Level 6 (Pandemic #3)

by Bobby Akart

When the next global pandemic begins, it will spread across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people. The next pandemic will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places—reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention.

after reading the Pandemic series, “I now realize that humans can become extinct. Not a comforting thought.”

Do you think prepping is silly? Well, you can hide from reality but you can’t hide from the consequences of hiding from reality. ~ Bobby Akart

Then the man took off the cap and he painted a red 6 on the exterior wall of her condo building until the wet paint dripped to the concrete porch.

out of fleeing into the unknown, she responded aloud, “I’d rather be paranoid and alive than oblivious and dead.”

Rainwater mixed with the blood of the dead sprayed Aranda from head to toe. Panicked, he tried to wipe his face and eyes of the bloody mix, but it was too late. Despite all of his efforts to protect himself while he brought the world news of the deadly plague, Aranda was now part of the story instead of just the storyteller. Aranda and his producer were drenched

in the plague, and NBC viewers saw it all live.

The party reached the ears of two dark figures observing the group through binoculars. The watchers weren’t enjoying the playful banter, but rather, were growing to resent it.

the world’s population has decreased from seven billion to less than three billion.

As the power grids began to fail across the country, a cascading effect took place, causing brownouts at first, followed by total blackouts in the last forty-eight hours. Only Texas, whose grid was independent of the eastern

“Mr. President,” started the surgeon general, “the worldwide death toll is estimated to be seventy-seven percent at this point. More and more people are dying as a result of social unrest as well as from the plague.”

“Our three-pronged attack, once fully implemented, would mean there could be a last patient.

Theoretically, that would be two weeks after the last patient succumbs to the disease.”

To answer your question, this strain of the plague may reach a state of relative dormancy within several months, but it will never go away.”

“Now speaking of rats burrowed in the mountain, let’s talk about how we’re gonna flush out these terrorists from their caves.”

The MOAB was thirty feet long and weighed twenty-two thousand pounds, including its nine tons of explosives. Although its explosive yield was a fraction of a nuclear weapon, it still packed a devastating punch.

okay. Heirloom varieties are open-pollinated, which means the seeds you collect after a harvest will produce more plants during the next growing season. Like a family heirloom, they’re passed from generation to generation.”

They did not, however, establish protocols for cleaning and sterilizing the equipment that was introduced into the base medical operations.

During the first twenty-four hours of increased personnel screenings, over a thousand people were exposed

By day four, those one thousand people had infected ten thousand more within the secured confines of Fort Bliss.

day eight when the original infected began to show symptoms of the disease, an additional one hundred thous...

The enormous western harvest mouse population of Fort Bliss didn’t participate in the battle, except for feeding on the dead. As a result, the plague was alive and well within the Fort Bliss safe zone.

When the Vagos decided to head north, looking for greener pastures, the sound of their bikes bounced off

the canyon walls created by Hoosier Ridge and North Star Mountain.

Levi and Seth were the thirteenth and fourteenth sons of Rulon Snow, and

They were conceived on the same night and born within minutes of each other, a coincidence too great for most. Therefore, it was generally believed only God could have a hand in the conception, making Levi and Seth special.

Snow’s commune was made up of blood relatives.

sending search parties up Boreas Pass, looking for missing men, who’d never be found, and their women, who were safely tucked away inside the numerous caves above Noah’s Ark.

the Hayman fire burned over a hundred homes, a hundred and forty thousand acres, and displaced five thousand residents.

Sneezes travel at close to one hundred miles per hour. A single sneeze can send more than one hundred thousand bacteria-laden droplets through the air.

Iridium-192, a Category

Combined with other bomb-making materials, exposure to the substance could cause

he espoused to the belief that acquiring weapons of mass destruction was his religious duty.

Military installations would be the first to be attacked.

Finally, the black standard, the battle flag of ISIS, would be raised on the nation’s most recognized structures in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. Victory would be theirs.

The Minuteman III missiles were all upgraded to the new W87 thermonuclear warheads. Each warhead yielded four hundred seventy-five kilotons.

the launch control center was designed to survive the launch of a nuclear weapon from within the man-made cave.

new target in the Qandil Mountains.

At the designated launch time, the five keys would be turned simultaneously, sending five signals, or votes, to three missiles within their facility. Refusal to turn the key by any three of the officers would not stop the launch, as it only took two of the members of the ICBM crew to carry out the order.

Once the keys were turned, there was no way to stop the launch sequence. All eyes were on Captain Miller as he nodded. It was 12:12 a.m.

six-hour trek through the Qandil Mountains to the airstrip on the Iraqi side of the border with Iran.

A flash of light from above caught his attention, followed by the roar of a rocket. In less than a second, four hundred trillion calories of energy were released over the Qandil Mountains, where he had slept just eight hours ago. The intense light blinded his vision, forcing him to raise his arm to shield his eyes until they were able to adjust.

him. At the point of impact, the temperature rose to two hundred million degrees Fahrenheit, four times the temperature found at the sun’s core, incinerating everything within eight miles.

As the seven-hundred-mile-per-hour winds blasted away from the impact point, Hassan ran for the airplane. He stumbled as he ran up the stairs due to the incredible fear overtaking his motor functions.

Deadly radioactive fallout would contaminate a large swath of Iran, including some areas outside of Tehran. People who’d survived the plague would now be doomed to painful, vicious deaths from radiation sickness and the resulting cancer, leukemia, and genetic damage for generations.

Actually, what Hassan did was look out into a new world and smile. He would be bestowed with the honor and power as the next caliph.

But the vast majority of the approximately seven billion people who died during the pandemic did so based upon the plague’s timeline—in days nine through twelve after contracting the disease.

After eleven weeks, the human race had dwindled to a fraction of itself, awaiting its release in the form of death. Day after day, mankind lurched toward the end—the quietus, seeking a final, merciful blow.

In this ninth day of the war, the plague bacteria were preparing to migrate through his bloodstream to the lungs. This was step one in a three-stage process, indicating the onset of sepsis and ultimately progressing to septic shock.