Apocalyptic Moon (After the Bane) Read Free

watched tapes of transformations, it still shocked her. Dora braced her heart for the worse. “Have you heard from Mom and Pop?”
    “No. Have you?” They lived in the marina. The last time they spoke, her dad said they were leaving for their cabin in Lake Tahoe. All roads had been blocked and people trapped in their cars, sitting ducks for zombie swarms. After a brief silence, he comforted, “I’m sure it’s because there’s no reception.”
    “Right, that’s what I heard.” They were dead. It was illogical, but she’d sensed it for the last couple of days. “Just promise to call me at least every other day.”
    “Not a problem. My solar charged cell phone is designed for the apocalypse.”
    “Where are you heading?”
    “Marti’s. She invited us to stay as long as we want. Her freezers have at least a six month supply of meat and a pantry of canned goods and bottled water taken from the disaster handbook.”
    Josh’s eccentric friend, Marti Carson owned an endangered big-cat breeding program in Mendocino. Her home stood above the cat compounds. Visitors walked on elevated bridges to view the cats. An ideal shelter, since zombies couldn’t climb. “I have to stay, but once the borders are opened, I’ll come to California. Doctors are allowed, too.”
    “As long as you don’t treat patients with Z-phage.”
    “These days I’m mostly doing diagnosis.” She wanted to treat patients, but because of her unusual gift of diagnosing them with just a few symptoms, Dr. Grover insisted she do nothing but screen patients before they were seen by other medical staff.
    “Good.”
    They chatted about her birthday party, and how he missed teaching his third grade class, since all the school closures. After the call, she pressed the phone over her heart. At the end of this week, she would arrange to go to California with the Red Cross.
    ****
    The emergency room turned out to be a madhouse as Dr. Grover predicted. Higher than usual heart and asthma attacks, not surprising with the stress from the fear of zombie attack. Dora entered room A, and switched on the computer. She stared at the screen. Good, no new patients. So far. Three of the patients in the waiting room raised her guard. Flu-like symptoms. There was no blood test to determine infection during the first stage. She reviewed her checklist of early symptoms: bloodshot eyes, headache, fever and numbness in their limbs. Minor compared to hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg or the Ebola virus where patients’ insides literally melted. Within a day or less after a zombie’s bite, the patient would slip into a coma, die and within seconds reanimate into a flesh-eating mindless creature.
    With no other accurate diagnostic tool, Dora checked the body for bite marks. Not an easy task. People lied to avoid quarantine. Parents of young children were especially protective. In fact, the most common emergency patient, the child with fever, was down to only one tonight. Worried parents would rather risk being bitten by their infected children than parting from them. Watching children, crying and screaming, wrenched away from the arms of distressed parents sent to isolation facilities, broke Dora’s heart. She couldn’t imagine her niece being carted away to die alone.
    Dora glanced at the clock, 9:00 p.m., and left the office to see her first patient. I’m still alive . Maybe I’m not a member of the 27 Club.
    She opened the drapes and smiled at the blonde curly-haired two year old squirming in her mother’s arms. She looked at the chart. Lindsey Benning. She knelt. “Hi Lindsey, aren’t you a pretty girl?” She glanced at her mom and offered her hand. “I’m Dr. Adler, what seems to be the problem?”
    The mother whispered, “A fever of 101. My mother takes care of her while I work, so she wasn’t exposed to any other kids. She won’t be quarantined will she?”
    The child tugged at her inflamed earlobe. Dora suspected an ear infection. “Sounds like she