ARES Virus: Arctic Storm Read Free

being nice and making sure he was okay. He never had been good at reading women. His heart beats rapidly from nervousness, and he wonders whether he should approach her and introduce himself. The sway of her hips and her long brunette hair grows smaller. With a deep, longing sigh, Charlie returns his attention to the cart.
    He rights the cart and picks up the wrapped package, noting that one corner is dented inward.
    Crap, crap, crap! I hate my fucking life .
    With his arm still burning, he contemplates what to do next. The shipping department may not take a damaged package. They may tell him to just bugger off, that they aren’t taking any liability for it. Charlie looks at the label again, searching for the address of the lab where it was supposed to be delivered.
    Of course there wouldn’t be one. Well, this day is wasted already. I’ll fucking take it there myself and tell them it was delivered this way.
    Turning around, he wheels the cart toward the lot where he parked his ten-year-old Honda Civic. As he pushes the package back across the park-like expanse of the large quad, the wheels squeak as if the cart is injured as well. What Charlie can’t see, nor anyone else for that matter, is the invisible cloud   fumes trailing behind him, coming from the dented package.

Chapter Two
     
    Pineville University
    September 2
     
    Siri gives Charlie an address and directions to Pineville Labs. Following the female voice, he finds himself proceeding through the middle of the city. With his windows down and enjoying what he can of the nice day, he turns down the music in order to hear Siri’s warning of an upcoming turn. The warmth of the day, though not overly hot, is making him a little light-headed. He barely heard, or for that matter understood, the last instructions. Once he gets the package sitting on the passenger seat delivered, he’s heading to his one-bedroom apartment and cranking on his Xbox.
    This has already been a wasted day, might as well make it complete , he thinks as Siri issues a direction.
    That’s the last conscious thought he is able to understand. His head suddenly swims and an overwhelming dizziness takes hold; he unknowingly presses down on the accelerator as his head slumps forward. The car lunges into the busy intersection where Charlie had been waiting at a stop light. He doesn’t feel the collision with the bus coming from the side street.
    The Honda Civic crunches under the impact and is sent spinning across the intersection, where it collides nearly head-on with a lamp post. The sounds of squealing metal and shattering glass cause the pedestrians waiting to cross the street to turn toward the noise. Many look, only to see their death rapidly approaching. Six people are caught by the careening vehicle before it slams into a post with a solid crunch. Four of them die instantly, while the other two lie bleeding on the ground, their deaths taking a few minutes longer.
    Several others are hit and thrown backward, the sound of their bones snapping lost beneath the screeching of the bus’s brakes. The smells of oil, gas, anti-freeze, and burnt rubber permeate the intersection. The sound of squealing tires stops, replaced by screams from the wounded and the terrified witnesses. Ruined bodies dot the corner, blood smeared on the concrete sidewalk.
    Charlie’s airbag deploys, but it only cushions an already lifeless body. The package leaves its seat and is launched through the broken windshield upon collision. Sailing through the air, on its second fall of the day, it hits the side of a building with a solid thunk . Bouncing off the concrete wall, it skips down the sidewalk. If anyone was listening, they would have noticed the changes from solid thuds to ones that sounded much more fragile.
    Many of the people packing the sidewalk, each on their own errand and buried in their own thoughts, fall within seconds. To those watching, it looks like a row of dominoes falling. That is, until they rise again,