Chapter 1

Central Florida in springtime can be a good place to live. Orange trees give off their fragrance that can even get through the auto exhaust fumes. George and Jane Amodon got up and started their morning routines. Jane got the kids ready for the school bus to take them to elementary school while George finished his routine having already said his goodbyes and kissed each of his two children. Jane wasn't working because George's new job afforded them enough money to make that possible. She had picked up a part-time job to give them some extra money and keep her busy. George and Jane shared a cup of coffee together, talked about the kids' school and the coming summer. It was time and George rose, kissed Jane and left for work.

His work at the plant was top secret and he took that seriously. He had been an officer in the army trying to develop counters to biological terrorists' potential attacks. Now, out of the army and working for a contractor, he had been working on countering a particularly nasty bug called SL47. It was an airborne virus that seemed to have a life of its own. It had been created by accident in a European lab and, when George left the army, it was natural that he would gravitate to working on a solution.

George went through the security procedures and entered his lab. His lab partner, John Engals, greeted him with his usual hearty good morning and they got down to work. Today, they would be trying a new vaccine. Over the last year, they had determined that there was no antidote. That was not surprising for a virus. Even the common cold has no antidote. With the flu, doctors would work on the symptoms and you get better as your body reacts to the virus. With the SL47, your body didn't have time to develop its antibodies before the virus killed you.

George thought that they had a promising vaccine that they were hoping could be administered as soon as a contagion was known and be effective. There was much work to do but it seemed that they were on the right track. Today, John and he would test it on a mouse.

John enjoyed his humor and had named all the mice after well-known lawyers. There was an old lab joke that one lab had started to use lawyers instead of mice because there were some things a mouse just wouldn't do and the technicians didn't get attached to the lawyers. It was an old joke made constantly funny by our number two man at the plant, who was a lawyer. M. Loyd Webb was not a funny individual and tended to be pompous. However, he made sure things ran smoothly hurtling any administrative blockage to keep projects going.

He rarely entered a lab but, when he did, there was a good reason. John said, "We will have a visitor this afternoon. M. Loyd will be coming by. There has been some discussion about adding a third person to our lab. His concern is that more people won't help though he will do it if we want it. Anyway, that's what he said as we came in together."

It was just after ten o'clock when the accident occurred. We were transferring a vial of SL47 from our storage to the testing point. We would allow Perry Mason to be infected, then use our vaccine and await results. It was an important point in our experiments. The vial dropped when the holder that John was using broke without warning. As it slipped down, a sharp point punctured his suit. His face went ashen. Almost immediately, the alarms went off and our lab was sealed.

The alarms continued to ring with the gas alert. Suddenly, a new alarm note started. The external breach alarm had started meaning that something was detected going into the atmosphere! I knew that John was dead and, unless there was a lot of luck, I would not survive either, as the lab might not be flushed before my air supply ran out. That second alarm meant something really bad was happening. Containment was supposed to be total. I had almost decided to open my suit. John had already removed his and was treating his cut. Neither of us said anything about the virus. There really wasn't anything to say.

Then another deeper booming tone began to sound. This was the nuclear alert! There was something wrong with the nuclear pile to the point at which radioactive matter was leaking out.

I looked at John and said, "What the hell is going on? None of this is supposed to be able to happen. We have safeguards." He nodded in agreement and I heard a rumble and felt a blast of heat and pain and then felt nothing ever again.

Jim Edwards was working on a house in Winter Haven. He had his own remodeling company with two employees. He looked up as he felt and then heard a rumble in the distance that became louder and louder. He thought to himself that he had moved from California to avoid earthquakes. He got ready to move over so he could look toward the sound when the world went white with a flash like the largest lightning bolt he could imagine. Even behind shelter, his eyes hurt. He could hear his helper screaming. "Joey, what's wrong?" All he heard was screaming as the light gradually became normal.