Plague

By T. Joseph Browder

One man, alone with his children. One world, in the grip of the worst viral outbreak in human history. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No place is safe. What lengths would you go to to protect the life of your child?

They kill. Violently and without warning. They are monsters. They prey on the living. They are not zombies. They are something much worse.

Prepare yourself for T. Joseph Browder's darkest and most controversial tale yet. It's not scary because it could happen, it's terrifying because someday, in the near future, it might.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Joseph Browder
• Release date: Jun 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311913081

T. Joseph Browder

T. Joseph Browder was born in Lima, Ohio in 1969. An ordained minister, he holds Doctorates in Religious Humanities, Metaphysics, and an honorary Doctorate in Divinity. A student of Human Psychology, his writing is driven by an insatiable curiosity for what makes people behave the way they do, make the choices they make, and feel the way they feel. Drawing on an intimate knowledge of the evil alive in humanity, his work centers on the darker aspects of life, the sudden changes and left turns life throws at all of us, and how we react to those things that lurk around the next corner, and go bump in the night.Joe currently lives in Kansas with his wife, Marie and is hard at work on a novel.

Book preview

PLAGUE

by T. Joseph Browder

Smashwords edition

Copyright © 2014 by T. Joseph Browder

Cover Art by T. Joseph Browder

ISBN 9-7-81-311913-081

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For all of us.

The sound the axe made when I slammed it into the top of my wife’s head was not what I’d expected. CHUNK! Or maybe THWACK! Like a sound effect you’d hear in a horror movie. But what it sounded like (and I’ve had a great deal of time to replay that moment was SPLORTCH! A wet but solid sound, like dropping a coconut half, meat out, onto a hardwood floor. It was such a disconcerting sound. So disconcerting that I loosened my hold on the handle of the axe.

That was a mistake. I had intended to bring the axe down near the front of her skull, taking out the prefrontal lobe and ending her life in one clean stroke. As it happened, Christine ducked her head as I swung and the axe took her on the crown, almost dead center. Instead of killing her outright I’d severed the connection between the left and right brain, which is not always fatal.

Urg! she cried, then: Fucker!

She stumbled backwards taking the axe, firmly embedded in her skull, with her.

Our two girls, Janey, ten, and Trisha, seven, were cowering behind me, screaming. Their screams ratcheted up a notch when blood began to flow down their mother’s face, around her nose, and into her wide open mouth, staining her teeth red. No blood had flown from the wound and painted the walls. Not yet. That’s pure Hollywood bullshit. You get the first blow for free. Any forensic scientist will tell you that. The gore doesn’t start to fly until you pull the weapon back for the second blow—and the third.

I recovered from that shockingly hard but wet sound, braced myself to retrieve the axe and strike a second time—and was unnerved by the sight of Christine reaching up and gripping the handle of the axe. Pushing it up, then pulling it down, grunting with the effort. The axe made a squeaking sound as she worked it to and fro, like wet timbers rubbing together. More blood