Read Online The Last Christmas by Jacqueline Druga - Free Book Online Page A

fraction of the population that caught it the first wave. Ten percent. But the second wave was like the Spanish Flu, it toppled sixty percent of the population. No one caught it. They all died.
    Leaving Italy barren.
    That was the Venice Flu in Italy and a few surrounding countries.
    Somewhere, somehow, it mutated again.
    The sixty percent infected became eighty, and it had a kill rate of one hundred percent.
    It had a rise rate of fifty percent.
    Half the people who died from the Venice Flu reanimated. The first reanimation occurred in London.
    The family was gathered around the recently deceased, and he sat up and bit the neck of his wife.
    It was all over the Internet.
    In the United States, we felt infallible. Really, we did. We’d read daily about it striking here and there, but not in the U.S.. It was reminiscent, people said, of the days of SARS.
    I paid attention to the flu. Reading headlines about the millions dead, and the violence ‘over there’ brought on by the undead, as they were called, was frightening. But we went on living our lives, living normally.
    Then on August 15th, eight months after it started in Italy, the first case was reported in New York, and then another in Virginia.
    It was here. It landed.
    Stage one.
    It spread like wildfire and the last day I left my house for a while, was on September 1st. That was to go to the store. Panic buying hadn’t begun yet. I was a few days ahead of it. Plus, I lived in a rural area.
    Schools never opened, and my plan was to stay in until the flu ran its course. Not even to go outside.
    It was in the air, so we had to avoid it.
    I wasn’t a “prepper”. I wasn’t a survivalist. I was a father and a husband with a will to protect my family. I was driven to do so.
    At the end of September, that was the last we heard anything on the news. The dead were rising. They were spreading out, looking for victims, looking for anyone alive.
    Suddenly I was struck with fear. Were we too close to a town or city? If those things that roamed in killer packs were out and about, how long would it be until they reached our home?
    I had managed to keep my family together.
    To me, it was time to go.
    I knew there had to be people around us who were sick, and how long would it be before they rose? Heck, without cars or airplanes, sound travels. The violent coughing carried through the dead air.
    They were close, they had to be. We had supplies, they were dwindling, but that was fine. We’d get more. Safety was foremost.
    I packed the supplies I needed and had just put my family in the van, when I saw my neighbor, Gene.
    “Mark, what are you doing?” he asked. No wait, he had raced from his house with a baseball bat. “Mark!”
    “Leaving, running for the hills, I suppose. I’m thinking somewhere way out there.”
    “My God, Mark. You’re taking them in the van and you have no idea where you’re going or how long you’ll be driving?”
    “What choice do I have?”
    “You’re insane. Your choice is to hunker down. Stay safe. Don’t leave. Don’t get in the van.”
    “C ome with us, Gene.”
    Gene shook his head. “ No. Why would you do this?”
    “This is my family, I need to protect them. How much longer will we be safe from those things that are killing people?”
    “The undead, the zombies,” Gene said, “they won’t last forever. It’s dead flesh. It won’t last forever. Just hunker down.”
    I had no intention of following Gene’s advice, until I saw them.
    Two sauntered down from the yard of the house across from me, and four more came down the street.
    Gene saw them. His eyes shifted and he backed up. “I won’t stay out here and die out here. Godspeed.”
    I needed Godspeed, because I discovered at that moment, some were fast. The ones coming down the street were soon followed by a running pack. The pack split, and four of them pursued Gene.
    He swung out his bat like a baseball pro and fled into his home.
    I jumped in the van, and then they