Plague: Death was only the beginning! Read Free Page B

Thereby, allowing it to spread quickly across the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a matter of days. Unknowingly, Jerry Lee’s act of charity had started a major epidemic within the rat population. It was known that tens of thousands, possibly millions, of rats congregated within each square-mile of the city. And as one rat died, their fleas would quickly leave the body and spread to others and so a chain of death began.
    Depending upon living conditions, many of the poor were directly affected by fleabites that quickly spread septicemic plague throughout their bodies. They in turn infected more fleas, as well as their human companions and families prior to their death. From the initial fleabite to death, time was now measured in hours, not days.
    One of the operators of the Southside Soup kitchen and shelter noticed that a number of their clients were coughing and shivering as they stood in line for their nightly meal.
    “Joseph, you don’t sound so good tonight. Are you coming down with something?” the man asked. “Maybe you should see Miss Julia and have her check you over.”
    “I … I’m okay. Just a little bug I picked up.”
    “Okay, but if you change your mind, Miss Julia would be happy to take care of you.”
    As the shelter manager was making his rounds early the next morning, he found Joseph slumped over the side of his cot with a large pool of blood spreading across the floor. Rushing to the man’s side, he stepped into the pools of blood and smeared the soles of his shoes with plague. Noting this later, he swiped his shoes with paper towels and dropped them into the nearest trashcan. The EMT crew and the emergency room staff concluded that the man had died from a bleeding ulcer caused by chronic alcoholism. Not fearing any danger, the shelter crew mopped up the blood with a dirty mop and changed the sheet on the cot. Within a week, the shelter manager, staff, and most of the residents became sick and died. Fearing the establishment of a plague pit, the public health service closed down the building and sent in cleaning crews in isolation gear to trap the rodents and spray the interior with a heavy bleach fluid infusion. But by this time, the disease had moved on into a larger territory and continued its spread. This marked another sad tale of the continuing story that was only beginning.
     
     

 
     
     
    “The will of man is to survive during times of strife.”
    -Thoughts from the Author
     
    Chapter 4
    Infected: 421 – Dead: 141
     
    Tom Drury scanned the headlines that were appearing on his laptop from Fox News. It made note of a large and growing population of indigent people falling ill and dying within the city of New York. Initially thought to be an emergence of Ebola, it was later determined to be the dreaded disease, the Bubonic plague. Tom was shocked at the number of deaths that had already been reported, and he dreaded the possibility of a widespread outbreak within the Continental United States. This was truly the thought of horror for many preppers and survivalists across the United States. They feared the influx of a virulent disease against the American people who had no known immunities for it. This was based on the introduction of the Enterovirus D68, also known as EV-D68, virus into hundreds of local schools when the U.S. government dumped thousands of illegal children from Central American into a healthy population in 2014. Many had already prepared after the outbreak of Ebola that had spread across several countries in 2014 and early 2015. Countless families had bought masks, gowns, duct tape, and plastic sheeting to seal off their homes and thereby isolate themselves from the growing pandemic outside them. Others, like Tom, had moved further into the wilderness areas of the U.S., to isolate themselves from any possible contact with infected members of the general public. For Tom and his neighbors, the wilds of southeastern Missouri had both the benefits of isolation and easy