In just a few short days, what I believe is one of my most creative PA books to date,
Sealed In, will be released. This book has been waiting fot it's day since my appearance on the History Channel. I wanted to release it when the show came out, but better late than never and I think this one is worth waiting for. Here is the synopsis and beginning of the book. The contents of the prologue (Not posted) was featured on the show.
Synopsis
Following a distress call from the State
Police, Dr. Edward Neil and a team from the Centers for Disease Control
enter the small town of Hartworth, Montana. Immediately they encounter a man in
a pickup truck holding a quarantine post. His body decimated by a disease like
they have never seen. The entire town, population a little under a thousand …
dead. Men, women and children. The unknown germ hit so fast, the town did not
stand a chance of survival. But it didn’t hit so fast that they couldn’t shut
down and protect others from what they had.
It is a race against the clock and not
only must Edward Neil discover what wiped out the small town in just a couple
days, he needs to determine if it crossed boundaries. The germ is strong,
contagious, deadly and fast.. If it did escape Hartworth, humanity could very
well face an extinction level event.
The germ frightens Edward more than
anything he has ever encountered. More so because he learns quickly it is
manmade. A biological weapon gone awry. As he fights and chases his answers, he
must also ponder the question whether or not it is already too late.
<><><><>
FLASH FORWARD
Ground Zero - 1
Hartworth, Montana
December 23
The wide eyes seemed to stare at Dr.
Edward Neil, following him around the room like a painting. Eyes that were open,
didn’t blink, the color of them lost in the blood flow that had poured into the
white portion of the eyeball and turned black.
The victim had to be in his twenties and
he, like everyone else Edward Neil guessed that he would encounter in
Hartworth, Montana, was dead.
The quiet, small town, nestled in the
north of the state close to North Dakota and Canada, was an entity all to
itself.
The nearest neighboring town was
forty-three miles west.
It had been days since a car moved down
the road or a person walked the streets
That’s what Edward estimated.
They entered into the town alone in
protective garb. A fresh blanket of snow lay upon the unmoved cars, covering
the Christmas decorations that gave even more a depth of sadness to the
situation.
The song, Silent Night, would forever hold new meaning. It eerily played on
‘auto’ through the streets of the town.
How fitting.
There were homes and ranches within the
boundaries of Hartworth; those had to be checked, as well. But Edward felt it
would be useless.
They would bring no one else into the
town until he and his team had thoroughly gone through and confirmed what had
occurred.
Edward hadn’t a clue what killed
everyone, not yet. Skin appeared as if it boiled below the surface, black as if
burned, but it wasn’t charred; it was blood. Skin peeled off in layers and
adhered to the bedding. This more than likely occurred while the victim was
still alive. It happened only after they literally vomited their insides, and
blood seeped from every orifice.
He stopped about five victims into his
search and made his way to the utilitarian metal lab trailer set center of the
one-stoplight town.
After disinfecting, he removed his garb
and poured a cup of coffee. They’d only just set up, had not been in town that
long, and already Neil felt the wind knocked from him.
He sipped his coffee. It made him sick.
He had been in the field and worked for the CDC for years; never had he seen
anything as horrendous as Hartworth, and he’d barely scratched the surface. When the call came about Hartworth, he
was back in Vermont actually joking around with Dr. Walker about a zombie
apocalypse. The odd timing of the call coupled with the conversation sent a
chill up his spine.
Receiving only minimal details and a
directive to pack a small team and go, Edward knew he wouldn’t be home for
Christmas.
It was strictly confidential. In fact,
Edward had never encountered something as classified as this.
A small team would go into Hartworth;
four CDC security squads would police the neighboring roads wearing gas company
logos. The story was a gas leak.
Hartworth, like many small Montana
towns, was an entity of its own, so it wasn’t uncommon for someone from a
neighboring town to go days or even weeks without having contact with
Hartworth.
Because of that, Edward hadn’t a clue
when the outbreak occurred or how long they were dead. Those were part of the
answers he had to discover.
The dead town, however, was luckily
discovered by a keen state trooper, Steve Irwin, who had a cousin that worked
as a secretary for the CDC in Atlanta.
The trooper was at a crossroads about
six miles from town and thought it odd that at two in the afternoon, there were
no car tracks in the snow, nor had any attempt been made to maintain or ash the
roads out of Hartworth.
He needed only to make it to the edge of
town, and he knew.
He discovered the first body in a pickup
truck right at the beginning of town, decimated by illness. The young man held
a shot gun and looked as if he were standing guard, or rather sitting guard.
Irwin took a picture of it with his
phone, and before calling it in to the station, he called his cousin at the
CDC. The trooper’s slip in protocol was actually a good thing. It worked in
favor of keeping the situation tight-lipped and secret.
The picture went through the CDC faster
than any disease.
Irwin was told not to go into town, to
report it as a gas leak, and position troopers on the outskirts to keep people
away.
He did. Irwin and the other troopers
immediately went into quarantine in a special CDC trailer.
As far as the story of the gas leak told
to the State Police, Edward was still fielding questions regarding that.
Something he could handle
What he couldn’t handle was the daunting
task of solving the mystery before him. He would with the others, bit by bit,
piece by piece, body by body.
He had to do so quickly, because with
something as deadly as what wiped out Hartworth, Edward was certain he didn’t
have much time.
But before he found the answers to what
happened in Hartworth, he had one very important task to complete. First and
foremost he had to find out if the bug crossed boundaries. If it did, the CDC
had bigger problems to face than just one small dot on the map.
