Buy the book:
The blurb:
The Michaluk Virus is loose.
In the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, the
Michaluk Virus has escaped the CDC, and its effects are widespread and
devastating. Most of the population of the southeastern United States has
become homicidal cannibals. As society rapidly crumbles under the hordes of
infected, three people—Ethan Bennett, a Memphis police officer; Cade Alton, his
best friend and former IDF sharpshooter; and Brandt Evans, a lieutenant in the
US Marines—band together against the oncoming crush of death and terror
sweeping across the world.
As Cade, Brandt, and Ethan hole up in a
safe house in Tupelo, others begin to join them in their bid for survival. When
the infected attack and they’re forced to flee, one departs to Memphis in
search of answers while the others escape south to Biloxi, where they encounter
more danger than they bargained for. And in Memphis, the answers that one man
finds are the last answers he wanted, answers that herald a horrific
possibility that there may be more to this virus than first suspected.
The Sneak Peek:
Excerpt
Brandt Evans’s scuffed black combat
boots struck the wet pavement heavily as he ran down the rain-dampened street.
His heart hammered wildly against his ribs, as if it were trying to beat free
from his chest. His breathing was loud and harsh. His hands sweated and shook
uncontrollably. His whole body was on edge.
He had been running for over half an
hour.
Brandt ducked into an alley without
slowing his pace. He dropped down beside a smelly, overflowing green dumpster
to hide. Leaning back against the cool brick wall, he felt the solidness of it,
the rough stones scraping against his back through his thin t-shirt. He closed
his eyes and struggled to breathe. His lungs burned. His eyes hurt.
He was a rabbit trying to outrun a fox.
Hunted. Desperate.
He just needed a moment to rest. Just
one moment. He could spare a moment, couldn’t he?
Brandt leaned forward and peered at the
alleyway’s opening. He took in a deep breath of the sharp, cold January air and
rubbed his hands over each of his arms in turn to ward off the chill. He’d lost
his jacket at some point during the chase, and he desperately wished he still
had it as he hunched over and shivered. He held his breath until his chest
ached, and then he slowly released it. It clouded the air before his face.
Brandt thought he might have lost them,
but he didn’t want to take any chances. There was no way to know how many had
followed him, how many had caught his scent. He had to assume that it wasn’t
just one or two. He had to assume that he was being pursued. Always pursued. If
he let his guard down…
Brandt wiped his sweating palms down
the thighs of his camouflage pants and leaned back against the wall again. He
knew what would happen if he were caught. He’d seen many of his fellow soldiers
succumb to the plague. He knew that if he were caught, it would all end in
blood and pain and death. It was not the end he had envisioned for himself when
he’d taken this mission, and he refused to let it turn out that way.
The faces of the other soldiers flashed
through Brandt’s mind, and guilt settled heavily over him. Even he had
known the exact moment when the quarantine failed, when the mission fell apart.
But rather than acknowledge the abject failure of the mission and order a
retreat, those in command had continued to bark orders at those under their
charges to fight and to die.
The guilt of surviving would plague
Brandt for the rest of his life.
Brandt had to get out of the city, as
soon as he possibly could, if he expected to stay alive. He had to run. He had
to get ahead of the infection, flee, and find a safe place to hide. He didn’t
care that he’d abandoned his post. His post didn’t exist anymore, as far as he
was concerned. Half of the military didn’t. They’d all died or turned within
the past several hours. All except for him.
A faint noise echoed from the
alleyway’s entrance. Brandt’s heart jumped into his throat and choked him.
Brandt leaned to peer around the edge of the dumpster again, and his hand
wandered to the military-issue Beretta M9 handgun at his hip. He drew it and
ejected the magazine to look inside. It was empty, as expected. He pulled back
the slide. He already knew what he would find: a single bullet, the one he’d
carefully counted ammunition to save. Just in case.
But Brandt was nothing if not a
survivor. Even with the lone bullet in his possession, he’d never have the will
to use it on himself. He snapped the magazine back into the gun as quietly as
he could. The sound was too loud to his ears, and he worried that the simple
action would draw unwanted attention to him.
As if on cue, a shuffling noise came
from the other side of the dumpster. A quiet snarl followed it, along with an
odd snuffling sound. Brandt closed his eyes and instinctively pressed his back
more firmly against the brick wall. He became the rabbit again, shrinking back
among the loose trash that skittered about in the stiff, cold wind; he hoped
against hope that he wouldn’t be sniffed out. Another jolt of adrenaline pumped
into Brandt’s veins as an ominous chill ran down his spine and raised the hair
on the back of his neck. He could have sunk into the bricks and hidden inside
them.
Brandt’s instincts whispered that there
was not going to be an escape from this one. Brandt wasn’t sure how much more
of this he could take. The idea of being chased, of being caught, was slowly
driving him insane. He had to do something, anything to alleviate the
awful sensation.
Brandt took a deep, steadying breath
and stood abruptly. His head swam at the sudden movement; his vision dimmed,
and the alleyway spun around him. His heart lurched in his chest. Brandt shook
his head and caught his hand against the dumpster to steady himself as he
lifted the gun. The weapon felt incredibly heavy, and the barrel trembled. He
swallowed and curled his finger to depress the trigger.
Time slowed to a crawl.
The last bullet left the gun with a
loud bang. The bullet whipped past the blood-covered man who ran down the
alleyway toward Brandt. It embedded into the wall with a splatter of brick.
Shards of red stone sprayed the man and cut into his cheek. He seemed
unaffected as he continued his pursuit of Brandt.
Brandt stumbled back. The emptied
Beretta fell from his limp hand to the pavement. Brandt looked left and right
frantically. Thoughts blazed through his mind in a flurry, faster than he could
catch them. His shot had missed? How had it missed when the target was so
close? He was an expert marksman, for Christ’s sake! He wasn’t supposed to
miss!
Brandt’s dark eyes alternately darted
from the man to the alley walls on either side of him. Should he try to run
past the man? Should he fight and kill him? Either way, he was likely dead.
Brandt swore under his breath and
mentally inventoried the weapons left on his person. There hadn’t been much to
begin with: just the sidearm that now lay expended on the pavement and a rifle
Brandt had abandoned once he’d run out of ammunition for it. The extra weight
of the spent weapon had been a hindrance to his flight. He took a couple of
steps back and remembered the one weapon he had left.
Brandt knelt and pulled his KA-BAR
knife free from the sheath strapped to the outside of his right boot. It wasn’t
much, and he wasn’t sure how much damage the seven-inch blade could actually
cause, but it was all he had left. He stood just in time. The man launched
himself at Brandt, hands extended, hatred in his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes.
Instinct guided Brandt as he lifted the
knife sharply upwards and stood from his kneeling position. In one smooth move
that should have been deadly, Brandt slammed the knife’s blade into the fleshy
underside of the man’s lower jaw.
To Brandt’s dismay, the man’s gnarled
hands closed in tight fists on Brandt’s shirt. The man shook his head violently
to free the knife from his jaw. Trapped, Brandt struggled to pull himself from
the man’s grip, but the man was stronger than he looked.
So Brandt did the only thing he could.
He wrenched the knife roughly from the man’s jaw and slammed it with all the
strength left in his limbs directly into the man’s left temple.
Shock invaded the man’s features as the
blade struck home. His forward momentum carried him a few more steps after
Brandt struck the fatal blow. He leaned heavily against Brandt and then fell to
the pavement, hard.
Brandt backed away from the body,
shuddering as nausea welled up in his throat. He shook the sensation off and
took his first real look at the man who had attacked him. He wasn’t anyone
Brandt recognized, which was the best news Brandt would get all day. This man
was too old to have been a current member of the military. He was around
seventy years old, thin and bony and wrinkled with age, hair white and sparse
on his head. His body was clad in dirtied sweatpants and a bloodstained white
bathrobe, his feet bare and torn from running without shoes on the cold,
unforgiving streets and sidewalks of Atlanta. The elderly man was definitely a
civilian, possibly from one of the local nursing homes. Judging by the crusted
blood under his lengthening, yellowed fingernails, the man had been ill for at
least four days.
Brandt leaned down and grasped the hilt
of the knife, pulling it free from the man’s temple. It slid away from the bone
and flesh with an indescribable sound that made Brandt nearly drop the weapon
as he shuddered in disgust. He took a moment to wipe the blood from the blade
onto the edge of the dead man’s bathrobe. He had no desire to continue his
examination of the dead body before him. Brandt looked instead to the Beretta
lying on the wet pavement. The weapon was empty; it wouldn’t do him any further
good. The chances that he would find much suitable ammunition for it in a city
under siege were slim, and searching for it wasn’t worth his time. The general
populace had days before raided the gun shops and sports stores in the city for
anything usable that had been left behind by the military, and all of the
ammunition stores were most likely bare. Regardless, he scooped the gun up and
jammed it into the holster on his belt.
Brandt looked around the darkening
alley. Night had begun to fall, the dusk settling over the alley and making it
difficult to see. He tried to center his mind and figure out where to go, what
to do. He couldn’t stay on the streets in the dark; it increased his chances of
being killed tenfold. The city still crumbled around him, so he needed to move
fast. His options were severely limited.
Brandt turned in a slow circle and
spotted a red ladder hanging at the end of the alley, almost invisible in the
dark. A fire escape, he realized. It at least offered an alternative to
returning to the street. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure nothing else
was coming in his direction. Then he returned the knife to its sheath on his
boot and jumped up. He caught the bottom rung of the ladder and hauled himself onto
it, his biceps bulging as he dragged himself up. He began to climb as quickly
as he dared.
The metal rungs were slick with rain
and ice, and they bit into Brandt’s palms and fingers as he trekked up the
ladder. His boots slipped on the icy rungs more than once and sent his heart
faltering in his chest. It was only through his own reflexes that he didn’t
fall from the ladder and to the pavement below. The thought of breaking bones
and leaving himself helpless was enough to keep him on his guard. There would
be no salvation for him if he ended up with a broken leg in a dirty alley in
downtown Atlanta. In that situation, he could just slap a sign on himself that
said “dinner” and lie back to wait for his end.
Brandt reached the roof easily enough
and gained his footing on the flat graveled surface. From there, he took a few
moments to look out across the city and plan his next step. Smoke billowed on
the horizon, close to the edge of the downtown metro area. A tornado siren
blasted its monotonous refrain from somewhere in the city, warning Atlanta
residents to get to a safe place. Gunfire rang out too close to Brandt’s
position for comfort. Screams echoed faintly through the streets nearby, but
Brandt didn’t dare check out the source. An ambulance siren played its part in
the symphony of a city falling in on itself.
Brandt dropped to his knees, suddenly
overwhelmed by the trauma he’d experienced that day. He ignored the gravel
digging into his skin through his pants and covered his mouth as he fought off
the bile that rose in his throat. The horror he’d faced throbbed in his brain
even as he closed his eyes. The things Brandt had seen that day were worse than
anything he’d ever dreamed of seeing overseas in combat; the images would stay
with him forever. It was all Brandt could do to remain upright in his kneeling
position as he fought to choke back the sickness in his mouth and in his soul.
Brandt couldn’t hold it back, though,
and he hunched over the gravel and vomited. His throat burned and his eyes
watered as he gripped the edge of the building and dug his fingers into the
stone. His chest heaved as he coughed up the remains of his last meal. Brandt
rocked back on his heels, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and
cleared his throat. The taste in his mouth was awful, but it was the last thing
on his mind. He felt at his face, testing his own temperature as best he could.
Brandt couldn’t tell if he was running a fever or if it was just heat generated
by his climb up the fire escape ladder. He was sure he would be feeling the
symptoms by now if…
Brandt shook his head, clearing his
throat once more as he took in the view. “A virus did all of this?” he
whispered hoarsely. He looked upon the city once more. The city in which he’d
grown up. The city he had loved more than any other city he’d seen in his time
in the military. It was like nothing Brandt had ever witnessed before. It was
the beginning of the end of civilization, and the thought terrified him. “How
can this even be possible?” he asked out loud to no one.
Derek Rivers was wrong. Derek Rivers
had to have been wrong. The man who had warned him of this very possibility was
long dead, one of the early victims of the viral outbreak that, even now, swept
over Atlanta and beyond with a speed to rival the Black Death itself. Brandt
had thought that Derek had exaggerated in his tales of test subjects and
viruses and drugs. But Derek hadn’t exaggerated. Indeed, Derek hadn’t gone far
enough in his description of the total devastation that the virus could visit
upon the city. Brandt doubted that the man had ever thought it would get this
far, that he had ever thought his worst-case scenario would come so
terrifyingly true.
“Which way, which way?” Brandt
whispered. He forced himself to his feet once more. It wasn’t time to be puking
on a roof and reminiscing about men who were likely dead. He slowly surveyed
the rooftop, searching for an escape route and a plan. He looked in every
direction, uncertain which way would be safest. None of them, really. Safety
was a foreign concept to Atlanta now.
Before Brandt went anywhere, however,
he needed weapons. He needed food. He needed water. And he needed a place to
hide for the night.
The Author:
Jessica Meigs is the author of The Becoming, a post-apocalyptic
thriller series that follows a group of people trying to survive a massive
viral outbreak in the southeastern United States. After gaining notoriety for
having written the series on a variety of BlackBerry devices, she
self-published two novellas that now make up the first book of the series. In
April 2011, she accepted a three-book deal with Permuted Press to publish a
trilogy of novels. The first of the trilogy, entitled The Becoming, was released in November 2011 on Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, and Audible in paperback, eBook, and audiobook formats. It was also
named one of Barnes & Noble’s Best Zombie Fiction Releases of 2011 and Best
Apocalyptic Fiction Releases of 2011. In March 2012, she released a related
novella entitled The Becoming: Brothers
in Arms. The second novel in the series, The Becoming: Ground Zero, is coming in July 2012 from Permuted
Press, with a third novel, The Becoming:
Revelations, to follow. A fourth and fifth book are currently in the
process of being written.
Jessica lives in semi-obscurity in
Demopolis, Alabama. When she’s not writing, she works full time as an EMT. She
enjoys listening to music and spends way too much time building playlists for
everything she writes. When she’s not rocking out at concerts or writing or
working, she can be found on Twitter @JessicaMeigs, on Facebook at
facebook.com/JessicaMeigs, and on Goodreads at goodreads.com/jessicameigs. You
can also visit her website at www.jessicameigs.com.
