Greetings everyone my name is Adrian R. Abarca. I wanted to let you all know a bit about myself and my novel ’Land of the Infected’. I have previously self published a novel called Leon [Anonymous] via Amazon Kindle. I was interviewed in November of 2015 by The Authors Radio program by Mr. Don McCauley regarding this novel. I was then in 2016 interviewed by Mrs. Daria DiGiovanni for the Writestream Radio Program. I have previously written for Mannerkoski Enterprises, Scarlet Productions, Blue Shark Entertainment and Calm Before the Storm Productions. In 2005 I served as a script reader and asseser of book and script materials as well as a development assistant for Marty Katz Productions. I graduated in 1999 from University of California Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. I also studied for three years at the well respected Playhouse West in North Hollywood, California. Jeff Goldblum was my teacher and mentor and it was there I polished the finer points of storytelling and dramatic writing and acting.

Please enjoy a 60 plus page excerpt of the book in the ’READ’ section above. If you enjoy please pre-order and we can get this novel published together.

For those of you unfamiliar with Inkshares this is a crowd funding site that once an author like myself reaches a certain amount of pre-orders like 250 Inkshares will then publish the novel and the reader like yourself will get an ebook or a paperback copy depending on what you pre-order. Together we can get this cool and fun novel published. I thank you for your time, consideration and most of all your support. All my best,

Adrian R.Abarca

’Land of the Infected’ is a novel which charts a global struggle to combat the avian flu as it is finally infectious to humans from global pandemic to mass panic, and then to the eventual struggle to reclaim the planet. Rather than a grand overview or a single perspective, ’Land of the Infected’ is instead a collection of individual accounts, each revealing an aspect of the larger plot and simultaneously presenting a very personal tale.

Land of the Infected ’Novel Synopsis’

Plot summary

The book charts a global struggle to combat the avian flu as it is finally infectious to humans from global pandemic to mass panic, and then to the eventual struggle to reclaim the planet. Rather than a grand overview or a single perspective, Land of the Infected is instead a collection of individual accounts, each revealing an aspect of the larger plot and simultaneously presenting a very personal tale. These different accounts take the form of interviews. The books draws from post-apocalyptic and even some of the current zombie literature. The telling of the exodus from Dallas, Texas and Jerusalem, Israel describes the rout of civilization in a similar manner to H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The tales cover many genres -- the story of an American commercial airline pilot who spent an entire flight combating the avian flu aboard his aircraft only to narrowly escape being shot down over London by the British Royal Air Force for fear of infection. This would fit easily among techno-thrillers. The viewpoint is not exclusively American, but focuses on the global nature of the struggle. This use of small personal tales creates a patchwork tapestry of the larger events unfolding in the book.

The Protagonist

Irene Carlson, a seventeen year old high school survivor from Woodland Hills, CA collects these harrowing survival first person accounts as she travels across the United States of America and uses them to address current issues such as environmentalism, the War on Terror and international health care.

Characters

The book consists of a series of more than fifteen personal accounts from the avian flu survivors.

Major epochs of Land of the Infected

The book is broken down into a series of personal events in a linear time line that reflects the attitude of society in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by plague, famine and geo-political disorder.

The Beginning

Thailand witnesses the first reported outbreaks of avian flu: refugees carry the virus to other nations. As the avian flu spreads through Africa, it is first referred to as the resurgence of the Bubonic Plague and the UN and military organizations are called in to halt the spread in Asia, Africa and then they take a hard line stance in Europe, mainly the German Schwarzwald (Black Forest). This time period is characterized by a combination of denial and profiteering. The geo-political stance is reminiscent to the Western attitude towards the HIV/AIDS virus. In this section, we learn more about the true nature of the infection from military personnel held up in the US Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton, CA: for example one PFC. Daniel Laruso describes the conditions of the outbreak and how the world’s bio-pharmaceutical companies were using small villages in Africa as testing sites for new drugs in the clinical trial phases of development and that this may have contributed to the nature of the outbreak. Some military and intelligence organizations begin to identify the threat, but most world leaders are still ignorant to the state of emergency up to this point as described by US General Lemond who recounts his battle with the avian flu in Western Europe and its toll on its citizens. Along with the daily struggle to maintain the perimeters separating the infected from the ‘healthy’ and deciding who is sick from those who are not and what to do with the infected as he tries to run the fine line between maintaining a strict military outpost and outlook on protecting the healthy and the mass killing of the innocent all in the name of military readiness. Several nations begin the act of self quarantine and isolationism and it is hinted at by a field worker, Pablo DeLeon of El Salvador that Australia may be free of infection and safe for travel.

The Great Panic

Irene Carlson describes the time of mass hysteria surrounding humanities realization of the reality facing them.

The Culling

This begins when the infection starts to overrun countries in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Refugees escaping from blighted areas help to speed up the rate of infection in other nations. At the same time, small pockets of survivors begin to pop up in communities as some become infected with the avian flu and die in a matter of hours and yet others, like Irene, cannot get sick no matter how much interaction they have with the infected. The rumors begin to swirl on the internet and in the news media that some may have a special protein inhibitor, CCR5, Delt-32 that is a carry-over gene from Western European ancestry that may have allowed some members family to have survived the Black Plague in the 12th Century. The public is unprepared. No large-scale warning is made, and due to the media-as-big-business culture in the United States at the time, many news outlets treat warnings of the avian flu plague as yet another disease outbreak like Ebola or SARS outbreaks of previous years. As a result, the first that many typical middle-class suburban Americans know of the avian flu threat is when the infected start dying on their porch fronts or lawns. Soon, the number of infected increases exponentially. Many in the United States attempt to migrate to Canada and vice versa as the reports become cluttered and both assume that the other is free of infection as described by a former ATF Special Agent Donovan Morton. However, no planned exodus is organized. U.S. and Canadian citizens drown on both sides of the Lakes trying to reach each others country. Yet others are slaughtered by the neighboring governments trying to keep the infected out. A large rift is drawn between Canada and the United States and neither one will admit fault. Hundreds of thousands die in the process. The peak of the infection is reached in the battle of Dallas and Miami as described by a former 7-Eleven worker, Jake Ryan, who recounts his ordeal while working the night shift of the convenience store as it is bombarded by the infected, rioters and looters, car accident victims, a woman in labor and finally a night in jail as he ventures out into the mass hysteria of the riot to try and reach help only to be caught by the police rounding up criminals, looter and government antagonizers. Jake is held in a holding cell in the Dallas Cowboys football stadium over night and by daybreak describes the calm after the storm. The city is devastated and repeated in Miami, Atlanta, Boston, New York and other major cities around the globe as the world leaders tried to self-impose city wide quarantines.

Turning the Tide

Dr. James Goldbloom, M.D., Ph.D, and a former geneticist and researcher of the H1N1 Spanish Flu virus of 1918 who was working for a top secret project in Phuket, Thailand recounts the origination of the avian flu, how it was spread from a top secret lab to be sold on the black market by a turncoat profiteer lab assistant to gun runners and drug dealers to its spread and eventually the containment and possible development of new anti-virals as a cure for the avian flu as he and other researchers are held up in a quarantined facility at the University of Chicago (mirroring the development of the H-bomb by Dr. Oppenheimer and other world physicist at the University of Chicago circa World War II in the race to beat the Nazis).

Global Impact of the Avian Flu and the Infected

We learn of the world’s response to the infection through the stories told by each member interviewed. Reporter Cal Trask of the London Times recounts how while covering the tenth anniversary of the diamond smuggling trade in Sierra Leon he is diverted to the Congo where he is met by the UN top secret scientific team working unbeknownst to the rest of the world at this point of an impending epidemic in a small mining village where all of its workers have fallen sick and are dying of some yet unknown disease (i.e., Ebola outbreak in Africa). As Cal digs further he traces how an organism once introduced to a new weaker species can dominate and serves to eradicate such said species, in this case humans, and how the village, country of Africa and the world learns of this new bird disease and how we are all affected on a global scale. And that with all of the impending death and chaos still looming some several years later, Cal hopes for the simple pleasure of teaching Irene how to work on a car’s engine and enjoy, if only for a day, a Sunday drive around the desolate city that was once Pittsburgh.

Post-World Infection

Some parts of the world we learn have no infection as Irene hears from other travelers of safe places to live in, ‘Eden’ like communities. One such community is in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In the Amish community that has practiced the self-imposed isolation from the outside world even before the onset of infection has all but totally isolated itself once they feel the infection as a threat to their survival. We learn through Elder Samuel Lapp, the group’s spokesman and leader of their desire to live in peace and tranquility and that with little to no modern comforts and no technology and communication with the outside world the Lancaster Amish of over eighty thousand have managed to maintain a ‘zero infection’ count. Their lives we learn are relatively unaffected by the infection and continue to live as they always have: with respect for the family, self and community, and not necessarily in that order with their Christian Judaic God at the forefront of daily and spiritual life. Irene concludes her interview with the Lancaster Amish of Pennsylvania with this thought that is very poignant with respect to the current world situation she and others face as well as for we the reader in respect to the world we encounter on a daily basis:

[“Samuel turns and leaves and I have a greater respect for these people than I could have ever imagined. In a world that is riddled with chaos they somehow have managed to be removed from its pander and pain, and have continued to forge ahead as they always have with great dignity and compassion. Perhaps with our desire to restore some sense of order in the world, we could take a look at the Amish and perhaps something can be learned from studying their communal way of life, strong work ethic and devotion to the family as good examples for our larger society.”]

Land of the Infected significantly alters the geopolitical and economic landscape. In particular, many governments collapse and or are thrown into chaos, and the political ties between certain nations grow stronger. The environmental effects of the war also hold great portent for the countries emerging from the depths of infection. This disease serves in the greater sense of the word to finally give humanity a ‘tie that binds’ uniting us all with one common goal: the continuation and prosperity of humanity through cooperation and proper discourse for future generations.

-- Adrian-Robert Abarca

Land of the Infected