The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact by White Raymond Dean

Author:White, Raymond Dean [White, Raymond Dean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian
Publisher: Raymond Dean White
Published: 2014-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

*

“I don’t like it, Ellen, but that’s what he said.” Michael’s report was going about like he’d expected. “Tend the sick and spread the death were his exact words. What do you want me to do? Lie?”

“Of course not,” Ellen snapped. She pushed away from the kitchen table and paced the room.

“Then quit shooting the messenger,” he said.

She never stopped her agitated pacing. “But quarantine! Abandoning sick people to die alone. This could break us, Michael. Through every trial this community held itself together by helping each other. We can’t turn our backs on each other now! It would destroy the Freeholds.”

“Didn’t destroy Colorado Springs,” Michael shot back. Then he shifted tack, playing dirty. “Are you going to be the one to bring this bug home to our son? Am I?”

She stopped pacing, flipped her long blonde hair back over her shoulder and glared at him, storm clouds roiling in her hazel eyes. How could he?

“We’ll end up abandoning the sick anyway, Ellen. It’ll happen as soon as panic sends everyone fleeing to their own homes, afraid to poke their heads out. That’s what happened in the Springs and it’s the only thing that saved them.”

She shook her head. Preserving their morality, their sense of community had gotten them through so far. What if Steven or Michael gets sick? Could she leave them to die alone? Hell, no!

“Doctor Lewis says…” he began.

“Doctor Lewis!” Ellen erupted. “Doctor Lewis said this. Doctor Lewis said that. Who do you think he is, Michael? God?”

A lump the size of Pike’s Peak formed in Michael’s throat. He’d seen the doctor’s pain.

“No, Ellen. He’s just an old country doctor who spent his life saving others, then watched people he’d known for forty years and a wife he’d grown up with sicken, rot and die because he could do nothing to save them.”

His voice quivered as he pleaded with her. “The Freeholds will be a ghost town, Ellen. One hundred percent mortality! The only way we live is by not catching it in the first place! Sometimes doing the wrong thing is doing the right thing.” Tears blurred his vision. He rubbed his eyes. A sob caught in his throat.

“Oh, damn,” he said softly and laid his head on the table.

“Oh, Michael!” She knelt beside him, hugging him to her while his shoulders shook and pain she hadn’t known was in him poured out.

He continued to shake and sob as raw emotion tore at him releasing visions of dead children he saw every day while searching for food, of half-rotted mummies he slept beside while seeking shelter in the ruins of their homes, of nightmares he buried inside, enduring for the sake of his family. And now this.

Guilt ripped at his heart. To deliver the plague among his friends and family. He’d touched the corpse and hadn’t caught the disease, but maybe the bleach he poured over his gloves and clothes hadn’t disinfected them. Maybe he, along with Josh Adams and Jack Quist had been a carrier.

He rocked back and forth, crying until he ran dry, and all the time Ellen held him.

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