the body she worked on in direction of the scream. Her assistants frazzled at the sound, quiet resumes once again. Scalpel still in hand, the coroner carefully slices the patient from the end of her sternum to the top of her bladder. Fascinated at the rapid degeneration of the organs, the once healthy woman of twenty eight now had a body of an end stage renal patient.
The coroner pulls and tugs at the diseased liver puts it into a container that would then be sent to a CDC lab for further examination. The coroner's hands dig back into the body, and her eyes widen with surprise as the young woman wakes up with glazed eyes cocking her head to side not at all aware of her surroundings nor of her being cut open like a cadaver, she is just aware of the growing hunger.
The assistants back away in fear but it's too late as the woman chomps down hard on the coroner's right forearm blood then gushing into the young woman's waiting mouth. More pale bodies shuffle into the operating room surrounding their cornered prey, which some say a quick prayer and others wish they hadn't ever come to this city and with the doors closed the screams barely make it into the hallway. By the next day, the pale faced sickly looking bodies slowly decomposing overwhelm the sick patients and by the third day all but one man is alive.
"Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones! What is your emergency?" The radio broadcasting from the CDC headquarters in DeKalb, Georgia blares into the office of Jones.
"They're here, they're here!" Doctor Jones, the Asian man frantically yells back.
"Who's there?"
"The walking dead." The radio goes silent on Jones end.
The Receptionist Home
Hours later he books a flight to his London home with his wife and child in tow. Not at all bothered by the harsh cough that takes him unawares.
Land field in Delhi
She was dying of hunger; the gnawing pain wouldn't go away. Her gaze shifts from the bloody carcass of the cat and the sound of a wounded dog draws her closer to her prey. Her hunger beckons her to take a bite and she does.
The meager meal wasn't enough instinct told her to hunt something bigger something more challenging, her glazed eye sight doesn't help much to find food but her nose tells her where to go and north she begins to shuffle towards. The noise of the city attracting her attention, and a loud moan echoes out calling her kind to her.
The virus spreads outside of India into China, the Middle East, Africa, and the rest of the world. It becomes a pandemic.