Journals of the Survivors (The Living Saga Novellas Book 1) Read online

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  Edition 1

  ISBN: 9781791355166

  Published 2019. Morristown, TN.

  Copyright © 2019 Jaron McFall

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the legally binding copyright holder.

  Please address all letters to:

  Jaron McFall

  P.O. Box 151

  Russellville, TN 37860

  This is for my family.

  My extremely odd family full

  of weirdos… but it’s still my family.

  Notes from the Author:

  1. All of the characters in this book are fictional. Any similarities to real people or situations are merely coincidence.

  2. Don’t forget to leave feedback on Amazon and social media. I appreciate any and all feedback (even negative feedback). It can only make my writing better.

  3. While it’s not strictly necessary to read The Living Saga: Book one, Surviving, to understand this story, you will be missing a lot of detail. This novella is a companion to that series.

  Thank you for choosing this book!

  Journals

  of the

  Survivors

  A Novella from The Living Saga

  By: Jaron McFall

  Introduction …

  Section 1 …

  Section 2 …

  Section 3 …

  Section 4 …

  Section 5 …

  Section 6 …

  Section 7 …

  Section 8 …

  Section 9 …

  Section 10 …

  Section 11 …

  Section 12 …

  Section 13 …

  Section 14 …

  Section 15 …

  Section 16 …

  Section 17 …

  Introduction

  This work contains the historical records of the survivors of the infection. It is made of journal entries, interviews, and a variety of data. The accounts are written to the best of our abilities for the sake of our future generations and the future of the human race.

  It is my duty that I will keep this record. I have not modified any of the records. I wish to provide as much primary source information in this chaos so that any who come after us may see our story.

  I have encouraged all members of the facility to record their daily lives and events. However, much to my dismay, some have flatly refused. Others have agreed, but I have yet to see them produce anything. For those who have been recording their daily entries, or rather, entries when they can, I have pulled the eventful days’ records and added them to the chronological record.

  This is a pivotal point in our history. This must be properly documented. Without a record, the future of the human race may never know what truly happened here.

  Dr. Harold Moore, MD

  Section 1

  From the journals of Dr. Harold Moore, MD.

  Here I sit. For the first time in a long time, at the screen of a computer. It is a laptop found while cleaning and preparing the main building of the school. There were multiple laptops found, in fact. Multiple pieces of technology that we will use when we have a proper power supply. Now, we are limiting electrical consumption. I have been granted this laptop to use for the sole purpose of transcribing the journals and diaries of the population for the historical record.

  The population of the facility has grown in numbers recently. Cedric, a young man with the knack for leadership, has taken to leaving the facility and gathering supplies. With winter fast approaching, we need much. In his crew’s outings, they have found and brought back many new members. We now have a total population of forty-two survivors.

  But before I begin to ramble, I will start at the beginning. I will record all of my memories of the past two and a half months as they relate to events leading all the way up until today, November 30th.

  From the best calculation we can gather, we believe that the events started on September 21st or 22nd. I cannot give an exact date. We do know that the first news reports of the infection began spreading on September 22nd. There was a news article I read in the morning paper. I remember the discussion I had with my wife. I assumed, based on the evidence of the time, that it had been about a man who had been exposed to methamphetamine or bath salts. My wife asked how bath salts could do this. I had to explain to her that the term was merely the street name for a drug called mephedrone.

  I did not know at the time it was actually some form of contagion. We discussed the scenario at work throughout the day. The stomach bugs, norovirus and rotavirus, were just picking up speed with the school year. The influenza would not be far behind. We always saw a rise in illness in late September.

  The next day, they locked down Harris County, Texas. It is the county that held Houston. We again discussed this new information at the hospital. Dr. Sanders postulated that it was a variant of the rabies virus. I didn’t think that this was plausible. Dr. Zhang thought it may have been a particular nasty strain of influenza that caused hallucinations. Some strains have caused mild hallucinations before. Perhaps this strain did the same. She may have been right. We still do not know.

  But we continued our work. We had no indication it would continue to spread. We thought the lockdown and quarantine would stop the diffusion of infection. By the 24th, schools across the nation were closing. Stores were being ransacked. In Rogersville, we did not have it bad. We were a small town. People ransacked the stores, yes. But they did not raid them and pillage as the news showed other cities doing.

  This is the day when the videos began to show up on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and everywhere else online. Every social media website was filled with videos that were leaked. The news stations were quiet on the matter. They showed no videos at first. Not until it was too late, that is. We came to learn there had been a press blackout from the President. After the videos were too wide spread everywhere else, news stations began to ignore the blackout and run them as well.

  I had patients to tend to. I continued to work. I was on staff as a general surgeon for the hospital. That day, I was only one of three surgeons that showed up. We usually had eight. None of the others came or answered calls. We were busy, too busy to discuss the events. Too busy to worry.

  It did not take long before I was the only one showing up for work. Due to the chaotic nature, I cannot say for certain what day the infected arrived. My days had turned into countless hours of work with sparse sleep when I was able to find it. I believe it was on day five or six, but it could have been longer. It spread quickly, too quickly.

  When the infection arrived, I was in the middle of surgery. I must admit, the man on the operating table died. He must have. I cannot see a way he could have survived what came.

  Hours before the infection reached us, a man came in carrying his son. The son was a young man, early twenties. I never got a name. It was chaotic enough for the timing. I did not bother with the paperwork. I checked on the situation, got the information I needed for the operation such as allergies and current meds, and went into action. The son had a mangled right leg. He had minor cuts and scrapes across the rest of his body. The father, likewise, looked rough. The father informed me they had been in an accident. They had been t-boned in an i
ntersection.

  The son had taken the brunt of the impact. His leg had a compound fracture, which meant that the bone was protruding from his skin. I was preforming an open reduction and internal fixation surgery to try to save his leg. The operation is commonly referred to as ‘putting a plate in.’ I had a small team of nurses.

  Unfortunately, I did not have an anesthesiologist. I had to use a local anesthetic and keep the patient awake. I could not afford to lose one of my nurses since I only had three. I had the secretary, Ms. Carla Blakely, come in instead. She occupied the young man the entire time. At least for the time we were actually in surgery, that is. It may not have been the proper thing to do, but with the situation in the nation, we did what we had to do.

  I was out of my depth at points. I had not performed this surgery in years. Not since I assisted as an intern. And I had never performed it solo. We had an osteologist who should have been doing this. But, alas, it was just me.

  It was all for nothing, though. We were nearly done. The fixation hardware was in place. I had most of the screws in the bone. Then, we heard the screams. I did not stop the operation.

  I put the last screw in the bone and began closing up the young man’s leg. This part was familiar. It was just sutures. It went quicker. There was one last thing I said before it all happened.

  “Five minutes left and we will put you somewhere to recover,” I told him. He looked terrified.

  Immediately after I said it, the door burst open.

  One moment, I saw my nurse, Nichole, standing there, between the door and me. Then, she vanished. In a heartbeat, she was just gone. Blood was everywhere. I could hear screams. My head was spinning. There was a door on the opposite side of the operating room.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  There was nothing I could do for Nichole. When I saw the wound exposing her carotid artery and internal jugular vein, I knew there was no hope. Although, at the time, this was reflexive knowledge. I didn’t realize until later that’s what I saw. All I could register was that everything was exposed… everything inside her neck.

  I saw the swish of hair that meant the head of the infected human was taking another bite.

  I cannot forget the sound that came next. Even over the screams, I heard a soft crack, a hiss of breath, and a slight gurgle. Nichole’s trachea had ruptured. I turned and ran.

  It wasn’t until the two remaining nurses, my secretary, and I had reached the breakroom that I regained my senses. I’d left him. I had run from the room like a coward and left that poor young man at the mercy of that beast.

  I saw Jamison, one of the nurses, barricading the door. It was one of the older doors with solid wood and triple pane glass.

  In the breakroom, we had bottled water. We had the foresight to run the faucet and fill every available container as well. The windows opened and it was on the second floor, so we took full advantage of the airflow and the ability of disposal.

  I will not relive everything that we went through in our weeks there. It is not pertinent to the timeline. We tried to keep our hopes up for the first while, but as time went on, we began to lose hope.

  We considered the window as an escape, but aside from the fall, there were infected humans in the courtyard below the window. We were stuck.

  I cannot say for certain how long we were there. It was multiple weeks at least. We ran out of food after about a week. We ran out of water about two days before we heard the gunfire. Right after the gunfire, I heard voices in the hallway. My throat was so dry, I couldn’t yell for help. I tried. I could see the others trying to gather their breath too. It was Agatha, one of the nurses, who managed it.

  She lifted herself next to the door as a shadow passed in front. Agatha feebly turned the knob and pulled the door open as far as it would budge. It made no sound, which I found odd. “Help,” she managed to whisper in a cracked, dry voice.

  I couldn’t hear the reply of the man outside. But I could hear Agatha telling him that she wasn’t bitten. Then, she removed the broom handles from the door that were acting as the barricade. She swung it open to reveal a group. Our saviors in this mess. Surely, had they came a day or two later, we would have died.

  We were weak and dehydrated. We were on the verge of death. But we managed to find our way back to life with this other group. Once we were taken back to their base, the facility where I now reside, we were fed and given water. I was given a sleeping bag and a spot to get some rest. I’m not sure how long I was asleep before I was woken.

  One of the members of their group, a boy named Cedric, had just returned. He was injured very badly. I decided, at that moment, this would be my penance. I would be their doctor. I would do everything I could to save everyone I could. I would never utter a complaint about it. I left that last boy to die, but on the edge of my death, I was saved. God was seeking me out for this. I know it now.

  I hadn’t prayed in years, but lying in that room of the hospital, seeing my colleagues slowly dying, I had prayed. I had prayed for a rescue. I prayed for forgiveness. I can only conclude that His plan is that I must earn my forgiveness. While I worked on the boy, I prayed my thanks.

  From that time on, our community worked well together, for the most part. We had a predicament though. There is an old saying in East Tennessee: “Sometimes, there are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.” I felt it an appropriate sentiment here. Cedric was a young man, a boy even. A high-schooler before this happened, yet he was looked to as a leader. He was reluctant, yes, but still influential.

  His brother, Charlie, was a leader as well. But I think only because of Cedric. Cedric looks up to him. That gives him authority. Sue commands plenty of authority herself. She has been a manager her whole life, as she told me over dinner one night. She was born for it. Then, there was Ben. Ben afforded me no grief. I’ve often wondered why this is. I think the obvious answer is that I’ve never openly confronted him. He is the type of leader that leads through power and intimidation. I cannot say his answers on things are always wrong, but neither is he always right. I will keep my eye on him, though.

  After a few days here, we were given a bit of sight outside of our short zone of protection. Our local electrical engineer gave us a glimpse of the world using a drone. This showed us a potential problem. It showed us an army. An army that had recently kidnapped and beaten Cedric. The same day I was rescued from the hospital, Cedric was taken from the hospital. He barely escaped their clutches.

  We now had proof of their intentions once they shot down our drone. This was just a few weeks ago. I have asked for Cedric to sit down and compile his memory of the last few weeks. We have had major conflict with this other group. Cedric has been directly in the center of it, as is the place of a born leader.

  Section 2

  From the journals of Cedric Donahue

  Copied by Dr. Harold Moore, MD.

  I’ve never written a journal before. Dr. Moore told me to think of it like writing a diary. Well, I’ve never done that either. Sue told me to think of it like telling a story. That, I can do.

  After our drone was lost, we had a meeting as a community. We decided that nobody was in charge. We decided that instead of picking a single leader, we would vote on everything. We didn’t want one single person making the plans and decisions for others to try to overthrow them. We were trying to make it a better place for us all to live.

  A few days after we voted to run as a democracy, I called for a new vote. I gathered everyone up in the shop class area of the vocational building. Somehow, I managed to make a lot of people furious all at once. My girlfriend was uber mad that I was trying to start up a project that would take members of our group, especially me, into an area where we knew that hostile jerks lived. Of course, my mother was mad too. But somehow, I’m more scared of Karli.

  “Why do we need intel?” Ben shouted at me the second I brought my plan before the people in the group.

  “It’s obvious,” I said. “We don’t know anything about them.
We don’t know if they meant to shoot the drone. We don’t know if they were just scared. We don’t know what’s going on.”

  “That’s the point,” Ben said back. “You don’t know a dang thing about them. And if you go out half-cocked, you’re libel to put us all in danger.”

  “Listen,” a gruff voiced man said to Ben. “There ain’t no reason we can’t just listen to his full plan.”

  Part of me recognized the voice, but I couldn’t place a face to it at first. I looked for the speaker, but I couldn’t see him. A few people in the shop moved and I saw a huge, brick-shaped man sitting in an office chair glaring at Ben.

  Ben froze. Part of his issue with the plan was that it came from me. He never said it, but if I so much as said ‘bless you’ to him after he sneezed, he would have his panties in a wad.

  “Sir…” Ben said but was immediately interrupted.

  “Eric,” Eric interrupted. “My name is Eric. Don’t start with that ‘sir’ crap.”

  “Eric,” Ben said, “I don’t know if you’ve been around long enough to really understand what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on?” Eric said. I could tell he was asking it, but he had no intention of getting an answer. “What’s going on is you are half-cocked already. You’ve got no reason to say no yet. Hear him out. That’s what a democracy does, right?”

  Ben huffed, but he was silent as I finished explaining why we needed to gather intel on the group. I barely had my argument finished before Eric stood up. While he may have looked like a brick sitting in the chair, he looked like a freaking wall standing up.

  Of course, I already knew that about him. I was the one who’d brought him, and his crew, in from a farm a few days previous. Eric was a combat wounded veteran, but I would never dream of calling him disabled. He was a tank and could plow through just about anyone or anything. I was glad he was on my side.