It Falls Apart Series | Book 3 | Chaos Dawn, page 1
part #3 of It Falls Apart Series Series
CHAOS
DAWN
It Falls Apart Series
Book 3
By
Barry Napier
Mike Kraus
© 2021 Muonic Press Inc
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Table of Contents
Previously…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
It Falls Apart Book 4
Available Here
Previously…
New York has been decimated by the Blood Fire Virus. The virus had also been let loose in Texas, where it was taking even more lives—hundreds and thousands of lives by the hour, it seemed. A nuclear bomb had gone off in Richmond, and then another in Louisville. The events had seemed unconnected, but as time passed, the connections between it all started to take shape and make more sense.
Special Agent Katherine Fowler barely survived the blast in Richmond, and after scouring the landscape for supplies and survivors, decided to carry out her initial assignment…to locate George Kettle, a suspected terrorist that might know more about what was currently taking place in the country. This search led her to running into Terrence Crowder, a former Homeland Security agent with ties to Kettle, at a cabin in the mountains believed to have once been occupied by Kettle himself.
Elsewhere, having escaped the military-run roadside facility with the help of Dr. Chen, there was finally some degree of hope for Olivia, Paul, and Joyce as they hunkered down in a real estate company’s model home. Chen was tending to Paul’s wounds from the escape as best she could, but she and Olivia had discovered that Joyce had come down with a fever.
A few states away, Ray and Courtney had survived a nightmare of gunfire and the Blood Fire Virus in Philadelphia International Airport. With no clear direction to go, the collapsing world awaits them outside, but what will it have to offer them?
Chapter 1
Olivia took the thermometer out of Joyce’s mouth and slowly brought it to her eyes, afraid to see what it said. By the light of the little bedside lamp, the numbers were quite clear and told her a truth she did not want to believe. Joyce was running a temperature of 103.9. She was not sweating and seemed to be sleeping rather peacefully despite Olivia’s urgent movements and the glow of the lamp.
She looked to the other side of the bed, where she had set Chen’s medical kit. There were a few basics in there (it was, in fact, where she’d gotten the thermometer) and she knew what to give Joyce. But Chen had taken other medicines from the pharmacy they’d stopped at yesterday, medicines from behind the counter that Olivia knew very little about.
Though Joyce’s temperature was incredibly high and Olivia was terrified, she could not help but speculate that she might be looking good news right in the face and choosing not to identify it. It had been nearly an hour since she’d awakened Chen—a little over an hour since Olivia had known Joyce was running a fever. Joyce had been fighting the fever for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes, when the Blood Fire Virus tended to take most people out in under forty minutes. Also, there had been no vomiting so far—only the fever.
Olivia shut the thermometer off and rested her hand on Joyce’s forehead. There were cool washcloths all around her head, and one resting at the top of her skull. Each one felt warm to the touch now. Olivia felt tears trailing down her face and realized that if Joyce had somehow come down with the virus and died, she would have no purpose. She knew it was a selfish reaction to Joyce getting sick, but there it was, plain and simple and ugly.
She heard Chen coming down the hallway, her suit making its static-like swishing noises. Another selfish thought Olivia had been wrestling with was wishing Chen would just take the suit off. It was freaky as hell and was a jarring reminder that they had been held against their will in a government facility. And now, with Joyce apparently having come down with the Blood Fire Virus, Olivia was beginning to wonder what exactly had been done to them while being held there.
Chen came into the room and hesitated a moment in the doorway. “I’ve been thinking,” Chen asked. “Do you have any idea when the fever started?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I got up to use the bathroom. Joyce was sort of tossing and turning in her sleep, so I put my hand on her cheek just to reassure her. And she was burning up. So I got the thermometer out of your medical kit. Her fever was just over one hundred and three when I took it the first time and now it’s nearly one hundred and four.”
“And it was about the same when I took it the first time I came in,” Chen said. She seemed to be thinking very hard about something but did not want to say it. For reasons Olivia could not quite pinpoint, it made her very uncomfortable.
Chen approached the bed when she did, Olivia noticed that she had at least left the gloves off again. She touched Joyce’s head and then checked the glands along her neck. “Can you please put your ear to her chest and tell me if you hear anything that sounds like phlegm?” Chen asked. “I’d do it, but…” she pointed to the head covering of the suit.
Olivia did. The heat coming off Joyce was frightening. She listened closely and though Joyce’s breathing was rapid and shallow, she could hear no evidence of fluid.
“I don’t hear any.”
“And you still haven’t heard any indication that she was close to throwing up?”
“No,” Olivia said. This was very true; she had been jumping at each and every noise the girl had made since Chen had taken her temperature the first time and confirmed that it was very likely the Blood Fire Virus.
“You’re certain it’s the virus?” Olivia asked.
“It’s incredibly likely, yes. And if it is, I’d say she’d doing a very good job of fighting it off. In almost every case I’ve seen, the vomiting comes at about the same time as the fever. I wasn’t sure if the antiviral meds I gave her would help—and I’m still not, honestly. But things are looking on the plus side. I know it’s hard to grasp that, given the fever, but based on everything I’ve seen, this is rather unorthodox.”
“I just don’t understand how she got it,” Olivia said. “If everyone at that facility believed we were immune and we’ve gone this long without picking it up, why is she all of a sudden getting it now?”
Chen slipped back into her little zone of deep thought, thinking long and hard about how to answer the question. When she took a deep breath and sighed, Olivia thought she already knew the answer.
“She was likely injected with it at the facility,” Chen said. “I don’t know that for sure, but—”
Olivia took two huge strides towards Chen. She drew back her hand and came about half a second from slapping Chen across that stupid mask. If she hadn’t already been weighed down by worrying about Joyce, she may very well have done it. Instead, she glared at the woman’s eyes through the protective shield.
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me…”
“I’m not,” Chen said. “At first, I was given orders to, but I refused. There were some doctors that were administering it while drawing blood. What I’m telling you is that she could have been injected with it, but it wasn’t me.”
Olivia thought of the other nurses and doctors that had come into their room and was both relieved and angry that she had forgotten their names.
“Did you infect anyone else?” Olivia asked.
“Yes. A man named Hassan Campbell. He had a fever of one hundred and two for about a day after the injection and then seemed to kick it. There were a few others that some of the other doctors injected that weren’t so lucky, though. A woman in the same
Olivia felt a million different words form on her tongue. She wanted to call Chen a monster, wanted to tell her to get out of the room, to get out of the house and go crawling back to her military buddies. But she recalled the bravery and selflessness Chen had shown in shooting at fellow members to help them leave the facility; she also recalled the absolute perfectionism and calm the woman had displayed in patching Paul up in the Personal Care aisle of a Walgreen’s.
“If you want the truth,” Chen said, “I came with you because I feel like I need to repent for what I’ve done. Not in any religious or ceremonial way, but to clear my mind. If this is how I can help—mending Paul, nursing Joyce and getting her to her father—then I will do it. I need to be in someone’s debt for the things I have done and apparently, the three of you are it. Now, we can discuss that further if you like but right now, Joyce just needs rest and fluids.”
“Will she be okay?” Olivia asked, feeling a little stunned by Chen’s comments. It was at least the tenth time she’d asked the simple question in the past hour.
“It is too early to tell. A fever this high this quick, even without the other symptoms…I just don’t know. Now, I wonder if you’d be okay going to get more cool washcloths. They seem to be at least stabilizing the fever.”
Olivia nodded and left the room, not wanting to keep pressing and to be of as much help as she could. Besides, she was glad to get away from Chen, only because she was afraid of what she might say or do if the conversation continued. She hurried downstairs and headed for the kitchen. On the way, though, she stopped by the downstairs bedroom and poked her head in. Paul was still sleeping soundly which Chen had told her was a good thing. Feeling confident in that, she grabbed another bottle of water from the fridge before going to the master bathroom and getting several washcloths and running them under the tap at the sink.
When she got back upstairs, she found Chen opening up a bottle of ibuprofen—one of many supplies she’d taken from the drugstore before leaving—while sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I figure a bit of this on top of the antiviral won’t hurt,” Chen said. “But we can’t give her too much.”
They worked together, Chen pouring slightly more than the appropriate amount into the plastic top that came with the medicine while Olivia uncapped the water and started to get Joyce into a seated position.
“Come on, sweetie,” Olivia said, supporting Joyce’s limp body. “I need you to take this medicine.”
“…to the moon?” Joyce said sleepily, still slogged down somewhere in dreamland. “Daddy really said that?”
“Sure,” Olivia said. “Open up, sweetie. I need you to take this.”
Chen put the cup to the girl’s lips, and it took Olivia pulling Joyce’s chin down for her to take the medicine. She started to spit it out immediately, but when Olivia replaced it with the water, Joyce was more accepting. She woke up just barely, glancing at both of them.
“Is that medicine?” Joyce asked.
“Yeah, sweetie, it is,” Olivia said. “You’re running a fever.”
“Tastes like grape,” she said, her eyes already fluttering closed.
“But you like grape, right?”
“Hmmm,” was all she said as she slipped back to sleep.
With Olivia still holding Joyce, Chen used one of the washcloths to wipe the girl’s chin where some of the medicine had rolled down. That done, Olivia rested her back down onto the pillow. She looked to the side of the bed she’d been occupying but was certain she would not get any more sleep.
“I need you to tell me she’s going to be okay,” Olivia said. She was thinking of how quickly Roosevelt Gault had died when she, Paul, and Joyce had visited him in West Virginia. She had not actually watched him slip away, but she knew how fast it had happened. The idea that Joyce might be dead within the hour was paralyzing.
“The fact that there is no vomiting is a very good sign,” Chen said. “But we have to do everything we can to keep that fever down. But honestly…there’s only so much we can do. Aside from our assistance, she has to fight it.”
“What else can we do?” Olivia asked.
“Now, nothing. Keep the cold cloths on her. Some doctors might recommend ice packs, but I think that’s a bad idea with the fever this high. It could put her into shock. She can take the ibuprofen again in four hours but if the fever stays the same or increases, we’ll give her something I took from the prescriptions.”
“Okay,” Olivia said, noting that nowhere in all of that did Chen actually say Joyce was going to be okay. She did notice that Chen had mentioned the possibility of more medicine in four hours. She wondered if that meant Chen thought there was a good chance Joyce might make it that long.
“I’ll go check on Paul while I’m up,” Chen said. “And Olivia…I’m very sorry. Sorry for my part in it all, for the way we—”
Olivia shook her head, reminding herself of all Chen had sacrificed. “Don’t do that. Not now. Right now, she’s all I’m focusing on.”
Chen lowered her head and said nothing before she made her exit. When she was gone, there was only the irritating sound of her suit’s little bristling noise as she went down the hall. And when she could no longer hear that, Olivia lay back down beside Joyce and the only sound in the room was the short and punctuated sound of the little girl’s labored breathing.
Chapter 2
Of all the things Terrence Crowder had expected to find at George Kettle’s isolated cabin in the mountains, he would never have dreamed there would be an FBI agent pointing a gun at him. He had not doubted Katherine Fowler when she’d identified herself as a Special Agent with the FBI. Her shooter’s stance and demanding demeanor suggested she was more than a cop. But he also doubted she was Homeland Security or CIA. Most people from those departments might recognize him, even in the protective suit, and have attacked him by now. So he guessed she truly was FBI.
More than that, she was an FBI agent that was wearing absolutely no protection of any kind—and did not appear to be sick.
When he had given his name, Katherine looked like someone had slapped her hard across the face. For a moment, he thought she was going to drop her gun. He rather hoped she would. He did not want to kill her, but he absolutely would if he had to. It was far too easy to remember killing the Homeland Security agents that had come to his home several days ago. But it was even easier to recall how simple it had been, how little it had bothered him. With Chaos Dawn underway, survival was going to take on all sort of shapes now. He wondered if this nervous-looking agent, still holding a gun on him, understood that.
“At the risk of seeming rude,” Terrence said, “either shoot me or invite me inside. But I truly think you and I should have a conversation. About George Kettle, among other things.”
“I was sent to find you, too,” Katherine said. “Not just Kettle. I know the sorts of things you’ve been involved in. Why would I want to talk to you?”
“Because,” Terrence said, his hands in the air, trying to prove he meant her no harm. “You asked me if I was George Kettle. I came here to find him, too.”
“I was given this address for Kettle,” the agent said. “I was also sent to a townhouse in Richmond to look for you.”
“I haven’t even stepped foot in that place in almost a year.”
“How do you know George Kettle?” she asked.
Terrence chuckled nervously and shook his head. “I’m afraid you just showed your hand. You said you knew the sort of things I’ve been involved in. But if you really did know those things, you’d know my relationship with George Kettle. Now, please…if you want, I’ll throw my gun down. I really would like to talk to you. I’m certain I have answers to most of your questions.”
“Toss it up here,” she said.
He did so, without hesitation. His Glock clattered on the porch just to her right. “For the sake of honesty, I should also let you know that I have an assault rifle in my truck.”
