Mind Plague

3.8/5 ( ratings)

A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO LOSE...

Imagine a world in which nearly everyone has lost their ability to think. That’s exactly the world Franklin Strock wakes up into one morning. His wife and his neighbors .... and seemingly everyone else, appears afflicted by a total inability to remember who they are and worse, how to do even the simplest things. He soon realizes that something has erased the minds of most everyone except he and a small handful of others.

The mind plague struck America just before dawn eastern standard time when most everyone across the country was asleep. When those afflicted woke up, they simply laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to recall what to do next, how to get out of bed, shower, dress, have breakfast, go to work or school. The hours and days past and still they laid in bed until eventually, they starved to death. Weeks and months later, millions upon millions of withered skeletons still laid in their beds.

Across the world, when the plague struck, cars went off the road, jet planes fell from the sky, people stood in their tracks, conversations ceased. And like their American counterparts, everyone who survived the initial mayhem, eventually starved to death and the streets of the great cities of the world were soon littered with corpses. In less than a month, billions died.
And humanity seemed doomed.

But like a handful of others, Franklin Strock escaped the ravages of the plague. With Ellie, his wife, who’d lost her mind and become a blank, he retreated to an uncle’s cabin deep in the woods. In the months that followed, he obtained all the food and supplies he needed to survive from the abandoned homes and stores in the nearby lifeless villages, towns and cities, while trying to awaken Ellie’s mind and bring back the woman she was before the plague.

And then, nine months after the plague struck down humanity, while napping in an old recliner on the front porch of the cabin one warm, lazy afternoon in mid-June, Strock was awakened by the roar of a motorcycle approaching on a state highway a quarter mile down from the cabin. As the bike rounded a curve on the highway in front of the cabin, it hit something on the road and careened off the road. Little did Strock realize that by going down to help the biker, he’d be introduced to the world that arose after the Mind Plague struck.

Scarsella’s eight crime and speculative fiction novels have been widely praised by reviewers and readers alike. Join him in this dystopian fable in which battling forces vie for the minds and hearts of their fellow man who’s minds have gone blank.