The Calm Before The Swarm

Copyright © 2011 Michael McBride

Smashwords Edition

The Calm Before the
Swarm
copyright © 2011 by Michael
McBride

Previously published in the collection
Quiet, Keeps to Himself copyright © 2011 by Michael McBride, from
Thunderstorm Books

"Diseaseater" copyright © 2011 by Michael
McBride

Cover photograph copyright © 2011 by
Konkolas

Excerpt from Burial Ground © 2011 by Michael
McBride

Excerpt from Vector Borne copyright © 2011
by Michael McBride

Excerpt from Innocents Lost copyright © 2010
by Michael McBride

Excerpt from Predatory Instinct copyright ©
2011 by Michael McBride

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from
Michael McBride.

For more information about
the author, please visit his website:
www.michaelmcbride.net

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NOVELS

Bloodletting

Burial Ground

Innocents Lost

Predatory Instinct

Vector Borne

NOVELLAS

Blindspot

Brood XIX

Remains (from The Mad & The Macabre,
with Jeff Strand)

Xibalba

ZERØ

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CALM BEFORE THE
SWARM

Bonus Material

DISEASEATER

An Exclusive Short Story

Excerpt from BURIAL GROUND

Excerpt from VECTOR BORNE

Excerpt from INNOCENTS LOST

Excerpt from PREDATORY INSTINCT

THE CALM BEFORE THE
SWARM

Every great advance in science has issued
from a new audacity of imagination.

---
John Dewey

Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil
done by him survives.

---
Abu Bakr

Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.

---
Arthur C. Clarke

Lithium Springs, Georgia

Dr. Lauren Allen pulled up to the barricade
in a wash of red and blue lights and rolled down the window of her
Sahara Silver Audi A5. A uniformed officer accepted her proffered
badge jacket without a word and compared her identification against
the list on his clipboard. His upper lip glistened with a liberal
application of Vick's VapoRub. She could smell it even over the
divine scent of the Mongolian beef in the Styrofoam container on
the seat beside her. The call had come in during dinner, forcing
her box up more than half of her meal. Had she known what the night
would bring, she would have gone for the shrimp with lobster sauce.
The onions and peppers were murder on her digestive system.

"Thank you, Dr. Allen." The officer passed
back her credentials. "Pull into the lot to the left and follow the
first row to the end. You'll be able to see where to go from
there."

Lauren nodded and rolled up her window. The
officer passed through her headlights and dragged aside the
barricade long enough for her to pull through. She turned into the
dirt lot as she'd been instructed and followed the uneven rows of
older model cars, dirty pickup trucks, and a smattering of tractors
toward the logjam to the east. Half a dozen vans were parked at the
edge of the lot and in the weeds beside a path that led down into a
copse of sycamores. The large Ford Econolines were stenciled with
the names of their official offices, lest the drivers forget which
one was theirs. Fulton County Coroner. The Evidence Collection Team
from the Atlanta Police Department. Fulton County Sheriff's
Department. The two unmarked vans were designed to be
inconspicuous, but instead only drew attention to themselves. At
least she now knew that the FBI had commandeered the investigation,
which meant that, with any luck, she'd be home by breakfast.

She parked behind one of the ECT vans,
confident that they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon, and walked
around to her trunk, which she popped with the tap of a button on
her keychain. Her positive-pressure personnel suit was folded
neatly next to her oversize briefcase. She slipped the baggy gear
over her smart skirt suit, sealed the plastic shield over her face
and shoulder length blonde hair, and grabbed the plastic case.
Perhaps her attire would prove to be overkill, but people tended to
shy away from her and let her do her work in peace when she wore
it, as though she were the one who was contagious.

The sodium halide glare from the east guided
her through the sycamore grove. She intentionally walked in the
grass beside the path so as not to disturb any potentially
important footprints and strolled down the emerald knoll toward the
source of the glow. She smelled the telltale stench of the early
stages of decomposition and adjusted the flow of air through the
suit's filtration device.

A lone Lithium Springs Police Department
cruiser was parked at the bottom of the hill. Poor rube must have
been the first on the scene. Beyond it, the fairgrounds were
littered with the trappings of a low-rent traveling circus. The
obligatory red- and white-striped big top. Games of chance. Rickety
rides more rust than metal. The entire inner grounds swarmed with
law enforcement officers and forensics techs from every county,
state, and federal entity. All of them wore masks, gloves, and
generic yellow isolation smocks over their uniforms and suits.
Silver-domed stadium lights were mounted to trees, tripods, and
even the surrounding claptrap booths, all of them directed toward
the massive tent.

Lauren encountered the first remains fifty
yards out from the ticket booth, amid a scattering of trash. The
body lay prone in the grass, arms pinned beneath it. Height, build,
and apparel were all definitively male. A small fluorescent pink
flag with the number one was staked into the ground near the man's
head. The weeds were tacky with blood and bodily dissolution. The
smell was malodorous, but definitely fresh. He hadn't been dead for
more than three or four hours. The back of his head was lumpy and
misshapen. His shaved scalp was only now beginning to stubble.

She crouched and inspected the soft tissue
swelling over the base of his skull and his neck. Each knot was
roughly the size of a half-dollar. She pressed the center of one,
which dimpled under the slightest pressure. It took several seconds
to resume its normal fluid-filled appearance after she removed her
finger. In the middle of each one was a tiny black dot from which
purplish-red striations originated like forked bolts of lightning.
She lifted the collar of his shirt. More wounds covered his back,
although in nowhere near the same concentration. The brunt of the
attack had been confined to his head.

Easing her hands under his shoulder, she
rolled him away from the ground to inspect his face. A waste of
time. The features were so swollen and livid with settled blood
that she couldn't see more than the faint impression of a mouth,
nose, and eyes. More black dots, more striations. She let the body
roll flat again, opened her briefcase, and removed several items
from their inserts. With a pair of sharp forceps, she gripped the
end of one of the black dots and teased out what looked like a
splinter, which she immediately placed in a collection bag. A
globule of amber pustulates bloomed from the tiny hole. She used a
syringe to capture it and drained the knot dry.

She closed her briefcase and resumed her
trek toward the main tent. The silhouette of the ticket agent in
the booth welcomed her. A flash from a criminalist's camera
revealed the deformed head.

Lauren passed through the gate and parted a
sea of investigators. Forensics teams pored over every available
surface in search of evidence. One even walked through the area
with a digital video recorder in an attempt to capture the entire
scene as they had found it. And it was definitely a massive scene.
Corpses were everywhere on the hay-littered dirt, crumpled on their
chests as though they had died even as they ran. Small pink flags
marked their passing. They were marked with a series of numbers
from twelve through twenty-eight. All of their heads were similarly
swollen, parting their hair with odd cowlicks. Men, women,
children. Most wore jeans and flannel shirts. Some of the women
wore cheap dresses and scuffed high heel shoes, as though a night
at the circus passed for high society in this rural section of
Georgia.

A Sheriff's Deputy waved her through the
flaps and closed them again behind her. There was no dialing down
the smell this time. The stench hit her in the gut and again she
tasted her Mongolian beef, which had been much better the first
time. Fortunately, she had dabbed enough perfume under her blouse
that a shift of her shoulders released a bouquet of jasmine and
lilac that almost spared her from the smell of death. Almost.

She stood in the main aisle and absorbed
everything around her. Stadium bleachers had been erected in nearly
a complete circle around the inside of the massive tent. From her
vantage point, she could only see the metal support structures and
the undersides of the wooden slats to either side, but the gaps
overhead between the seats were filled with lower legs and feet.
None of them moved. Directly ahead was the main ring. A group of
suit-clad agents had gathered in the center under the tightrope and
trapezes. Bodies littered the ground all around them. The
spotlights still shined down on the carnage. There were performers
of all kinds: the ornately-garbed ringmaster, young women in
sequined leotards, animal handlers in elaborate costumes, filthy
carnies, and a colorful assortment of painted clowns. A lion, a
tiger, and a parade of elephants. All lifeless on the dirt,
scattered as though a tornado had blown through. It was a truly
mortifying sight.

One of the agents saw her and tipped his
chin. He broke away from the others, strode directly toward her,
and offered his gloved hand.

"Special Agent Maxwell Cranston," he said.
"And you must be Dr. Allen from the CDC."

Lauren nodded and inspected him over his
mask. He had dark eyes and hair slicked back with so much gel it
seemed to absorb the scarlet glow from the lights strung up in the
rafters. An air of confidence surrounded him. Unfortunately, that
air reeked of the hundreds of corpses packed into the tent.

He gestured toward the center ring and fell
into step beside her.

"Have you had a chance to examine any of the
remains yet?" he asked.

"We both know the cause of death, but as far
as the presence of any sort of communicable pathogen, we're going
to have to wait for a lab analysis of whatever samples I
procure."

They walked out from between the bleachers
and Lauren gasped at the scope of the slaughter. The stadium seats
were nearly filled to capacity. There had to be easily four hundred
people collapsed on the metal slopes. Tangled in the aisles. Lying
on top of one another. Clumped in mounds. She saw parents who had
tried to shield their children with their bodies, elderly couples
who had been trampled in the momentary stampede, baby carriages and
wheelchairs, still occupied. These people had seen death coming,
but had been unable to move fast enough to escape. Agents and
officers in their isolation gear threaded through the masses,
taking pictures and gathering whatever evidence they could
find.