by S. Ganley
Two days after their arrival, none of their personnel had been permitted to leave the hangar or allowed access to any of their equipment to continue their work. Armed Air Force Security Patrol guards in full chemical warfare gear remained stationed outside the containment shelter and in plain view of the more than forty scientists, doctors, technicians and analysts who had been given special clearance for evacuation from the Continental United States in order to continue on the work of finding a way to fight the spreading infection.
Two Star Major General (MG) Matthew Brookover was the ranking officer remaining with the US Army's Southern Command originally based out of Doral, Florida. MG Brookover had been conducting an inspection tour of forces in Honduras in Central America when the outbreak was first reported. Central Command headquarters in Florida had been hit hard in the early stages of the infection and the senior leadership above MG Brookover were lost in the first twenty four hours, leaving him in overall command. Along with several junior staff officers he had left Honduras for Cuba as soon as the quarantine of that country had been announced by the Joint Chiefs and had assumed overall command of all ground forces as well as security operations for Guantanamo. He had also assumed command of the Cuban forces that were now under American control as the Cuba General and his own security team initiated a military coup against the government and voluntarily approached the American military with an olive branch of cooperation to see them all through the crisis. MG Brookover had not been impressed with the arrangements made by the Joint Chiefs to evacuate the scientific personnel to Cuba and he had argued strongly against it. Despite his objections, his orders on the matter had been made clear and he had allowed them onto the base. But, any further level of cooperation had ceased shortly after their arrival when one of the flight crew on the C5 that had transported the staff out of Atlanta turned up ill and was found to have contracted the virus. Even though they had all been screened before boarding the plane, the flight crew itself had not gone through the same process. The plan had called for the entire crew to be equipped with bio-hazard suits and self-contained oxygen sources so it was not exactly clear where the crew member may have contracted the infection. The man had died within four hours of landing in Cuba and the body and plane had been incinerated before he had a chance to reanimate. That incident had prompted MG Brookover to completely reevaluate his orders. What should have only been a brief quarantine period had instead turned into an indefinite confinement under armed guard.
It had taken Dr. Woods hours of pleading, threatening and coercing to finally get MG Brookover to agree to speak with him about the matter on the phone.
"Dr. Woods, I really don't care what you feel is acceptable or not. My first and primary concern is the protection of the men and woman on this base. My orders were clear about allowing you and your personnel access to the base. But I assure you, the conditions of your quarantine were left solely to my discretion. If I feel, and mind you I do, that you or anyone with you presents a threat, I am authorized to take whatever measures I deem necessary to ensure containment is maintained."
The General's tone made it clear that he was a man not accustomed to having to explain himself to anyone and it was obvious to Dr. Woods that the only way he would get through to him was appealing to his common sense about the position they were all in.
"General, I understand your position, really I do. If the roles were reversed I would have similar reservations about allowing anyone suspected of carrying the illness access to the base. I am not asking for access though, I just want you to consider allowing us to move into the facilities being constructed specifically for our work to continue. If we are not allowed to continue the work we have started, and soon, we may never find a cure. For the moment, Cuba is safe from the virus, but that is not to say that at some point that could change. Consider if one a single zombie happened to wash up on shore somewhere along the miles of coastline where it goes undiscovered." Dr. Woods said with a mixture of pleading as well as a sense of urgency in his voice.
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment and Dr. Woods had the impression that the General had muted the call, when he returned to the line his voice still held the same gruff and firm demeanor but his reply was not what Dr. Woods had expected, "Ok, doctor, I have just received the final report from OUR medical staff clearing your people. You will be permitted to take control of the research facility before the end of the day, but, I want to make something crystal clear to you and I want you to make it clear to your people. The entire facility will be ringed with a heavily armed detachment of American and Cuban forces. Their orders will be simple and not up for interpretation or debate. Any attempt by any personnel to move past the barbed wire barrier erected around those buildings will be met with deadly force, no warnings and no exceptions."
The General paused at that point, probably for some type of dramatic effect, "I want to be clear on this doctor. I am not comfortable at all with what you and your people are doing here. While I accept the need for continued scientific experimentation, I will not compromise the security of this base or the personnel on it. Is that understood?"
The threat of deadly force against his personnel as well as being ringed in with barbed wire and under guard had never been part of the original plan to evacuate them to the base and continue their work. But, Dr. Woods also understood very well where the General was coming from by coming down so hard on them. They were dealing with a virus that none of them understood very well and that had the most deadly of consequences once loose in a population. Knowing the people that he worked with like he did, he knew that there would be a great degree of resentment at having to work in conditions closely resembling a military prisoner of war camp. One of the first things he thought of about such an arrangement was how the CDC mobile field center had ended up incinerated along with all personnel, equipment and samples. That incident had been as a direct result of a failed security measure that was taken to a deadly conclusion when common sense in the wake of the virus was not properly used and a weak minded bureaucrat refused to see the grey areas in established regulations. It was a hard concession to agree to, giving in and not standing firm about issues related to security right up front could quickly allow things to spiral out of control down the road. Dr. Woods held his tongue as all those thoughts rushed into his head. Time was short and it was better that they be allowed to resume their work as quickly as possible, he would just have to worry MG Brookover later.
"Whatever it takes to get us back to work General. How soon until we can occupy the facilities?"
"Communication systems are being installed as we speak. I am also having a system of closed circuit cameras put in. Once that is completed, you and your people will be escorted from the hangar and across the airfield to the facility. Logistics for providing meals and other necessities are still being worked out, but we should have a system in place before you occupy your new homes."
"Thank you General." Dr. Woods humbly replied.
"Don't thank me Doctor. I don't want any part of you or your people on this base or in country. I am a soldier and I am following orders. Make no mistake, I will be watching your every move and if I see anything that threatens the security of this base, I will not hesitate to eliminate that threat." The line went dead at that point but there was nothing more left that needed to be said by either man.
Dr. Woods knew that they were going to have an uphill fight on their hands from that point forward. MG Brookover was clearly not going to be an ally in their race to find a cure and he was already plotting something that he knew needed to be done that would not get approval from the General, but for them to have any hope in finding the cure it was a step that had no alternative. He needed to have living specimens from the mainland secured and returned to their new facilities. Dr. Woods was already working on how he would pull that off without the General finding out and blowing them all the hell and back.
Chapter 3
Doug had slipped silently
up the kitchen stairs and through the house into the laundry room where he had a good view of the yard between the side of his house and Cameron's home next door. His hopes of finding the grounds free of any of the wretched creatures were quickly dashed when he spotted three of them meandering around at the far edge of his front lawn next to the road. He recognized one of the men and the sole woman as a pair of his neighbors. The man lived five houses down, he was a nice guy who had helped Doug on one occasion when his lawn mower had slipped a belt in the middle of cutting his grass. Doug had always meant to do something nice for him in return, maybe offer to take him to a Redskins game or hire a private lawn service to take care of his yard one weekend, but had never found the time. Looking at the man know, Doug realized that that time would never come. The woman was an older spinster and lived three houses down on the opposite side of him. He remembered that her husband was a grouchy old fart who spent most of his time sitting on his front porch just watching people go about their day. From time to time he would angrily shout out at neighborhood kids who rode bikes or scooters past his house to stay out of his driveway or off his lawn. Doug had never really seen much of his wife, he had heard that she was mostly bed ridden and suffering from dementia. Seeing her now at the edge of his lawn stumbling around with those other two zombies he thought of just how cruel life could be. Already nearing the end of her life and probably well prepared to welcome the endless sleep and darkness that came with her passing, she was reduced to walking the earth as a hideous creature whose sole purpose was to find and feed and others like him. Doug wasn't sure who the other man was. He was a fit guy, clearly a gym rat, probably in his mid-thirties, and he was also completely naked except for a single filthy sock on one foot.
The three zombies were not paying any particular interest to the house or anything else for that matter. They seemed content to simply shuffle back in forth in a small circle from the edge of the lawn onto the street and then back again. Doug had seen several of them acting like this already, he thought that it was some form of dormant state used to conserve energy reserves. His theory was that since their internal organs were no longer functioning, the digestive process had also ceased in their bodies. Their desire to consume other humans could be termed as a sense of hunger, but he didn't think it was the same type of hunger that their victims experienced. He believed that what they consumed from the people they hunted down and ate was a source of energy for them, a process similar to putting fuel in a car. Without the ability to digest what they ate within the complex systems of the stomach, a chemical process had to occur within their rotting bodies to break down amino acids and other proteins from their cannibalistic diets. This was the only explanation he could come up with to explain how the zombies could physically continue on. The body stores energy processed from food sources in fatty tissue, since that energy is basically a chemical enzyme, the organs involved in normal digestion are not necessary in the case of the undead. This would also explain how their bellies did not simply explode from the amount of food they could take in without a means to excrete waste products. In their case there simply was no waste left over to excrete. Everything they ingested must be completely reduced to chemical form and stored as energy reserves. With the ability to use everything they consumed as pure energy they would also be capable of endurance and strength far beyond that of a typical human. Add to that equation the fact that all pain receptors in their bodies no longer functioned and that without the normal inhibitors that the human brain employed to help keep the body alive, a zombie was by far an extremely formidable predator. Seeing them in this state of dormancy he realized that with their sole motivation being to feed on other humans like himself, when such stimuli was not present they were capable of dropping off into modes of low energy consumption while they patiently waited for their next meal to happen by. Even though they weren't very active when in such a state, he had no doubt at all that their senses were highly in tune with their environment and that they could react in an instant to a sight, sound or smell that let them know someone was nearby. This was actually when he thought there was a higher degree of risk in being detected by them. They weren't making much noise at all and their shuffling about was only along a small perimeter. It would be easy for him to not be aware of their presence until he was almost on top of them and by then they would have already detected him and been on him before he could react. He had to make sure that he was constantly aware of his surroundings and move forward only when he was completely sure that it was clear of any of them in this state of suspended animation.
He waited until the three zombies had completed a couple of circuits around the short path they were following until he picked up a pattern of when all three of them were facing away from his house for the longest period of time. When they once again started to move in that direction he sprinted for all he was worth across the side of his lawn being careful to not make any noise other than his feet plodding against the soft grass. Once he reached the line of shrubs marking the boundary of his property line and Cameron's house next door, he dropped to a single knee while he fought to catch his breath. It wasn't more than one hundred and fifty or so feet that he had just run, but his lungs were on fire and his legs were already starting to feel rubbery. He knew that a lot of it came from just pure anxiety at trying to remain quiet along with the constant fear of what would happen to him if he was spotted. But he also recognized that he was just in terrible shape for this level of physical activity. While he was far from the wreck that his wife had let herself become and had only picked up a few extra pounds around his midsection over the years, he just was not accustomed to any type of physical exertion. The fact that he also smoked almost a pack of cigarettes a day was not helping much either as he felt his tortured lungs crying out for air.
Glancing back towards the street at the edge of his lawn he noticed that the three zombies were still occupied with pacing back in forth in their little circle, his presence had so far not been detected. The wind was blowing towards him so it was actually him who picked up their scent instead of the other way around. With his stomach still heaving slightly from his quick spring across the lawn the sudden putrid mouthful of air that he was forced to suck in caused him to gag. He had smelled them before, it was an odor that was difficult to miss and impossible to forget once you experienced it. Nothing short of a corpse in a full state of decomposition came close to that particular odor and he was convinced that it was actual decomposition from within their ruined bodies being excreted through their pores that was the source of that horrendous smell that followed them everywhere. While they were capable of picking up his smell from a long distance away he had to admit that as their bodies continued to emit that particular stench the playing field was almost even in that regard. As long as the wind was moving in the right direction he would be able to know when there were zombies in a general area.
Regaining his breath and confident that his movements so far had not attracted any attention, he peered over the top of the row of hedges into Cameron's yard. While his own house faced straight on to the road, Cameron's was canted more to the left, leaving him looking at the corner near the back of the house and a straight line down into the backyard as well as the rear patio and deck areas. Cameron had been pretty sure that the sliding glass door leading from the wooden deck into the dining area and kitchen had been left open making that his best option for slipping inside. Movement on the far side of the yard caught Doug's attention. There was a small wooden utility shed tucked discreetly into a far corner of the backyard. Cameron's mother had been a gardening enthusiast and Doug had seen that shed open from time to time and noticed how it contained stacks of fertilizer, planters and a myriad of other gardening implements as well as tools and his father’s riding lawn mower. On the far side of the shed there was a decorative strip of fencing that Cameron's mother had set up to grow a variety of creeping flowers that started in dirt beds along the bottom of the fence then spread upwards totally covering the e
ight fall tall wooden structure. Between the side of the shed and the flower covered fence there was a tangle of garden hoses and wire that had most likely been used to help tie down young plants to help keep them growing in a particular direction. Tangled up in that unkempt tangle of hoses and wire he spotted a zombie struggling to free itself. Doug was pretty sure that the man was Cameron's father, but he could only get a glimpse of him for a second or two each time he rocked forward against the snare holding him in place from the knees down. From the worn patch of grass at the edge of the shed where his foot would scrape across the ground each time he tried to move forward, it looked as though he had been stuck in that same position for quite some time. Other than that single zombie, his route from the line of hedges through the side of the yard and onto the porch looked clear.