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  Before the Dead Walked

  A Novel

  by

  David Burke and Derek Hart

  All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2018 David Burke and Derek Hart

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, places, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  “If the common honey bee disappeared off the face of the earth,

  man would only have four years left to live.”

  Albert Einstein

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Connect

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to our mutual friend, Bob Lenthart, who is himself a master storyteller and who inspired us to write this tale.

  Foreword

  A honey bee is any bee member of the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Currently only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, but historically, six to eleven species have been recognized. The best known honey bee is the Western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, including the stingless honey bees, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of bees, including honey bees, is known as melittology.

  Beekeepers in western countries have been reporting slow declines of stocks for many years, apparently due to impaired protein production, changes in agricultural practice, or unpredictable weather. In early 2007, abnormally high die-offs (30–70% of hives) of European honey bee colonies occurred in North America. Such a decline seems unprecedented in recent history. This has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It is unclear whether this is simply an accelerated phase of the general decline due to stochastically more adverse conditions in 2006, or a novel phenomenon. CCD is unique due to the lack of evidence as to what causes the sudden die-off of adult worker bees, as well as few to no dead bees found around the hive.

  Research is beginning to determine the causes of CCD, with the weight of evidence is leaning towards it being a syndrome rather than a disease, as it seems to be caused by a combination of various contributing factors rather than a single pathogen or poison. However, in April 2013, after a report was released by the European Food Safety Authority identifying the significant risks of the class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, the European Union called for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoid pesticides. In 2015, an 11-year British study showed a definitive relationship between increasing agricultural use of neonicotinoid and escalating honey bee colony losses at a landscape level. This is the first field study to establish a link between neonicotinoids and CCD.

  A 2007 study linked CCD with Israeli acute paralysis virus at a level of statistical significance. IAPV was found in 83.3% of hives with CCD, and has a predictive value of 96.1%, making it one of the most probable candidates as the infectious agent in CCD.

  One other possible hypothesis is that the bees are falling victim to a combination of insecticides and parasites. Feral honey bees are prone to high levels of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV). The varroa mite thrives in honey bee colonies by sucking the hemolymph of honey bees, causing open wounds that are susceptible to varroosis. Higher levels of DWV are more prevalent in colonies that are not being treated for varroosis. Tobacco ring spot virus (TRSV) spreads and negatively affects the health of honey bees indirectly. TRSV has a wide host range. It can be transmitted from infected plant hosts, through parasites such as varroa mites, and ultimately infect insects like the honey bee. In January 2012, a researcher discovered Apocephalus borealis larvae, a parasitic fly known to prey on bumble bees and wasps, in a test tube containing a dead honey bee believed to have been affected by CCD.

  No effective preventative measures against CCD have been suggested to date.

  As of 2017, beehive losses remained high, and were not due to CCD alone, but to other factors as reported by the USDA. Climate change is one critical factor, as well as predatory wasp species, and human sabotage of beehives for malicious intent.

  Preface

  This particular year, only the most observant people paid attention to the number of contrails that appeared over Georgia. For nearly a month, line after line of white clouds streamed from the jets sailing nearly ten miles high. Again no one really paid any attention. This story does not mean to imply that the streams of vapor emitting from jets had anything to do with what happened later. Radio journalists laughed at the conspiracy theorists as crazy snowflakes. That ended it. It was just a huge coincidence that after three months of zigzag patterned lines painted across the skies over Georgia that something terrible took place.

  They call them the dog days, pronounced dawg, down here in Georgia. These were the endless summer days when the temperature was so hot that there was nothing to do but sweat. The air was hazy brown, still and heavy. It was thick with the humidity that marked the South. You could say that the summers in the south were equivalent to the winters in the north. One just had to get acclimated to them. Someone once asked a girl how long she had been in Georgia. He knew by her accent that she was from the north. She told him fifteen years. He said, “Goodnight girl, you are a Georgia Peach by now. If you can go through three Georgia summers and not be scared off, you are a Southern Belle.”

  At the end of a dog day, all you could do was sit on the porch, drink a glass of sweet tea and comment on how cool the evening was. Needless to say, August was the hottest. This year was a little different, however. It rained a lot. Usually, by the end of August, as the hurricane season began to blow through the gulf and by mid-September, the fresh air of autumn arrived, along with football and pumpkins. Unfortunately, the weather seemed very uncooperative this year. In fact, the old timers remembered such a time in the past, when it would get so hot during the day and then rain all night. Strange things happened that year. The stories were nothing more than legends, of course, but perhaps everyone should have paid closer attention.

  As in any good tall tale, there is always an element of truth hidden within.

  This summer in Georgia was the hottest summer on record.

  Still, nobody paid much attention.

  Introduction

  This novel has been a long time in the making. David Burke and Derek Hart have conspired before, but those literary expeditions were the skilled blending of dramatic cover art and action-packed storyline. This time around, the authors got together to write something a little different. Sure, it has the trademark styles of both authors, with some incredible research conducted by David Burke, along with his typical fantastic cover art, coupled with an intriguing plot penned by both he and Derek Hart.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the University Of Guelph Beekeeping Lab in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Honey bees play a key role in this novel, while also making an incredible impact on agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability, by providing pollination services to crops and wild plants. The lab’s mandate is to help honey bees continue this vital work. Dr. Ernesto Guzman, Paul Kelly, and Nancy Bradbury were incredibly helpful in providing critical information to the authors.

  Thank you to Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express Train, Limited, for providing wonderful details about, perhaps, the world’s greatest railway journey. The Trans-Siberian Railway runs like a steel ribbon across mysterious Russia, connecting east and west from Moscow over the Urals, across the magnificent and endless steppes and alongside the shore of Lake Baikal, which is the world’s largest freshwater lake. The authors are especially grateful to Tim Littler, the founder, who currently resides in Altrincham, Cheshire, England. The planet’s leading provider of long distance luxury railway journeys, Golden Eagle Luxury Trains operates private trains in Russia and its former republics, including Mongolia and China. Tim actually took the author’s proposed journey and provided magnificent details for the entire trip, which are imbedded within the body of this book.

  The authors are also very grateful for the assistance provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and Fort Benning, which is a United States Army base straddling the Alabama-Georgia border next to Columbus, Georgia, along with the Association of Medi
cal Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and finally to The Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO), for their cooperation in providing details regarding the proposed goat farms in Afghanistan.

  Of course, we would be remiss without acknowledging our fans, loyal readers, and supporters, who also contributed to this novel. This includes Jodi Roth, Lupita Irazaba, Dimiter Kolev, Linda Mickey, Stephen Gilbert, Ian Lenthart, Toni Trick, Luben Jelezarov, Anthony Schell and our rogue investigator, Jeff Parker.

  Cover art by David M. Burke

  Prologue

  Stranger Events

  Sandy McClain was out in the field raking hay. This had to be done before the rains came so that it could dry out before bailing it. This man was a cowboy’s cowboy. He spent most of his time buying and selling cattle over in Roanoke, Alabama. He had around 1,200 acres of pasture, timber, and scrubland in Harris County, Georgia.

  Someone once asked Sandy why he left his doors open at home all the time. He replied that if anyone needed something, they could have it. He went on to say that they wouldn’t have it for long though. McClain was from an old family going back ten generations of self-reliant people who pioneered this area of west central Georgia. His ancestors fought General Sherman as he marched to the sea.

  When he wasn’t buying cattle, he was fixing something. Everything on the farm needed fixing at one time or another and Sandy had a barn full of junk. Metal bits of tractors, wheels, bits, ploughs, tools, and even brooms. It was an American Pickers paradise. Sandy would never sell anything, just in case he needed it for some unknown emergency in the very near future.

  However, Sandy would give you anything you asked for if you needed it. There wasn’t a night gone by where people didn’t show up at Sandy’s to work on their truck, tractor, or anything broken. It was not uncommon to see a pit-fire near the barn, with about eight logs or chairs circling it, and folks enjoying the evening over some Fiddlers whiskey.

  Just after sundown on this particular evening, Sandy got off his tractor, drenched in humid sweat. Normally, the smell of fresh cut hay produced enough oxygen to invigorate even the dogs lying under the porch of the farm house.

  Not this time.

  Something just stank.

  At first, Sandy thought he had run over a skunk and spilled the glands out. Yet this odor was not the stale skunk odor so familiar in the woods. No, this was something like a rotting carcass. Sandy passed it off as having crushed a dead rabbit that had been decaying for a few days. The funny thing, he observed, was that there were no buzzards circling overhead. Those mangy birds kept his fields clean of the critters he would shoot dead from time to time. Coyotes were beginning to become a problem again, as well as armadillos. Killing the scruffy varmints meant his calves would be safer and his ground wouldn’t be plowed up with potholes by the hard shelled armadillos that were constantly searching for grubs. Although they didn’t come out by day, the night drew them to his property like moths to the light. The other hazard was the all-too-common rattlesnake. They struck fear into this cowboy like nothing else. He had been in more fights, stared down the barrels of several guns, had more knives pulled on him than anyone this side of Fort Benning. He had the reputation of a troublemaker. He never really made trouble, but it just seemed to find him.

  One time he fell off his horse and stared into the face of a rattlesnake, which made his bowels open. That was the only time he showed fear from one of God’s creatures. His family, friends and cattle needed protecting. In order to do that, the unwanted critters needed to be kept in check. For that reason alone, Sandy always had his trusty old Henry .22 Golden Boy. He kept it with him at all times when out in the pasture.

  Now, something was really putrid.

  It made him scrunch up his nose.

  Dusk was settling as he made it back to the old house. The doors were still wide open. The dogs were flagging their tails at their master’s return. Perhaps because they knew they were about to be fed.

  “Damn stink,” Sandy said, as the smell seemed to follow him.

  The odor surrounded him, or was infused in his shirt still wet with sweat. The stench stuck to him, as well as the cloth.

  “Gonna get me a shower ya mutts, so hang on,” McClain shouted at the dogs.

  As the shadows lengthened, so did the dogs’ hunger and Sandy laughed at that thought. It would be a long time before he laughed again.

  Sandy looked at the blank computer on the table near the dining room. He used it once or twice a week. It was not a necessary thing. Though lately, he found he could look up some prices for cattle in neighboring states. He found that interesting.

  He also discovered some porn. That didn’t really interest him either, because the ladies were all too perfect. Whatever happened to a bit of character and mystery? He didn’t need pussy in his face.

  Sandy was, however, amazed at all of the information that was available and how much he would never use. He walked past the quiet kitchen, checked on the slow cooker. The ham hock and potatoes had been simmering for about six hours now. He lifted the lid and the smell of ham overtook the putrid smell that had accompanied him back to the house.

  As he undressed, he felt like tossing the clothes into the waste bin, or even burning them, but his common sense took over and he stuck them in the Maytag with hot water and a little extra detergent. After showering, he didn’t notice the smell. Simmering ham filled the house. Shooing the dogs out, he filled up a couple pans with some Alpo; them yapping at him the whole time as if they hadn’t been fed in weeks.

  Putting the pans down on the ground, three Aussies, one lab mix, a shepherd-terrier and another unidentified dog ate heartily. Sandy went back inside the kitchen and pulling up a chair to the table, he ate his dinner in silence. In his mind he was calculating the number of round bales he would tie tomorrow. How many he would sell and how many he would keep for the winter.

  He knew he had to get up early and get it done.

  “Nothing new there,” he said to himself.

  This time he needed to hustle a bit more as rain was forecast for the weekend. The hay would have a day or so of good air to help dry it out.

  “Damn rain,” he muttered.

  It was a farmer’s curse and a farmer’s blessing. As in anything, timing was everything. This year, the rains came plenty. Much grass was cut and hay baled. Some good money was made. Most of that would go to the stinking politicians, as they had just raised property taxes again. He detested politics, regardless of which party was doing all the talking. They were all just a bunch of back-stabbing lying scumbags.

  Dusk came quickly and the slight fog that hung over the newly cut grass made an eerie sight, but nothing new to an old hand at living in the country. Lights from an automobile turned down the dirt driveway.

  The living burglar alarms, all in unison, removed their mouths from their food and started their feverish barking. It would drive you crazy if you didn’t own dogs. Sandy lived alone. He appreciated the company of the dogs. The Aussies were his workers, friends, and companions. The others were his watchers. Their keen eyes spotted the movement of the truck about a hundred yards before making the turn. They hadn’t removed their heads from the food bowls, until it turned into the drive. Their hackles were up. They looked ferocious, but for the most part, they were good only for barking. Sandy looked over beside the kitchen door and saw his rifle at the ready.

  Jack Watson got out of his Ford dually, standing six-foot-five, with a big cigar in his mouth. Two of the dogs were hopping on their hind legs wanting to be petted by this familiar friend of Sandy’s.

  Jack was the local chief for the volunteer fire department. He and Sandy did everything together as kids. Growing up together, they hunted, fought, drank and worked side by side. They were like kindred spirits. It was only natural that Jack married Sandy’s sister, Kat. Jack’s county-issued radio hung to his hip like a cowboy slung his pistol. Over the air, the silence was broken by the sounds of 911 dispatchers calling for some kind of assistance. It was nothing that Jack need to be concerned about. His calls, if directed to him, would be preceded by a certain tone to alert him of a fire. He turned the squelch up to quieten some of the radio clutter.