The X Virus

The crowd shifted toward the mess, not away from it. Phones appeared. A child began to cry. The woman tried to straighten, gagged again, and vomited a thick sheet of blood across the ticket machine.

A security guard pushed through the bodies.

“Ma’am, step away from the machine.”

“She’s sick,” someone said.

“She needs an ambulance.”

The woman seized the guard’s sleeve. Blood pumped from her nose in two bright streams.

“Don’t touch her,” Mara shouted.

The guard looked over. “Move back, please.”

“She’s bleeding.”

“I can see that.”

The woman’s fingers dug into his sleeve. Her shoulders jerked. The guard pulled hard, and the fabric tore free. She collapsed against the machine with a sound like a sack of wet clothes hitting the floor.

The terminal went quiet for half a second.

Then everyone started moving.

The crowd broke in every direction. People shoved away from the woman, straight into the travelers behind them. A suitcase toppled. A man fell over it. The child’s crying turned into a scream.

Mara grabbed Eli’s wrist.

“Emergency exit. Now.”

They made it three steps before the crowd closed around them.

A shoulder struck Mara’s back. Eli’s hand slipped from hers.

“Eli!”

“I’m here!”

His voice came from below. He had fallen to one knee between two suitcases. Mara hooked both hands under his arms and hauled him up as a woman slammed into her from behind.

“Don’t push!” Mara shouted.

“Get out of my way!”

“There’s a sick person - ”

“There are sick people everywhere!”

The woman shoved past. Her sleeve was speckled with red.

Mara wiped her palm against her coat and looked toward the ticket machines.

The first woman was still on the floor. Blood leaked beneath her cheek and spread across the white tile. A man crouched beside her, trying to turn her over. She convulsed and sprayed a crimson arc across his face.

He screamed.

Something in Mara’s mind clicked into place. This wasn’t one person fainting. It wasn’t food poisoning or some sudden seizure. The woman had been standing inside the crowd, breathing the same air, touching the same machines. Now the man who had helped her was covered in her blood.

“Eli,” Mara said. “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t touch your face.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

Another passenger staggered out of the boarding lane.

He wore a navy ferry uniform. His hands were pressed to his stomach, and blood seeped between his fingers. He tried to speak, but a violent spasm folded him in half. He vomited onto the shoes of the people nearest him.

The terminal erupted.

A gate alarm began to shriek. The departures board flickered from DELAYED to EVACUATION, then went black. The glass doors rattled as hundreds of bodies surged toward them. Somewhere behind Mara, a child wailed for her mother.

Eli pulled at her sleeve. “Mara, I feel sick.”

She turned.

His face had gone gray.

“Where?”

“My stomach.”

“How bad?”

He swallowed. A tremor passed through his jaw.

“I don’t know.”

Mara pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. Cold sweat slicked his skin.

“No,” she whispered.

“What?”

“We’re leaving.”

She dragged him toward the emergency exit. The crowd had become a living wall. People climbed over benches. A man smashed at the locked glass doors with a fire extinguisher. Each impact rang through the terminal.

Mara spotted a gap beside a column and drove into it, keeping Eli behind her. A suitcase struck her shin. Someone caught her coat and nearly tore it off.

“Let go!”

The hand released her. Mara twisted sideways, dragging Eli through the gap.

They reached the barrier. Beyond it, the service corridor ran along the terminal’s western wall. The emergency door waited at the end, its red push bar glowing beneath a green sign.

A security officer stood in front of it.

“Staff only!” he yelled.

“Open it!” Mara shouted.

“The evacuation route is blocked.”

“People are dying in here!”

He glanced past her. His expression changed when he saw the blood spreading across the floor.

“I need authorization.”

Mara shoved Eli behind her as another wave of passengers crashed against the barrier. Metal buckled. The officer grabbed the rail.

“Open the door!”

“I said I need - ”

A wet popping sound came from the boarding lane.

Everyone stopped.

The uniformed man had fallen against a row of seats. His back arched. Blood ran from his ears and eyes. His shirt ballooned outward, stretching over his ribs.

Mara recognized the look on the faces around her: the instant before terror became knowledge.

“Down!” she screamed.

The man burst.

The explosion was not fire. It was pressure, flesh, and red heat hurled through the terminal. The seats ripped from their mounts. Glass shattered inward. A wall of blood struck the crowd and slapped across the departures board.

The shock wave threw Mara against the barrier. Her teeth clacked together. Eli disappeared beneath the bodies.

For one breath, there was no sound except the ringing in her skull.

Then the screaming returned.

“Mara!”

She saw Eli on the floor, pinned beneath a fallen suitcase. Blood dotted his cheek, but she couldn’t tell whether it was his.

She climbed over the barrier. The security officer had been thrown against the emergency door. His neck bent at an angle that made Mara look away.

Eli clawed at the suitcase.

“I can’t move.”

Mara seized its handle and pulled. The wheels jammed against the warped railing. She pulled again, feeling something tear in her shoulder.

“Look at me,” she said. “Breathe through your nose.”

“I’m going to throw up.”

“Not here.”

“I can’t - ”

“Eli, look at me.”

His eyes found hers. She wedged one boot against the barrier and hauled with everything she had. The suitcase shifted enough for Eli to crawl free.

Behind them, the crowd surged toward the corridor. Some people were coated red. Others were bleeding from their noses, their mouths, their ears. A woman staggered upright and vomited onto her own chest. The people around her recoiled, but there was nowhere left to go.

The terminal had become a sealed bowl.

Mara shoved Eli toward the door. “Push the bar.”

“It’s locked.”

“Push!”

He leaned into it. Nothing happened.

Mara looked at the dead officer. His key ring hung from his belt.

She crossed the narrow gap, crouched, and took it. Her fingers slipped on his blood. Behind her, something struck the barrier hard enough to bend it another inch.

“Mara!”

“I’m coming.”

The key ring held six keys. She tried the first. The lock rejected it. The second scraped but did not turn.

Eli gagged.

“Please,” he said.

Mara tried the third. The lock clicked.

She shoved the key in deeper and twisted.

The door opened two inches.

A hand reached through from the terminal side and grabbed Eli’s backpack.

Mara kicked the hand away. “Run!”

Eli slipped through the gap. Mara followed, but the crowd slammed into the barrier behind her. The door jerked wider, then began to swing shut.

A man reached for her.

“Help me!”

Mara caught his wrist.

For a second, she had him. His palm was hot and slick. Blood poured from one nostril and dripped over his upper lip. His eyes fixed on hers.

“Please,” he said.

The barrier groaned.

Eli shouted from the corridor. “Mara!”

The man’s grip tightened. His stomach lurched beneath his shirt.

Mara saw the swelling begin.

She let go.

The door slammed between them.

A violent impact shook it at once. The metal bowed outward. Mara staggered back as something struck the other side with a dense, terrible thud. Red liquid seeped beneath the threshold.

Eli stood ten feet away, pressed against the service corridor wall. He was breathing hard, one hand clamped over his mouth.

“Mara,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

She ran to him.

The corridor lights flickered overhead. Pipes rattled behind the walls. Somewhere below, water rushed through the building with a deep mechanical roar.

Eli lowered his hand.

A thin line of blood had appeared beneath his nose.

Mara stared at it.

Beyond the sealed door, survivors pounded and screamed. The sound faded beneath another heavy impact, then another. The emergency route ahead narrowed into darkness, and water began spilling under the far service gate.

Mara took Eli’s hand.

“Keep moving,” she said.

He looked back at the door. “What about them?”

The metal shuddered again.

Mara pulled him toward the rising water. “We can’t open it.”

Behind them, the North Quay terminal filled with blood, and the only way out began to flood.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 9,116 words in the full book.