The Zulu Virus Chronicles Boxset (Books 1-3) Read online

  The Zulu Virus Chronicles Series

  Books 1-3

  HOT ZONE

  KILL BOX

  FIRE STORM

  Steven Konkoly

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2017 - 2018 by Stribling Media. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact:

  [email protected]

  Contents

  HOT ZONE

  Dedication

  About HOT ZONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  KILL BOX

  Dedication

  About KILL BOX

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  FIRE STORM

  Dedication

  About FIRE STORM

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  HOT ZONE

  BOOK ONE in THE ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES

  Dedication

  To my family, the heart and soul of my writing. I couldn’t do this without their tireless support and love.

  About HOT ZONE

  First. A huge THANK YOU for your continued readership and warm friendship over the past seven years. Before publishing my first novel, THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC, in 2010, if you had suggested I might be writing books for a living—I wouldn’t have believed it. That dream came true in 2013, and I have you, the reader, to thank for it. You created a monster, and that monster has no shortage of stories to tell.

  When I started batting around ideas for a new series last year, I kept thinking about THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC, and how it had become immediately popular, much to my delight—and surprise. As a new author, I had no reason to expect any success with this book, but the story resonated with readers right out of the gate and emboldened me to continue writing books. I knew fairly quickly that I wanted to return to those roots for the series I would launch in 2017.

  HOT ZONE represents a full-circle return to the type of thriller that launched my writing career. A close up and personal look at a rapidly unfolding catastrophe, from the “average” citizen’s perspective.

  —A new doctor struggles against the odds to save patients, until she is forced to take action to save her own life.

  —A divorced police officer balances the demands of his department with the needs of his son, as the madness spreads.

  —A young couple embarks on a perilous trek to escape the inexplicable tide of violence pushing against them.

  —A reluctant scientist is pulled into the middle of an unthinkable scenario.

  —A government agent is sent on a dubious mission in the outbreak zone.

  You’ll quickly get to know this diverse cast of characters, spread across a rapidly dying city—as their individual stories of survival and loss merge into one.

  Welcome to the HOT ZONE, and the ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES!

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Lauren Hale leaned against the cool tile wall and took a moment to regroup. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face, taking several deep breaths. Just the thought of walking back through the emergency room doors made her nauseous. At this point, she’d been on her feet for close to fifteen hours, seven hours longer than her scheduled shift. Staying a few hours past the end of a residency shift wasn’t unusual, especially a day shift, when she could rely on a full night of sleep to recuperate—but this
was something entirely different.

  The emergency room had been slammed with a steady flow of patients all day, the number of check-ins increasing hourly. So far, none of the attending physicians had hinted at releasing her from the ER. The arrival of the second shift in the late afternoon had barely made a dent in the overcrowded waiting room, which left her less than optimistic about her chances of leaving when the overnight shift arrived. They were slammed. The line to check into the ER now snaked as far as she could see along the sidewalk leading to the parking lot.

  She slowly exhaled through her mouth and opened her eyes. Back to work. Before she pushed herself off the wall, the doors swung inward, revealing Dr. Larry Cabrera, her supervising physician. He stepped inside the small hallway and removed his blue face mask. Lauren straightened, momentarily blanking on where she should go next.

  “I’m heading back in, Dr. Cabrera. Just needed a few seconds,” she said.

  “That’s fine, Dr. Hale,” he said. “We could all use a few. I’m hoping to get you out of here for a few hours when the third shift arrives. I’ll start rotating people out a little at a time once I get a handle on who actually shows up.”

  “Is the third shift light?”

  “A little. Same crap that’s apparently making its way around the city.”

  “Any idea what we’re dealing with?” she said.

  “At first I thought it might be a late season flu wave. Fever. Headaches. Drowsiness. Fatigue. Now I’m not so sure. The headaches seem too severe. Migraine level. And I haven’t seen a single patient with a cough or runny nose.”

  “The volume of patients arriving within such a compact period of time strikes me as odd. Have you ever seen this with the seasonal flu?” she said.

  “We occasionally get swamped with flu cases during the fall and winter months, but when I say swamped, I mean a full waiting area that we clear over the course of the day. Not a growing mob outside the entrance.”

  “At what point do we shut down the ER?” she said.

  Dr. Cabrera gave her a quizzical look. “Shut down?”

  “I mean stop accepting patients,” she clarified. “Shut the doors. At least temporarily.”

  “I hadn’t given that any thought. Nothing like this has happened before,” said Dr. Cabrera, his voice trailing off.

  “I better get moving,” she said. “I need to work my way through the general examination unit.”

  “How long has it been since a patient has moved out of there?” said Dr. Cabrera.

  “At least three hours,” she said.

  At the start of her shift, the general examination area still served its original purpose. Patients were escorted from the waiting room, thoroughly assessed, and often subjected to a battery of tests intended to determine the underlying cause of their symptoms. By midmorning, they had filled most of the Emergency Department’s one hundred and fifteen beds with patients reporting similar symptoms. They’d reserved a few critical care beds, along with an intensive diagnostic and treatment unit bed for acute emergency cases like heart attacks and car injuries that could not be diverted to other hospitals.

  “We’ve filled every bed in the hospital, and all of the area hospitals are reporting the same thing,” he said. “I don’t see this getting any better.”

  Shouting erupted beyond the swinging doors, from the waiting room. Moments later, a nurse dressed in dark blue scrubs burst into the hallway.

  “We have a problem!” she yelled. “One of the patients is getting violent!”

  “Shit,” said Dr. Cabrera, already barreling past the nurse. “Where are the cops?”

  “There’s another disturbance outside,” said the nurse, following him. “They just left.”

  Lauren took off with them, entering the ER waiting room in time to see a massive black man shove a young black woman into a group of patients scrambling to escape the mayhem. The woman stumbled backward, losing her balance and toppling a mother trying to get her toddler out of the way.

  The three of them hit the tile floor, the young woman landing on the kid, who let out a pitiful scream. A man dressed in a tracksuit yelled a few obscenities at the attacker after getting out of his seat to intervene.

  Before the Good Samaritan took more than two steps, a thick fist jackhammered his face, exploding his nose. The man dropped to his knees, blood covering his mouth and chin. To Lauren’s horror, the giant aggressor gripped the bloodied man’s head with both hands and pulled it into his rising knee. The violent impact made a sickening crunch, snapping his head backward at an unnatural angle and exposing the front of his neck.

  When the crazed attacker pulled back his jackhammer fist, with the obvious intention to strike the man in the neck, Dr. Cabrera lowered his head and rammed straight into the lower right side of the guy’s back. The doctor knocked him far enough away to disrupt the lethal blow, but the man didn’t go down. Not even close. Roaring, the enraged attacker grabbed Dr. Cabrera by the lapel of his white lab coat and swung him into a very recently vacated row of metal chairs. The doctor bounced off the chairs and fell to the ground, instantly scrambling backward on his hands and feet to get away from the man bearing down on him.

  Without thinking, Lauren charged through the panicked crowd of patients, arriving in time to deliver a downward kick to the back of one of the man’s knees. The sudden strike buckled the joint, dropping him to the floor momentarily. He lashed out at her closest leg, knocking the Dansko clog off her right foot.

  She staggered backward in fear, tripping over a patient that had curled up in the fetal position on the floor. Landing hard on her back, she lay there unable to draw a breath while the grunting madman lumbered slowly in her direction, his murderous eyes locked onto hers. Lauren pushed against the floor with her arms, rising into a seated position—the wind still knocked out of her.

  The man stepped over the curled-up patient a few feet away and snarled.

  “Kill you, bitch.”

  “Stop. Please. Just stop,” she begged, scooting desperately along the floor. “We can help you.”

  “Kill youuuuuu,” he howled before lunging at her.

  Before the full weight of his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body pinned her to the hard floor, she curled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her head. Her brain instantly switched into raw survival mode, transmitting one message—protect your head. There was nothing she could do to fight this guy. She was at the mercy of others now.

  The first blow cracked one of the false ribs on the right side of her rib cage, blasting her with a sharp, excruciating pain. She resisted the instinctive reflex to lower her arm to protect her ribs. A second, more powerful punch followed almost immediately; agony overrode instinct. The moment her arm moved to her side, the man hammered the side of her head with a single blow, bouncing it off the arm she had tucked underneath.

  She lay pinned beneath the monster, too stunned by the attack to react. When the assault did not immediately continue, she opened her eyes and flicked them upward. The man had a police baton under his neck, both hands clawing at the officer behind him. She felt some of the weight lift and didn’t waste a second analyzing the situation. She grabbed the nearest chair and pulled herself free of his legs. As she scrambled free, a pair of strong hands lifted her to her feet, a familiar, muffled voice barely breaking through her terror.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” he said, wrapping her arm around his shoulder.

  He guided her to the swinging doors that led to the ER examination and treatment areas. Glancing over her shoulder, the short journey unfolded like a surreal, slow-motion scene from a horror movie.

  Three police officers wrestled the attacker to the floor, one of them pressing a stun gun into the side of his neck. The man’s legs twitched in synch with the rhythmic crackle of the electricity as they pressed him against the tile. The waiting room had vacated around the pile of officers, leaving two catatonic patients upright in their chairs. As Dr. Cabrera pulled her through the doors, she could have s
worn that one of them was moving her lips without making a sound. The Good Samaritan in the blue tracksuit sat propped against the chairs along the far wall, eyes rolled back in his head—face smashed. What the hell just happened here?

  Chapter 2

  David Olson poked the thick bed of gray ashes in the lakeside fire pit, hoping to unearth a few dying embers. Starting a fresh campfire was easy enough, but there was something profoundly satisfying about reviving the previous night’s fire. He dug his walking stick deep into the sunken pile, immediately rewarded with a wisp of smoke and a faint orange glow. Perfect. David cleared the area around the ember and gently topped it with a small bundle of twigs and bark shavings he’d dried next to the fire last night.

  Within moments, the single tendril of smoke that had risen from the ashes of the rock-lined pit morphed into a steady smolder. The first flame of the morning crackled through the twigs soon after that. By the time the kindling fully caught fire, David had arranged three modest logs over the blaze in a teepee shape, filling the gaps underneath with sticks and a few thin strips of wood chopped with his hatchet from the logs. He had the makings of a solid campfire.

  His only real challenge at this point was waking his teenage son for “breaking-camp pancakes.” The three logs would go quick. After that, they’d have to resort to some of the sketchy stuff they had found near the lake. Soggy, dead wood likely passed over by the rest of the campers that had passed through during the early summer. He’d set it next to the fire to dry, but there was only so much you could expect from deadwood. The cast-iron griddle he’d lugged for miles needed to go over the fire immediately. The first pancakes would be ready within twenty minutes.

  David gently blew on the fire, encouraging it to rise, before walking over to their low-profile, two-person tent. He unzipped the front screen and stuck his head inside, wrinkling his nose at the dirty-sock smell.

  “Josh, time to wake up,” he said, in a far too civil tone for a teenager accustomed to sleeping in until noon. “We need to eat and pack up. It’s a long hike out.”

  Predictably, his son didn’t stir inside the thick mummy bag. He grabbed the bottom of the bag and shook it.

  “Rise and shine, Josh. Time to get moving.”

  Josh groaned, his voice muffled inside the down cocoon.