“As things stand now, I am going to be a writer.  I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.” – Hunter S. Thompson

Short Story Excerpt, The Virus

The Virus

I am E?.  The first person I infected was Britni Rangold, a mother on a family vacation in Egypt.  I attacked her central nervous system and produced fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, cough, hematomas, and bleeding from her mucous membranes.  Before she died, Britni Rangold passed me onto 100 other individuals.  Those 100 individuals each passed me on to 100 more.  My time had come.

---

In the 1300’s, The Black Death wiped out 100 million people, and killed between 30-60 percent of the population in Europe.  It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover.

            In 1918, The Spanish Flu, H1N1, killed 75 million people, almost six percent of the global population.

 

            Noted molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, once said, “The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is a virus.”  He was right.

---

            

             No one knows where it started.  Africa is the likeliest suspect I suppose.  That’s where Ebola outbreaks first occurred in the 20^th century.  The deadliest outbreak, Zaire, 1976, had a case fatality rate of 90%.  This virus has a case fatality rate of 99%. 

It isn’t Ebola though.  It’s something else.  When the virus first occurred, we took blood and tissue samples from the first cases we found, and tested them for all five known strains.  None were a match.  It presented exactly like Ebola, influenza like symptoms, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, hematomas, bleeding from mucous membranes.  Whatever it is, it is the deadliest virus we’ve ever encountered as a species.

The basic reproduction number, or Rnought, is the number of cases one case generates as an average over an infected period.  Measles had the highest Rnought in recorded history, where one person with Measles passed the disease on to as many as eighteen other people.  The Rnought for E? is 100.  It has gone airborne.  We don’t have long.

---

I am Dr. Heather Kline.  After Yale, I went to Harvard Medical School.  I did my residency at Johns Hopkins, before being offered a position as an Emergency room attending physician at Lenox Hill Hospital.    After four years at Lenox Hill, I was offered a new position created by the city of New York in response to 9/11.  I am now the Chief Medical Emergency Responder.

Anytime a mysterious case shows up at any of the New York City hospitals, I am sent in to investigate.  I can be at any hospital in the city in less than twenty minutes.  I have seven different cars at my disposal, a full time bodyguard, a police escort when I need it, and use of an NYPD helicopter. 

It was April 10^th, 2019.  I was at home with Roscoe, my three year old Beagle.  My cell phone went off.  It was the Chief of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital, a man I had never met, Dr. Steve Simkins.  He was yelling inaudibly.

“Dr. Simkins, calm down, what is the situation?”

“The situation is critical Dr. Kline.  In my forty years of practicing medicine, I’ve never seen anything like this.  We are doomed.”

“I need to know exactly what you do.  Give me as much information as you can, and be as specific as possible.  I will be recording this conversation.  It may be useful later.”  As Dr. Simkins began to speak, I hit the panic button that I wore around my neck that immediately alerted my bodyguard, George Hartman, that we needed to move.  George was in my apartment in less than thirty seconds.  I jotted a quick note to call for the helicopter and to ready my team.

“Patient zero presented with a 104° fever.  Patient was unresponsive to painful stimuli.  Patient had no pupil response.  Patient had no gag reflex upon evaluation.  Patient had no patellar reflex upon evaluation.  Patient’s husband reported 36 hours of vomiting and diarrhea.  During evaluation, patient began hemorrhaging blood from ears and eyes.  Shortly thereafter, blood began to appear at the nose, the fingernails, and the toenails.  Ambulatory services were called to their house this morning because patient had had what appeared to be a fainting spell.  At the present time, the patient, the patient’s husband, their two children, the two EMTs, and the nurse that evaluated her, all appear to have contracted the virus.  They are all infected Dr. Kline.”

“Dr. Simkins, I am on my way now, my team will meet me there.  I need you to quarantine all of the infected in a communicable disease ward.  We’re lucky, only your hospital and Lenox Hill have a quarantine room capable of handling a level 4.  Contact the CDC and request immediate support.  Tell them I am on my way, they will want to speak to both of us when they arrive.  Their best response time to NYC has been six hours, so until then it’ll just be you and me Dr.  This is Kline; over and out.”

I followed George to street level, where four police cruisers had blocked off traffic in both directions for a square landing area 30 X 30.  George and I looked toward the sky as the helicopter approached for landing.  It touched down and George, myself, and three SWAT team officers boarded.  We took off and headed in towards Mt. Sinai.

---

When I hit New York City, I knew that my day had come.  The day of E?.  After being loose in the city for three days, I had infected 99.9% of the population.  After day five, I had killed over 65% of the population.  I was winning.  There was nothing they could do to stop me.  Nothing.

Short Story Excerpt, The B

Here's an excerpt from a short story I'm working on entitled "The B."  This and other stories will be appearing in my new book sometime in the future.

We called it The B.  We never referred to it by its full name.  None of us could do it every day if we had used its full name.  We just said, “hand me a can of The B,” and did our jobs.

I heard that it was used as a pesticide.  I didn’t know anything about pests.  All I know is that it killed humans real good.  Two minutes, tops.

Before the war, I was a miner.  I had hauled coal for the better part of my thirty seven years.  The heavy labor had given me a muscular build.  I guess that’s why they selected me for the job.  The only other reason I can think of is because I was a Jew.  Juden.

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I arrived at Birkenau on February 1^st, 1942.  I was on one of the first passenger trains to enter this new camp.  I call it a passenger train, but it wasn’t.  It was a cattle car.  And from the day I was abducted from my home in Konigsberg, seven days prior, I had been standing.  We were hoarded into the car by Germans shouting at us in a language we didn’t understand.  They pointed machine guns in our faces and stabbed at us with the butts.  They locked us into the cars with padlocks. 

My friend, Gregor Kuznitisin, who I had known since the day I was born, attempted to jump off the train.  They shot him four times in the chest.  After he fell, the man in charge walked over to Gregor, pulled out his Luger, and shot him in the head.  That was the last time I ever saw anyone try to escape.

For seven days and six nights, we traveled through Poland to get to Birkenau.  There were 77 people in my car when we left Konigsberg.  When we arrived at Birkenau, only 40 were left alive.  The others died from despair.

On the seventh night, we arrived.  The train pulled directly into an encampment, passing under the German words, “arbeit macht frei.”  We were told that this meant “work will set you free.”  This was another of the kraut’s lies.  No one was ever freed.  In the 757 days that I spent at Birkenau, I never saw anyone go free.

The padlocks were cut and we were thrown onto the platform, much the same way we had been loaded onto the train in the first place.  We were separated by sex, men to the left, women to the right.  That was the last time I ever saw my neighbors alive, Mr. and Mrs. Nikolai Rozentov.  I saw them two days later when I saw their bodies lying on a pile of hundreds.

Not All Out of Love, as posted on Flurries of Words

http://flurriesofwords.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/bargain-book-not-all-out-of-love-by.html

Another Positive Review

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/jul_12.htm#cowper

Big things on the horizon...

Submission to The New Yorker-Check
Submission to Collier's Magazine-Check
Submission to Harper's Magazine-Check
Submission to The Saturday Evening Post-Check
Submission to The Yale Review-Check
Submission to The Missouri Review-Check
Big things on the horizon-Check and Check

2012 New York Book Festival

My new book, Not All Out of Love, received an honorable mention in the 2012 New York Book Festival!  Go to http://www.newyorkbookfestival.com/ and click on 2012 Winners.

Check out this awesome website, Addicted to Ebooks, at http://www.addictedtoebooks.com/

They were nice enough to feature my book on their front page today, 6/5/12.

Literary R&R: Charlene Reviews: Not All Out of Love by Jamie Sch...

Literary R&R: Charlene Reviews: Not All Out of Love by Jamie Sch...: ISBN #: 978-0615601953 Page Count: 140 Copyright: April 20, 2012 Publisher: One Day Description: (Taken from Amazon) Th...

Rejection

"The best part about having self confidence is in knowing that everyone who rejects you is just a stepping stone in the road to success." - Jamie Schoffman

Translation: I don't care how many people reject my work, I will continue to write and write and read and read and slowly become a master of my craft.

Just had someone buy my book from New Delhi, India!  Hope it gets there ok.

Short Story...Things My Father Taught Me

Things My Father Taught Me

            When I was ten years old, my father taught me how to swim.  He took me to Lake Beaumont as the sun was setting and he threw me into the water.  I wasn’t surprised.  This was what my father always did.  That is who my father was.

            When I was two years old, my father taught me how to walk.  He threw broken glass on the floor so that every time I fell, I cut my hands, arms, knees, and shins.  He said, “No son of mine falls down.”  It took me three months to learn how to walk.

When I was four years old, my father taught me how to catch a ball.  He threw baseballs at my chest until I cried.  He broke three of my ribs.  He said, “If you don’t want the ball to hit you in the chest, you’ll just have to catch it.”  It took three weeks for me to learn how to catch a baseball.

           

When I was six years old, my father taught me how to hit a ball.  He duct taped a baseball bat to my hands.  He wouldn’t let me loose until I successfully made contact.  My hands were burned from the duct tape and two of my fingers were broken.  He said, “No son of mine swings like a pussy.”  It took three days for me to learn how to hit a baseball.

           

When I was eight years old, my father taught me how to ride a bike.  He tied my hands to the handlebars and my feet to the pedals with rope.  He tied the handlebars to the back of his pickup truck and he took off.  He didn’t stop until I didn’t fall anymore.  He said, “No son of mine needs fucking training wheels.”  It took three hours for me to learn how to ride a bike.

           

When I was ten years old, my father taught me how to swim.  Three minutes after he threw me into the water, I drowned.  As my head fell under the water for the last time, I heard him say, “No son of mine would ever drown.”  That is who my father was.

Jamie Schoffman

4/1/12