BLOODLINE The Last Sanctuary | A Novel | By @WendyyWolfe

[7] Between The Dream

Between the Dream

On the third floor of Salt Lake Regional, in the doctor's lounge, Billie Jo lay on an emergency cot. She had been up a straight seventy-two hours and she was bone tired. Too tired to sleep, though God knew she needed it. The events of the previous two days preyed upon her mind, and she stared sightless into the semi darkness.

The clock over the door said 2:20 am but it might as well have been anytime.

Conditions in Salt Lake City had continued to deteriorate, the CDC and WHO had formally declared a state of emergency.

Worldwide.

They officially concluded the United States of America to be in the throes of a strange pandemic and urged Military, State and Government leaders to take the necessary steps to alert the American citizens and to enact protocol with instructions everyone should take from this time forward.

Although there was no official statement to give name to the illness yet, authorities were calling it MCHVc level IV, Morrhagia's Cerebral Hypoxia Viral compound, because somehow, medical researchers working to trace its origins, assumed it had leapt from a level II animal host straight to level IV human host. An advance so rare it had only been documented two other times in history.

It would be months before they formally recognized this plague for what it was.

Also working to untangle the DNA sequencing, research agents from the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical terrorism task force were indicating strongly that it was a Bio-Weapon.

Man made.

With an unknown delivery system and, a one hundred percent death quotient, with no cure, no vaccine available and confusion as to a patient zero.

It was a fast ravaging compound virus meant for the worst kind of biological warfare they said, during a private press release to Hospital Authorities.

They explained, with as few details possible, how it transmitted through bodily fluid contact, and during cell mutation, produced a toxin which attacked and robbed the brain cells of oxygen, resulting in extreme symptoms, then death.

In normal circumstances that is.

But there was nothing normal about this. Because the dead refused to stay, well, dead.

It was unclear where or how it had started.

The NBC refused to give any more details beyond those, urging the Government to focus on public action for protection instead.

Things were already out of control.

Either way, to Billie Jo, her neat compartmentalized life had become a war zone. She had retreated to the darkened sanctuary of the lounge and refused to leave when she learned dead patients had risen to bite, eat and turn others into an undead catastrophe. They had only managed to control the surge a couple of days with their so called, 'specialized euthanization technique' before things spiraled into chaos.

A large-scale military triage mobile unit had taken over the back-parking area of the hospital, and for three days had been trucking in supplies, chemical decontamination trailers, chemical protective clothing which they were all required to wear and the whole area had been cordoned off with privacy chain-link fencing.

Armed guards were posted at every entrance and soldiers surrounded the outside perimeters. There was only one way in or out, and that was through them.

It was a last ditch effort to keep the infected inside from reaching the public. That meant anybody could potentially be an infected. So nobody got past them.