Plague of the Dead by Z.A. Recht

Author:Z.A. Recht
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

USS Ramage

January 19, 2007

1545 hrs_

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Ewan Brewster was beginning to worry about his health prospects. He wasn’t ill with the strain now, but that was no guarantee he’d even be in one piece in a few hours. The situation in the quarantine zone was reaching a boiling point. Brewster had kicked a folding chair to shreds hours before and pulled a wickedly-shaped club of bent metal free from the wreckage. He’d backed himself into a corner of the room and kept a close eye on the other occupants, waiting for one to make a move.

The problem wasn’t that they didn’t trust each other—Trust was pretty well established in a group that had already been through as much as they had. The problem was that they didn’t know who was going to turn, and it had become damn near impossible to even tell who was beginning to feel ill—because everyone in the room had contracted a nasty stomach flu around the same time, two days earlier. Rebecca had said it might have been food poisoning, which was possible, considering the men all ate the same rations. It was as if God himself had decided to pull a fast one on the soldiers.

Normally it would have been easy to spot someone beginning to slip under the influence of the strain. They would cough, shake, run a fever, maybe vomit, and eventually turn in the midst of their sickness. Now, with the introduction of the flu, everyone was coughing, running fevers, and vomiting into whatever receptacle lay nearby. And since cabin fever was also rampant—the occupants had been in the same room together for a week—hostility was noticeably higher. In the end, after a particularly nasty shouting match, they had decided to back off and simply watch one another.

Brewster didn’t rank his chances of survival very high, being unarmed and possibly in the same room with a carrier. He had his money on Decker; the sergeant had been even more irritable than the others today. Brewster ran the back of his hand across his brow, and shook his head to ward off drowsiness. He hadn’t slept in over a day, going on two. It was too dangerous to sleep.

“Feeling fatigued, Brewster?” Decker asked, laying back on a bunk, arms folded across a sweat-stained t-shirt, breathing heavy. “Feeling like you can’t go on?”

“Fuck you, ass-hat,” Brewster growled from his corner across the room, brandishing the club and hunkering down once more.

“Little hostile for someone who’s uninfected,” commented Decker.

“Lay off him, Sarge, he’s tired. We’re all tired,” said Scott, laying near the door with his back against the wall.

Decker grunted a barely audible response, and shrugged.

Tension was high. Scott was less worried about the strain than he was about the other soldiers tearing each other apart out of stress. If any of them had the strain, they’d be turning sometime soon, within . . .

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