Dark Beginnings

What if you lived in a small coastal town where a madman was determined to share his gift of eternal life with his community? What if a serum designed to dramatically alter DNA had the power to attach itself to docile marine life, creating a creature capable of tremendous violence and destruction? HAL JOHNSTON, a brilliant scientist at Raydon Labs in Northern California, tries to create a life extending medication when his beloved wife HOLLY is stricken with terminal cancer. Denied treatment by their medical insurance company, HAL steps up his research on his "Blue Gem Serum" by adding ingredients not sanctioned by the FDA. HAL's antidote was supposed to cure the ravenous disease in Holly's body. Instead, it extends her life indefinitely as she reanimates into a zombie capable of spreading the disease. After HAL's secret laboratory is discovered and his beloved HOLLY destroyed, the now mentally deranged scientist takes the future of mankind into his own hands. He climbs a viaduct flowing to the Pacific Ocean where he takes his own life but only after he has released his viral vaccine into the water supply. The serum mixes with the local marine life and starts a chain reaction, quickly devastating the small coastal town. Venomous, genetically altered sea creatures emerge from the ocean and begin a deadly rampage. One sting from the creature's venomous tail turns its human foe into a lifeless walking zombie. A bite from a zombie or a sting from a "scrabion" spreads the deathly infection. No one is safe. As the survival battle begins, a diverse group of personalities come together. Homeless drunk JIMMY, pest exterminator JOEY, escaped prisoner RICK, teenage stoner friends MARK and KEITH, medical student AARON and forensic nurse WHITNEY to name a few, offer each other support as Tylerton dies around them. They win some fights and they lose some fights as we wonder who will make it and who will join the hopeless undead. Each member of the group contributes in different ways as they build a makeshift haven inside a Mimi's Café. The US ARMY and the CDC join forces to combat the epidemic. They deploy various methods to try to halt the invasion and multiplication of zombies and mutated creatures alike - much without success. Eventually, the problem seems to be contained, but is it? This is "Dark Beginnings" the first installment in Diane Sager's apocalyptic series EVIL VEIN.