Dawn of a New Day

by Mariano, NIck

  When the doctors and scientists back at Fort Detrick received the news from Malaysia they were shocked and concerned by what was being reported. It appeared that the hordes of zombies were becoming much more organized and somehow were using intellect to devise their attacks on people. They were also amazed that some of the infectees could actually open doors and do other minor motor functions. Fort Detrick and the CDC dispatched several teams to Malaysia so they could autopsy some of the infectees and try to determine what changes had taken place in their makeup since the New York attacks.

  OUR NATION'S CAPITAL

  Although the spread of the super virus wasn’t as wide spread in the U.S. as it was in Asia, there were however, increasing cases outside of Wilmington. Several of the people infected by the accidental discharge of the virus at the Federal Building had then traveled outside the area before the CDC and police could track them down. The area most affected by these infectees was Washington, D.C., as many of the Federal agencies in Wilmington had employees who traveled regularly between branch offices in Wilmington and Washington in the course of their duties. Washington was a particularly tricky city to tackle the virus since besides the large number of federal agencies there; it was also a mecca for tourists, especially in the summer months. June was Cherry Blossom season in D.C. and thousands of tourists flocked to the city to sightsee and many schools throughout the area made bus trips with their students to visit all the museums and monuments before the end of the school year. Closing the city down was an option but not one that the President wanted to entertain. Even setting up roadblocks and screening visitors as they entered the city would not prevent the spread of the disease since infectees in the early stages were not readily identifiable.

  Richard Collins worked for the IRS and spent three days a month at the branch office in Wilmington. Mr. Collins was unfortunate enough to have been at his Wilmington office on May 17th, the same day that Special Agent Taylor picked up the mysterious box from Mr. Strauss and later placed it in his office’s evidence room. The super virus vapor spread throughout the Federal Building that day via the air conditioning ducts and, except for a faint smell he detected for perhaps 5 seconds, Collins was unaware that anything unusual had occurred that day. He returned home a day later and that evening kissed his wife and daughter, who were always happy to have him at home with them. Both would be immediately infected by virtue of Collins’ kiss and three days later both would also have sore throats and notice some blotchiness on their arms and legs. The same would be true of Collins, however, he would also begin to feel a sense of uneasiness and feel irritable for no particular reason. His daughter was scheduled to go on a class trip to Washington that day and the class would visit the Smithsonian, as well as several monuments throughout the city. Even though she didn’t feel 100%, Melissa Collins got dressed and had her mother drive her to school so she wouldn’t miss the big class trip. She also knew that her boy friend was going on the trip and they planned some together time while the class wondered through the Smithsonian.

  After Melissa was dropped off Mrs. Collins, or Marie to her friends, she would stop by the local Food Lion store and get some groceries for dinner that night. When she arrived back at home she was surprised to see that her husband was still asleep in bed. At first she thought he may have had a heart attack and was dead. He never overslept or missed work, but then she saw him stir in bed and decided to let him sleep as just last night he complained of a sore throat and some achiness. She wasn’t feeling all that great either but thought it was just another one of those summer colds that she regularly got. By noon, Richard was still in bed and Marie was getting concerned. She went back upstairs to see how Richard was doing and when she went to shake him, she noticed that his face was a mass of oozing sores. She stepped back from the bed in horror, when suddenly Richard sprang from the bed and attacked her, biting her first on the neck and then moving on to other parts of her body. Within two minutes Marie was dead and Richard sat casually on the floor having his lunch. He didn’t know what was happening to him and in fact he couldn’t really think clearly anymore. All he knew was that he had a massive hunger and after lunching on his wife for a while he decided that he needed something else to feast on. He walked down stairs and noticed that his next-door neighbor Stephanie was outside doing some Spring flower planting and so he opened the front door and staggered over to see her. Stephanie was absorbed in her work, but as Richard approached, she looked up and was startled to see her neighbor in a pair of pajama bottoms and covered with oozing sores on his upper body. Even more disturbing was the fact that his face was covered with blood and gore. She made an effort to get up but Richard grabbed her before she could get upright and bit deeply into her neck. She managed one loud scream before collapsing. The scream was loud enough to get the attention of the neighbor one house over and when he saw what was transpiring outside, he dialed 911. The police responded quickly to the scene and although they hadn’t actually seen any cases of the super virus and its zombie effect, the two responding officers were fairly sure that’s what they were encountering. Everyone at the station had been briefed and even saw photos of what the infected looked like and could do. Without hesitation they both opened fire on both Richard and Stephanie, shooting them both several times in the head for good measure. They then talked to the neighbor who had made the 911 call and found out who and where these people lived. They entered Richard’s house cautiously and just as they began to climb the stairs they saw a bloodied figure standing at the top of the stairs. Their guns were already drawn and they opened fire on the figure as she started to descend on them. The person hesitated for a slight moment before she tumbled down the steps. Both officers had to retreat quickly down the stairs in order not to be fallen on. They called the incident in immediately to their precinct and CDC and military personnel were quickly dispatched to the area. Police officers also closed off the entire area, as authorities didn’t want word of a possible zombie attack in the Capitol making the afternoon news. Later that day authorities would tell the local media that a domestic dispute had resulted in the deaths of two people and an apparent suicide by the shooter.

  While all this was going on, Collins’ daughter was making her way through Washington with her class, although she was really starting to feel bad. Even her boy friend mentioned that she didn’t look too well and asked what those blotches on her face were. She had tried to cover them up earlier by applying some heavy makeup and initially that had done the job. Now she saw that the blotches were actually starting to swell and she could feel that something was oozing from her body and that one or two wet spots had appeared on her blouse. She was also starting to feel a bit foggy and disoriented and she asked her boy friend to take her back to the bus so she could rest. By the time she reached the bus a feeling of aggressiveness had started to set upon her and just as her boy friend was getting her on the bus, she turned and attacked him. He fell to the ground and she plunged onto him and began to feast on his arm. He screamed in pain and passersby immediately responded, however when they saw what was happening, they quickly retreated and dialed 911. Police units were there in a flash and as soon as they saw what was happening they responded with deadly force. A shower of gunfire hit both Melissa and her body friend while onlookers watched in horror and disbelief.

  The news of this incident couldn’t be avoided as easily as the earlier event at the Collins’ house. Several of the onlookers had videoed the whole incident on their smart phones and within ten minutes it was on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Within minutes the video went viral and over 50,000 people watched what was titled “Zombie Attack in DC.” At first many thought it was a prank or practical joke but when the national news media began to interrupt their regular programming, they quickly realized that this was no joke. Many had heard of something happening earlier that month in Wilmington and everyone had seen and heard about what was happening in Asia. No one was however aware that this super virus everyone was talking about was now in th
e Nations’ Capital and they began to worry that the United States would start to crumble if the problem wasn’t addressed quickly.

  That evening the President would again address the nation and acknowledge for the first time that containment of the Nazi virus which had swept through New York State previously and then mysteriously reappeared late last month in Wilmington, NC, had now escaped the confines of that area and showed it face for the first time in the Nations’ Capital. The President went on to say that the National Guard in all fifty states was being mobilized and citizens were requested to contact authorities if anything unusual was noticed in their neighborhoods or if people began to feel ill. The President then turned the speech over to the Head of the CDC, who outlined the characteristics of the virus and the various stages it went through. He said that initially people would get a sore throat or cough, however, this should not be confused with a common cold or the flu. The next stage, the appearance of black and blue spots on parts of the body was the first indication the super virus had actually infected someone. This stage then progressed to the oozing stage where spots began to swell and ooze fluids and even blood from the infected person. The last stage encompassed the person beginning to lose his sense of reasoning and rationalization and even attacking other infected or non-infected people he came in contact with. The CDC Head stressed that it was extremely important for people to seek medical help at the first sign of stage two, the appearance of black and blue sores. Once the virus progressed beyond this stage the ability of medical authorities to cure the disease was greatly hampered. He also stressed that people who had not been inoculated with the X554 vaccine should do so immediately, as this had shown very positive signs of preventing the infection. He ended his talk by advising the public that the White House, in conjunction with the CDC and doctors at the U.S. Army’s Medical Command, were actively working both in the United States and abroad on finding a cure for the deadly disease and again stressed the importance of getting vaccinated immediately. The President went on to say that his National Security Council had recommended, and he had approved, a temporary closing of Washington to all outsiders who were not actually working in the city. Effective this day all tourism was stopped until the spread of the virus could be contained. The President concluded the address by saying that he and the medical resources of the United States were confident that a total cure would be found shortly and that people would be able to get back to a normal life soon.

  What neither the President nor the CDC Head told their audience was that once infected doctors had no real cure for the disease. The mortality rate at present was 100%.

  BACK AT GERMAN INTELLIGENCE

  The CDC Global Rapid Response Team arrived in Germany and met with the Director of the German Federal Intelligence Service, Bundesnachrichtendienst, located in Pullach and explained what files they were interested in locating. They believed that Mengele and his group of scientists and doctors might have left some of their research papers at Auschwitz when they fled the facility at the end of the war. Teams scoured some of these records after the outbreak of the super virus in New York; however, the files regarding how the researchers actually formulated and constructed the virus were never discovered. Consensus was that some of these files might have either been destroyed before the group abandoned Auschwitz or Mengele may have taken some of the research information with him. They hoped however that some of the original research files were still hidden away with the files that were recovered at the war’s end. The Director said that he would provide the CDC Team with whatever resources they needed and two large rooms were dedicated to the files from the camp.

  Robert Maxwell, the Team Leader for the CDC, was surprised at the volume of files that were brought to them to search. Both rooms had boxes of materials stacked almost to the ceilings and Maxwell knew that finding what they were looking for would be a timely process. The fact that much of the research was chronicled in German made the task even harder. One hundred people were dedicated to the project but Maxwell knew if they were to find something in a timely manner they would need three to four times that number of people. Maxwell spoke fluent German, however, most of the Team did not. He requested that CDC Atlanta find as many employees as they could who spoke German and dispatch them to Pullah to help in their search.

  None of the boxes had any labeling on them and so it was like finding a needle in the haystack since Auschwitz opened on May 20, 1940, and continued its operations until January 27, 1945, when Soviet troops liberated the camp from the Germans and freed over 7,000 prisoners. The first gassing there took place in 1941 and Mengele came to the camp in early 1943 and promptly began his experiments on human genetics. Maxwell wasn’t sure that they would ever be able to discover what they were looking for, however, this was the only possibility they had for finding out how Mengele had manufactured the super virus. Research at the CDC and Fort Detrick had uncovered some clues about the virus’s construction; however, some key elements were still missing. Only if they fully understood the virus could the American scientists hope to ever find a cure for it. They did know that the X554 vaccine protected people to a certain degree from the deadly disease, however, unless they could cure the virus, it would continue to spread throughout the world.

  Meanwhile back at Fort Detrick, fresh samples of the Asian strain of the virus were being worked on and scientists continued to be baffled by the mutation of the virus and the new characteristics that the zombies were displaying. It was almost like some were learning from trial and error and were able to do things previous infectees couldn’t. The fact that they were grouping into hordes and had developed some motor skills enabling them to attack people with greater success was intriguing the doctors. Many of the people attacked would eventually become infected themselves and so the number of infectees in many cities was growing at an alarming rate. Scientists were starting to look at how the pneumonia virus interacted with the three viruses already composing the super virus. Lab tests on the Asian samples revealed a virus unlike anything ever seen by mankind. Trying to separate the various strains and then work on a vaccine was going to be a challenge.

  Meanwhile back in Germany the CDC Team was busily sifting through thousands of files from the days of Auschwitz. Many of the files had to do with various experiments that Mengele and his group had conducted before they developed the super virus. One large box of old records talked about experiments that he had conducted at Auschwitz that ran a wide gamut and one folder talked about freezing experiments where victims were submerged in ice water for long periods of time to see what the effects would be. Mengele also had a special interest in twins and conducted numerous experiments to see how twins were formed in the human body as opposed to a single birth. He worked on various types of transplants to determine what organs and body parts could be transplanted from one person to another. Mengele studied the effects of tuberculosis bacteria on the human body, experimented with various types of gases that could cause illness in patients and even death and several new types of poisons that could be used to torture or kill inmates at the camp. He started studies into types of virus that had the potential to cause mass deaths. When he met with Reichsfuhrer Himmler in 1943 he told him about the flu virus that killed close to 700,000 people in America in 1918 and over 21,000,000 people worldwide. He explained how the virus caused a person’s lungs to fill up with fluids and that the person actually ended up drowning himself. The Doctor also said that the virus had the characteristic of mutating over time and that even though some antidotes had been developed to counter the virus, they quickly became ineffective because of the mutation. Mengele told Himmler about how the plague had killed over 75,000,000 people in the 1300s and quickly spread throughout the world, even managing to somehow cross oceans and infect people in cities far away from the initial outbreaks. He explained that remedies for this infection were non-existent and that once it got started the fatality rate was almost 100%. He also mentioned that the rabies virus, which dates back to ancient ti
mes, was quite lethal, and that if left untreated was almost always fatal. Smallpox was another highly contagious disease caused by a virus and was highly contagious for humans that his team was studying. Mengele envisioned creating new and more deadly viruses that the Germans could unleash on the world and turn the course of the war. The Himmler-Mengele meeting that was chronicled in the files talked about creating the super virus per Hitler’s wishes, however, the files the team was currently scanning didn’t get into the particulars on how he hoped to do this. Maxwell thought they were getting closer to finding some of the doctor’s secret files but knew that they still had thousands of files to still go through.

  HAVIC IN ASIA AND ELSEWHERE

  The zombie outbreak in Asia continued to get worse and new cities were affected almost daily. Many of those infected merely died and did not return as a zombie. Doctors and scientists weren’t sure why this occurred. Did the smog outbreak and respiratory infections from the Indonesia fires play a role in this? Did a person’s DNA or family background have something to do with it? Was it the luck of the draw? No one was sure why one person got infected and died while others roamed the streets in a zombie like state. As time went by the numbers of persons turning seemed to outnumber those who were dying, at least in Asia. The ratios in the United States were about even and so the authorities were having better luck in containing the situation. Some thought the X554 vaccine was helping to slow things down.