The Fallujah Strain

Copyright 2014 by Thomas Porter. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

Prologue

The upper left corner of the thick plastic sheeting covering the doorway of the cinder block building outside Fallujah blew in the wind.

Inside, three men wearing medical protective suits lay on the floor, dead. Vomit smeared the inside of their surgical hoods.

After four years of disciplined, persistent, methodical attempts to develop a strain of Ebola worthy enough to represent their hatred for the West, they struck viral gold. They called it no. 289. Their 289th batch of weaponized Ebola.

The speed at which no. 289 reproduced itself, and its ability to travel on the slightest of breezes, were indeed a tribute to the men's skill. Its virulence, the speed at which it killed each person it infected, were a tribute to their rage.

The first particles of no. 289 escaped through the stopper in the vial, then passed through their breathing filters like a bug through chicken wire.

They never stood a chance.

It killed them, brutally, quickly, and mindlessly. It used their lungs to duplicate itself ten thousand fold, then disposed of their carcasses where they lay. It circulated through the still air of the room for several seconds before finding the gap in the upper left corner of the doorway. It found a lone man walking near the side of the road. It attacked his lungs, duplicated itself, and moved on.

It spread across the Middle East in two days, across Europe, Asia, and Africa in another five. It traveled across the globe like burning natural gas. It hit people in cars stopped at traffic lights, killed them, duplicated, and moved on. It swept through train stations in Europe, open air markets in Africa, and the plains of Asia at a speed that would have made its creators proud. It burned through the streets of Rome and Shanghai in an afternoon. New York City, Vancouver, and Los Angeles succumbed the following day, then Santiago, Minneapolis, and Muncie the day after that. It moved with the wind, infecting, duplicating, killing. Infecting, duplicating, killing. Most were dead within minutes of being found by no.

289, but some unlucky few, about 3 percent of the world's population, survived for a few days, writhing in agony as their organs were liquified. Another 1 percent lasted months before death.

But some very few, less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the world's population, were immune to no. 289. After exposure to the virus, they lost all their hair and the upper layers of their skin took on a blue tint, as if they suffered from severe cyanosis, but they were otherwise unaffected. They lived.

About a month after Ebola no. 289's burn through humanity, an immune phlebotomist in Brownsville discovered that daily transfusions of his blood kept his infected wife alive. Word of this power, the power to keep others alive, spread quickly. But, throughout history, power's constant companion has been the desire to abuse that power. The 1/10th of 1 percent were immune to Ebola but not to this desire.

No. 289, the Fallujah strain of Ebola virus, broke out five years ago. This is the story of Maya, an immune girl orphaned by the virus who abused the power of her blood in her own immature way, and of what happened next.

Chapter 1

Maya woke up slowly and comfortably, her bald head cradled in three of her favorite pillows. She leisurely opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, painted in cheerful yellows and greens.

As she had instructed.

Her eyes followed the curves of paint while she remembered. She was in sixth grade, five years ago. The door to her classroom opened, the teacher fell to her knees, clutched her chest, and died. Shortly afterwards, the students began vomiting violently. Maya watched from her desk, unaffected.