The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak (18 page)

Brian's inability to think for himself instead of reading an instruction sheet verbatim and without any
independent initiative was one of the things that sealed the fate of the survivors trapped inside the field center. The steps on the check sheets that his instructions had told him to skip where the ones that would have told him to contact the CDC command staff as well as the crisis center in DC. Had he taken even the slightest level of extra initiative and made one of those calls he would have been informed of the big picture with the virus being out of control and the importance of the field center continuing their work in searching for a cure. He would also have been made aware that the only known source of immune human samples was located inside that facility. Instead of continuing on with the checklist in this case the decision would have been easily made to dispatch a team to their location to determine the status of the field center and preserve all samples of immune tissue and blood available. As it was, there was nowhere in the instructions he followed that dictated he should make any calls outside of the communications center before reaching the incineration stage of the check list. Having the knowledge that there would be a warning of several minutes to anyone still alive at the field center removed any misgivings that Brian may have had and that would have possibly caused him to consider making a phone call for a second opinion on the actions he was about to take. Starting the process was as simple as clicking two virtual buttons presented on the computer screen, since it was the supervisor’s responsibility to carry out this directive, Brian took control of the mouse from the computer operator and clicked the first button. This prompted a red box to appear on the screen urging caution and asked if the user was sure that they wanted to initiate this process. He hesitated only as long as it took him to read the warning and then he simply clicked on the yes button, telling the computer that yes, he was sure he wanted to initiate this action. Other than a countdown box that appeared in the upper corner of the screen starting at the five minute mark, there was nothing else that happened to show that he had just condemned several of their top scientists and last real hope at a cure to a fiery death. Had alarms sounded and lights flashed, it may have shook him up just enough to pick up the nearby phone and call for a second opinion. His job with this crisis done, he returned to his own computer station and started writing up a log summary of the situation and his actions, he would spend the five minutes remaining in the lives of over a dozen men and women working on a spin to make himself seem heroic.

#

Amy Benson was still doubled over on the floor in the corridor just outside the central lab. The pain from her severed finger was still radiating through her body and making her sick to her stomach, but there was something else along with the pain that was even more disturbing. She could
actually feel the virus moving through her veins and corroding her internal organs with the first tendrils of inevitable death. Within only a few minutes of the attack, a wave of nausea washed over her and she didn't miss the fact that the dark chunky remains of her last meal were heavily coated with dark and tacky blood.  As she felt the toxins coursing through her body the tears running down her cheeks changed from tears of pain and agony to ones of a broken heart from the realization that she would never see her beautiful twin girls grow up and turn into women. As she thought of all the milestones in her daughters lives that they would experience without their mother at their side she cried even harder. Her sobs at first prevented her from noticing the changing tone in the ringing alarms sounding throughout the field center. It took her several moments to realize that something was different and she bit down on her lower lip to try and stifle her own sobs long enough to interpret the change in the alarm tones. Flashing back to her last training mission she recalled that all of them had been subjected to this particular tone after two failed exercises which resulted in simulated release of infectious agents inside the lab areas. There was no mistaking that sound and what it represented, someone had triggered the incinerator protocols for this station. Suddenly it hit her that the last moments of her life had been reduced from a period of only a few hours to now less than five minutes. In a way she felt some measure of relief, the prospect of dying alone and covered in her own vomit in this small corridor only to return from the land of the dead as one of those horrible demons was not a fate she had any desire for. Now, with the incineration process starting, she would die in a brilliant flash of flames, an instant of intense heat and it would all be over. The temperature levels the field center would be subjected to would ensure that nothing, living or dead, could possibly revive. When it was over, all that would be left would be ash and melted slag. She took a small measure of comfort in knowing that even though she was about to die and that her girls would never see their own mother again, at least she was dying as a human being and not a terrifying monstrosity.

The alarms continued to blare but she tuned them out and instead closed her eyes tightly and thought about her husband and her daughters, she tried to revisit birthdays, Christmas's past, her wedding, the arduous eighteen hours of labor she spent giving birth to her beautiful twins. The
deeper into her memories she was able to go the less she noticed the pain coursing through her body and the more at ease she was able to make herself. She had already accomplished so much in her short life that she would be leaving this world a proud and fulfilled woman, she had left a mark, people would know that she had existed and her name would live on. Her family would grieve for her, no doubt about that, but they would know that she died working to make their world a better and safer place to live in. How things would eventually pan out in the face of this current virus outbreak she had no idea, she could only offer up a silent prayer that someone would be able to continue her work and find a cure. She didn't allow herself to entertain the notion of what would happen to her own family if this virus continued to spread out of control, it was something she pushed from her mind and instead told herself that they were safe and would come through this just fine. What Amy didn't realize was that while some of the data she had generated had been transmitted to the computers at the CDC, the majority of it was still sitting in memory in various computers spread throughout the field center. Once the facility was destroyed it would be back to square one for anyone coming along behind them trying to recreate their work.

As the chime on the alarm changed to signal that it was now ten seconds from ignition of the incinerators, Amy squeezed her eyes shut tight, she searched her memory for the most pleasant image of her family all together one last time. In those final seconds of her life she held tight to that image and let it flood her thoughts while leaving room for nothing but that one single image of her family together. The rumbling groan of all four incinerators firing up at the same time was drowned out by the laughter of two young girls and their smiling father. Amy died with a smile on her face and peace in her heart. For the others trapped in different rooms inside the field center, they met their end for the most part screaming at the top of their lungs for help while pounding futilely against the magnetically sealed doors trapping them inside what was to become an oversize urn for their ashes.

It was well into Sunday morning before Dr. Woods and Dr. Martin learned of the loss of the CDC field center. When they missed a scheduled conference call at nine that morning
, Dr. Woods had their own communications people begin attempting to raise them with no results. It was only after tracking down the day shift supervisor at the CDC communications and monitoring center that they learned there was a problem. When the CDC was also unable to raise their field center they began sifting through the logs from the night before to find the last entry for when they had confirmed communication with the unit. It was in those logs that the supervisor discovered the entry detailing the alarm activation and how the overnight shift had followed the procedures manual for initiating what Brian Cansler had simply noted as an 'incineration event' in accordance with the instructions from the manual. The supervisor was caught off guard by the frankness and brevity of the entry describing how their entire field team had been summarily reduced to ash without a single notification outside of the communications room having been made. The day shift supervisor immediately began lighting up phone lines all over town and into DC as he spread the word about the loss of their people. A helicopter response team was organized and directed to the location of the field center to verify the destruction of the facility and search for any potential survivors. Federal agents were then dispatched to the home of Brian Cansler to pick him up and deliver him back to the CDC for questioning and to face possible charges. His vision of being the heroic leader during a time of crisis was about to come crashing down around him. It was unfortunate that he would be dead long before he could face charges related to this incident, along with anyone else who would ever have knowledge that it had even happened.

Hearing the news about the loss of the field center Dr. Woods had to sit down for a minute before his spinning head caused him to pass out. The personal they lost in that incident were absolutely irreplaceable in terms of their collected knowledge and experience in dealing with the type of outbreak they were facing. Added to those loses he had to also consider the work they had done to date on how to fight this virus. The only known immune survivor of the original strain of the virus and all samples collected from her were also
lost. The last data dump had been only a partial retrieval of their stored computer files. Information systems technicians had identified a network glitch that had prevented them from backing up all of those files to the CDC computers, in the meantime they had been accessing the information while it was stored on the hard drives and server that was in the field. Only a small portion of the research and findings was now available on other computers in the crisis center or with the CDC, it all amounted to them being pushed right back to square one in terms of finding a way to defeat this virus.

Looking up at the maps depicting the spread of the virus, Dr. Woods now realized that starting over from scratch was never going to make it. The virus had reached almost every major city in the United States and it was harder for him to find a country anywhere else that did not have confirmed cases than
those that did. The last word they had from Washington was that the President was being kept under close medical watch on bed rest after having come down with the flu. While his test results were still pending, it had been discovered that one of his Secret Service agents had been found dead in a bathroom of the White House apparently from the virus. The body of that agent had been moved immediately under guard to Quantico, Virginia were it was about to be examined in the FBI laboratory there and it came back to life, forcing three agents to tear it to shreds with automatic gunfire. Unfortunately, it managed to take a bite out of one agent’s leg before it was finally put down for good with a head shot. Two members of his own team at the crisis center had called in sick that morning and reports from other supporting agencies were showing similar absences as well. He reminded himself that this was still the weekend and the following day when thousands of workers took to the streets on their way into offices across DC and other major cities, the virus would have a chance to pick up even more speed. The next round of decisions that needed to be made were based on whether or not it was time to start activation of the emergency broadcast system. His recommendations to General Page and the members of the cabinet were that all schools and government offices be closed and that private business owners were highly encouraged to ask their own employees not to come to work for the next couple of days. He wanted to extend that warning for at least the entire coming work week, but he knew that would not be received very well. The longer any business was shut down the more money it lost and that was just not an acceptable proposition for this administration.

He had to give General Page some credit though, even with his early reluctance to take more decisive action in the area surrounding the quarantine zone in New Jersey, as soon as he saw the video images from the drone at the National Guard checkpoint he had mobilized Guard and active duty troops to help quell any civil unrest in major population areas. Ev
ery city with a population of 50,000 or more would soon have military units deployed and ready to react if more people sick with this flu started to become hostile to any local or government authority. Although he was still unwilling to use the term zombie in his description of these people he did agree at least in principle with the theory that they were dealing with people who were coming back to life after a period of being deceased. The troops being deployed were given clear rules of engagement this time. Their orders were that if faced with any threat of force from civilians, armed or not, they were to use all means at their disposal to avoid allowing civilians to come in physical contact with them, up to and including deadly force. A caveat to that order made it clear that head shots were to be the attempted at all times, this included a brief explanation concerning virus carrier’s ability to absorb multiple gunshot wounds to their torsos without slowing down.

With their field operations now
gone, the labs at the CDC were instructed to shift gears back to studies of the virus itself and attempts to break the RNA coding that made it so difficult to treat. What they would now have to do was test samples of the virus against known vaccines used to combat similar illnesses. This basically amounted to a task that was impossible, finding a cure by trial and error with existing vaccines was such a remote probability that Dr. Woods considered it a waste of time, but he knew that they had to at least be trying something.

#

Waking up Sunday morning Garrett felt much better than he had trying to fight crowds in busy shopping centers while nursing a hangover and getting by on limited sleep the day before. He had crashed early on Saturday evening, thankful that Calvin was tied up with a date instead of trying to convince him to continue celebrating his new job. Calvin would use that as an excuse for as long as he could or until some other equally worthy life event cropped up to take its place. Garrett half expected a call sometime today from Calvin that they needed to celebrate the fact that he managed to get laid two nights in a row by the same woman, most of his
post-divorce escapades tended to be of the one night variety.

Feeling much more refreshed
, he climbed out of bed and right into his running clothes, a quick cup of coffee and a check of his email and he hit the road for a brisk run to get him in the right frame of mind to tackle the day ahead. He knew that after he started work the following day it was probably going to be better if he started doing his workouts in the evening hours during the week. Even though he was not a stranger to conducting unit PT, the familiar military acronym for physical training, in the wee morning hours, it was a habit that he was now more than willing to give up. He had also noticed that many more of his neighbors who were into running and working out also tended to use the after work hours as their primary time to work up a sweat. It would be nice to start making some more civilian friends who shared such interests, running alone tended to get boring.

Walking from his front door to the nearby sidewalk where he would take a minute to stretch
, he noticed the red flashing lights of an ambulance pulled up to a townhouse about six doors down from his own. A police cruiser was also on the scene and there seemed to be a great deal of hustling to and fro from the parking lot to the wide open front door of the unit. He wasn't sure of the name of the couple that lived there but he recalled that they were a younger pair, he had looked to be in his mid to late twenties and she was probably still finishing up her last year or two in college. He didn't think they had any children and it seemed that he worked a regular nine to five job somewhere and she came and went on a much more flexible schedule. He decided to walk a couple houses closer and do his stretching against a fire hydrant that seemed to offer a better vantage point to see whatever was going on. He wasn't exactly a rubberneck in terms of sticking his nose into these types of situations, but other than that pain in the ass Carlos and his malcontent roommates, this was generally a very quiet and unassuming place to live. Seeing an ambulance and police cruiser in front of a neighbor’s house first thing on a Sunday morning was very out of the norm.

Starting a prolonged stretching routine
, Garrett watched as a single police officer stationed just outside the front door of the town house spoke frantically along with highly animated hand and arm gestures into a cell phone. Garrett could hear his voice but was still too far away to follow the conversation outside of an occasional word or two. Finishing his conversation the officer turned and marched back into the open door of the townhouse. He got the impression that someone inside the house was sick and they were preparing to transport them to the hospital. He found it unusual that the police would respond to the scene of a medical emergency not involving some type of violence. Garrett had half expected a domestic incident even though the couple had seen very happy together and he would not have pictured the guy to be the wife beater type. Something else caught his attention as he his eyes took in the parked emergency vehicles in the parking lot. The back doors of the ambulance had been left standing open and Garrett now saw that a gurney was already situated inside. He knew that it was possible in a mass casualty situation to configure ambulances to carry two gurneys at a time by using a narrower model of gurney and reducing the amount of equipment stored in the back. Since this configuration did not allow for a paramedic to ride along with the patients and render treatment during travel, this was a setup that was set aside for the most catastrophic of circumstances where medical transportation would be stretched thin. Right now Garrett could see that this particular ambulance had been set up for just that type of situation, even more unnerving was the sheet draped figure laying on the single gurney already in the back of the ambulance.

As he dragged out his stretching routine and continued to watch the townhouse he saw a paramedic backing out the front door guiding the second gurney along with him as he dropped the wheels onto the sidewalk at the bottom of the small run of stairs leading to the doorway. On top of the gurney and partially covered with a white sheet Garrett saw the young wife of the house with an IV line attached to her arm fed from a bag that had been laid across her chest. Garrett couldn't clearly see her face from his position so he was unable to tell if she was conscious or not, but he did see one thing very clear that made him realize this was anything but a routine medical run. While there were several straps attached across her legs and torso to prevent her from falling off the gurney
, her left arm was sticking out of the sheet and dangling slightly down along the side of the gurney. Garrett at first thought he was seeing things but as the paramedic moved the gurney further along the sidewalk and started to move it into position at the back of the ambulance he saw more clearly that her wrist was secured tightly to the side of the metal framed gurney by a thick plastic zip tie. When the police officer stepped back out from the townhouse behind the paramedic Garrett also noticed that he had an assault rifle carried by a sling over his shoulder, Garrett knew there was much more going on here than a routine medical emergency. 

Sticking a live patient in the back of an ambulance that was already loaded with the remains of someone else was not what Garrett suspected was standard operating procedure. Making it even more disturbing was the very high probability that the remains on that other gurney were those of the young ladies husband. The two gurneys were packed so tightly together in that small space that with her arm
cuffed to the frame of her gurney she could reach out with her fingers and just about touch the still form next to her. The paramedic was finishing up his work in the back of the ambulance and Garrett heard the squelch break on the cop’s radio. He heard the man respond with his call sign and give his current location, there was a reply over the speaker that Garrett couldn't quite make out and the officer responded that he were just about to clear the current scene. He couldn't hear the nature of the next emergency but when the radio call ended, he heard the cop tell the paramedic that they had another one. With one final check on the paramedic, the cop returned to his cruiser and tore out of the parking lot with the emergency lights flashing.

Garrett waited until the ambulance had left the parking lot and was gone from sight before finally starting off on his morning run, he had chewed up enough of his day
pondering over his neighbor’s misfortune and it was time to try and get his day started right. He felt bad for the young couple, if in fact that was the husband under the sheet in the back of that ambulance he knew that if the woman pulled through that her life would never be the same again.