The Rabid Mind

By Bruce Buckshot Hemming

 This is a story about a scientist that created the world's most deadly and contagious bio weapon known to man. It released from the lab with a little help and spreads around the world like wildfire.

The infected become like enraged beasts and attacks everyone in sight. These infected, enraged beasts soon out number the survivors.

A small group of people struggle to survive in a world gone mad. Is this the end of the human race? This is not a story of the undead rising. This is a story of humans being driven mad with a thirst for blood. Volume 1.

This is a real live Zombie Apocalypse.

National Geographic is airing a show very similar to this book. Saturday December, 21, 2013 at 9 pm EST
Title Zombie Earth here is the description of the show.
Is a “zombie apocalypse” simply a concept of fiction — or could an infectious disease REALLY turn humanity into a race of vicious, seething monsters? The truth just might shock you! NGC examines one all-too-real scenario — a pandemic caused by a mutated rabies virus. Experts from the fields of medicine, biology and the social sciences explain what could happen if humanity faced a deadly contagion for which there was no cure.

This book is intended for mature audiences due to gore, explicit sexual situations and language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Buckshot Hemming
• Release date: Dec 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781501488900

Bruce Buckshot Hemming

Bruce (Buckshot) Hemming, a retired military veteran and native of Michigan, has over forty years of experience in the outdoors, much of it in the extreme climates of Alaska and North Dakota, hunting with bows, muzzleloaders, and rifles, as well as fishing and trapping. Over the last fourteen years, Buckshot has taught wilderness survival all across the United States. He has written nine books, including the Amazon best-selling Grid Down series, a gripping post-apocalyptic tale.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Listening to the battle that raged outside, Sandra felt her stomach twisting and legs weakening beneath her. She made it to the window and leaned over as far as she could to see the box. There were two coyotes on top trying to get in, with the rest of them swarming around it.

Dad, you have to help him! They’re going to rip that box to shreds and eat him alive! Jim and Sandra then heard the popping sounds of a little .22, followed by howling echoing through the mountain.

Inside the box, Matt was struggling to stay alive, no longer caring where he hit the coyotes—put lead in them anywhere and they would die. He emptied the magazine and started reloading. His fingers were getting cold in the subzero weather and the box kept getting shoved back and forth. It was like being on a carnival ride from hell. Reloading the magazine, he shoved it in and racked one in. He struggled to refill the second magazine, but it was better to get it done now while he could still feel his fingers. Trying hard to clear his mind, he thought about what to do next. He knew there was only one way of getting out of this alive.

Several months earlier

Matthew Babcock was a simple yet attractive twenty-five year old. He weighed about 165 pounds and stood 5’10" tall. His friends called him Matt. He had light brown hair and soft hazel eyes. He wasn’t a large man, but wasn’t considered small either.

In his life, he had worked a variety of odd jobs such as a construction worker, a clerk at a gas station, a short order cook at the local diner and even a Wal-Mart. He took whatever job he could find. He wasn’t particular; he just needed the money. He had plans and a goal. To obtain what he wanted, he needed cash—lots of it. His one bedroom apartment in downtown Denver was small, sparse and disorganized, except when it came to his camping equipment. Matt loved the outdoors and spent his days off in the mountains backpacking, hiking, hunting, and fishing. He loved enjoying the beauty of the land. It made him feel secure and at peace—and it made everything else in the world seem useless.

When Matt worked for Wal-Mart he met a guy named Chris, who had moved to Denver from New Orleans. Chris told him about how bad it really had been during hurricane Katrina. He explained that had it not been for his relatives in Denver, he wouldn’t have had anywhere to go after leaving New Orleans. Like so many others, they had lost everything, except for what they could pack in their SUV. Matt always listened carefully to the horrible stories Chris would share about the chaos, destruction and violence that ensued.

Matt got to thinking about the world and disasters. It seemed every time he turned around there was some horrible force of nature working against mankind. It wasn’t long before he became concerned about his own future. What would happen to him if something like that occurred here in Denver, he wondered. He didn’t have any family left, except for his grandpa who was in a nursing home in Utah and some distant relatives who lived in North Carolina that he’d never even met.

It wasn’t long before it became clear to Matt that, if something horrific happened, he would be homeless or, even worse, dead. That thought didn’t sit too well with him. It made him start thinking about ways he could prepare for an uncertain future. He did a lot of research on the internet and found a world of information. He chatted with strangers and, through e-mails, asked about a million questions. It took some time to filter through all the details and come up with a plan on how to prepare for the unexpected. Some of the stuff he found was just plain crazy, similar to throwing a bucket of water on a raging inferno, like recommending a person have three days’ worth of food and water stored and ready to use. A lot of good that was going to do, he thought.

What if something happened that caused an emergency to last longer than three days? I’d be screwed, he muttered to himself. And that was something the people of New York discovered when the power went out years later.

Matt endured lots of frustration, sifting through a mountain of information before he managed to find some sensible and practical advice on how to prepare—and you didn’t have to be a millionaire to do it either.

It had been the likes of events such as 9/11 that became a real wake-up call for many Americans, the frightening realization that America wasn’t always safe. It took some time, but Matt eventually came to an important conclusion: 1) When disaster strikes, you’ll be paddling your own canoe with no help from anyone; 2) The government is nowhere to be found when the shit really hits the fan; 3) You can count on your fellow citizens to rob, kill, or rape you; and 4) The law will quickly disarm you—ensuring you’re truly alone and defenseless.

It wasn’t long before Matt decided to join a group of like-minded folks. People referred to them as preppers. He figured it was the best way to be prepared, should some horrible disaster befall his country again—whether natural or man-made. He considered all the possibilities and determined it was best not to be alone. There was safety in numbers but, most importantly, there would be others to help one another survive. The more people you have for protection, the better off you’ll be.

Prepping for a disaster was a life-style and tended to be based on being a rugged individual with respect for America’s historical pioneering spirit. Matt thought it was a good idea to join such a community, where he could learn to become more energy independent and learn practical skills for survival. He really liked the idea of having food and supplies stored for emergencies. Heck, the way the economy was going, an emergency could be due to losing your job or dealing with the effects of inflation. It seemed like such a logical thing.

The group Matt joined conducted Friday night meetings on a hundred acre property that Dr. Donald Brash, a member of his prepper group, had bought.

Dr. Brash had a ‘doomsday’ bunker built on his property by a company called Deep Earth Bunkers out of Dallas, Texas. The idea of the group was to band together to form a survival community before a disaster struck. They referred to it as SHTF—when the shit hits the fan. It was then that their knowledge, skills, resources and instincts would be put to the ultimate test.

Once a member was voted into the prepper’s group, Dr. Brash allowed that individual to buy up to five acres of land so they could set up their own retreat. In the meantime, supplies could be stored in the bunker for future use. The group had a required list of supplies that each family was obligated to have in place in order to become part of the group. It was called their entrance ticket. The items on the list met basic needs for themselves and any family members he or she brought along with them when the SHTF. The list was sensible and non-negotiable.

Each person joining the prepper’s group was required to have a year’s supply of food for each person and at least one Battle Rifle Standard AR-15, AK-47, SKS or FAL in .308. The idea behind this was to have standard ammunition in .223, 7.62 x 39, and .308. They also had to have one thousand rounds of ammo per battle rifle, in addition to having a .22 rifle or pistol with ten thousand rounds of ammo for it. Of course, first aid and other supplies to last a year—everything from cold medicine and aspirin, to lip balm, toilet paper, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, laundry soap, a battle vest, FRS radio, lanterns (with stored oil), extra batteries, a solar charger and open pollinated, non-hybrid, non-GMO garden seeds.

The group needed individuals with specialized skills to supervise endeavors for their little community. They wanted skilled individuals such as organic gardeners, doctors, dentists, mechanics, welders, etc. They also were looking for a construction foreman with knowledge in building root cellars and off the grid power structures. The group also actively sought out people with primitive and outdoor survival skills for hunting, fishing, trapping, identification of wild plants and blacksmithing. It was their way of getting rid of the big talkers who never put their money where their mouth was, and weeded out undesirables that didn’t want to be part of the team. If you weren’t serious about surviving a disaster, you definitely couldn’t afford it as a hobby. It had to be a real commitment.

Everyone was talking about the new television reality show, Doomsday Preppers. The preppers figured out that they had to maintain a low profile and never publicize their efforts. Stupid people, they often thought shaking their heads in disbelief. Going public was never a good idea and guaranteed nothing more than being put on several ‘government surveillance’ lists. The lessons from prior disasters taught them an important lesson—those damn two-legged predators would surely track them down when the SHTF. It made absolutely no sense to advertise that. Before people knew it, they were being monitored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and those people were instantly branded as threats; against what exactly, no one was really sure. Matt recalled a man featured on Doomsday Preppers, who, a few days after the episode aired, was declared mentally defective and incapable of owning guns. It was like a scene out of a movie — the government came in and seized it all. He was stripped of everything, including his dignity.

An unidentified neighborhood ‘busybody’ notified the local television station when Dr. Brash’s bunker was shipped to him. The station quickly sent out a local crew to film the ‘whackos’ for the evening news. Even though they only showed a quick clip of the bunker on pallets, the National Security Agency Fusion Center, operating out of a Utah Data Center monitoring most forms of media and communication, saw the story and put the group at the top of a high-priority surveillance list. After identifying the Doctor’s IP address on the internet, they attached a permanent ‘cookie’ to his computer, allowing them to track his entire internet browsing activity. It wasn’t long before they also authorized hacking into his personal email accounts for ‘national security purposes.’ The government had all the names and information of everyone in the group and tagged them just like Dr. Brash. That was how the Feds discovered everything about the groups plans for their ‘prepper community.’

The DHS and FBI jointly sent a CI (confidential informant) to infiltrate the group. They gave him a generous three hundred thousand dollar budget to bring down these ‘threats to national security’. The CI studied the group’s information and figured out a natural way to physically come in contact with some of the people in the group, so that they wouldn’t be suspicious of him. He posed as a home site buyer interested in a ‘secure’ location to live and prepare for a disaster. He had done this before and knew how to talk like them and convince people that he was one of them. He made them feel that he too was a prepper with an engineering background. He had tools, supplies, food and knowledge, and was welcomed into the group with open arms. The fledgling group couldn’t have known they had just invited in and embraced the enemy.

The land was carefully chosen, down in a valley with fertile ground for growing crops and setting up an orchard. The site was as near perfect as one could possibly want; there was a river with plenty of trout flowing past. There was also great hunting because it was close to the elk wintering grounds, in addition to the deer that lived on the property full time. There were an abundance of small game animals in the area too.

The group had complained a lot about not being able to find genuine like-minded people that really wanted to join, get prepared and get to work making their community. Matt knew this all too well. In the past, he had tentatively mentioned prepping to a neighbor of his. His neighbor, named Bill, lived on unemployment benefits and had no plans to get off them. He was determined to stretch it out for the full ninety-nine weeks too. The guy bragged that he would show up at job interviews slovenly and rude, thus ensuring he never got hired so he could keep collecting unemployment.

Matt had mentioned prepping and some of the reasons why he did it. His neighbor was very critical of Matt’s plan, calling him names and saying he was basically crazy. Matt couldn’t understand Bill’s reasoning at all. What was wrong with learning to grow your own food? What was wrong with hunting elk to save money on your food bill? What was wrong with wanting to own property and live an ‘off the grid’ lifestyle? Matt certainly did not consider himself a ‘nutcase.’

He worried about this for a while and then it hit him. Of course! This man depended on the working segment of society to pay for his free-loading lifestyle of unemployment. This man couldn’t even think about being responsible for his own survival in a true SHTF scenario and would survive only with a great deal of difficulty, if at all. Who wanted to take in a dead beat person whose main goal in life was to live off other people’s tax money? So, it was easier for him to just sit back and suck the teat of the liberal administration buying his vote with other people’s tax money. Government controlled media fostered class warfare, continually suggesting that the rich should give money to the professionally unemployed and career welfare recipients, whether they deserved a helping hand or not. In the end, Matt just gave up on Bill. Besides, Bill wasn’t the type of person the group was looking for anyway. He obviously would feel a sense of entitlement for benefits that weren’t his to have.

Each person or family in the group was required to learn some new skills. It could be starting fires from scratch, ham radio operation, canning and drying foods, building an affordable secure cabin, off grid power generation, basic first aid or gardening.

Knowledge was power and the preppers never stopped learning new things. After Matt bought his five acres from Dr. Brash, he would spend the weekends camping in a tent on his property. He was saving his money and was looking forward to building a cabin on his property the following year to live in. It would be nothing big, maybe 14x20 feet, and easy to heat with a wood stove. It wasn’t like he was planning on getting married and having a family anytime soon. If he found a woman he liked, she would have to be willing to live a rugged, frugal, self-sufficient lifestyle. He wanted any child of his to know how to survive off the land, instead of becoming a brain dead zombie, watching TV and playing video games all day.

Matt’s last girlfriend had been a total disaster. The one time she went camping with him, all she did was complain the whole time about the bugs, the wood smoke, the uncomfortable tent and the nasty tasting food, cooked over a fire. She also complained about being bored because she couldn’t use her cell phone or text any of her friends. Matt couldn’t wait to take her back to the big city and leave her there. It was all downhill from there. They hung on too long and finally she broke it off. Best thing that ever happened to him, he thought.

Matt had another neighbor down the street that he talked to occasionally. His name was Phil Davis and he was a retired cop from Denver. He had already built an A frame cabin with a loft, for getting away to hunt and fish. He and his wife Debbie were good people. They had two well-behaved kids — a son, Philip, 12, and a daughter, Kara, 10. Purely by chance, Phil owned the property next to Dr. Brash’s. It already had a well and septic system and offered Matt the ability to tie into their solar water pump. Matt would have to hire a ‘ditch witch’ to come in and run the line underground to his cabin once it was built. It would only cost him $300-400 dollars, plus another $1500 for his part of the well. Matt was overjoyed, considering what the cost to drill a well, as well as the solar pump outfit cost. He figured he got off very cheap!

Phil’s wife, Debbie, was in real estate and had made great money for several years. They had been smart and saved most of it. After the bust in 2008, she got out of the real estate business and decided to be a stay at home mom. She stubbornly hung on to the money, telling her husband it was for something important in the future.

Phil and Debbie were the first couple to join with Dr. Brash. They paid cash for everything that was needed for their supplies. Debbie was ecstatic. No matter what, they had a place to go to that they owned free and clear and it was stocked with a year’s worth of supplies for all of them. It was a vacation home, a hunting camp, a survival retreat, or whatever. It was perfect. It was a great load off her mind, knowing they had something solid to fall back on in these uncertain economic times.

Chapter 2

Government grant money was hard to come by, so Dr. Ben Dulling, UC Berkeley, was going to make sure his project was a success. The students he had helping him had no idea of the true nature of his experiment. As far as they knew, they were trying to help develop a vaccine to prevent Alzheimer’s, using rats as the subject vehicle. Unknown to the students, they were helping to create a biological weapon for the U.S. government, using rats as a vector. Theoretically, crates containing thousands of infected rats could be parachuted into target cities, breaking open on impact. Rats would quickly advance throughout the city, biting and spreading the infection. Within thirty days the population would be decimated. The military would then napalm the whole place and continue to commandeer the rest of the country. That was the ultimate goal of the experiment.

Part of the goal was to genetically alter the rabies virus to cause highly-increased infectivity, but diminished mortality. The plan was simplicity itself: virologists would splice influenza A virus (H3N2) genetic material directly into the region of rabies virus’ responsible for how it was transmitted. The rabies would then borrow various genes from the flu virus, making it easily transmissible with a shortened incubation period, and largely non-lethal. The subtle component of the genetic engineering involved altering the way the virus replicated itself, in order to modify the specific mode of transmission — either by being bitten by an infected organism or by contact with infected fluids, but not by the respiratory route.

The respiratory route of transmission was eliminated in order to control the pace of the epidemic. One fundamental principle of virology is that if the spread of the virus and tempo of the infection are too rapid, all the ‘hosts’ die too fast and the epidemic burns itself out. With these genetic modifications, people would be infected quickly with the virulent rabies virus and all would progress to the acute neurological period, exhibiting anxiety, depression and violent behavior. However, and most importantly, they would not all die, thanks to the influenza genetic material. This would be a very delicate process.

The government had some stringent requirements for production of the new virus: it had to be cheap to produce and have at least a 50% survival rate of the victims at any one time. The idea was that, at the acute neurological symptom point in the infection, many victims would be highly infectious, leading to a pandemic and ultimately killing more off.

Unfortunately for Dr. Dulling, testing of the new virus in rats was only producing a 20% survival rate, too low to satisfy the requirements of the military. If he could get the military brass to agree to lower the survivability requirement to 35%, he might just be able to pull it off. In addition, logistically, one of the most difficult tasks would be coming up with a strategy to manage large numbers of people in the violent neurological stage of the disease. He huffed to himself, that’s the military’s damned problem.

The phone rang, breaking his thoughts. Hello?

Dr. Dulling, just the man I was looking for. This is General Wright. Do you have a minute?

The doctor politely answered. Yes. What can I do for you, General?

I understand you are having some success with our little project? The General probed.

Yes, General. We have been able to increase the survivability rate up to 20% on our last live test. General, our current data indicates a cap on percentage of survivors. I’d like to ask you to consider lowering the target survivability numbers.

Actually, doctor, the reason I am calling is to let you know Congress is on our back to save money, so we are going to have to cut corners somewhere. I am authorized to drop the 50% requirements to 35%, if you can have it finished by the end of this fiscal year. That would be October first. If you can achieve the 35% benchmark, we can most likely renew your grant money. The Defense Department budget allowed eighty billion dollars for Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation. I’ll grant you, it seems like more than enough money. Unfortunately, the DoD’s Inspector General made an internal audit public, revealing enormous unrecognized budgetary discrepancies. Further, the Inspector could not rule out that these shortfalls were not the result of fraud, waste and abuse, so we are really under the microscope now. If you cannot get those kinds of numbers, then unfortunately we will have to shut down the project and the grant money will come to an end.

Dr. Dulling quickly responded. I understand, general, two months. Just give me two months — I believe I can come in under the wire, so to speak.

Thank you, doctor. Don't let me down. I need not remind you of the urgency of this project and keen interest in the final product extends all the way up the chain of command.

I'll do my best, general. Thank you.

Good day, Dr. Dulling. Please contact me A.S.A.P. with some results.

I will do that, sir.

Two months was not enough time to perform further intricate genetic manipulation of the virus. Dr. Dulling thought back to when he had fudged some data back in grad school. He was lucky not to get caught back then, but in this case it was worth the risk. He was sure these stupid jarheads wouldn’t know the difference. With that, he decided to alter the data to make it look like he had achieved the desired military specs. It would be easy to do and he knew it would even fool others in his field if they saw the report. Besides, he was almost there now. He assuaged his guilt by thinking of the Christmas bonus he’d get from the university for landing another huge government grant. It would simply be icing on the cake! The real power was for others to recognize his genius.

He also needed a lab assistant to work in the isolation lab at his home, where the real work for his experiment took place. An intern working on a master’s degree would be perfect. Preferably, he wanted to hire a girl. She could do all the work and get her degree, and he would get all the credit — for both of them. Hopefully, the young intern would be willing to show him some ‘gratitude’ some night, should they be working late. He broke into a smile. What wonderful opportunities opened up with grant money! Dr. Dulling got out his laptop to outline a lab guide for the students.

Dr. Dulling reviewed the Military Specs about why rabies was chosen in the first place and the goal of the bio weapon.

Rabies, from the Latin meaning ‘madness’, is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). It is zoonotic (i.e., transmitted by beasts), most commonly by a bite from an infected subject. For humans, rabies is almost invariably fatal, particularly if post exposure medications are not given before the onset of severe symptoms. The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain, followed by death.

The incubation period of the disease is usually a few months in humans, depending on the distance the virus must travel to reach the central nervous system. Once the rabies virus reaches the central nervous system and symptoms begin to show, the infection is untreatable and fatal within days.

The period between infection and the first flu-like symptoms is normally 2 to 12 weeks, but can be as long as two years. Symptoms progress to slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror and hallucinations, progressing to delirium. The production of large quantities of