There have been a few inquiries concerning short stories. Short stories for now can be posted on blogs. Just to prove it, here's one lol.

SOW THE WIND

John Thornton was a high school biology teacher. He had tried using his PHD in virology to teach at the college level at the University of Maryland. But the campus politics and endless paper work had driven him to teach high school instead. Less paper work resulted in more time for his beloved family.

His wife Karen was an investment banker whose office was in tower one of the World Trade Center. On that clear September morning when the fanatics brought both towers down, Karen had taken his daughter Iris and her 2nd grade class to work with her for a field trip.

All he could remember of that day was that evil cloud enveloping Manhattan after the collapse.

He must have suffered some kind of breakdown, for his next memory was awakening in a hospital. They said he'd been "asleep" for 10 days. The doctors said he was fine but kept him there 3 more days for psychological testing and MRIs. Then they told him he was free to resume his life.

What life? John thought. His life was gone in that cloud of dust.

He'd tried going straight back to work teaching. But after the 2nd time he'd "blanked out" and stood staring into nothing in front of his class, his school district decided it was best he take a paid leave for the remainder of the year.

It was during this leave that he first started thinking about terrorism, terrorists, and consequences. Justice and revenge.

It didn't take much to have himself declared disabled due to post traumatic stress syndrome. This gave him a steady income on which to live. And a chance to pursue private research in his field of virology; and to plan.

Regardless of the claims that Islam was a religion of peace, John believed otherwise. Weren't the high jackers and their puppeteers Muslim? If Islam were so peaceful, where were the Muslim clerics condemning terrorism?
If the religious leaders did not condemn it, they must support it. And if the clerics supported terrorism then Islam must condone these barbaric acts.

He thought of this as he boarded his flight back to the states from Saudi Arabia. He remembered the last 12 years.

It had not been al that hard to obtain the corpse of a chicken which had died of avian flu in China. With his expertise and patience it had not been hard to alter the virus. In his basement. He was not a mad man. He didn't want to kill the world, just one murderous religion. So the first change he made was putting a limitation on how many times the virus would replicate itself before it shut itself down. His calculations showed about 1000 times would suffice. That would give it enough time to infect everyone within about 500-1000 miles of its release. He bred and tested and tinkered until all batches showed a shutdown life of 800-1200 replications.

After that it was fairly easy to breed it to be immune to any medicine likely to be used against it. And to give it a human mortality rate of 98%.

The tough part was the spoors. He didn't just want to kill people; he wanted to destroy a religion he held responsible for so much death. He wanted the first 300-400 generations of the virus to produce spoors. Spoors that would remain lethal and thus render their resting places uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

The delivery system was simplicity itself. A small weather balloon, a timed aerosol canister and a trigger.
Just release it upwind of the intended target and walk away.

So 12 years after 9/11 as his plane sped home, John smiled. Terrorists he thought. Then he chuckled to himself.By the time he landed, the deed would be done. In a few days the epidemic would be full blown and quarantines would be in place. In a month Mecca would be a stinking graveyard. Most of the Arabian peninsula would be lethal to enter.

Terrorism...........
.........had Osama and his fiends thought it a one way street?

* Note : this work of Fiction does not reflect any of the beliefs of the author. ANY acts of terrorism are to be condemned...........stan