So please fess up, has anyone, ANYONE, seen anything like this?!?!?!
I want ONLY true stories, no B.S, no Sci-Fi ramblings. Please only post if you have seen this type of stomach/brain before, as I am dying to find out what would cause this condition.
Let’s see, survey says…
Hold on. Some sort of ruckus down the hall. What the hell are they doing in there? Someone is screaming like a lunatic and it sounds like they are brawling in the exam room. Christ, I have seen cops lose it before on each other during tough autopsies, like when one of their partners is on the table, but why are they going so nuts over these bodies?
Logging off for a minute, let me investigate, heading back to the exam room and will be back in a minute. Post replies if any of you have had a night like this you want to chat about.
Not long after, Mack’s computer displayed pop up notice alerts on a screen that had no viewer.
15 minutes has passed. Session pausing for inactivity, do you wish to continue?
25 minutes has passed. Session is timing out; do you wish to remain on line?
30 minutes has passed. Session ended. Good bye.
The topic had 12,957 reply posts within the hour.
Chapter 15
Containment
Woodrow sat at his desk to the side of the subterranean lab. He could still hear the cries from the infected echoing from their cages and piercing the wall between him and their cells. There was a ‘ping’ sound, and he glanced over to view an incoming email that had popped onto his laptop.
-----Original Message-----
To: Dr. Coleman
From: Unknown
RE: what you have done
You think you are so smart don’t you?
You think no one has tried this before?
Man creates fire to clear away the useless underbrush.
To rid the landscape of the elements that outlived their usefulness…in hopes that the fire will not only destroy, but will allow for rebirth of new life, of a new social order.
But what happens when the fire you created cannot be contained?
Do you think you can restrain what you have unleashed?
They tried it in India. Bhopal was our small containment effort.
They tried it in Africa. You think Rwanda was simple tribal genocide? Rwanda was our containment.
What name will you give to the containment efforts in New Jersey?
The email ended without signature or further explanation. Dr. Coleman quickly typed his response.
-----Original Message-----
To: Unknown
From: Dr. Coleman
RE: what you have done
Who is this?
The auto reply came back instantaneously.
-----Original Message-----
To Dr. Coleman
From: Microsoft Outlook
RE: Undeliverable
Delivery has failed:
The server has tried to deliver this message, without success, and has stopped trying. Email account closed.
Whoever had contacted him closed their account before he could even type a reply. Before Woodrow could fully evaluate the email he’d read, he was startled by the ringing of his cell phone.
Woodrow picked up the device. “Hello?”
“Coleman, it’s Jerry Sullivan,” the voice said urgently. “I want you to listen careful—”
“Jerry? What is going on?”
“What’s going on is I am saving your ass. You need to get out of there ASAP, discreetly. Can you leave the facility?”
“I guess so, there is no guard here or anything, let me see.” Woodrow walked down the hallway and turned the corner. He saw that the office door of Colonel Abdullah was open, a rare occurrence. He peered in and saw Col. Abdulla sitting at his office desk. His right hand lay on the desk, gripping a Glock 19. His left temple and frontal lobe was splattered across the floor. Woodrow wondered if it was an assisted suicide. He reported this to Jerry and continued on.
He started towards the elevator, pausing to look into the holding pens of the infected. They were inexplicably riled up, like animals sensing a coming earthquake. Arriving at the elevator, he pushed the button, but there was nothing. No lighted UP button, no sound of the car coming. It was dead. He walked over to the door leading to the stairwell only to find it locked. He now jogged down the hall, but upon entering the infirmary, he found the guards had all fled. A few infected were still strapped to their beds, but three beds were overturned, their occupants missing.
Woodrow caught his breath. “This is bad, Jer!”
He ran back to the elevator and frantically pushed the buttons, but still nothing. It was then that the ear piercing alarm began. He made it back to his office and closed the door to try and block the sound so he could speak to Jerry. He looked over at the Skells through the glass partition. They were manic, disturbed by the sirens.
“I’m locked in, Jerry. There is no way for me to get out of here and my hosts and their guards have fled. Can anyone come get me?”
“Afraid not, not now anyway. Are you in a safe area?”
“I’m surrounded by a bunch of brain dead lunatics who think with their stomach and want to rip me apart. I feel like I am back in high school,” Woodrow said, utilizing the gallows humor that had kept him sane through his high school years. Then he heard the sound of a dozen prison cell doors automatically slamming open and a second louder piercing alarm went off. The Skells were no longer contained, and started filing out into the common areas.
Woodrow realized instantly the dire situation he was in. “Jerry, listen to me. Remember back when you came up to visit me in college? It was you and your sister. You wanted to kill me the next day, but I swore to you nothing happened between me and her when we ditched you at the party. Well it did.”
“Hey, Wood—”
“Listen, it wasn’t just a screw. I really cared about her, and I was really sorry how things ended with her. I did not want hurt her, but I knew she wanted something I was not ready to give at that time.”
“Wood, listen, don’t worry about that right now. We will get you out of there,” Jerry said, as if he were trying to convince not only his friend of this near impossible assertion, but also himself.
“Jerry, I need to destroy this place, I need to get rid of the infected subjects. There was some strange shit I have been dealing with some strange shit for the past couple days. I can’t keep this to myself; someone really has to know what went on here, and what led to it.”
“Wood, whatever you are thinking of doing, don’t do it.”
“Please tell Fiona what I told you, tell her I was thinking of her, never stopped.”
“Coleman, listen to me, stop talking shit!”
“You’ll tell her won’t you?”
Jerry gave a sigh of resignation. “Yeah, I’ll tell her.”
“Take care of the boys, okay? Get them out of Jersey.”
“Leave it to Dr. Woody to bang my sister,” Jerry joked one last time with his friend.
Woodrow hung up the call and went over to the glass panel against the wall and started prepping the lab for complete decontamination through immolation.
Chapter 16
Hungry
Jack “Smoothie” Jones began his night on this job as he began most any other of the dozen jobs he had held in the past couple of years, by surfing porn on the company computer. He was just glad to be out of his house for the night and away from the kids. It had been three weeks since his last job, and the family was driving him nuts. Smoothie, who’d received his moniker from his friends who knew him as anything but smooth, probably held the record for landing and losing jobs quickly.
The shortest job he had held was last month. His brother’s employment agency got him a job working for the state cleaning up litter on the side of the Atlantic City Expressway. His brother thought there was no way in hell he could screw this up. Hope sprang eternal. Smoothie was told to be at the boardwalk in front of the T
ropicana at 8 a.m. Saturday morning where a New Jersey government van would pick him up for his day of work. To even his own surprise, he not only made it on time, he was actually there at 7:45 a.m. He had never reported to work early. Ever. But without having to shower, shave, and since he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day before, which were the same clothes he’d worn to sleep last night, it cut down on the “get ready” time.
Smoothie was unhappy he’d left his bagel sitting on the kitchen counter. Damn he was hungry. It was then he saw a hotdog vendor setting up shop for the day, and he ran over to be his first customer.
“Two dirty water hot dogs please,” he ordered from the vendor, and then proceeded to load them up with as much free ketchup, relish and chopped onions as he could. Having vegetables in your diet was important.
Smoothie had made quick work of the first dog by the time the van pulled up. He was beckoned in by the driver, but when he tried to enter with the loaded dog, he faced the driver’s raised hand giving him the Heisman.
“This is a government van, no food or drink inside,” the driver snapped sternly.
Well this was a quandary. He’d paid $1.50 for two hot dogs. He had only consumed one, so if he threw this one away, it would be like throwing away… like a dollar. Fuck it, too early for algebra. He stuffed the entire dog in his mouth and heaved his sizable ass into the shotgun seat of the van. As the van began to roll forward, it lurched, causing Smoothie to slam back into the seat.
The relish, or onion, or something, went down the wrong pipe. He tried to clear his throat and chew the dog at the same time.
“Ahem. Ack, AHEM.”
An explosive cough turned the chewed up dog and condiments into projectiles as if they’d been dispatched from a shotgun burst. The partially consumed hotdog meat, bread, ketchup, relishes and onions splattered across the dashboard and windshield like a Jackson Pollock painting. The driver, leaning as far left as he could to escape the spray, pulled the van over to the side of the road.
The van driver shouted in disgust and anger. “Get out!”
Smoothie’s new job had not lasted even a one block drive.
But now, here he was a night janitor at PCRC. Easy gig, he only handled a couple of floors, and most of the garbage was already neatly shredded. Now he was ready for some “ME” time, and found a laptop that had been left on.
Score!
It looked like whomever the computer belonged to had been emailing and IM’ing people like a madman and then took off without shutting down. Smoothie figured the computer owner probably got into some sexting, and then went to the bathroom to take care of business, forgetting to close out his system.
“I hope this fool knows how to delete his cache, or he is going to see the remnants of some disgusting websites when he arrives in the morning,” Smoothie chuckled to himself. He fiddled with the system, trying to find the internet browser, and noticed the system was connected to security cameras in and around the building.
Hmmm, this could be interesting, Smoothie thought to himself with a sly grin.
When Smoothie was night desk manager at the no-tell motel in Seaside Heights, he had a field day with the security system cameras, spying on the drunken college coeds who did not realize they were on candid camera.
“Let’s see if any late working employees are still here and getting frisky...”
What he saw was not what he had hoped for. As he flicked around the various cameras, he found the monitor which displayed video feed from the building’s main entrance. It showed what must have been two dozen soldiers in full hazmat suits. They were similar to the type of suit he himself wore when he had worked the crime scene cleanup job. That was a fascinating job, but Smoothie was fired for taking pictures of the victims’ cadavers at the crime scene with his cell phone and emailing them to his friends.
He was confused at seeing soldiers in this type of clothing, at this time of night, trying to get into the very building in which he was sitting.
They were ramming the door, but he was in that very same building and could not hear a thing? Was he watching this live or was this some sort of movie? Then it became apparent that this was no movie. When the video soldiers finally breached the door, a very real and deafening alarm went off in the building and the lights began flashing.
He covered his ears and ran for the exit, but the doors had auto locked. He ran for the elevator and frantically pushed the buttons. Nothing lit up. He ran to the other exit down the hall, locked as well, but through the thick glass, he could see there were people running up and down the stairs. He banged on the door, yelling for someone to let him out, but they either did not hear him, or didn’t care.
There was a large vibration, as if a violent earthquake had struck, or perhaps it was an explosion. A second set of sirens went off, this one distinct from the first siren, which still continued ringing. The second siren was more ominous sounding for some reason. He continued banging on the door in hopes that someone would let him out.
Two soldiers ran up the stairs, and then what appeared to be an African American woman in a nurse’s outfit. He pressed his face against the glass to see where they were running, only to be startled backwards by the reappearance of that same nurse. This time, her face was bloodied and panicked stricken. She slammed her face up against the opposite side of the glass so hard he could hear her teeth shattering.
She vanished but then was again slammed up against the glass. This time, a good part of her face was missing. The splattering of blood and gore against the glass by the mangled woman’s face took him back to that government van, to the loaded hotdogs and the splattered windshield. Why hadn’t he thrown that goddamned hotdog away?
Chapter 17
Chaos
Jerry stood on the hood of his pickup truck peering through his binoculars to view the chaos unfolding at the PCRC building. The place was surrounded by military vehicles and soldiers in complete chemical biological warfare personal protection clothing. The few civilians that had arrived on the scene ran off when they saw the soldiers decked out in gas masks and tactical equipment. The soldiers had breached the front door and were making their way into the building.
It was not long before smoke was billowing out of several windows and the sound of muffled gunfire could be heard from within the building. While all this was happening, deep in the underground lab, Woodrow had moved all of the lab equipment and samples into the bio-containment chamber for incineration. Through the thick glass walls, he could see the clock ticking down to the Thermite release that would shower down onto the remaining infected creatures that were still in their cells.
Thermite would basically melt the infected subjects to the ground, a gruesome, but effective way to dispose of these poor creatures. Woodrow sat down to his laptop to type out his last will and testament and hopefully, a letter that could explain everything. It was then he felt a hand wrap around his ankle.
He was so startled that the chair flew across the room and he landed flat on his back, and Mohammed popped out of one of the raised floor panels.
Is he the one that spells his name with an O or a U? he thought. Shit, what difference does it make?
“Come, come, come!” Mohammed beckoned in a hushed yet urgent tone, waving his hand for Woodrow to follow. Woodrow trailed him down under the floor panel and saw there was a pathway they could crawl through. About forty feet along, they popped up through the floor into the morgue. His guide opened the door to the body incinerator and crawled in. Woodrow protested, but then saw at the other end of the oven, Mohammed pushed open the back wall, revealing another door which they used when they cleaned out the chamber.
They made their way through the cleaning room and up the back stairwell. The dark hallway contained bodies that had been shot by soldiers. They looked like the infected from the lab, but weren’t the same ones. They must have been housing infected somewhere else in the building. But for what purpose? And why had they not told him about these subjects?
<
br /> Though the siren was ear shattering, as they passed the fourth floor they heard pounding coming from one of the doors. Mohammed tried to pull his companion along, but Woodrow had to see if there was someone that could be saved.
Outside, Jerry watched the first of the emergency response vehicles arriving at the now burning building. Soldiers were trying to keep the firemen back, but the responders were insistent on performing their functions. Some shoving matches occurred, then the gunfire was no longer muffled by the interior of the building, it was breaking out all around the outside of the facility as the infected were streaming out of the breached front door towards the soldiers, police, firemen and spectators that had gathered.
Jerry realized it was a lost cause. This had been a clusterfuck of a day and he had not completed any of his objectives. Now there was no way to rescue Woodrow either. The old man was going to be pissed. He hoped his brother Daniel was having more success. No, he prayed his brother was successful in his objective. He jumped down from the hood and took one last look back.
Wait. What the hell was that?
He glanced back again. From the second floor, he saw a chair smash through the window and go crashing down to the ground. It was followed by a dark man in a white lab coat who was cautiously climbing out of the window, trying to brace his fall and not become one of the infected.
Jerry had seen some infected smash through higher level windows earlier in the day and they didn’t throw chairs first and they didn’t gingerly climb down. They simply smashed their own bodies through the glass and fell to the ground, only to get back up and start running on shattered legs. Earlier today, he had seen one Skell force its way into a small window towards a victim with such force the attacker had actually ripped off his own head, which was stuck on the top of the windowsill, tearing it from his body as he forced his way in. The head fell backwards to the porch, but the body continued forward.
Exit Zero Page 6
