Read The Flu 2: Healing Online
Authors: Jacqueline Druga
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Horror, #Medical, #dystopia, #life after flu, #survival, #global, #flu, #pandemic, #infection, #virus, #plague, #spanish flu, #flu sequel, #extinction
The Flu 2: Healing
A
PERMUTED
PRESS
book
Published
at
Smashwords
ISBN
(
eBook
):
978-1-61868-1-614
ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-1-607
The Healing
copyright
©
2013
by
Jacqueline Druga
All
Rights
Reserved
.
Cover
art
by
Travis Franklin
.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Table of Contents
October 14th
My name is Christian Hughes, but everyone calls me Chris. I’m thirteen. This is my first entry. I don’t know how much I’ll write or for how long.
My pap said I should write in a journal. He said it would help me get my feelings out. Don’t need to write in it every day, just when I feel like I have something on my mind. I asked him if he ever had one, he said he didn’t but saw no reason why I shouldn’t. I’m the talker.
I don’t know what I’m gonna write. Maybe tomorrow I will. Kind of explain what all happened and why I am writing.
In the morning we leave. Not for long and not far away.
I don’t even know what’s outside my town. Heck, I was rarely outside of my town before this all happened.
My stepfather is taking me and my little brother away. Just a trip. Just us three.
He said so we can find ourselves.
I hope he’s right. I hope I find myself. Because right now, I am so lost.
October 15th
Two hours into the journey, Mick Owens pulled over. There was a rest area just before the end of the Ohio turnpike and it was a perfect place to stop.
Their drive had been an easy one, not that two hours in a car was all that long. It was peaceful driving. They spotted one car on the road and they were headed in the opposite direction. One car in two hours. It was only highway driving and what was ahead scared him.
Civilization. Or what was left of it.
The boys didn’t say much. Mick didn’t expect them to. It was part of the reason he was taking the boys away for a spell. Perhaps the further away from home, from the hurt, the more they would be themselves, if that was ever possible again.
They had lost. Mick and the boys had lost. Their mother, their grandmother, brother … it was too much to handle.
Mick not only saw those around him succumb to the flu and lose their lives, he had watched the spark of life leave Chris and Tigger.
Then again, it had only been a week. Time would heal. For that Mick prayed.
There wasn’t a soul at the rest area; it was eerily deserted and Mick put the SUV in park. Fall had set in and the leaves covered the parking lot like a layer of snow. Untouched, because no cars had passed through them.
He looked in the rearview mirror to six year old Tigger who due to a medical condition, was no bigger than a three year old. Tigger wiggled.
“You have to take a leak, Tig?” Mick asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just dancing.”
“I’m sure.” Mick opened his door. “Chris, take your brother while I top off the gas.”
“Sure.” Chris started to open his door but stopped. He looked through the windshield at the silent rest area building. “You ain’t wanting me to take him in there, are you?”
“No, I—”
“Cause it’s not like I’m scared or anything, just … it’s …”
“Chris,” Mick said softly, “just take him a few feet from the truck. Not too far. I don’t want you boys far from me at all.”
Again, Chris started to open the door. “Why you topping off the gas, Mick? We running low already?”
“No,” Mick answered, shifting his eyes to the rearview mirror and to Tigger who wiggled more intensely. “I’d rather not stop when we are near Pittsburgh.”
“Cause that seems kind of fast, doesn’t it?”
“What’s seems kind of fast?”
“That we’re running low on gas.”
“We aren’t running low on gas, I just wanna top off.”
“What if we run out?”
“Chris …”
“I mean, with no electricity, how we gonna get gas?”
“I brought plenty.”
“How do you know?” Chris asked.
“I know. We’re not going all that far. Now take your brother to pee.”
From the backseat, Tigger said quietly, “Too late.”
Mick grumbled with a slight exhale and stepped out of the SUV. “I’ll get you fresh pants.”
“I’ll help ya, Tig, get you all dry,” Chris said. “Shame Mick made you pee your pants like that.” He too slid out, looked at Mick, and gave a smile. Not wide, but a smile that indicated he was kidding him.
A moment of breathlessness hit Mick and he was glad to see it. Chris hadn’t smiled in a week. Not that there was any reason to, but even when his father died long before the flu, Chris found a reason to smile.
Not this time, though. Mick hoped that somehow he’d put some ‘at ease’ on the thirteen year old boy’s face, in fact, he hoped that outcome for them all.
* * *
It had been weeks since Tom Roberts had opened his video store. He closed it for a spell when the government ordered all unnecessary businesses shut their doors. Then Mick shut the proverbial doors to Lodi, Ohio and Tom opened his store again. But not for long. A month or so, and then Lodi suffered the same fate as the rest of the world.
It faced the flu.
Tom was one of the first to get it. Lodi was ready, under the watchful eye of Lars Rayburn and the CDC, prepped with an experimental treatment.
The treatment worked on Tom. It worked on a lot of people, but it failed on so many. Tom didn’t just suffer from the after effects of the flu, he suffered from a broken heart he was certain would never mend.
His wife Marian … gone.
His daughter Dylan … gone.