Turners | Book 1 | The Beginning Read online

  Turners

  The Beginning

  Written By

  Ellis Thomas

  Copyrights: 2005, 2011, 2013, 2020

  Editing and Cover Design by

  Sandy Sierra

  [email protected]

  Their people will become like walking corpses,

  their flesh rotting away.

  Zechariah 14:12

  Turners Trilogy

  The Beginning

  ~~~~~

  90°

  coming October 2020

  ~~~~~

  Junction

  coming February 2021

  Dedicated to my family whose support and encouragement have meant so much.

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Brandon John.

  My life started after the great plague was in full swing. Because so much was lost, I have taken on the task of piecing events together for posterity, and I have chosen to relay those events from Sydney Fletcher’s view not only because her story is like that of thousands of others who were able to survive, but also because I know her so well.

  In compiling Sydney’s memories and working with her and others, my intent is to provide a ground-level view of the scourge that almost wiped out humanity.

  While I’ve used creative license to fill in the gaps when subjects were unavailable for interviews, either because of distance or death, the story that follows is based on firsthand witness accounts. Whenever possible, I have simply written it in the same way it was told to me.

  1 The Beginning

  It all started when some workers were digging in Siberia and came across a mummy. Turns out, the mummy was carrying a contagious virus which one of the pathologists contracted while examining the remains. It took almost four years for the virus to become a fast-spreading plague. In the beginning, the transition phase was so slow, people kept the afflicted at home and just made sure they didn’t get close enough to kiss. Home deodorizing kits were the rage back then because, well, let’s face it: rot stinks. Initially, the “turning” process took up to nine months to complete. In that time there was hope that a vaccine would be developed.

  When it became obvious that the Turners epidemic, as it came to be called, was not going away, the afflicted began receiving treatment in hospitals run by the Centers for Disease Control, or the CDC. This made things a little more comfortable for the people at home—not to mention that they could breathe again without constantly setting off the gag reflex.

  For a while, it looked as though the CDC was making progress in combating Turners and that the epidemic might eventually be eradicated.

  Unfortunately, the “miracle” vaccine the CDC developed caused the virus to mutate, and Turners came back with a vengeance. The new strain of the virus was resistant to all previous vaccines, and over time the transformation phase went from six months to hours, and then to just minutes for some, depending on their immune defenses.

  Turners was now the world’s new super-virus.

  In the plague’s infancy, the virus could only be spread if a person was bitten by a Turner—the animated life form of a person who had “turned.” But within a year, it had evolved to the point where it could be transferred to another human, or even an animal, if a Turner’s fluids contacted any open wound. And, since Turners were always oozing something, this meant that even just a scratch from one of them was almost always fatal.

  Those who had turned also had a strange gait, probably from rigor mortis developing in their muscles. Watching them move was like watching a stop-motion camera—like when you slow down a movie camera, so you see quick frames instead of a smooth motion. Their speed seemed to depend on how long ago they had transitioned. The “older” ones moved more slowly and were easy to fight or get away from. But the newly transformed ones, well, you simply had to run faster than they did or be a great shot. In Sydney’s case, she ran.

  Although the virus reanimated flesh, the brains were the key to the animation—and to a Turner’s destruction. Turners only ceased to function when their brains were destroyed, which had to be done by “popping” the head open and releasing the pressure inside, creating a burst of matter. You could smack a Turner on the side of the head, but if you didn’t get the brains to spill out, it would just keep coming at you.

  “No burst, you’re first” became Sydney’s mantra.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  The first mega outbreak started when an office worker contracted the virus via an open wound. The usual symptoms didn’t manifest until he arrived at his desk to start the workday. He suddenly “turned,” and within minutes he had bitten a dozen stunned co-workers, who then began to undergo the morphing process themselves.

  This began on the third floor of one of the new high-rises in San Francisco, and knowledge of what had happened quickly made it to the first floor thanks to the security cameras. Security called the police, who immediately surrounded and quarantined the building, locking in anyone who hadn’t had the foresight to vacate the building when the chaos started. As havoc spread through the top floors, Turners began breaking through the windows and falling to the street below. Most people had the good sense to run when bodies started falling from the sky. Others were busy gawking and stood there as bodies started raining down.

  Turners that hadn’t broken all their bones when they fell immediately rose and went after the closest “meat.” The ones that couldn’t walk, bit and grabbed at anything close by. As for the unfortunate people locked inside the building, their meal plans changed as they became lunch.

  Although the earliest Turners were nocturnal because of their aversion to sunlight, the later ones were also active during the day. Daylight didn’t impair the new strain of virus and it was believed that the sun’s warmth loosened their joints, making it possible for them to move more easily. Since no Turner was able to discuss the benefits of day versus night with anyone, that will remain one of the mysteries.

  2 Sydney

  Sydney Fletcher was a survivor in one of the darkest times the world has known. The people she loved, hoped with and fought alongside gave purpose to her existence when dying would have been so much easier.

  She inherited her large, green eyes from her mother and her five-foot, ten-inch frame from her father, so she’s told. Her thick, red hair was a throwback from some earlier relative, and the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks was a gift from nature. Fortunately, she didn’t get her character from either of her parents.

  Almost from the beginning, life was an endless lesson in survival for Sydney. Her father abandoned the family when Sydney was only three, an event that began the downward spiral of her mother’s emotional stability. Alcohol was the first street her mother went down to extinguish the pain of rejection. When alcohol ceased to create the desired effect, drugs were next, and then she turned to prostitution to support the habit that her government-aid checks didn’t cover.

  By the age of eight, Sydney—as well as her eleven-year-old brother, Rob, and her nine-year-old sister, Alicia—was surviving the best she could on handouts and by scrounging around for anything edible. Leftover scraps from the meals of their mother’s male “guests” kept death away, but not the gnawing hunger pains that were a constant part of their life.

  Children become adept at getting by in their environment, whatever it might be. Long before reaching adolescence, Sydney and her siblings had become masters at deception. Whenever they went to the corner liquor store and food mart to buy snacks for their mother, they always left with a few extra items. Rob would create a distraction while Sydney and Alicia stuffed whatever prepackaged food items they could into their clothing. Later, when Sydney looked back on those years, she wondered sometimes if
the clerk had intentionally looked the other way.

  On cold nights, the three children huddled together on an old steel spring twin bed with sparse covers, extracting whatever heat they could from each other. They endured constant beatings for even the tiniest mistakes, which made Sydney determined to be as perfect—and as invisible—as she could be.

  Their mother only paid the electric bill so she could watch her shows. She never paid the water bill, so the children would wait until after dark and wash down in the back yard of the vacant house next door, silently thanking God for the person who, for whatever reason, kept the water turned on there. Taking advantage of their beneficiary, they carried buckets of water to their house so they could make a bath for their mother, wash what little clothing they had, along with their mother’s dirty dishes, and fill the tank in the toilet so it could be flushed once or twice a day.

  Unbelievably, they looked forward to the occasional, merciful trip to a shelter or even the emergency room. It gave them a chance to get rid of the lice that infested their hair and fill their stomachs with warm food—until their mother decided she needed them again, and then the cycle would start over. To their mother, Sydney and her siblings meant government aid, which meant money for more drugs.

  By the time the plague was in full swing, those harsh beginnings had molded Sydney into someone who was able to survive, when so many others fell.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  It had been about forty-eight hours since Sydney’s last intake of something solid, and the bread heel that other hungry eyes had missed had long ago stopped doing its job. While rummaging around, she found a teabag and an empty gallon jug and had the bright idea that maybe she could sell homemade tea. For some crazy reason, the other houses looked like they might have families with money. Wealth is truly relative.

  Sydney was getting a little discouraged after the fourth “nobody home” and the third “Thank you, but I already have plenty to drink.” Since their water had been turned off a long while back, Sydney wondered, could it be that I stink? Or maybe they noticed the little community on my head?

  As she was puzzling over this, she came to the eighth house. A woman with a kind face opened the door, smiled at Sydney and invited her in. The lice jumping around on Sydney’s head didn’t seem to bother the woman at all. As they walked through the house to the kitchen, where the woman’s purse was, Sydney noticed, along with a very strange odor, an old man in an adjoining room who was standing so still she thought he might be a mannequin.

  Reaching into her purse, the kind woman gave Sydney a quarter but told her maybe she could sell the tea to the people next door. Wow! Sydney was handed a chance to make another quarter! Thinking about what she could buy with it, Sydney dropped her guard, and on her way out of the kitchen—to the horror of the nice woman who’d just paid her—a hand grabbed her.

  Being a malnourished eleven-year-old does have an advantage: every part of Sydney was wafer thin, which meant the old man grabbed a handful of clothing instead of flesh. He grunted a sound suggesting surprise that there was no meat in his grasp, although his expression hadn’t changed at all. The hesitation before his next move gave Sydney the chance she needed. She twisted around and went down on the ground. This maneuver had worked well on the perverts her mother associated with and served her well now.

  “Oh, I’m so very sorry,” said the shocked woman as she stepped between Sydney and the man and held him at arm’s length. She seemed as surprised as Sydney.

  “I always keep a good eye on my father and make sure he’s restrained when I can’t watch him. I wasn’t thinking when I let you in. He’s, uh, recovering from an illness, and he does strange things at times. I can see I won’t be able to keep him here much longer, though.” Sydney couldn’t imagine why the woman looked sad at the prospect of putting the old man out of the house, but she told her it was okay just so she could get out of there.

  Once down the road, Sydney looked back and relaxed a bit.

  That was her first encounter with someone who was “turning.” She later learned that during the transition process, aversion to daylight was the main symptom, along with very spongy-looking skin and severe blotchiness.

  Sydney had seen people who liked to pretend they were zombies, like in the movies. They would dress up and act like the living dead. But the man who tried to grab her really smelled awful, so she dismissed the idea that somebody was playing a joke on her. Plus, the woman who had invited her in truly looked distressed about what had happened.

  After that initial encounter, Sydney started picking up bits and pieces of conversations about a sickness that was quickly spreading. Since no one was acting any weirder than usual around her house, she dismissed what had happened as she focused on her own survival issues. Weirdos and gangs were always harassing kids where she lived, so as far as Sydney was concerned, life went on as usual.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Fearing the disease in their “home,” Sydney’s mother became obsessed with her own version of cleanliness. She sent Sydney and Alicia to the vacant house next door to collect water, which she put on to the stove. While waiting for the water to boil, she made Sydney and Alicia strip down and get into the shower. Twenty minutes later, in the frigid Arizona winter, she came in and dumped a pot of very hot water over them. Everyone knows you must boil a thing to clean and disinfect it. Amid the girls’ pleading screams, the layers of dirt peeled off, leaving a few blisters behind. Realizing that the water was too hot (or maybe she just wanted to torture them a bit more), she went and filled a pot with cold water to pour over them. After that, the girls spent more time in the back yard of the vacant house next door, determined to stay cleaner and avoid future “spa adventures” at the hands of their mother.

  3 Clowns & Fashion Trends

  Clowns are an odd thing. A lot of people can take or leave them, and some people really loved them. Turners changed that.

  Sydney personally never had any problems with clowns. She always enjoyed the traveling circuses that came to the area because they provided an escape from the horrors she faced at home, and they were easy to sneak into when her pockets were empty. At least that was how she felt before the outbreak. But afterward, circus clowns became serious contenders for the title of “best plague spreaders.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  It was just after the high-rise incident, and most people were still trying to believe the plague was going to go away or run itself out. Halfway into the show, the “Oohs!” and “Ahhs!” turned into “Oh, no’s!” The costumed dogs in the dog act came out running, with the clowns right behind them. Sydney didn’t remember the circus dogs ever running like that before, but she quickly understood why when the clowns came out doing a jerky dance. The audience thought it was part of the act until the clowns hit the first row and started recruiting members for the Turners Club before anyone had a chance to react.

  Most of the circus employees and staff were not hard to miss when they turned, but the clowns were different. All that makeup hid a lot of the telltale signs that were normally a dead giveaway. The camouflage on their faces allowed them to get very intimate with anyone who was within an arm’s distance. This gave them a distinct advantage, and quite a few Turners after that had strange makeup smears.

  The virus also led to some interesting fashions. Leather became the preferred choice for garments, and the thicker, the better. The stores that were still open couldn’t keep leather apparel in stock.

  As a survivor in those changing times, when personal protection was all-important, Sydney learned to look for what she needed in places that no one else thought about. One day she happened to go over to a neighboring house that hadn’t been occupied for more than a year. The house had been emptied when the husband acquired a taste for his family.

  Keeping her eyes open for anything that might come in useful, Sydney zoned in on an area in the garage that had been used for welding. Hanging neatly on a hanger was a grayish-beige suede welder’s jacket that blended wi
th its surroundings. Sydney couldn’t believe her luck! The long sleeves would protect her arms and the high collar would protect her neck. She thought about taking the helmet, too, but she needed all her peripheral vision and besides, the helmet felt too confining. Latching onto the jacket, she felt like she had struck gold!

  Her weapon of choice was an old fireplace poker. In her mind it was the perfect choice for defense against Turners. It was less dangerous than a knife if she rolled over on it while sleeping, and it had a longer reach. The thin shaft was great for splitting heads, and now, at the ripe old age of twelve, her well-developed muscles were hardened for the task. Her movements, when she wielded her poker, were deft and deadly. Amazingly, though, the muscle in the left side of her chest stayed soft, and she still dared to dream.

  When the Turners moved like turtles, her fireplace poker worked just fine. But with the speed many of the newly turned now had, thanks to the enhanced virus, they were harder to deal with. The key to surviving was to avoid confrontations. Sydney didn’t know anything about guns, but lately she had been thinking she needed to get one and, just as important, she needed to become very good at using it. She hoped eventually to find someone who would teach her.

  4 Alone

  It was early spring when Sydney’s mother began acting stranger than usual. Sensing that something was going on, the children started sleeping with one eye open—except for Alicia, the eternal optimist in their family. Alicia couldn’t get her mind around the fact that their mother was growing odder, so she was not on guard like she should have been.

  After an especially tough day when none of them had been able to get their hands on enough food, the siblings hit the cots and were out cold. They always slept with the bedroom door locked because of their mother’s guests, so, Sydney guessed, Alicia must have heard their mother groan and went out to check on her. When they woke up the next morning, their mother was on the kitchen floor, pasted with blood and staring at the ceiling. Apparently, during the attack, Alicia had grabbed a cleaver and performed brain surgery on their mother, but not before their mother was able to get a few bites in. Rob told Sydney to leave the room and did what he needed to do to their sister.