Outbreak Chapter 13

The e-mail was short but it conveyed everything that he needed it to. At the very least it let his family know that he was ok. He was sure that his mother would be sick with worry, like most any other mother she was always extremely concerned whenever one of her children was in any type of danger. He could only hope that the internet was still working when he got to Wiggins' apartment so he could check for a response.
He got off the computer offering to give Aidan and Rebecca a chance to send messages to their families. He wanted to remain somewhat productive so he got the last of his food from the microwave and moved over to the pile of supplies that still needed to be packed away. He divided his attention between packing, eating and watching the news.
After watching the news for just a few minutes he could tell that things were still getting worse. Troops still hadn't been sent into the city and they were still under orders to not allow any civilians out of the city regardless of if they showed signs of infection or not.
Little was still known about the outbreak but it was speculated that the disease was spread by fluid transfers since anybody that the news helicopters spotted being bitten turned soon after while others who were merely in physical contact but escaped unharmed or only with scratches seemed to be fine. Every person bitten seemed to take a different amount of time to change. The people who were mauled and bitten multiple times seemed to turn the fastest, probably because larger amounts of the disease was transferred into their system. There were reports of others who took hours to change after receiving only small shallow bites that likely only transferred only small amounts of the virus into areas of their body with less blood flow. So far there hadn't been any reports of people whose bodies had fought off the disease, it seemed to effect everyone.
At sunrise when the media had first been able to get a good look at the chaos in the city using news helicopters they had estimated that roughly ten percent of the city was infected. The number of infected seemed to be growing exponentially and currently they were guessing that the number was closer to a third of the population and growing rapidly.