Plague: Death was only the beginning!

Plague

Death was only the beginning!

                           Book 1

Donald R. Franck

Copyright © 2015 Donald R. Franck, Francine C. Franck

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-149543261

ISBN-10: 149543236X

This book has been assigned a CreateSpace ISBN.

Editing by Kelly Hartigan (XterraWeb)

http://editing.xterraweb.com

Cover by The Book Cover Machine

http://thebookcovermachine.com/

Disclaimer

This is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. In addition, any real locations or businesses are used in a totally fictitious setting and have no relationship to real-world persons or events.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Author’s Note

How do we survive in a world gone mad and in which everywhere we turn the devil is grinning back at us? We do so by standing our ground and continuing to be the best that humanity has to offer. As our resources fade to nothingness, we must create new ways of thinking and new ways to helping our fellow man. Only in this way can the human race survive the coming dark years. Only by resisting the legions of hell itself, can we push back the insanity and regain the future.

Everyone needs a second chance at life if we are to face the dark terrors surrounding us, and only by grabbing that brass ring can we survive as a species while running toward the light.

That is the basis of our story.

       DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the great editing staff and others who helped define what this story was all about—people going the distance to save others. It could not have been completed without you. In addition, to my wife, Francine, who kept me going with new ideas and directions I had not thought of. You are the best! Finally, to all my family and friends, who sent me their prayers during the long months of my health issues. You gave me the courage to keep fighting.

To all my fellow service members, past, present, and future: Thank You, and God Bless You!

To the ICU Step down unit at Ozark Medical, Heather, Shane, and all of the wonderful crew: Thank you for my life. You really are the best!

Finally and always, to Lola and Bailey, who were cruelly taken much too soon. We miss you so much.

“Why is it called the Black Death? And where does it come from?”

The Black Death

To understand the severity of the Bubonic plague (Yersinia Pestis), we must first study history. One of the first recorded incidences of the plague was during the time of Emperor Justinian around 600 A.D., and while little is known of that, it was thought to have had a major effect over a large area of the population in the Middle East.

It wasn’t until the middle of the 14
th
century, approximately 1345 A.D., that the first major plague spread across vast areas of China, Eurasia, Europe, England, and beyond. Hunter-gatherers on the Eurasian plateaus of western China were first thought to have come in contact with the plague bacilli through the hunting of a marmot-like animal (squirrels and chipmunks), which is a known plague type carrier. The plague bacilli incubated in the fleas carried on the animal’s back. Because the fur itself was very valuable, some owners ignored the danger that was displayed by a staggering animal and so were infected by the fleas themselves. From there, the disease was thought to have moved by travelers, across what would later be known as the Silk Road, to the city of Caffa on the Caspian Sea. Within days of arriving in the city, the plague was spreading like wildfire across the crowded slums and filthy streets that were commonplace during that period. Realizing the danger, sailing ships from Genoa quickly departed and made their way westward toward Constantinople and points west. By the year 1346A.D, it was estimated that 10,000 people per day were dying of the plague in Constantinople alone.

To give you an idea of what is described as the Black Death, you must consider a healthy person who has become infected. They first will run a high fever, and later, swellings of the lymph nodes called buboes (often with the formation of pus, in the region of the armpit or groin) will develop. Some will have blackish-blue discoloration on their chest and abdomen. Later, they will develop a serious cough with bloody sputum (mucus that is coughed up from the lower airways), and toward the end stages, bloody diarrhea. Black Death is eerily similar to the hemorrhagic fever Ebola. From infection to death can be as little as three days as the bacterium rapidly develops inside the lungs and the lymph nodes, as well as the bloodstream itself. This effect on the body helps to differentiate the different stages or names of the plague itself. Bubonic plague is normally associated with buboes in the lymph nodes and high fevers that develop over a period of time. Death that results (35% to 65%) can take more than a week from the first time the symptoms appear. Pneumatic plague developed primarily in the lungs and is quickly spread by coughing of aerosol particles of blood and bacterium. This mode of travel allows it to be picked up from surfaces, as well as by direct contact with the infected person themselves. It spreads quickly in crowded and confined areas directly due to those airborne droplets. (Death rates of 90% to 95% can result.) The most horrifying of the three plagues is septicemic plague, which runs madly through the bloodstream itself, and infection to death can be as little as fourteen and a half hours. Normally caused by a fleabite, it quickly moves through the bloodstream itself and literally chokes itself to death on blood. It may be from this strain of the disease that the “Black Death” itself may have been named. Since it directly affects the blood itself, the extremities, like the arms and legs, would become extended straight out from the body and become entirely black and hard to the touch. A truly horrible sight indeed.

Because the plague has the ability to break off into different strains, it can affect vast areas and either move slowly, as the bubonic plague normally does historically, or swiftly, as the airborne aerosols effects of pneumonic plague can do, to move and quickly spread across the land. The results are still sickness and death for thousands. Septicemic plague is the most lethal of all the strains and normally has a death rate of 100% of those left untreated. Another bit of irony is that the plague can also kill dogs, cats, cattle, rats, and other forms of life, which classifies it as a zoonotic disease. Avian and swine flu are other examples of a zoonotic disease. There were even reports of lions dying from the plague in the Constantinople Zoo during the plague years of 1345 to 1348.

The epidemic of the 1340s was said to have killed over one-third of the European population, which was estimated at that time to be from seventy to one hundred million souls. So it is frightening to consider the number of dead that could result with our modern crowded cities and air travel. As it could quickly spread within weeks to every corner of the world, no one would be safe.

“What is the meaning of an ‘Epidemic and or a Pandemic?’”

Pandemics

When we consider the differences in a pandemic and an epidemic, we mainly need to discuss a level of scale. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a scale by which the flu can be measured against world population.
WHO constantly monitors flu cases throughout the world, relying on information from a wide network of sources, including government health agencies, university scientists, and international aid organizations.

WHO has developed a system of identifying where the world stands with regard to pandemic flu. The system has six phases:

Phase 1
: No new influenza virus has been found in people or animals.

Phase 2
: New virus has appeared in animals, but no human cases.

Phase 3
: A new strain of animal influenza virus infects humans, but there have not been human-to-human infections.

Phase 4
: The new virus passes from person to person, but transmission is limited and confined to a certain location.

Phase 5
: There is frequent transmission of the virus between people in a particular place, but it hasn't spread to the rest of the world.

Phase 6
: Pandemic. The virus is widespread worldwide.

We are currently in phase 3, which marks the beginning of the "pandemic alert period," because of what has been developing with avian influenza virus H5N1.

It's possible that the H5N1 will turn into a human influenza virus. But if it does, it may never be contagious enough to spark a pandemic. Or a virulent new strain may be contained before it can spread far.

As you can see, even a virulent disease like avian flu or the plague has to reach a vast population across the entire planet before it can be called a pandemic. Yet once it does, no one is safe.

“What is the difference between Ebola and the Pneumonic Plague?”

The Plague

One of the first things you must consider in comparing the Ebola disease and the pneumonic plague (Yersinia Pestis) is that Ebola is caused by a virus and the plague is caused by a bacterium. With a virus, the disease is normally only spread by direct contact, with the exception of some airborne droplets by an infected person either coughing or sneezing and then touching a surface. This would leave a microscopic blood trace, either in the air, or on the surface, for a short period of time. And another person either touching that surface, or by inhaling airborne droplets, can then become infected. In times past, the black rat (Rattus rattus) normally carried it inside their fleas. When a normal black rat carried the disease, the fleas themselves would become engorged by the infected blood of the animal. As the plague multiplied, it would bloat the fleas’ stomach, and each time the flea moved on to another animal, it would regurgitate the plague into the bloodstream of the animal (or person) and thereby spread the disease. While the fleas of the rat are normally different from a human flea, it can still infect human beings. This, in turn, allows the human flea to spread the plague from person to person in the dirty enclosed environments of a large city.

Ebola, on the other hand, was initially thought to be caused by monkeys deep in the African forest of Western Africa. Hunters would kill the monkeys for food and thereby become infected with the Ebola virus. Some historians even believe that prior incidences of the Black Death may have actually been contributed to the Ebola virus catching on worldwide. A frightening thought if true.

Symptoms of Ebola include high fevers, coughing, bloody sputum, vomiting, bloody anal discharge or diarrhea, and finally, but most frightening, the liquefaction of the internal organs.

While the symptoms are similar to the plague, the incubation period of Ebola is much longer and could exist up to twenty-one days before victims start showing symptoms of the disease, whereas plague can show up within a matter of hours from its initial exposure. Depending upon the severity of the Ebola virus, the death rate is normally only about 70%, whereas the plague death rates can reach levels of 90% to 100% within less than a week. In either case, you would be dealing with a very lethal and deadly disease that can spread quickly regardless of the weather (Pneumonic plague seems to actually like cold, moist weather and spreads quickly during the fall and winter months).

“
Our Story Begins with a Death, regrettably.”

-Thoughts from the Author

Chapter 1

Infected: 1 – Dead: 0

Dr. William Dent from Doctors Without Borders, under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) was just completing his last visit with his colleagues at the small clinic in Beranimbo, Madagascar before returning home. He had spent the past three weeks treating a large number of Bubonic plague victims, as well as recording the first new outbreak of Pneumonic plague that had just broken out in the area. He shuddered as he saw more bodies carried out of the clinic as the ferocity of the plague decimated the local population. A small child, upon observing one body being removed, ran over to Dr. Dent and wrapped his small arms around the doctor’s leg. Even completely enclosed in bio-contamination protective clothing and gear, he was startled and surprised and quickly removed the child’s arms from his leg. In doing so, he unknowingly spread the child’s mother’s sputum across his pants legs.

The small child was startled as the large masked figure shoved the child away from them and the boy quickly ran to follow the litter bearers as they carried his mother’s body to the mass graves some distance from the clinic. Within a few days, his own small body would be added to the pile; this corpse, now nameless, was quickly covered up with a mixture of lye and dirt as if he never existed.

Unknowingly, as Dr. Dent removed his protective clothing, he failed to notice a small rip in his pant leg and the impression of fingernails that had broken the seal on the back of his knee. As well as skipping the mandatory bleach spray down of his suit before disrobing, he had not gone into the clinic itself. Even if he had noticed it, he would have disregarded it as he had been taking prophylactic doses of ciprofloxacin antibiotics to aid in his body’s resistance to the plague bacilli. Maybe if he’d been wearing thick blue jeans or had even worn slacks, he would not have become infected. But, because of the heat and humidity of the tropics, he had instead been wearing a pair of shorts under his thick biohazard suit. He spent the rest of the day and evening packing his suitcase and arranging for his trip to the airport so that he could fly home the next day. Regrettably, by the time his Jeep reached the small dirt airstrip, he was already running a low-grade fever. Shrugging it off as just the heat, he boarded a small aircraft that carried him to the nearest international airport for his flight to Brussels and then on to New York. By the time he reached New York City itself, he was already in serious discomfort with chills, fever, and body aches that he thought were just a reaction to the possible flu that was going around. After all, he had been in the jungle, in a very hot climate, and he had now moved north into the cold and damp air of the Americas. And he gave no thought at all to the possibility that he might’ve been infected with something far worse.

After reaching his apartment in the upper east side of New York City, he decided that he was too ill to cook, and so he ordered some of his favorite local Chinese takeout. As fate would have it, just as he opened the door to the delivery boy, he coughed into the man’s face, expelling thousands of microscopic bloody droplets of pneumonic plague over not just the man but the money that he passed to him. The doctor was now patient zero, and the deliveryman had now become the vector by which disease would be able to travel across the city. The deliveryman, Jerry Lee, made several more stops before returning to the restaurant. His first stop after Dr. Dent’s apartment had been to a small startup company nearby. Just before opening the door to the building, he wiped his hand across his face as if to remove the feeling of being coughed on. Upon grasping the door handle, he left countless samples of the plague that could sustain themselves for several hours outside the body. Rather than going up to the office, he stopped, leaning his hands against the counter, and talked to the receptionist for several minutes while he exchanged food for cash. The cash exchange included a five-dollar bill that he’d gotten from the doctor and now passed on to the receptionist as change, which in turn infected her, and the spread of disease now doubled in size.

Judy, the receptionist, called upstairs and announced that the takeout had arrived. This prompted John to stop by the bathroom and wash his hands before picking up his food to eat it. Because the paper dispenser was empty, he briefly wiped his hands on his pants before entering the elevator and heading downstairs.

“Thanks, Judy! The guys are working late tonight and this will help tide us over,” he stated.

“No problem, I included something for myself when you passed me down the call for ordering. Here’s your change,” she said as she passed the contaminated five-dollar bill to John. His moist hands shuffled the money before sticking it into his wallet. With a wave of his hand, he headed back to the elevator and pressed the button. Upon reaching his floor, he grabbed the door handle and walked inside the office complex. After passing out several bags of food, he tiredly wiped his eyes and got back to work. He still had several more hours to go before he could go home. Three days later John was dead. He was only one of many that would appear over the coming days.

The first of which was Dr. Dent, who was discovered by his building manager when he opened the door to drop off a package that had been delivered to his office. Thinking that the man was only asleep on the couch, the manager shook the man’s shoulder in an attempt to wake him up. Reaching a telephone, the manager called 911 and requested an ambulance to his location. A man had stopped breathing and needed immediate assistance. Feeling that the body was still warm, he rolled the man onto the floor and began to perform CPR in a futile attempt to revive his tenant. Unknowingly, he too was infected because Dr. Dent had been swiping his bloody lips with tissues and storing them under his couch. These now lay sight unseen by the building manager. For once, the ambulance group responded promptly, and they continued performing CPR until they reached the hospital emergency room. At 9:08
AM
, Dr. William Dent was pronounced DOA, and his cause of death was listed as unknown until an autopsy could be performed. By this point in time, the disease’s progression had reached a frightening stage. Rather than doubling, it was a geometric progression, quickly spreading to more than one hundred people in less than seventy-two hours. Jerry Lee, the deliveryman, had done more than deliver delicious Chinese food. He also had delivered the Black Death to more than fifty people during the course of his shift. Judy and John had spread it to another ten people that evening. Between the apartment complex manager and the ambulance crew, more than twenty additional people had been infected in a matter of hours. Death was now stalking the streets of New York.