The Plague Box Set [Books 1-4] Read online

  the

  Plague

  Box Set

  Books 1—4

  Full Collection.

  ***

  Isla Jones

  THE PLAGUE, BOX SET

  Copyright © 2019 by Isla Jones

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.

  Digital Edition 1

  Imprint: Independently published.

  Winter Dawn; Winter Plague; Winter Castle; Winter Storm.

  The Plague Series, Box Set Collection, Complete.

  Winter Dawn, book 1

  Winter Plague, book 2

  Winter Castle, book 3

  Winter Storm, book 4

  note from the author

  Winter Dawn

  Book 1

  Isla Jones

  1.

  My name is Winter Miles, and I shouldn’t be alive. I should have died along with the rest of them. But I’ll start at the beginning … before the dawn.

  I used to think that life was a party and we all had to attend.

  It was a party hosted in a hot, sticky room that teemed with people. Some laughed, others cried.

  Then, there were the quiet ones in the corner, checking their phones, waiting for an excuse to leave—waiting for an excuse to check out. I was in that group. But I stayed. Most of us did.

  We stayed at the party because our friends and family were there.

  They didn’t want us to leave.

  Things have changed. Time has changed everything. The circumstance is still the same, but the room is different now. It’s chilly and barren. Most of the partygoers have left. And it’s not a party anymore.

  It’s a funeral.

  Life is a funeral.

  2.

  In my musty and cramped apartment, I leaned back against the kitchen counter to pull as far away from the television as I could. The news threw gruesome sights into the conjoined lounge-kitchen, reports of mania, of people beating others to death in a frenzy of rage. Families attacking in packs, as if they were wild dogs, coyotes or wolves.

  It was sickening.

  Nausea curled my stomach and my fingernails dug so hard into the counter that when I drew my hands away, crescent marks dented the cheap linoleum surface.

  My roommates inched closer to the TV, hanging on every word that the anchor said. But I couldn’t stop myself from turning my back to the lounge and staring at the magnets on the old, beat-up refrigerator instead. Still, every word reached me.

  Los Angeles had always been a hotspot for violence. Major cities tended to be that way. But now … Well, my planned visit to Washington D.C. to see my sister couldn’t have come at a better time. Speaking of my sister, she did in that moment what she always did—saved me from myself. She rang my cell. It vibrated in my pocket once before it was in my hand, button hit, and pressed to my ear.

  “Winter?” Her hitched voice crackled through the poor service in the Valley. “What’s all that racket?”

  “Hey,” I said, shooting a glare back at the TV. “Gimmie a minute. TV’s on.”

  Neither of my pesky housemates spared a glance at me as I shuffled though the lounge and out onto the cramped balcony. Cleo, my black and daring Chihuahua—the light of my life—darted between my feet and skidded to a stop at the wooden fence encasing the balcony.

  I slammed the sliding door shut behind me. Though, outside wasn’t a whole lot better noise-wise than inside with the blaring TV. Out on the balcony, blaring sirens wailed through the air. Then again, it was the Valley …

  Birds didn’t sing here, sirens did.

  “Sorry,” I spoke into the phone. “It’s gone nuts here. Like everyone is suddenly on crack.”

  Summer’s haughty voice caught on a veiled laugh. “It’s California, I’d expect no less.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was all right for me to diss the state, given that I’d chosen it as the place to live—but Summer, with her London years behind her, Oxford education (scholarship, I should add), and high-end job at the Centre for Disease Control in D.C., fancied herself above the likes of Cali.

  To fill my silence, she added, “Are you bringing that rat of yours?”

  My scowl twisted deeper into my freckled face and I looked down at Cleo between my feet. Through my curtain of peach hair, I watched her roll onto her back, tongue flopped out of her mouth, and pant up at me.

  “That rat,” I said, “is the closest to a niece you’ll ever get, so be nice. She’s sensitive.”

  It was Summer’s turn to roll her eyes. I couldn’t see the gesture, but I felt it in my bones, heard it in her pause.

  She ignored my retort. “When are you leaving?”

  “About an hour, maybe sooner. Just need to pack up my Jeep and take Cleo out for the toilet.” I wasn’t planning on starting my across-country road trip before midday, but with all the chaos out there, traffic would be a nightmare. Until they got all those rabies infected people off the streets, I’d feel safer out of LA.

  That’s what they called it. Rabies. A new strain, or something like it. Probably came from bats, rodents or pigs—maybe even birds. I didn’t know…no one really knew its origin.

  To be fair, it’d only just started—the infection had taken its first victim two nights before and it was quick to spread violence in its wake. It’s all that was talked about since. Like they did with Swine Flu and Ebola. Smeared it over the papers, social media and the TV, then—poof. Vanished. Gone.

  Both of those sicknesses were still out there. But they weren’t new anymore, they weren’t interesting. So they stopped reporting it, and we stopped talking about it.

  The rabies mess was no different. A fad. Fading, passing.

  Still, knowing that didn’t mean I had no intention of getting the hell out of the state.

  *

  Barely a half-hour after my call with Summer, I was pushing the final duffel bag into the mess of luggage piled in the trunk. Driving for such a distance made me a bit anxious about all the things that could go wrong—breaking down in the middle of nowhere, running out of gas before reaching a rest stop, needing to use the bathroom so badly that I’d have to wee on the side of the road beside Cleo. The little things. But none of those worries compared to my fear of flying. Besides, it was cheaper to drive across the states than it was to fly.

  My trip to DC was meant to be a month-long or so, but I packed as though I was moving permanently. If Summer offered, I would stay. I would be as close to her, the last remaining family member I had, as possible.

  Ever since our parents died in a plane crash when we were kids, it was only ever the two of us. Summer and Winter Miles—torn apart by social workers, plonked with different foster families, and now, worlds apart. But Summer being the oldest, and a sharp, determined woman, didn’t hold onto ideals of family the same way I did. She didn’t need me like I needed her.

  Before I could wrangle the trunk shut, my housemate shouted over the edge of the decaying balcony above.

  “Winter!” shouted Piper. “Cleo has wet the carpet again! I stepped right in it!”

  My grimace was hidden by the trunk door. I peered around the side and squinted up at her, the sun glaring at me not unlike Piper did.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” I shouted back at her. Lies. I told her lies. The minute I hea
rd the glass door slide shut—how it clanged and clunked over its old, rusty rails—I closed the trunk and jumped into the driver seat.

  Cleo was curled up in her car-seat (more like a brown, cushioned safety basket hooked to the seat) and lapped at her clipped nails. She didn’t like whenever I groomed or washed her. She hated it so much that whenever I clipped her nails, she would lick them for days as if trying to grow them back into sharp talons that only belonged on eagles and hawks, not fierce Chihuahuas.

  I reached for the keys that dangled in the ignition, but was frozen in place before my fingertips could touch cool metal. Panic struck through me.

  Louder than the sirens that wailed through the dreary Valley was a scream. A man’s scream. One that curdled in the throat, one that prickled my skin and shivered my spine. And it was close. A street away, maybe two.

  A strange tingle ran through me and twitched my fingers.

  Part of me wanted to call the cops, but the other part begged to start the car and speed out of the Valley. By the sound of the scream, the horror and agony in it, I knew it was getting closer.

  The infection.

  All it took was a single glance at Cleo in her little seat-basket—a single look at her perked ears, alert eyes, and quivering, curved spine—and my hand reached for the keys over my cell. Nothing in this world could make me jeopardise Cleo.

  I sped out of the Valley, wheels screeching under the chug of my old car.

  It was only when a parade of cop cars whizzed by me on the main road that the tension from my muscles slipped away with the guilt in my stomach. They could be going to the scream, I thought. A lie to tell myself, a white lie of possibilities that eased the shame within me. But what I didn’t know then was that I would learn to live with the shame of cowardice.

  I would learn to live with it, and wear it like a badge of honour.

  Within days, the longest days of my life, my shame would become my survival.

  3.

  It was getting to me. Irritability crept into my veins like … a virus. Hours of being stuck in a scorching, tacky car without AC, crawling through backed-up traffic, and listening to a non-stop babble of reports on the radio.

  The reports talked of how the new strain of rabies was transmittable—bites, sometimes scratches. But there was a greater chance of being pummelled to death before becoming infected, they said. Then, they were quick to change their angle.

  Social media was to blame. That’s what they blabbed about—all of the broadcasters, from every radio station my car could get. Social media was blowing up a small spread of incidents, making them seem worse than they really were. I wouldn’t have known, though. The internet dropped out in LA a few hours back, not long after I’d left my apartment. And I wasn’t much of a social media person, anyway. Too much politics, I never really got into the whole ‘meme’ thing, and to be honest, I didn’t have any friends. Not even my housemates could be called friends.

  Summer was my friend. My sister, yes, but also my friend.

  With a stuffy sigh, I shifted on the hot driver’s seat and fiddled with the radio tuner. Round and round it went, but the sound never stopped being static or news. I wanted music, something to take my mind off the rows of cars caging me into the middle of the highway, something to interrupt the dreariness of what I’d left behind in the city that glimmered in my rear-view mirror like a mirage in a desert.

  It wasn’t until the air began to cool and the sun began to droop behind the skyscrapers of downtown that my cage loosened. I managed to pull free and zip along the carpool lane—I’d pay for the toll fine later—to reach the turnoff leading to the state border.

  Once clear of the highway and all its pollution, I pulled over. Cleo was bursting. It was a surprise that she didn’t wee herself in the car—and I wouldn’t have minded if she did. Toilet training never seemed to work with Cleo. Not after we’d spent so long on the streets together. I supposed that was why she seemed so at ease on the side of the road. Both of us, really.

  I sat on the burnt orange dirt, letting the cool breeze dry the sweat between my hair. Cleo pranced from shrub to shrub, pausing every so often as though she’d heard a snake over the steady hum of passing cars. But there were no snakes.

  We had our rest, cooled down, and I did the unthinkable. There wasn’t a rest stop for another few miles, and I had to go. You understand.

  When we were seated and secured back in the car, I tried to call Summer. But out there in the desert edge of California, my crappy service failed me again. The calls didn’t connect.

  I tossed the cell into the cupholder between me and Cleo, then pulled back onto the road. At least if I passed the state border, the first day of my journey wouldn’t have such a useless feeling about it. But it was not to be…

  Red lights greeted me at the border. Taillights. A collage of them, blocking my way.

  I groaned and banged my head back against the headrest, once, twice, three times—until I had to stop from the ache that brewed there.

  Cleo gave a whine, as if she knew what was spread out before us. More traffic. Barricades. Military.

  “I know,” I grumbled back at her. “Me too.”

  Soldiers made their way down the rows of cars, some idling—like mine—and others turned off altogether. I watched them, the soldiers, pause at each car, speak to the driver, then move on to the next. Other soldiers stood on top of their trucks, red glow-lights in their grips, motioning for us to back up and make space. But for what?

  I found out when a soldier rapped on my window. Only a little, I wound the window down. Enough to hear him, but I’m cautious that way.

  “What’s going on?” The tired complaints stuck to my voice like toilet paper to the bottom of a shoe. “I need to get through, I’m in a hurry—”

  “No one’s gettin’ through,” he said robotically, as if bored. “Borders are closed indefinitely. You’ll have to turn back around.”

  “Back?” I echoed, a little shrill. “And go where? The city’s a mess, it took me all day to get through it.”

  “Don’t care, lady.” He drew back from the window.

  Before he made to walk away, he paused—something tugging at him. A conscience, maybe. Or a moral duty to do at least one good deed a day. I don’t have to suffer like that—I look out for myself and my Cleo. That’s all. And that’s all it will ever be.

  “Did you see that dirt road just past the rock about two miles back?” he asked.

  My nose wrinkled as I tried to summon the memory. “The one before the canyon?”

  “That’s the one,” he said with a nod. “Take that road for a few miles until you reach the plaza. You’ll fine a motel there, but you’d better get in before the rooms fill up.”

  His glance at the other cars warned me—most of us stuck at the border would be headed straight for that service area, for that one motel in the area. I wanted to be one of the lucky ones.

  “Thanks!” I rolled up my window, fast, then crept out of the tight space I was locked into. If the car behind hadn’t reversed diagonally, I wouldn’t have made it out without scraping my neighbours. A sin I was prepared to commit.

  Not that I believe in sins…

  But I believe in luck. And luck was on my side that night.

  We were one of the firsts to reach the plaza—a service area with a gas station, two fast food joints, a small diner, one long stretch of rooms that made up a motel, and a picnic park with those outdoor toilets plotted around it.

  The crescent moon was inching higher in the sky by the time Cleo and I hurried into the motel room. The owners must’ve known what was happening at the border, because they’d charged almost a hundred bucks more than what the stuffy room was worth.

  I don’t remember why I turned the TV on, but I remember I regretted it almost as soon as the news flooded the room with coloured light. But I was quick to tune out and flop down on the hard, double bed beside Cleo.

  The Jeep was parked right outside, close in case anyone tr
ied to steal the luggage I was too tired to heave into the room. With that security in mind, I was quick to drift asleep. The news didn’t wake me. The new arrivals outside didn’t wake. Bumps and bangs in the neighbouring rooms didn’t wake me—

  But the screams did.

  *

  My breath caught in a flurry of panic.

  I jolted off the bed, Cleo scrambling to stick to my side. Screams ripped through the thin, peeling walls and raked over me like claws. The wretched sound seemed to come from everywhere, from all angles. But then, I realised, it could have been coming from everywhere. But that would mean…

  My legs almost buckled. Something hard hit the wall to my left. Wild eyed, I held my breath and stared at it, as though the plaster would cave in any moment. But it only rattled again, the shake shadowed by another cry.

  “Shit.”

  That one, guttural word spurred me forward. I loathed to do it, but I had to. Shakily, I clutched onto the drapes and peeled them apart—I didn’t want to look out there. The screams of terror and cries of bloodthirst warned me off. But I had to make sure the path to my Jeep was unblocked.

  If only it were that easy to focus. If only I had more control over where my gaze went—I would’ve looked at my Jeep, not the chaos in the car lot.

  For some reason, the first thing I remember was the sky. Pinks and purples swirling together over the canyons in the distance. It was dawn, and with it came death.

  I’d never seen them up close before. Pictures online, short choppy videos on the news … Those couldn’t show what the infected were really like. Nothing could have prepared me for them.

  People were screaming—fleeing, zig-zagging around cars that stalled and idled. But every turn they took led them straight to the infected. There was no escaping them—their bloodshot eyes so red they looked as though they bled.