Read Online Masked by RB Stutz - Free Book Online

that showed the
man’s entire body covered in a dark purple bruise. The man appeared to be
screaming.
     The images were horrifying and
morbidly fascinating. It was humbling to be told that had happened to each of
us. No one said anything regarding the images, but the silence was thick with
shock and horror.
     He explained when the first
cases of infection appeared; no one had any idea what it was. The CDC had never
seen anything like it and couldn’t link it to any other known viral strains. A
national emergency was called and the whole country was put on alert. The American
people were told once they knew of someone who started to show signs of infection;
they immediately needed to contact the CDC. They were told there was no cure
and in order to stop the spread of the virus, the infected needed to be
immediately quarantined. Emergency quarantine facilities were set up all around
the country. The infected were rounded up and isolated in these facilities to
live out the remaining hours of their lives.
    The CDC, as well as other governmental
and commercial medical research organizations across the globe, was frantically
working on ways to neutralize the virus. The viral strain was so different from
anything else ever seen and it took some time to develop anything to even try
against it. As these groups worked, new cases of infection continued to be
reported and people continued to die.
    There wasn’t a consistent method
of transmission anyone could identify. Geographically, people from all over the
U.S. were infected, but their families and friends who they had contact with
would not be and there were no cases reported outside of U.S. borders. Those
who had contracted the virus didn’t appear to have any consistent traits that
could shed any light on where the virus had come from or who the infection
would target.
    It wasn’t until three weeks after
the virus had claimed its first victim that one of the domestic commercial medical
research organizations was successful in killing the strain in an infected
tissue sample. Considering the 100% mortality rate and the short gestation
period, they quickly brought in one of the infected to test the potential cure.
The patient who was brought in had shown the first signs of infection approximately
twenty-two hours prior. The team administered the anti-virus, but it was neutralized
by the active virus immediately.
    Dr. Roberts was a part of that
group and led the team who administered the anti-virus. When it didn’t
neutralize the virus in the patient, her team scrambled to determine what was
causing their “cure” to work in a live tissue sample, but not in a live person.
They repeated the procedure several times on their dying test subject and kept
trying up until his organs failed.
    They thought their anti-virus was
a bust, but then Dr. Roberts had an idea. She tried injecting the now deceased
test subject again to see what the effect would be on his infected tissue once
the heart had stopped pumping blood through the body. The virus was dead in the
blood sample they subsequently took.
    They immediately found another
one of the infected who was right at twenty nine hours. The young woman was in
horrible agony and all they could do was try and make her comfortable, waiting
for her to go into cardiac arrest. Once she did, they immediately injected the
anti-virus in order to give the heart a chance to spread it before complete
failure. Once her heart stopped, they let thirty seconds pass and then began to
resuscitate the woman. They were able to get her heart pumping again and breathing.
She was unconscious, but alive.
    Once the patient was stabilized,
they took a blood sample and found the virus in the sample was no longer active.
With this news, they worked to produce as much anti-virus they could and
administered it to the infected as it was ready. They gave the treatment to the
infected in all stages of progression, initiating the cardiac arrest, so that
there would be less