Darrell Bain, Alien Infection

Alien Infection

Darrell Bain

Twilight Times, May 2006, $16.95

ISBN: 1933353724

At Lamont Memorial in Lufkin, Texas, the night shift ER Doc asks Lab Technician Michael Brandon to draw blood for tests from a patient seemingly dead. As he fills three tubes up, the barely alive patient knocks the syringe into Michael's wrist, though neither of the medical attendees notice because they are distracted by the movement. Not much later, as Michael tests two of the tubes of blood and refrigerates the third, two suits with guns arrive taking the two tubes, but quickly leave as the comatose patient has some how escaped.

Michael goes home, but becomes very ill. A few days later he recovers only to learn that anyone involved with that patient is being eliminated in what has been made to look like accidents as the ER Doc and nurse died while allegedly running away together. Realizing the Feds will come for him and how diabolical these suits are, Michael heads to Dallas where he meets Mona to get his ID changed. He cuts himself shaving, but panics when she touches his bleeding nick with a finger she had accidentally stuck with a pin. She becomes infected. As they flee together, each notices they seem younger and healthier while the Feds hunt them now in Arkansas.

This medical thriller grips the audience from the moment that Michael is jabbed by the syringe, and never slows down as he and Mona struggle with learning the truth and surviving the ordeal of the Feds wanting them dead in what appears to be a clean-up cover-up operation. Michael and Mona are interesting protagonists, but what hooks readers is the need to know, even with the obvious title, what infects the heroes and why the Feds want to eradicate the evidence. ALIEN INFECTION is a fine science fiction suspense thriller that the X-Files crowd will enjoy.