Earth's New Beginning: The Sleeping Death Contagion

By John Gleed

In Gleed's first novel, a highly infectious virus (The Sleeping Death Contagion â SDC) kills most of the Earth's population in less than three months. In only three days, the virus causes the death of nearly every infected victim as they sleep. Only a rare and random genetic immunity to the fatal effects of the virus leaves less than one in a hundred thousand survivors.

This story follows the lives of six different survivors in Canada, England, Kenya, China, France and the United States for the first nine months after the disease strikes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456605384

Book preview

strikes.

Prologue

This story tells how the human race came to a rapid near-extinction early in the twenty-first century. The cause was not in any way related to the folly of modern man. No thermonuclear or biological war, pollution catastrophe, or any other kind of human created disaster played a part.

This catastrophe had its beginnings in outer space, more than four hundred years ago. A burst of cosmic rays, originating from an ancient supernova struck a cluster of organic molecules within a comet traveling far outside the orbit of the farthest planet, Pluto. A unique chemical reaction resulted in the formation of dangerous new organic molecules.

For three centuries, the molecules remained harmless in the cold vacuum of outer space. When the comet’s path finally came closer to the Sun, a near encounter with Saturn’s third moon, Prometheus, caused the comet to break up into hundreds of smaller pieces.

One piece containing the new molecules, measuring about ten feet in diameter, was now set onto a new path which would become a collision course with the planet Earth, about a hundred years in the future.

On Thursday, July 9, 2015, the collision with Earth was imminent. The comet fragment had passed within twenty million miles of the Sun and was now on its path returning to deep space. However, Earth was now directly in its path. At nine in the evening, some residents of the town of Glens Falls in northern New York State saw a shooting star in the southeast. The few people who saw the shooting star had no idea of its upcoming impact on their lives and on the lives of all the seven billion or so people living on Earth.

After its fiery journey through Earth’s atmosphere, only a small snowball remained at the point of impact, in a cow pasture about five miles from town.

The dust and debris from the violent impact with the ground were spread over an area of about a square mile. The dust fell with the morning dew as a light, almost invisible coating on the grass. In the dawn’s early light of the following day, the cows continued their normal feeding activities, the previous night’s loud and bright explosion at the far end of their field now forgotten.

However, the milk the cows provided at their Friday evening milking was contaminated with minute quantities of the now-active organic molecules created more than four hundred years earlier in deep space.

The processed milk was delivered to the Glens Falls supermarket on Saturday morning, just in time for the weekend grocery shoppers. Unknown to anyone, the organic molecules had largely survived their journey through the Earth’s atmosphere, the cows’ digestive systems and the milk-processing factory. A small number of the milk containers on the grocery shelves included enough of the contaminant to initiate the final phase of the end of the world as we knew it.

On Sunday morning, Jim Henderson got up early to complete the preparation for a presentation he was making the following day in New York City. His wife, Elaine, and their two children slept in.

Jim helped himself to cornflakes with the milk his wife had purchased in Glens Falls the previous day. He was already suffering from the early symptoms of a summer cold. He was not concerned because he usually did not suffer much when he caught a cold.

He would however have been horrified if he had realized what was about to happen inside his body when the cold virus encountered the contaminant now in his bloodstream.

The contaminant reacted with the DNA of the cold virus and caused a unique and dangerous mutation. This mutation resulted in the creation of a completely new virus, with a much more serious impact on the human body than the original cold virus. The circumstances of the reaction of the rare extra-terrestrial contaminant with Jim’s specific cold virus were unique. No one else who consumed the contaminated milk was infected by that same cold virus from which the mutated virus originated. Jim was the only victim at this time.

However, the new virus grew and multiplied in Jim’s body. It spread to the people he loved in exactly the same way as the common-cold virus did. The virus was highly contagious. Because it was a completely new strain, no one had antibodies in their bloodstreams able to defend against it. By the end of the day on Sunday, Jim, Elaine and both of their children were infected with the new virus. They did not know, because the early symptoms of this virus were no different from, or more serious than a mild summer cold.

The mild cold symptoms that all the family were experiencing the next morning were not enough to prevent them from going about their normal Monday activities.

Jim drove to Albany to catch an early flight to New York City. He was going there to make a presentation to executives from all over the country at a trade conference for police security specialists. Elaine went to her regular job at the Glens Falls public library. Michael went enthusiastically to his summer computer day camp. Susan went, less enthusiastically, to her summer job as a sales clerk in the local hardware store.

In the course of their day, they had dealings with a large number of people in Glens Falls and, unknowingly, spread the mutated virus to many of their contacts.

On Monday, after a long hard day and with an early start on Tuesday ahead of them, the children were already in bed by ten. Jim and Elaine also decided to have an early night. They still were suffering from mild headaches and running noses but they did not suspect they were infected with something much more serious than a summer cold.

Jim, whose infection with the new virus was now more than thirty hours old, would never find out.

The mature cells of the new virus that were more than twenty-four hours old had started to produce small quantities of a lethal enzyme not usually found in the human body until close to death.

When we go to sleep, our brains naturally produce essential chemical messengers to tell the heart, lungs and other vital organs to keep on functioning even though we are fast asleep. The lethal enzyme produced by the new virus slowed and eventually cut off the brain’s production of these chemical messengers.

While Jim was awake, the presence of the enzyme in his body did not matter, but as he fell into a deep sleep, it became fatal. Without the production of the chemical messengers in sufficient quantities, his vital organs quietly shut down. His breathing gradually slowed and became shallower and, just after midnight, his heart stopped beating. Thus, he became the first victim of the Sleeping Death Contagion, or SDC, as it became known.

Elaine, who was asleep in their queen-size bed beside him, did not notice anything wrong or particularly different, except he was not snoring loudly as he usually did when he was in a deep sleep. When she was wakened by their alarm at seven the next morning, she was devastated to find she could not wake Jim up and that his body was cold. In a blind panic, she discovered he was not breathing and she could find no pulse.

She had no way of knowing that Jim was to be the first of more than seven billion SDC fatalities, including herself and her children.

Part 1: The Contagion Spreads

In shock and despair, Elaine called their next-door neighbors and close friends, Peter and Mary West. They came over immediately to help her cope with the tragedy of Jim’s death. They called 911. An ambulance was immediately dispatched and it arrived in less than ten minutes.

The ambulance attendants confirmed Elaine’s fears. They estimated that Jim had died several hours earlier.

They were very perplexed about the cause of death and they immediately transferred Jim’s body into the ambulance to take it to the hospital. They were sure that the medical officer in charge would order an immediate autopsy to determine how and why Jim had died.

Elaine and the children were in shock and, in their misery, hardly noticed the mild cold like symptoms of runny noses and mild headaches from the infection passed on from Jim on Sunday. The comforting hugs and embraces that Peter and Mary gave to Elaine, Michael and Susan inevitably resulted in them becoming infected with the deadly SDC virus themselves.

In this, they joined a growing number of people in Glens Falls already infected by the virus. Most of the Glens Falls Library staff members, who had been exposed to Elaine during her workday, were already suffering the summer-cold symptoms of SDC. Several library users served by Elaine the previous day were also infected.

Although Michael did not attend his computer day camp on Tuesday because of his father’s death, all twelve of the students and the two teachers at the day camp were already infected. Their close contact with Michael on Monday had sealed their fate.

Susan had a busy day on the cash register at the hardware store on Monday, serving almost a hundred customers. She had taken her lunch break with two friends at the pizza restaurant next door. As a result, and due to the very infectious nature of SDC, many of the people she had contact with were infected and destined to be among the first victims.

By Tuesday, SDC had now infected more than a hundred residents of Glens Falls and the immediate area. The virus that had been spread by Elaine and the children was extensive. However, it was localized to the Glens Falls area at this point.

This was not true at all for Jim. His Monday trip to New York had given SDC the opportunity to spread its deadly infection across the United States and to several other countries and continents. This was long before anyone recognized the grave threat to the entire human race.

On the Monday-morning flight from Albany to New York, Jim was sitting beside an older couple who had just completed a three-week visit with their son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren in Albany. They were returning to their home, a small village in southern Italy.

The Albany-to-New York Laguardia flight was the first leg in the long trip home. They caught the Monday-evening Alitalia flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Rome. Their close contact with Jim on the short flight was enough to infect them both. This ensured SDC was able to cross the Atlantic to begin a first point of infection in Europe.

On the crowded airport bus Jim caught from LaGuardia to Manhattan, he was in close contact with several people. Most, like himself, were visiting New York on business. They had come there from all over the northeastern United States. They were just in town for the day.

On Monday night, they returned to their homes, taking the virus from their contact with Jim with them. Several of the airport employees who had been exposed to Jim took SDC into their homes across New York City.

The trade show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was well attended by people from Boston, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami. There were many local attendees from the New York area. There were also international visitors to the conference from Ottawa, London, Paris and Stockholm. Jim came into close contact with many of these people as he attended a couple of the seminars in the morning and early afternoon.

Later in the afternoon, he gave his own presentation on the practical use of advanced fingerprint-recognition systems. This was a topic of great interest to many of the people at the conference. The conference room where he gave his presentation was filled to capacity.

More than a hundred people attended his session, including many of the international visitors. Some of the attendees stayed on after the formal presentation to ask Jim specific questions and seek advice on carrying out pilot projects of their own.

Because of the extended exposure in a room with poor air circulation, almost half the attendees at the session left already infected by the SDC virus. In Jim’s shared taxi back to the airport that evening and on his flight back to Albany, more people were infected.

Because Monday was the last day of the conference, most of the infected people returned to their homes that same evening. By the time Jim went to bed at eleven on Monday, the SDC virus he had caught on Sunday had already infected more than two hundred new victims. About a hundred were in the Glens Falls area and another fifty were in the New York City area.

SDC had already been carried into nearly thirty homes in Boston, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami and Ottawa. The flights carrying it west to Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles and east to Italy, England, France and Sweden were still in the air when Jim died in his sleep just after midnight. In the next few hours, they would all land and take their deadly disease to start more than twenty new points of infection. The deadly contagion, although not yet diagnosed by anyone, was now unstoppable.

The SDC virus grew quickly in the bloodstreams of the infected victims. In less than twenty-four hours from initial infection, the virus was sufficiently potent to begin infecting new victims who were exposed to their host. After thirty-six to forty-eight hours, the fatal brain enzyme produced by the virus was in sufficient concentration in the victims’ bodies to cause death during their next period of deep sleep.

On Tuesday, the mild cold symptoms were starting to be felt by many of the people infected during the previous day. The infected inhabitants of the Glens Falls area were already spreading the disease to their family, friends and work contacts. By the end of the day, SDC had spread to almost five hundred residents of Glens Falls.

In the New York area, the contagion was also growing rapidly. By the end of Tuesday, more than three hundred people were infected. In Boston, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Ottawa, small pockets of SDC were taking hold, with more than a hundred people infected. In Europe, the contagion had spread to London, Rome, Paris and Stockholm.

In the teaming European airports, those infected in New York mingled with passengers from around the world and the SDC virus continued its deadly journey to all continents on Earth.

On the flight to Los Angeles and in LAX after landing, the infection was passed on to travelers to Mexico, Brazil and Australia.

On Tuesday night, Elaine and her children went to bed early after an exhausting and distressing day. Elaine’s mother, Jean, had come to stay with them from Albany. Jim’s parents were arriving from Chicago the next day.

Elaine still had no idea about the cause of Jim’s death. The chief medical examiner at the hospital had reviewed his case and ordered an autopsy. The autopsy had been carried out in the afternoon, but no reason for death had been found. Further blood and body fluid tests had been ordered for the following day. At this point, Jim’s death was a single isolated case without any explanation or potential diagnosis. No one saw any cause for alarm or the need to initiate any kind of emergency isolation program. Even if they had, it would have already been too late.

Michael finally went to sleep at about ten. Elaine and Susan stayed awake in their grief and worry about the future for another hour. Finally, the stress and fatigue won the battle and they both fell asleep.

Jean looked in on them just after eleven. She did not go into their rooms, for fear of waking them, but was relieved to find all three were still and quiet. She went to bed in the spare bedroom and quickly fell asleep herself, not knowing that Michael had already stopped breathing and that Elaine and Susan were close to death. They would expire before midnight. The SDC virus had claimed three more victims.

On Wednesday morning, Jean woke up late, at about ten. She was surprised, on seeing the time on her bedside alarm clock, that the house was still quiet and Elaine and the children were not yet awake. Surprise slowly changed to worry as she lay in her bed for another half-hour, waiting for signs of life from the rest of the family. Her wait was futile.

She finally got up and quickly got dressed. She first went into Elaine’s bedroom to wake her. Elaine had been dead for several hours. In panic, Jean screamed for Susan and Michael. Her anguish multiplied tenfold when she discovered they were also dead. Finally, she called 911 and in an ominous repeat of the previous day, an ambulance was quickly dispatched.

The ambulance crew was the same one that had come to the house after Jim’s death the day before. They immediately recognized something was seriously wrong and felt the first feelings of concern for their own well-being.

They made an urgent radio call to the hospital and talked to the chief medical examiner. He directed them to transport the three latest victims to Albany General Hospital for more comprehensive post-mortem examinations. The ambulance crew put on gloves, masks and gowns in a vain attempt to avoid being infected themselves. They could not have realized that the SDC virus had already infected them twenty-four hours earlier, during their first visit to the Henderson home.

The Glens Falls medical examiner phoned the Albany General Hospital chief medical examiner with the details of the Henderson cases. He added a strong, but hardly necessary, warning to take every precaution in handling the bodies and performing the required autopsies. He also sent an urgent email to the New York State Health Department in Albany. After some further consideration, he sent a copy of the email to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.

The Monday SDC infections that started in Glens Falls and New York through contacts with the Henderson family were now more than thirty-six hours old. The deadly enzyme was now present in lethal concentrations in the bodies of the more than two hundred next victims. The only symptoms being felt by these people at this time were the slight headache and runny nose of a mild summer cold. They continued to be safe until they went to sleep.

They carried out their normal Wednesday activities, spreading SDC to many more people in Glens Falls, Albany, New York City and other locations across the country. The contagion was now also being spread rapidly in Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and Australia. This was all due to the direct and indirect contacts made by Jim Henderson during his Monday trip to New York.

By the end of day on Wednesday, almost five thousand people on all continents except Antarctica were infected by SDC and were doomed to die. Because there had been only four deaths and because all were in one family, no newspaper, radio station, or TV station had yet picked up on what soon was to become the biggest news story ever.

On Wednesday night, this was about to change.

As night fell in Europe, the first deaths outside Glens Falls came in Italy, England, France and Sweden as the infected victims went to bed and fell asleep. Five to six hours later, as the night progressed on its east-to-west path, the first victims in eastern North America went to sleep. In less than two hours, most of them were dead. As happened with the Hendersons, most of the deaths were not discovered by family members until Thursday morning.

The isolated deaths in Europe did not cause much of a stir except among the family members and friends affected directly. In Glens Falls and New York, this was not true. By noon Thursday in Glens Falls, about a hundred deaths had been reported. In New York, more than fifty died in their sleep fatalities had been discovered. The numbers would grow during the day as family, friends and co-workers missed people who lived alone.

The concern and sometimes near-panic reactions by people who heard the breaking news on TV and radio was understandable, especially for those closest to the reported deaths. On Thursday afternoon, some farsighted people recognized and acted on the need to get away from where the unexplained deaths were occurring. The people of the Glens Falls area began to leave town in large numbers. Because many of them were already infected, this action caused SDC to spread more widely and more rapidly.

In New York, the reaction was somewhat less dramatic. The proportion of people in the larger population directly affected was so much smaller. The result, however, was the same. People began to leave the New York area in growing numbers, some of them taking the infection with them. Isolated deaths in Boston, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta were not yet connected to the events in New York State.

The information about the Glens Falls and New York deaths was communicated in an urgent email bulletin to both to the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York. After conferring with their respective health-administration officials and with each other in a brief conference call, they concluded, correctly, that they now had a major health emergency on their hands. A designated emergency-response task force was initiated to plan and coordinate the response for the city and the state. They also communicated with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and with the senators and congress representatives from New York.

An urgent call was placed to the president’s office at the White House. The president was informed about the health emergency on Thursday evening, just before a state dinner to honor the visit of the new president of Thailand.

However, the deadly SDC virus was already present inside the White House.

One of the security consultants who had attended Jim Henderson’s presentation at the trade show in New York on Monday had meetings with some of the members of the White House Secret Service detail on Tuesday. SDC was now spreading through the White House staff. When the president called an emergency meeting after the state dinner to discuss the New York State health crisis, several of the meeting participants were already infected. By the end of the meeting, the president was also infected and his fate was sealed, together with the seventy thousand others now infected around the world.

As the sun rose in Washington on Friday, July 17, 2015, it was already midday in Europe. The seriousness of the situation was being recognized there for the first time. Well over a hundred unexplained sleeping deaths were reported in Europe.

As the morning progressed in North America, sleeping deaths were being reported in large numbers. There were more than five hundred deaths in Glens Falls, three hundred in New York City and nearly two hundred across the rest of North America, spread over more than twenty cities and towns. The newspapers and TV and radio newscasts were now leading with this story and, as the number of reported deaths increased, the tone of the reports was changing from factual to worried.

CDC in Atlanta was the scene of feverish activity, putting a strong emphasis on finding a diagnosis for the deaths, but without any success. The mild cold like symptoms suffered by most of the victims had been noted, but none of the autopsies had revealed any major conditions common to the victims that could explain their premature deaths. Until the CDC scientists found a cause of death, they could not even begin the search for a cure or prevention mechanism. The team responsible for tracking and isolating the infection was now very worried indeed.

It was obvious the original source of the SDC contagion had been from Glens Falls or New York because of the number of reported deaths from these areas. The spread to other areas and even other countries and continents had been so rapid that any kind of isolation or quarantine plan was doomed to failure.

His staff was updating the president on an hourly basis, who was now himself suffering from what seemed like early cold symptoms. As the reported death toll increased, it became obvious this was a very serious situation.

On Friday afternoon, the president held an emergency session with the objective of coming up with an action plan. The possibility of setting up designated quarantine areas around the country, with a total ban on movement into and out of the areas, was discussed for the first time.

The practical and legal problems involved in implementing such a quarantine plan were recognized, with the large number of people and different jurisdictions involved. The president and his staff decided, with the approval of the CDC experts in attendance at the meeting, to postpone the decision until the next morning. The numbers of deaths in Europe and the rest of the world were not yet large enough to warrant implementation of quarantine measures there.

As government officials were considering quarantines and other emergency measures, the SDC contagion was continuing to spread rapidly. By the end of the day, about six hundred thousand people were infected around the world. Nearly half a million people in North America and over a hundred thousand in Europe were suffering from the mild cold like SDC symptoms that would cause them to die in their sleep sometime in the next two days.

Panic in Glens Falls was rampant. More than five hundred people were already dead. By Friday evening, more than half of the population had fled the area. Since nearly all the people who lived in the Glens Falls area were already infected, they were taking SDC with them wherever they went.

In New York City more than three hundred were dead and about three hundred thousand were infected. The exit from the city was becoming a major traffic problem and a public TV broadcast by the mayor on Friday evening had not improved the situation. His pleas for New Yorkers to stay calm and not to leave the city were ignored. The broadcast had accelerated the panic and urgency to get out of the city as rapidly as possible.

Saturday was the day that brought the realization to most governments that the spreading contagion was more serious than anything ever previously seen. A few forward-thinking people saw a threat of the total extinction of the human race.

As the day broke in Europe, more than a thousand people were dead. In North America, more than seven thousand had died in their sleep during the previous night. The number of deaths in the rest of the world was relatively small, fewer than two hundred. However, the unexplained sleeping deaths had reached every continent. It was now recognized as being caused by the same infection claiming much higher numbers of victims in North America and Europe, where panic had by now become endemic.

Saturday was the most difficult day in the president’s life. His chief of staff had awakened him at four in the morning when the news of large numbers of sleeping deaths had started to come in from England, France, Italy and Sweden. The planned federal health emergency meeting that had been set up for ten that morning was brought forward to seven.

By the time the meeting started, the news from Europe, Asia and Africa was even more alarming. When the meeting got into session, the reports of deaths in cities in North America started to come in, as people woke up to find family members, lovers and friends had died in their sleep. The number of reported deaths in Glen Falls and New York was especially horrifying. Closer to home, by nine, more than a hundred deaths had been reported in the Washington area.

The barely controlled panic of the meeting participants nearly got out of control when the meeting was interrupted. An aide reported that three members of the White House Secret Service detail had died in their sleep the previous night. It was a credit to the president and his staff attending the meeting that only two staffers abruptly excused themselves on hearing the news. They deserted their White House duties to immediately collect their own families and flee Washington.

As the information now available was reviewed, the connection to the mild cold symptoms experienced by most victims prior to their sleeping death was brought to light. Most of the people in the meeting noticed that nearly everyone in the room, including the president himself, seemed to be suffering from a runny nose.

The director of the CDC despondently admitted how little useful information his organization had discovered about the contagion. A firm diagnosis of SDC still had not been possible. The cause of death was uncertain, despite a large number of autopsies. No cure or preventive measures had been identified. The only definite recommendation he was able to make was the immediate implementation of the quarantine plan that had been tentatively discussed the previous evening.

The meeting ended before ten, after the CDC report. Most of the participants hurried off to see their personal physicians about their cold symptoms. The president’s doctor was summoned immediately. The medical advice obtained by these most powerful people in the country was no different and no more helpful than what the rest of the population were receiving.

At eleven, the president had given the unprecedented executive order to mobilize all federal and state authorities. He announced a complete quarantine of all urban areas with populations of more than a million. All public and private air travel was suspended within the United States. All flights to and from the United States were canceled indefinitely. Interstate highways were closed, as were all U.S. border crossings. The steps taken were much more far-reaching than after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

At noon, the president addressed the nation on television and radio. After explaining the gravity of the crisis, he urged everyone to remain calm and stay at home. Despite his best intentions, the president’s actions and his address to the nation made the panic arising around the country even worse than it already was.

On Saturday afternoon, people were on the move across America by every means available to them. Because it was a weekend, the reaction to flee was much easier to act upon. In most areas of the country, the quarantine orders were impossible to enforce and the spread of SDC was accelerated and broadened.

The near-extinction of all human life in North America was now inevitable. It would progress at an exponential pace. The news of the U.S. actions spread quickly around the world, accelerating the panic everywhere.

By midnight in Washington, the number of infected had grown to well over a million in North America, with a slightly smaller number in Europe. SDC had reached every large center of population in North America and Europe. Almost three million people were infected worldwide.

The crisis that had occupied the president’s day had left him in despair. When the last meeting ended at midnight, he was in desperate need of sleep. He went to his bed reluctantly, leaving orders to be awakened if there were any major developments. He lay awake for almost an hour, worrying about what the next day would bring. He need not have worried about his capability to deal with events the following day. His exhaustion finally overcame him and he went into a deep sleep. He was dead within an hour.

North America died quickly, with fifty thousand dead on Sunday, five hundred thousand on Monday, five million on Tuesday and fifty million on Wednesday. With few exceptions, by the end of the week, all of the more than three hundred million inhabitants of North America were dead.

Europe died almost as quickly, with fifteen thousand dead on Sunday, two hundred thousand on Monday, three million on Tuesday and fifty million on Wednesday. As with North America, by the end of the week, nearly all of the seven hundred million people who lived in Europe were dead.

By Monday July 27, 2015, only two weeks after SDC had claimed its first victim, most of the seven billion or so inhabitants of the Earth were dead. The Earth was now truly ready for a new beginning.

Part 2: The Survivors

The nature of SDC was such that it could have resulted in the extinction of the human race. The extremely infectious nature of the SDC virus combined with the short time period to fatality had catastrophic results.

The speed and high rate of infection after any type of contact ensured SDC would spread widely and rapidly. It was unfortunate that Jim Henderson’s trip to the trade show in New York ensured the rapid spread of the contagion, both within the United States and internationally. Any type of isolation or quarantine plan was doomed to fail right from the start.

Any attempts at diagnosis and research into potential cures or preventive measures were aborted by the fast spread of the contagion. This resulted in the rapid breakdown in civilization in all locations that became infected. When the nature and results of SDC became widely known, the natural impulse to flee just accelerated the rate of spreading. This ensured that even isolated communities were invaded by fleeing infected people and quickly became infected themselves with almost one hundred percent fatality.

The extinction of the human race would have been complete within less than three months except for a very fortunate accident of nature. On a random basis, one person in every hundred thousand or so had been born with a natural genetic immunity. These people were as susceptible to SDC as anyone else. However, the infection did not generate the deadly enzyme in sufficient quantity to affect their normal body mechanisms during their sleep.

They caught SDC like everyone else. However, the only symptoms they experienced were the runny nose and slight headache. In most cases, they lived to see all their family, friends and all the people in the communities where they lived die in their sleep in a period of less than a week.

For many of the survivors, this experience was just too much to bear. When they realized what had happened and that they were now very much alone, they had no desire to continue living and they committed suicide by whatever means were available to them. Many just stopped eating and drinking and died from dehydration or starvation.

The random nature of the genetic immunity ensured that the survivors were spread across the world in approximate proportion to their original population. This was irrespective of race, gender and age and was in a ratio of about one survivor per hundred thousand. Earth’s population was reduced from more than seven billion to about seventy thousand by the end of July. In the vocabulary of twentieth-century environmentalists, Homo sapiens had suddenly become a critically endangered species.

The total population of North America was now about three thousand. Most of these people were in the big cities. In spite of the panic-stricken urge to flee that occurred in most centers of population, the infection and dying was too quick to allow many people to act on their impulse to flee.

The cities quickly became very unhealthy and unpleasant places to be because of the large number of unburied bodies quickly decaying in the summer heat. Because most people had died in their sleep and in their own beds, most of the bodies in the cities were confined to their homes. Shops, factories and offices were largely free of bodies. It was in the living spaces—the apartments, townhouses and suburbs—that the smell of decay quickly became intolerable.

The SDC survivors in the large cities either left them for the surrounding countryside or moved into the offices and shopping centers. The nearby smaller towns and villages became the most common places of choice for most survivors. They were close to an adequate quantity of food and other supplies. It was easy enough to make a new home without requiring too much effort to dispose of the dead.

The same pattern occurred outside North America, with about seven thousand survivors in all of Europe and about sixty thousand around the rest of the world.

Canada: The Survivors

In the small town of Morrisburg, Ontario, Michael Warren was the only survivor. Morrisburg was situated on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, across from the small town of Waddington in northern New York State and forty miles south of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa. Prior to SDC, the population of the town was about three thousand.

Michael had lived with his parents in Morrisburg all twenty-one years of his life. At the time of the catastrophe, he was working as a junior auto mechanic at the local Canadian Tire store. He became aware of the deadly contagion when the first news reports of unexplained deaths in Glens Falls were broadcast on the local radio on Thursday, July 16. Even though Glens Falls was only an hour’s drive from Morrisburg, he did not give this news much attention. He went on with his regular day at Canadian Tire, without any real concerns beyond what he was going to do with his friends on the weekend.

On Friday, things changed dramatically. The reports of large numbers of unexplained deaths in Glens Falls, New York and other cities in the United States became more and more urgent during the day. The first deaths in Canada were reported from Ottawa.

For Michael and his workmates, this was too close to home for comfort. Not much work was done on Friday afternoon, with employees and customers crowded around the television in the Auto Service waiting room. As they discussed the news and possible courses of action for themselves, they were not aware the SDC virus was already en-route to Morrisburg.

Three sources of infection reached Morrisburg on Friday. One family fleeing from Glens Falls had come to pay their relatives a surprise visit in Waddington. They had passed their infection to the owner of the local liquor store when they purchased beer and wine. On Friday afternoon, two Morrisburg residents had taken their boat on the short trip across the St. Lawrence River to pick up a couple of cases of cheap American beer from the Waddington liquor store. They were not aware that they had returned to Morrisburg with something more noteworthy than their weekend supply of