Chapter 9 Chapter 8

On June 18, Joe Bob Brentwood stopped a speeding driver on Texas Route 40 about 25 miles east of Arnett.Five hours had passed since his conversation with his cousin, Harper Scombe.The driver was a Braintree man named Harry Trent, an insurance salesman.In a 50 mph zone, he went 65 mph.Joe Bob handed him a ticket.Trent took it respectfully and went so far as to sell Joe Bob his home and life insurance.Bob was amused.Joe Bob felt good about himself, and death was still very far away for him.However, he didn't know that he was already terminally ill.At the Texarco gas station in Harper Scomb, he got something else but gas; so when he gave the ticket to Harry Trent, the latter got what he Not just a ticket.

Joe Bob was a good constable with a good circle of friends.He passed the germ on to more than 40 people that day and the next.As for how many people were infected by these 40 people, it is difficult to say clearly-who can answer the question "how many angels can dance on the tip of a needle"?A conservative estimate is that if each person infects 5 people, there will be 200 people.According to this conservative algorithm, these 200 people will infect 1,000 people, and soon, 1,000 will become 5,000, and 5,000 will become 25,000. Underneath the California desert, someone ended up using taxpayers' money to create a chain letter that went unhindered.A deadly chain letter.

On June 19, Larry Underwood returned home to New York.The same day Frannie Goldsmith told her father that her uninvited little one was coming soon, and the same day Harry Trent stopped for lunch at an East Texas cafe called Beb's.Trent ate a large plate of cheese sandwiches, and for dessert Beb's special strawberry pie.He had a slight cold, probably allergic, and kept sneezing and spitting.During the meal he infected Beb who was washing the dishes, the two truck drivers in the corner, the guy who delivered the bread, and another guy who came in to change the records on the record player.He also tipped Sweet Sanger, who served him, a dollar — a dollar that led slowly to death.

As he was leaving the café, a station wagon drove up.The one with a luggage rack on the top, the car is full of children and luggage.With a New York license plate.The driver rolled down the window and asked Harry in a New York accent about State 21 going north.Harry gave the New Yorker a detailed description of Highway 21, and at the same time issued a death pass to the driver and his family, without his knowledge. The New Yorker was named Ed M. Norris, and he was an adjutant in the criminal investigation team of the 87th Police District of New York City. For the first time in 5 years he really enjoyed the vacation.The family had a great time and the kids had their fill of time at Walt Disney World in Orlando.Norris never dreamed that the whole family would die on July 2nd, and he was still thinking about going back and telling that son of a bitch Steve Carrera why he didn't drive with his wife and children to find him. A place to play.Steve, he was going to say to him, maybe you're a good detective, but a man who can't run his own house like this is better off pissing on a snowdrift by the side of the road.

The Norris family ate a quick meal at Bebb's, then followed Harry Trent's gracious directions to Highway 21.With three children sitting in the backseat of the car, their skin tanned and red, the couple were amazed at the overzealous enthusiasm of the Southern Gods.Ed thought, God knows what would happen to his pair of freaks if Carrera came here for a walk! That night, they stayed at a motel in Eustace, Oklahoma.Ed and Trisch then infected the reception staff.The three children, Martha, Stanley, and Hector, infected the children they played with on the hotel playground as they headed to West Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee.Trisch also infected two women at a laundromat two blocks from the hotel.While Ed was going to fetch ice, he passed someone in the hotel hallway, and that person, too, was infected.Each infected person becomes a new link in the chain of infection.

Early in the morning Trisch woke Ed up and told him that Hector was sick with a cough and a fever.Judging from his piercing cough, she guessed that the child might have laryngitis.Ed Norris snorted dejectedly and told her to give the boy some aspirin.This damn laryngitis will come back four or five days later, the child can get sick safely at home, and this vacation can also leave a perfect memory for Ed (of course, accepting the envious eyes of others is even more important) It's what he's been waiting for).The child's intermittent dry cough came from the crack in the door of the suite, like the barking of a hound.

Trisch had hoped that Hector's symptoms would abate during the morning.Got laryngitis, can only lie obediently.But at noon on the 20th, Hector's eyes almost turned into glass balls, without any light, and aspirin failed to reduce the fever.What Trisch didn't expect was that Hector's cough seemed to be getting worse, with sticky phlegm in it, and his breathing seemed weak.Somehow, Martha seemed to be infected too.Trisch himself was beginning to feel a itchy throat and a cough, but so far it had only been a few light coughs, which a small handkerchief would do. At the end, she said to Ed, "We've got to get a doctor and show Hector."

Ed pulled into a gas station and found the current location on a map tucked in the car's sun visor: Hammer Crossing, Kansas. "I don't know," Ed said. "We could at least make an appointment with a doctor." He sighed, running his hands through his hair distractedly. "Kansas, Hammer Crossing! God! Why does he have to be sick in a place like this?" Martha also looked at the map on his father's shoulder. "Papa," she cried, "I hear Jesse James robbed the bank here. Twice!" "Fuck Jesse James," Ed said gruffly. "Ed!" Trish yelled.

"I'm sorry," he said without feeling sorry for anything in his heart.The car continued to drive forward. After six phone calls in all, Ed Norris managed to get in touch with a doctor in Bolliston.The doctor told them to be at his clinic by three o'clock.Boriston was twenty miles west of Hammer Crossing, out of the way, but right now Hector's illness was a priority.Ed was genuinely concerned, the child had never been so weak. They arrived at Dr. Brendon Sweeney's clinic at 2 p.m. and waited outside his office.Ed sneezed, too.There was a room full of people waiting for the doctor. It was nearly 4 o'clock before the family saw the doctor.Hector is already in a semi-conscious state at the moment, no matter what Trisch fiddles with, he still looks in a daze, and Trisch himself feels that he has a fever.Stanoulis, who is only 9 years old, is still in good spirits and has never been safe there.

During the time that Ed's family was waiting for the doctor, no fewer than 25 people were infected with the disease that was later named "Captain Trips". The name "Captain Trips" would soon be widespread in this collapsing nation.Among these infected people, there was a wife who looked like a housewife. At that time, she just went in to pay the money.She took the disease to the bridge club she frequented, and everyone there was not spared. This matronly figure was Mrs. Robert Bradford, known as Sarah Bradford in the Bridge Club, and Cookey by her husband and friends.Sara played a good card that night, probably because the opponent was her best friend Angela Dupre, and the two seemed to have a sympathetic heart.The two of them made a great victory and won all three games.The only thing that made Sarah feel bad was that she seemed to have a bit of a cold.The last time I caught a cold, it was a second time so soon, it was really confusing.

At 10 o'clock in the evening, the poker players broke up, and she and Angela found a cocktail bar to have a quiet drink.Angela is in no hurry to go home, it's David's turn to play poker at home tonight, it's a weekly lesson, and she won't be able to sleep because of the noise... Unless she has two glasses of sparkling sloe before going to bed Alcohol, this is the tranquilizer she prescribed for herself. Sarah ordered some beer, and the two talked about the night's card luck.At this time, the guests of the Boriston Cocktail Bar were all infected without exception, and the two young men sitting next to them drinking beer were the first to bear the brunt.The two were about to leave for California to find their way out, as Larry Underwood and Rudy Schwart had done, when a friend offered to help them find work with a transportation company.The next day, they set off westward, spreading germs along the way. It's a well-known fact that chain letters don't work.According to the promise of this kind of letter, you only need to send $1 to the first person on the list in the letter, then attach your name to the end of the list, and then send the same letter to 5 friends, you can get A whopping $100,000 or so.But who has it?there has never been.But Captain Trips chain letters are very effective.Pyramid work had actually begun, but not at the base, but at the top, which was the dead guard named Charles Campion.When the birds returned to their nests and everyone returned home, the postman was still tirelessly delivering bundles of chain letters to each participant, each containing a dollar; Captain Trips acted as the postman's chain. This is not the case with the letter, it sent first a bedroom, each with one or two corpses lying there; then ditches and pits full of dead corpses; foundation pits for yards and unfinished buildings.In the end, the corpses all began to rot and stink. Sarah Bradford and Angela Dupre walked together to the parking lot (while infecting four or five passers-by they met in the street), kissed each other hastily, and went their separate ways.Sarah returned home and infected her husband, five of his poker friends, and their teenage daughter Samantha.Samantha was worried at this time, she was worried that her boyfriend had contracted gonorrhea.The parents didn't know about it.For now, Samantha's concerns are not unreasonable.In the long run, though, she didn't have to worry about it: gonorrhea, no matter how bad it was, was nothing compared to what her mother had passed on to her. Samantha was going to swim in the Boriston YWCA pool tomorrow, and there was no doubt that everyone who swam there would also be doomed. and so on.