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    Black Virus: Black Rust, #1
    Black Virus: Black Rust, #1
    Black Virus: Black Rust, #1
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Black Virus: Black Rust, #1

    By Bobby ADAIR

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    About this ebook

    Alienated in a world where he doesn’t fit in, Christian Black survives because he’s different. Then the virus came, and made the world turn different, too.

    Now people are dying by the million. Food supplies are short. Riots are blazing through the streets, and Christian’s only goal is to keep his family alive. But safety lies far from the city, and just getting out will be more difficult than anyone knows.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBobby ADAIR
    Release dateJul 21, 2016
    ISBN9781536594300
    Black Virus: Black Rust, #1

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    • 4/5
      The books I've read so far from this author are to short. Slow Burn 1 -3 should of been a novel, I can't see wasting my 3 free monthly books on a 100 pages. I do like the stories though:)

    Book preview

    Black Virus - Bobby ADAIR

    Cover Design and Graphics

    Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a.  187designz

    Editing, Research, & Proofreading

    Kat Adair

    John Cummings

    eBook and Print Formatting

    Kat Adair

    Chapter 1

    I didn’t say he was degenerating, Mrs. Black. I said he was atypical.

    What does... my mom blubbered and buried her face in her hands, What does that mean?

    Please, Mrs. Black, Dr. Rajan leaned close. His computer’s camera lens distorted the proportions of his head, making him look like an alien.

    Mom sniffled and wiped her eyes before looking back up at her monitor.

    It’s not the spongiform encephalopathy. Your son never tested positive for the mutation that generates the prions. His behavior has nothing to do with the H5N1 virus. Dr. Rajan looked away from the screen for a moment as he searched for the most delicate words. I’d seen the habit dozens of times when I’d been in therapy with him in person. I’d seen it plenty more after we transitioned to online sessions. He’s different.

    The words weren’t delicate enough. Mom’s sobs came back. Eighteen months since contracting the disease and her emotions grew more volatile by the day. The prion affected everyone differently.

    Stop spying. It was Levi, my older brother.

    Without looking away from the gap in the door I was watching through, I silently shooed Levi to go somewhere else. I was keeping tabs on Mom, my way of getting a progress report on her well-being, while Dr. Rajan was trying to give her mine.

    She typically met with Dr. Rajan just once a month but had pushed him into an impromptu meeting after my session because she was concerned. Our golden retriever, Lucy, had been mauled a few nights before. We’d found her remains behind the garage. She’d probably heard something in the backyard and had dutifully gone out through an open window to protect us while we slept.

    My dad was the one who discovered her lifeless body and his wails brought the rest of us out to see what had happened. He used to love Lucy so much that Levi and I joked that she was his favorite kid. Until I saw him on his knees in the bloody grass stroking her matted fur, I’d thought the prions in his brain had eaten away every connection to Lucy. He hadn’t even acknowledged the dog’s existence since last winter.

    My mom cried loudly and dramatically like a woman being beaten. Levi’s tears were silent and shamed. He hid them by hanging his head forward, letting his long hair drape around his face.

    I looked at the smears of blood, mangled organs, and mashed grass, and understood that Lucy had not gone quickly. She’d fought, lost, and suffered as she tried to escape. I knew Lucy must have howled, in her way begging help from her pack—the rest of us. Somehow, we’d all slept while her killers tore at her body.

    Levi’s shoulders shuddered, and he covered his eyes. He was drawing the same conclusions I was, and guilt was piling on top of his loss. We were all to blame.

    That’s when I noticed Mom. She’d stopped looking at Lucy and was staring at me as floods of tears rained down from her cheeks. What’s wrong with you?

    I’d loved Lucy, but I wasn’t crying. I wanted to kill the prion-twisted bastards who’d murdered the dog that had been a companion my whole life, but grief wasn’t an emotion that often visited in my heart. As far gone as mom was, she saw that in me, and it frightened her. I was different in a way that didn’t fit within the bounds of a mother’s generous concept of normal, in a way that horrified her.

    I wasn’t a big kid. In fact, I was average in size. Maybe I was a little stronger than most, but not remarkably so. I was faster. I was pretty sure of that. Young boys are always devising games to measure themselves against one another. In some of those games, I excelled.

    Mostly, I was decisive, and I was ruthless.

    Those two were the biggest differences I saw when comparing myself to the other kids.

    Many of them were cruel, as young boys often are, but none of them understood ruthlessness the way I did.

    They’d grown up in a school system that jumped through every hoop to stifle violent outbursts of young boys coming to an age where they felt the mean kick of testosterone for the first time. Most kids readily respond to conditioning of their behavior, whether through the dreaded lecture, boring timeouts, useless suspensions from school, the wooden paddle, a leather belt, or a knuckly fist. I probably would have responded too, except that I understood from an early age the connection between behavior and punishment wasn’t always direct, it was chosen. I also understood that it was chosen for a reason. That made me question the reason. That made me understand that the adult authority figures in my life were attempting to manipulate my behavior in the same way they might manipulate the behavior of a leaky puppy, by connecting inappropriate actions to painful punishments.

    I realized punishment wasn’t a consequence, but a price. I liked doing some things that were outside what they called the rules of normative behavior, and I understood the retributive cost of each.

    There were times when punching another boy in the face once, twice, or a dozen times was what I wanted to do—it’s just the kind of thing that comes up when you’re a boy. I knew the price every time I swung a fist.

    There were some boys in school whose newly coursing hormones spurred them to dominate all those around.

    And I felt an equally powerful need to rebel.

    One of them might say something. I might punch him, but not one of those movie punches where you poke someone in the nose to create a bloody fountain in his face. I wasn’t that kind of fighter. When a boy pressed his bullshit too far with me, especially if he was a bigger boy, I solved the problem with damage and pain.

    A knee to the nuts was a favorite tactic. Throat punch, absolutely. Smashing a jaw shut on a wagging tongue, certainly. An elbow to the temple to daze him, without a doubt. Any of those would get me started and then it was all about bruises and blood. Not all of my would-be tormentors remembered what happened after that first elbow to the head, but they all saw the bruises in the mirror for the next few weeks, feared the next deep breath that would stretch their aching ribs, felt their scabbed lips crack open and bleed when they ate their lunch, and gasped at their swollen balls whenever their pants cinched up just the right way in their crotches.

    That was important to me. It was how I used a cruder version of the corporal methods utilized by the school officials to teach the bullies to leave me and my two little brothers alone.

    Because my dad couldn’t hold a job, we moved around a lot. Every year, sometimes midyear, I found myself in a new district. Levi was four years older than me so he and I never attended the same school. The twins, who were small for their age, were a year behind me, and we often found ourselves on the same campus with the same bullies.

    It didn’t usually

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