The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak (26 page)

She paused before opening the front door as she realized she had not made a decision on where she would go when she left her apartment. Turning to th
e right was out of the question. That would take her down the short covered pathway right out in front of her building and in clear sight of those people still ravaging her neighbors. That meant that she would have to turn and run to the left and come out along the backside of her building. From the back of the building she would be able to make a run down a short incline and into the other parking lot that would lead her to the Carpenter's residence. As she thought of her landlord and her husband, that seemed to be the most likely place for her to run and seek help, at the very least if they didn't know already they should be made aware that one of their buildings was not only on fire but was also under siege by a blood thirsty pack of cannibals. Maybe her landlord would have better luck reaching the police using the landline in her home. Her confidence started coming back as the plan formed in her head, having a goal to reach and somewhere to go once she left her apartment made her feel much better than she had only a moment earlier. She eased the door open and peeked outside making certain that no one had circled around to her side of the building in the last minute or two. Seeing that she was safely alone, she crept out into the covered alcove and closed the door softly behind her. Moving quickly, she kept close to the wall of the building to minimize her profile until she reached the back corner of the building. Taking a cautious look around the corner she could now fully appreciate the scope of the blaze, her little section of the building was the only remaining portion not already fully involved in a towering inferno that was spitting flames and ash high into the sky. The conflagration must have been visible for miles and she once again thought about why the hell the police and fire department were not already on the scene fighting the blaze and arresting the murdering band of sickos on the opposite side of the building. She decided it was something she was going to stress to Mrs. Carpenter that she needed to file a formal complaint with the city for the lack of emergency service response. Once she was certain that the path was clear and she could make it down the small hill without being observed, she took off at a fast trot while holding her arm over her eyes to help shield herself from the falling ash.

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Dr. Woods had issued the orders for both the crisis center and the surviving members of the CDC labs to begin breaking down their most critical mobile equipment and to prepare both facilities for immediate evacuation. Contact with the White House situation room had been completely lost two hours earlier, but in his final act of command, General Page had pulled off what Dr. Woods considered to be the impossible. The commander of the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had quarantined the entire base after the first reported outbreaks occurred in overseas locations stemming from flights originating in the Continental United States. In accordance with a department of defense protocol that designated Guantanamo as an autonomous command authority in the event of a breakdown of command
, the base was able to isolate itself from the outside world without any further command authority. Due to a recent trade and travel embargo imposed on the nation of Cuba itself as a result of the latest blustering from its contemptuous regime, the country had already been effectively isolated from the outside world for the last three weeks. By imposing those restrictions, the United Nations had unwittingly turned the small island nation into the last bastion of infection free society known throughout the world. Naval and air force assets stationed at Guantanamo reinforced with a small contingent of forces out of Naval Station Key West at the southern edge of the Florida Keys had already been on station working to enforce the travel restrictions on the country. When word came from the commander of the base at Guantanamo that he was enforcing a total lockdown as a result of the world wide epidemic, those attached forces were immediately transferred to his command and their orders were that any water or airborne attempt to reach within fifty miles of any point of the island of Cuba without direct authority from his office was to be met with deadly force without hesitation or reservation. All forces under his command were also restricted from approaching within fifty miles of the shores of North America or any neighboring Caribbean islands. His quick thinking and foresight likely saved the lives of everyone on the island and as a result, the commander of Cuban forces had approached the Americans and offered to temporarily place all of their armed forces under American command for the duration of the crisis. A move never before heard of or even anticipated, it was learned that while those overtures were taking place a contingent of Cuban special forces had seized control of the capital in Havana and launched a military coupe ensuring that no civilian leadership would interfere in their efforts to keep the country secure and infection free.

General Page had spent the last several hours of his command coordinating with the commander at Guantanamo to work out a method for evacuating select key personnel from the United States to the military base on Cuba. Only personnel cleared by military medical authorities as free of even
a runny nose would be allowed to board dedicated military flights bound for Cuba. Upon arrival, the aircraft and all aboard were to be quarantined at a point on the far end of the runway where detailed blood testing would be conducted on each individual before they were permitted to interact with any base personnel. It was an imperfect system that the base commander had at first raised a host of arguments against, but when it was explained that without the scientific and medical personnel planned to be evacuated, any chance of finding a method of beating this outbreak would more than likely be lost once they were themselves inevitably exposed to the virus. With the help of Cuban workers, an impressive facility was being constructed on a remote part of the American base that was destined to become the new scientific and medical research and response center dedicated to the outbreak. All uninfected personnel at the CDC along with several truck loads of sensitive equipment were to be escorted by armed convoy to the regional airport where they would be airlifted by a pair of US Air Force C5 Galaxy transports nonstop to Guantanamo. A hangar at the airport in Atlanta had been secured and turned into a hasty medical screening zone where everyone authorized to board the transports would be examined by army doctors adorned in the highest rated chemical warfare protective suits available to the military. An entire infantry company had been assigned to pull security around the hangar and air craft, reports had already been filtering back of zombies and mobs of civilians trying to gain access to the airfield and the whole area was becoming littered with bodies, making it necessary to hasten the efforts at evacuating the CDC staff.

The Vice President and the remaining federal leadership had elected to remain in place at the secure bunker underneath the Greenbrier hotel, the logic being that leadership of the nation would never be
transferred to foreign soil. They would remain in place and stay in the loop with the efforts underway in Cuba to reorganize and find a way to fight the epidemic.

Dr. Woods and select members of his own staff were to board a waiting C130 cargo
plane at Andrews Air Force base, a similar set up had been arranged at that location to evacuate the crisis center personnel as well as several critical medical staff from Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland who were being ferried to Andrews via helicopter airlift. There was a certain amount of discontent at running out during the darkest hours they had ever faced, from his own team, only himself and seven other analysts would be making the flight from Andrews. Dr. Martin and the remaining members of the team he had spent so much time working with to help coordinate efforts for many other crisis faced by the nation would not be making the trip. Their fate was sealed when preliminary testing of their blood showed signs of the infection. Most of them were already displaying visible signs of the illness. As stoically as possible, Dr. Martin had tried to explain how it was for the greater good in the long run, they would continue to keep the center in DC running for as long as possible. The would continue coordinating with the remaining emergency services they were still in contact with across the country, while feeding raw data to the new operation in Cuba once it was up and running. Their final goodbye was bittersweet given that those who had still tested infection free had been segregated from those with signs of infection and it was only via the in house conferencing system that they were able to talk to each. Dr. Woods assured his good friend that they would be in touch again in less than a few hours when he arrived in Cuba and could get their communications up and running. He had no way of knowing that less than an hour after their plane departed Andrews, the crisis center would be burnt to the ground during an attempt by civilians on the outside to break in after a rumor of a possible cure that was only being provided to select persons in the government began to make its rounds through the surrounding communities.

Society had started to crumble to its very foundations and as the working government began to either fall victim to the illness or flee to places far from seats of power, the citizens, soldiers and others left behind started taking measures into their own hands to ensure their personal survival.

Satisfied that the house was as secure as they could get it for the time being and with both of their sick or injured guests now out cold, Garrett and Calvin sat together in the kitchen where Calvin filled his friend in on what he had learned in the past few hours.

Calvin explained that the night before he had taken Kimberly to visit one of her good friends who
had come down with a nasty bug. Her friend lived in an apartment that she shared with another girl, Calvin made a moronic comment about a domestic partnership of some sort that Garrett didn't bother to pursue further. When they got to the apartment neither roommate answered their knocks on the door but they found the door unlocked and let themselves in. Calvin said that the place reeked like a dead body and he worried as soon as they walked in that they would find Kimberly's friend dead. He once again got sidetracked as he delved into a dialogue about how that discovery would have had the potential to be a cock block for him that night. Garrett couldn't believe the man sometimes, he was trying to get to the point about explaining how he had discovered that the world had been thrust into some kind of real life science fiction based zombie nightmare and yet he found it amusing to go off on tangents about his sex life. He put his foot down on the bullshit and told Calvin to get to the point already. Seeing an unusually serious side of Garrett, Calvin apologized and explained that it was just a way to help him cope with the situation. He admitted that while he had seen some pretty awful sights during his time in the military, those paled in comparison to what he had been dealing with over the prior twelve hours. He continued on and explained that despite the smell permeating through the apartment, they found both roommates alive and in their respective beds, both of them were very sick though. The girls had vomit all over their beds and were running incredibly high fevers, they were conscious but not very responsive and clearly delirious from their fevers. Calvin called 911 and he said it took him several times to get through, but when he did get an operator they told him that it would be a one to two hour delay for an ambulance. They said that there was a bad outbreak of flu in the area and that all emergency services were backlogged on calls. He had asked the best hospital that he could just drive the girls to himself and was told that they would not be allowed access to any area hospital or medical center. All such facilities were already well beyond capacity and state police along with National Guard elements were being deployed to turn people away. The best advice the operator could give him was to keep the patients hydrated and administer aspirin for fever. Calvin said that he was about to hang up when the operator lowered her voice and had said in almost a whisper that if either girl died to make sure the body was securely restrained. Before he could respond, the woman had hung up. He had been unable to get back through to 911 again after that. Without medical help on the way and after the ominous warning about the hospitals being guarded by armed forces and turning patients away, there was little they could do for the two woman except try and help them stay comfortable and make the best of available medications already in the house. What he had a hard time getting over was the warning the operator had conspiratorially given him about restraining either one of them if they should happen to die, at that time he had no idea what to make of that off the wall piece of advice from an emergency operator. The other thing that Calvin couldn't get over was the distinct smell of death hanging in the air inside the apartment. While Kimberly cared for the sick roommates, he decided to take a look around the rest of the building. He described it as a relatively small building, four stories with four fairly nice apartments per floor. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. He continued down the hallway past Kimberly's friend’s apartment and found the next apartment's door wide open. He said that the smell was overpowering at the doorway and after he received no response from his calls into the residence he stepped inside and found two bodies sprawled out in the living room amidst broken furnishings and other signs of a struggle. A naked woman in her mid-twenties was laying on her stomach bent over the arm of an overturned love seat, Calvin described an obvious gunshot wound to her temple. The other body was that of a man closer to forty and dressed in a rumpled business suit. He said that it looked like a married man dropping by on his lover on his way home from work. He was holding a small caliber pistol in his hand and also had a gunshot wound to his head, this one under the chin. In addition to the gunshot wound it looked like he also had a severe laceration to the side of his neck that Calvin swore looked like a deep bite wound. His suspicions about that wound were confirmed when he moved to the other side of the room and got a look at the girls face. Her mouth and lower jaw were coated in blood and gore and a strip of skin that looked like it matched the missing piece of neck from her boyfriend was still clenched in her closed teeth. His thought was that the guy had come into the house looking for a piece of ass and she jumped him while in the nude, but instead of some loving she had something much more deadly in mind and managed to get her teeth locked on his neck before he knew what hit him. He must have been carrying a small pistol in his jacket pocket and at some point during the struggle he managed to pull it and get a shot off that took her down. Somehow he must have figured out that a bite from someone in her condition would end up causing him to join her in the zombie world and he had chosen to take a different road by shoving his own pistol up under his chin and blowing his brains out. Calvin had noticed that while his wound left blood and brains all over the room from the ceiling to the walls in the hallway, the woman had lost only a few drops of already coagulated slimy looking blood, the only true evidence of her wound was a chunk of brain matter splashed across the back of the love seat where she had fallen. While neither of them appeared to have been dead that long, the woman was the one responsible for the acrid smell of decomposition filling the building.

Calvin told Garrett that by the time he returned to the apartment with Kimberly and the two sick girls
, he found both of them dead and Kimberly passed out cold on the bathroom floor in front of a puke filled toilet. In the short time he has been exploring the neighboring apartment Kimberly had picked up a high fever and fell violently ill, the toilet was tinged with blood mixed into her vomit and her breathing was ragged and shallow. He suddenly found himself in an apartment building with at least four dead bodies, a very sick girlfriend, and 911 was no help at all. Even though he considered it to be nonsense, he took the advice of the dispatcher he had spoken with and tied down the arms of both dead roommates to their bedposts with rope he found in their utility closet. He had worried what the police would think if they suddenly showed up and found them like that, but he felt that since 911 calls are supposed to be recorded, he was at least covered by saying that he had acted under the advice of the emergency dispatcher.

Growing tired of the step by step details Garrett told him to try and get to the point abou
t learning of a zombie outbreak. He had a feeling that it was getting to the time where the two of them needed to start discussing what their next move would be and Calvin could drone on for hours when he got into the thick of one of his stories.

Gathering his thoughts for a moment
, he went on to explain that within a short time of tying the two bodies to their beds and returning to the bathroom to help clean Kimberly up, he heard a racket coming from the bedrooms. When he went to check it out, he found both of the girls who he knew for a fact had been dead only minutes early, struggling against their biddings and hissing and snapping like rabid dogs. He described them as just what you would expect from the zombies you saw in the movies, yellowed skin and dead puss filled eyes that he had never seen on anything but a corpse before. He had left the girls locked in their rooms, grabbed up Kimberly and made a run for his truck.

Once he got her back to his place he had bundled her up on the couch and started scanning the airwaves with his police scanner to see what kind of news he could pick up. The television and radio were all reporting the same thing, that there was a flu outbreak and people were advised to stay at home and avoid hospitals and medical centers because they were becoming overcrowded. There was nothing being reported about
National Guard troops on the streets or about the dead coming back to life. His scanner told a different story though, all night long he picked up transmissions about a zombie outbreak, that the dead were coming back in larger numbers and attacking anyone they could get their hands on. Police were being told to shoot suspected zombies through the head. Reports kept coming in about more and more people dying and that the situation was getting out of control. He had heard rumors that the government was on the verge of declaring a state of martial law and enforcing a 24-hour curfew to try and burn the virus out by trapping citizens in their own homes and letting those who were already infected simply die off.  Calvin had spent most of the night listening to the scanner and caring for Kimberly until he started hearing the sounds of fighting and gunfire in the parking lot of his own apartment complex. He had grabbed one of his handguns and went onto his back porch to check it out when he came face to face with a man who had those same dead eyes and fucked up looking skin color that he saw when the two girls had come back to life on him. He had no choice but to put a round in the guy’s shoulder to try and stop him but it didn't even register with him that he had been shot. Calvin had ended up backed into a corner and forced to put a shot through his forehead to drop him for good. After that, he had to hunker down in his apartment with furniture piled up against the doors as a crowd of the things descended on the entire complex. He thought that gunfire from him and one of his neighbors might have attracted more of them from somewhere else. He had stayed barricaded inside his apartment for hours while listening to them tearing shit up in other apartments and trying several times to force their way through his doors. He had listened as four of his own neighbors had screamed in terror when their doors were forced open and they were attacked in mass by the things. It was only a little after the sun came up when enough of them had moved off that he felt safe enough to make a break for it. He had packed some guns, ammo and a few supplies and made a run for Garrett's place hoping that it might still be safe since it was in a more secluded part of town.

Garrett had several questions about Calvin's experiences the night before and the information he had picked up on his scanner. For the next hour they discussed the implications of their situation, the most pressing issue at that point became what to do with the two people sleeping in the next room. Based on what Calvin had witnessed and the news he had heard during the night, Steve was their biggest threat at that moment. Since there was no cure for a bite wound from a zombie and the end result would be that at some point he was going to simply die and then come back to li
fe only to turn on both of them. Calvin suggested that it would probably be best to just put him down before that happened. It certainly wasn't a proposition Garrett was willing to take lightly, but at the same time he had to weigh the threat that Steve posed to them against his feelings. He had killed before and had long ago reached a point where he felt that taking a life under certain circumstances was acceptable when it came down to a choice between his own life or those he cared about and the ones he was forced to take. In this situation even though the threat was yet to come, it was going to come down to eliminating the potential danger on his own terms before it reached a point where they were forced into action and there was a greater risk of injury to either of them. Garrett wanted to put that idea off to the side for the time being while they discussed Kimberly, she was still hanging on, but as sick as she was it was possible that she would also pass away and then come back as the undead. While Steve's condition was a foregone conclusion that there was no hope for him given the lack of possible treatment for a zombie bite wound, it was less clear in the case of Kimberly. They didn't know if someone who was simply sick with the virus could recover and were very hesitant to simply put a bullet in her head if there was even the slightest chance she could pull through. Several times during their discussion they had taken quick breaks to check on Kimberly and Steve, while they didn't feel comfortable enough talking about these things in their presence they were also leery of the two of them being left unattended in the next room.

The agreed to consider their options for a little while before making a decision, in the meantime Calvin dragged in the bags he had recovered from his truck. He spread the contents out on the table and counters in the kitchen. Considering the circumstances
, Garrett was pleased to note that his friend had taken the time to clean out his gun safe on the way over. On the table were two very well maintained AK-47 assault rifles each with six full magazines of ammunition and three boxes of spare shells, three semi-automatic hand guns also with ample ammunition, a pair of military grade high powered binoculars, four cases of meals-ready-to-Eat (MRE's) the plastic pouches carried by the military as field rations, two menacing looking tactical knives and a pair of short range encrypted radio sets.

Garrett whistled as he cast his eyes over the bounty spread out over his kitchen, "You don't screw around, do you?"

"You try being trapped in a small apartment with a horde of flesh eating zombies crawling all over the place trying to get their hands on you. Then you will better appreciate my affinity for firepower." Calvin replied.