Author: steve
Last saved by: Stephen Woodward
Company: asmuchasposibull

Sample chapter “The first cases” By Michael Gilwood
“Good evening, viewers. We apologize for the break in the program. Earlier this evening, seventy-three cases of Ragish-C were identified south of Veracruz in the Boca Del Rio area, one of our most important coastal fishing areas. The seventy-three victims have already been transferred to the Statesport Sanctuary in Xalapa, where they are under careful observation. Veracruz authorities are working to determine the origin of the disease and asked that we advise you to be on the lookout and report anything out of the ordinary.”
A flashing telephone number appeared on the lower half of the screen in big white numbers.
“If you have any information regarding this incident please call the toll-free number you see on your screen.” The shrivelled mug disappeared and the documentary continued.
“What the dickens is going on?” Steve asked as Mara walked into the kitchen.
Quickly peeking from behind the door, she asked. “What is Ragish-C anyway?”
“It’s a brain bug,” Steve said. “Not your ordinary everyday bug though. I read about it once in a Time Life magazine.”
“Seventy-three victims, Jesus, it’s scary.” Mara’s voice streamed with concern as she placed a bottle of water back into the fridge and closed the door. “Is it contagious?”
“Not sure. I do remember that Time Life said the project was abandoned after certain never-to-be-named people mysteriously disappeared.”
“Until now,” said Mara’s sarcastic, droning voice. “I think someone just ripped open your Time Life article again.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. What the heck, what do you want for supper? I’m starved.”
The next day it was confirmed in bold, black front-page letters.
Seventy-three victims on Veracruz beaches infected by Ragish-C virus.
The article read: Early yesterday evening, Veracruz police patrolling Playa Norte came across seventy-three local citizens wandering on the beach in what they collectively called an incoherent state. One of them was Gerard Callais, a French oceanographer who vanished yesterday afternoon. Directly after his wife filed the missing persons report, leads given by locals immediately led the police to the beach to begin their search.
Gerard Callais went into the Gulf early that morning on his boat ‘Calypso Venture’ and was last seen docking it at four in the afternoon outside the estate. Briefly afterwards, he disappeared. His wife immediately telephoned the police and explained her dilemma. Local police found him three hours later with seven others wandering about the North Beach in a puzzled, lost state of mind. His sister has put up a reward for anyone who can offer more information on how he may have contracted the disease. Simultaneously, on three other beaches farther south, another sixty-five casualty’s were found.
Gerard Callais will be remembered for his contributions to science, as he was the man responsible for the recent discovery of the world’s deepest ocean trench one hundred and forty kilometres west of the Marianas. The area known as Saipan Island indeed has become a legend.
Doctor Slaven Kolak says the symptoms and behavioural patterns of the seventy-three victims are definitely similar to those associated with Ragish-C, but he concurrently states, it is mere speculation at this time as the biological results won’t become available until morning. The enigma of it all, Ragish-C was last reported eleven years ago in New Zealand and mystifies him as to how it might have gotten here.
#
Mara switched on the television in time to see a sceptical Veracruz town council bickering about what had happened. After closely reading Doctor Kolak’s morning testimony in the newspaper, all they could confirm was the victims were near the sea when it happened. The next day amongst the day’s trivial programmes, small waves of activist violence started making the headlines. Desecration and destruction began to stick its ugly head above the mould again and gradually creep its way into their lives. Steve’s fears intensified.
Steve’s firearm was tucked away in a wall safe in the study. An early retirement gift they’d said. Five years of horrendous service in the Panama Government was more like it. That was nine years ago. It had become just a dismal reminiscence of Steve’s military and policing days, nothing more.
“You never know, you might need it one day,” they said as they placed it into his hand and shook the other. God, Steve had thought of those words so often in the past. Yet he didn’t, he couldn’t go down that road again. Brushing bad memories to one side like he had done so many times before, he punched in the combination code and took out the box. Feeling the familiar weight in his hands, Steve flipped the lid and the laser sighted Walther Mk II .38 automatic along with five sixteen-shot magazines each fully loaded came unforgettably into view.
#
As days surged into weeks and the temperature dropped still farther, they found themselves going from one extreme to the other. By mid-April it started to rain for the first time in more than a year, and by early May, it began to snow. That was when more cases of Ragish-C entered the headlines.
“Hey, I thought this doctor Kolak said it could only be transmitted by blood,” said Mara ogling the front page.
“It’s not Ragish-C, I tell you. It must be something else. I remember the article.”
“Well, read it again, make sure.”
Steve stored all his old Time Magazines under the bed in a sliding cupboard. Yanking them out, he started searching for the article he’d read all those years ago. “Here it is.” Time Magazine, July 2029, the smiling, furrowed face of Wally Banks stupidly portrayed the front cover. Wally was president of the Amalgamated Amerussian States and had funded the longest ocean road stretching across the Bering Strait, joining the Asian continent to America only two years before. Steve had the unbearable pleasure of meeting him once. Wally was probably the most callous person ever conceived, yet Global Nations worshipped him, saying he was something of a god. Steve flipped the pages intentionally skipping the Banks interview.
The article read: Ragish-C, is it a genetic threat? Artificially spliced structural genes extracted during animal research were found to produce a variety of Ragish disease after their hereditary character was summed and replicated with the messenger gene. Scientists call it Ragish-C.
Ragish disease, primarily designed for bacterial warfare, targets then shuts down the central nervous system completely disabling its victim minutes after inhalation. Ragish-C is a ripened derivative. Apart from it being undetectable by conventional means, the gas that transports the virus is odourless. Donned the ultimate weapon of war, Ragish-C victims indifferently wander about with the lust to maim or kill other similar species.
“Hey, maybe Zombies do exist after all,” said Mara.
“Don’t be silly. Listen, here’s more. As far as the medical specifics go, once the infection has begun its cycle, the disease can only be transmitted by direct contact. Imagine this; soldiers infected with the Ragish virus, they just have to touch the enemy or vice versa. Mara, read between the lines. What they are saying is no bullets, no bombs, no expense, and most definitely no evidence.”
“It’ll be quite a reduction for the taxpayer’s pocket linings, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, jokes aside, it’s the same damn thing what doctor Kolak says; it doesn’t even mention the water.” 
That evening, the television reported another nine cases in Champotón. Champotón was  another poor man’s fishing village, but like those in Veracruz, these too revealed identical symptoms. The more Mara and Steve began to think about it, Champotón and Veracruz separated by more than four hundred kilometres had somehow uncovered cosmopolitan cases of this new strain of water virus. They looked towards the map again and gasped. Their eyes met painfully.
“It’s spreading across the Gulf!”
#
An ethereal panic struck the coastlines as more cases flowed from the television plasma screen to watching, impatient eyes. By mid July, the entire northern Mexican coastline was suffering six hundred cases per week, augmenting as the non-existent winters brought with it ultra low temperatures. An international alert came into effect.
(WASP) World Aid Special Programme donated assistance for immediate distribution in all forms. A massive coastal evacuation was called upon and special temporary housing units were set up inland to accommodate the human flood.
The newspaper was full of it. The news began from as far south as La Ceiba in Honduras, or as far north as Tampico. No one really gave a damn about what was going on until it hit United States soil a week later.
Ninety sardine fishermen were picked up by Corpus Christi sea rescue teams and were immediately transported to Robstown Community Hospital where they were individually treated. The CDC by this time was beginning to show particular interest in the virus.
Mike Branigan, chief bacteriological analyst and microbiologist, opened the door and walked into one of the hospital rooms. The skewed, yellowed number on the door had obviously fallen off a couple of times before. Mike had been chief bacteriological analyst for the past ten years at the Houston based Centre for Disease Control emporium two hundred kilometres to the north.
“Good morning, nurse, how’s he doing?”
“Good morning, Doctor Branigan, his temperature has come down, his body functions are reacting to nervous stimuli, his heart rhythm is fine, and his blood pressure has stabilised. This morning he even got out of bed to have a pee without wetting the floor. The weird part, I’m not getting any alpha or beta activity: it’s as if his brain is switched off.”
“How’s that possible? Has he been eating?” said Doctor Branigan running his hand through his hair.
“No, he hasn’t touched his food in two days, none of them have. Since they were brought here, they just sit on the bed biting their nails, mumbling.”
Mike reached over and began to examine the patient. “What’s his name? Did he have any identification on him when he was brought in?”
“Yes, his name is Alvaro Ramirez,” said the nurse fiddling her thumbs in an anti-clockwise motion.
“He’s a Mexican born, American citizen. I checked all his papers.”
“Good. Hello Alvaro, my name is Doctor Branigan. I am going to run some tests on you. Nod your head if you can hear or understand me.”
The patient lay there, quiescent and motionless. The un-registering eyes didn’t blink; the mouth didn’t twitch on hearing Mike’s words. He bent over with his stethoscope and unbuttoned Alvaro’s shirt placing the cold rubber concave cup onto his chest. The moment it touched the hairless frontal area, Alvaro gave a slight sound of dissatisfaction and twitched his body to withdraw himself away from the rubbery menace.
“Look how he reacts to temperature change. Have you scanned him?”
“It was the first thing I did when they were brought in two days ago, they’re all the same: every damn one of them.”
“And the EEG, what did it tell you?”
“Absolutely nothing. The resident chief neurologist is going crazy. There’s no sign of any tumour and there appears to be no cerebral damage.” 
Doctor Branigan listened attentively to the heart thumping a few centimetres away from the warmed up rubber cup.
“It sounds perfectly normal.”

Doctor Branigan opened his black briefcase, removed a crinkle bag containing a throw away syringe. Noisily ripping it open, he removed the syringe and extracted ten millilitres of Alvaro’s blood for examination.
“I’m going to take this back to Houston for examination.”
Doctor Branigan placed a white sticker on the side of the test tube -Alvaro Ramirez, room twenty-one, and continued taking notes. Reaching once more into his black bag, he produced a penlight lantern.
“Haven’t you noticed something odd, he hasn’t blinked once since I’ve been here?”
Doctor Branigan bent over switching on the powerful xenon light and pointed it directly into Alvaro’s left eye.
“GOOD GOD! Even his eyes contract normally. Nurse, get me his encephalogram results, hurry, I need to see this for myself.”
Scooting out of room twenty-one and entering the passageway, the nurse disappeared down the hallway to the information desk thirty metres away. The information attendant quickly handed over a brown envelope to her. Grabbing it from the attendant’s hands she ran back to join the doctor.
“Here they are,” she said gasping for breath and watching as Doctor Branigan tapped Alvaro on the knee checking his reflexes. She was just in time to see the left leg bounce itself high into the air. Doctor Branigan stood there flummoxed and began scratching the back of his neck.
“Let me have a look,” he said as he opened the envelope, carefully flipping through the papers. Alpha activity-nil, Beta activity-nil, electro-cerebral activity non-existent, thalamus regions un-stable, the diencephalon is non-functional. 
“Is there nothing more?” said Doctor Branigan. “From the outside this guy is dead. Obviously, from his point of view he is still very much alive. Nurse, get me the patient’s transfer papers. I’m going to take him to Houston with me.”