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The Plague of Palatka
By Thomas Miller
Chapter 1: The Arrival
It started with a whisper, a soft murmur among the townsfolk of Palatka, Florida. The streets bustled with newcomers, drawn by cheap land, growing businesses, and the promise of a fresh start. But with them, they brought something else—something unseen, festering beneath the humid air of the town. It began as an odd fever, nothing more than a mild inconvenience. But as the days passed, the sickness spread like wildfire, consuming the town and threatening to plunge it into chaos.
HCA Putnam Community Medical Center, a small hospital already strained under financial cuts and staffing shortages, quickly found itself overwhelmed. The waiting rooms brimmed with coughing, feverish patients, their eyes sunken, their skin sallow. Dr. Henry Wallace, a veteran physician who had served Palatka for over twenty years, had never seen anything like it. Patients deteriorated at an alarming rate—vomiting blood, their organs failing within days.
"We're dealing with something different here," Wallace muttered as he studied the latest reports. "Something new. And it's killing people faster than we can understand."
Nurses rushed to contain the outbreak, but it was futile. The hospital's resources—already stretched thin—crumbled under the pressure. Beds were filled with patients whose breathing grew shallow, their skin covered in dark lesions. The sick lined the hallways, spilling out into the parking lot, begging for help.
The CDC was called, but by the time they responded, Palatka was already teetering on the brink. The local government, desperate to contain the spread, implemented a quarantine. But it was too late. The sickness had already seeped into the lifeblood of the town, infecting police officers, teachers, even the mayor himself. Fear slithered through the community, growing with each passing day.
Chapter 2: The Collapse
As the sickness ravaged Palatka, the city's infrastructure crumbled. Grocery stores were looted as people stocked up in fear of an impending collapse. Businesses shuttered their doors, unwilling to risk exposure. Gas stations sat abandoned, their pumps empty, their attendants long gone. Even the church bells, which had rung faithfully every Sunday, fell silent.
The medical staff at HCA Putnam worked tirelessly, but they were fighting a losing battle. The disease mutated quickly, resisting every treatment thrown at it. Dr. Wallace, desperate for answers, turned to old medical texts, drawing comparisons to historical plagues. "If we don't stop this," he warned his colleagues in a late-night meeting, "Palatka will cease to exist."
By the third week, entire neighborhoods were abandoned. The city was unrecognizable, its once-friendly charm replaced with eerie silence, interrupted only by the occasional distant scream. Martial law was declared, but even the National Guard couldn't stem the tide.
And then, people started disappearing.
Rumors spread through what remained of the community. Stories of figures in hazmat suits dragging away the sick in the dead of night. Of secret laboratories operating deep in the swamps. Of an unmarked black truck seen driving towards the old, abandoned rail yard.
Dr. Wallace wasn't sure what was more terrifying—the sickness itself or the secrets it seemed to unearth.
Chapter 3: The Hunt for a Cure
As more succumbed to the illness, the medical community became desperate. A ragtag team of doctors, researchers, and rogue scientists worked tirelessly in a makeshift lab hidden inside an old warehouse on St. Johns Avenue. With no support from the crumbling hospital, they relied on scavenged supplies, experimental treatments, and black-market pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Vanessa Kline, an epidemiologist from Jacksonville who had come to Palatka to help, was convinced the disease wasn’t natural. “This doesn’t behave like any known pathogen. It’s too precise, too effective at destruction,” she murmured, flipping through blood test results. “It’s like it was engineered.”
The more they dug, the darker the truth became. Something had been brought to Palatka—not just a disease, but something deliberate.
As the doctors raced to understand what they were facing, the town faced another horror: those who survived the sickness weren’t the same. Their minds fractured, their eyes hollow. They whispered about hearing voices, about something waiting in the dark.
And then, one night, the sky over Palatka turned red.
To be continued…