“Then yesterday I fired a bunch of machine guns, got drunk again, and woke up with an armful of tattoos given to me by a spiritually enlightened ex-motorcycle gangbanger.
“And how was your weekend?”
“Uhhh, Janice and I bought some school supplies for the kids,” Phil said with his eye suddenly twitching at a much faster rate. “Thanks for asking.”
With our social pleasantries dispensed with, we got down to work.
USAMRIID (U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) had delivered—by armed and armored transport—samples of each of the other 14 ZIP strains. Additional sets of the ZIPs were being flown to several other research facilities around the world. Since our early Friday meeting, much greater minds than mine had been refining and expanding upon my idea. Some incredible talent and technology was now focused on the co-infecting parasite project and I allowed myself to hope as I hadn’t dared hope since the infection began.
However, as the week progressed, I noticed a slow, but steady decline in the number of ParGenTech staff. A few had discovered their loved ones were infected and made the courageous decisions to accompany them to the detention centers. Some scoffed at their decisions, calling them fools, but how could any parent just watch their children being taking away to what amounted to a death camp?
A few more employees became infected themselves. This was more than alarming, and the question everyone asked was how could scientists, now fully aware of the nature of the parasites, become infected? It was obvious that preventing infection wasn’t as easy as just wearing a mask and gloves.
Everyone began boiling their drinking water, even if it was bottled. Food was cooked until it was almost black. Most people with families maintained a “10-foot-pole Rule” of not coming close to one another, and plates, utensils, and glasses were marked with each family member’s name and then used only by them. Sex was completely out of the question for anyone who didn’t have a death wish. And everyone habitually coated and recoated themselves in hand sanitizers, and scrubbed and rescrubbed every surface in their homes with bleach.
But still the numbers of infected grew.
Schools were considering closing after just one week. Many parents refused to send their children, and teachers didn’t want to expose themselves to seven periods a day of classrooms full of possible carriers.
Businesses started to close. At first, it was out of fear, but then it was because so many employees tested positive and were taken away.
The economy was teetering on the brink of disaster. Food supplies ran short. Gas prices initially spiked to $7 a gallon, then plummeted to a $1.29 because no one was going anywhere.
It seemed like you couldn’t drive a mile anywhere in the Hudson Valley without hearing the sounds of gunfire. Ordinary citizens were increasingly taking matters into their own hands—and who could blame them with the average wait for police now being between two and three hours? The bodies of shot and bludgeoned zombies, and their victims, were not uncommon sites on the streets, and would often remain there for days. The stench was something indescribable.
While other areas of the country, and the world, were experiencing outbreaks of infection, the Hudson Valley of New York was still unquestionably the hardest hit. Bordering states were considering closing their borders, and air travel became severely restricted from Albany, Westchester, and Newburgh airports, with all travel for pleasure being effectively eliminated. Even residents of towns on the outskirts of the Hudson Valley were beginning to form vigilante groups to set up roadblocks, threatening violence to anyone trying to pass. Everyone was in a “shoot first and ask questions later” state of mind.
Chaos was rapidly descending upon our once tranquil valley, and something had to be done. On September 10, a combined statement from federal, state, and local government officials announced that beginning Thursday, September 13 at 9am, Martial Law was being declared and a mandatory quarantine would go into effect. The counties included Rockland, Westchester, Orange, Putnam, Ulster, Dutchess, Greene, Columbia, Albany, and Rensselaer. Parts of Sullivan, Schenectady, and Saratoga counties were also being considered.
The rules of the quarantine were simple: stay in your home or risk being shot. Don’t expect any help from police, firemen, or paramedics—you were one your own. In the next 48 hours, ration packs would be distributed door-to-door that contained enough “survival crackers and nutrition tablets” for one adult for 14 days, and a small bottle of bleach.
There would be no exceptions for any reason, and special ZAP “Quarantine Enforcement Teams” would ensure 100% compliance. No travel was allowed out of the valley, effective immediately. If you were sick or pregnant, you had two days to find a medical facility in the Hudson Valley that would accept you, then you would be there for the duration. Water and power company employees were ordered to remain at their posts for the duration. Hospital employees would remain in the hospital for the duration. Wherever you chose to be for those two weeks, that’s where you would be, for the duration.
Within ten minutes of the announcement, panicked people mobbed the supermarkets. Many riots and brawls broke out which needed to be suppressed by the National Guard and ZAP teams. What months of zombie attacks had so far failed to incite, the General Order of Quarantine had unleashed with the stroke of a pen. The veneer of civilization was splintered and once decent and caring people acted like animals fighting to horde supplies.
There was a French film I once saw about WWII where a character said that “When war came, first people lost their cigarettes, then their coffee, then their dignity, and finally their hope. I missed my cigarettes the most.”
That about summed up the frenzy to make sure you had enough “essentials” like cigarettes and coffee—and let us not forget the other major food group, beer and liquor. But let’s face it, by Wednesday night at midnight when all stores had been ordered to close, you were lucky to find even a can of beans or a jar of beets on a supermarket shelf.
Of course, it’s easy for me to be critical, because I already had my stockpile of food and supplies, so I was spared the indignity of fighting over packaged cold cuts and boxes of pancake mix. But I still stood five paces from the edge of the street, as instructed by loudspeaker, when the ration truck came by, and I caught the single box that was tossed to me by an armed man in a full biohazard suit. You never knew when survival crackers might come in handy at the next post-apocalyptic wine and cheese party.
Cam begged me to come up to the compound—excuse me, Sherwood—where he knew I would be safe, but I flatly refused. And despite the fact that I unquestionably had one of the best supplied and fortified homes in the area, there was no question where I would be spending “the duration”—at ParGenTech. There was no way I was going to hang out drinking with survivalists (which just might kill me!) or stay home and watch Netflix when there was work to be done.
The company had issued a statement that those employees who decided to remain at work would be fed three hot meals a day, be given comfortable cots, and receive a substantial bonus. The latter was the deciding factor for many of the employees who opted to spend the quarantine there, but not for me. I just wanted to work and work, and keep working until we finally got some results.
Of course, I had no family so I had no agonizing soul-searching to do, but just about everyone else did, so only about 25% of the project staff was in the building when they sealed the gates and locked the doors of ParGenTech. I was actually surprised to see Phil there, but he explained he had sent his family to stay with his wife’s parents on their sprawling farm in Greene County. He tried to put on a brave face, but I could see the decision pained him.
Because I was in the cloistered world of my lab, I can’t report from personal experience what went on during those two weeks, but plenty of horror stories came to light on TV and the Internet. One of the most poignant was from a man in Albany who had decided to keep his webcam on 24/7 so the world could see his family’s daily lif
e for the two weeks. “Quarantine Reality TV” he called it, thinking he would get his 15 minutes of fame. He got it all right, but not in the way he expected.
After six days of boredom with only a handful of occasional viewers, viewership skyrocketed when his four-year-old daughter became ill. All the symptoms of advanced infection quickly came on, and audiences around the world were mesmerized as they witnessed the parents restraining their daughter on the kitchen table with clothesline rope. People in every country watched in shock and fascination as her poor little body was wracked with spasms for 24 hours. The parents desperately pleaded for help, but under the rules of quarantine, they were on their own.
Then early one morning, viewers saw the young girl suddenly stop writhing, and she was very still and peaceful looking. Millions hoped she had beaten the infection. Few realized the girl had just died. They watched, they waited, and it seemed as if the whole world was holding its breath, praying for a miracle. But it was not to be.
After just a minute or so, the girl’s right hand began to twitch, then her left. Her tiny feet wriggled back and forth under the ropes. Then her head jerked back and forth a few times, moving in short increments like a robot with rusty parts. A friend who witnessed it said it was as like a pilot turning on all the systems and testing the controls before taking off. In a way, he was right. The dead girl’s systems were switching her biological controls over to the parasites.
Everyone watching either screamed or gasped at once as the little girl’s eyes suddenly sprang open and she immediately started growling, clawing at the table, struggling against her restraints, and snapping her teeth together. The most chilling moment was when her head turned and she looked right at the webcam with the cold, soulless, hungry eyes of a killer.
The webcam was then yanked up toward the ceiling and a moment later the father’s face appeared looking down. His expression was an awful combination of anguish, desperation, and resolve. He said just three words.
“God forgive me.”
A moment later audiences jumped out of their seats at the sound of a gunshot. A tiny drop of blood hit the camera and the picture went red.
The little girl wasn’t growling any longer. Running footsteps and the screams of a woman quickly followed, with the woman yelling over and over, “What have you done?”
Another shot silenced her.
Seconds ticked away, and a young boy’s voice could be heard almost whispering.
“It’s okay, daddy. I don’t want to become one of those zombie monsters.”
There was a third shot, quickly followed by a fourth. Then there was nothing but a silent, red screen. It was two days before someone mercifully cut the feed.
Another disgusting webcam hit came from two college girls in New Paltz. They shared a basement apartment just off Main Street and had quickly become tired of being cooped up without any companionship. Flaunting their drugs, booze, and various body parts, they said their door was open to any men who had the “balls to risk breaking quarantine.”
“Come on down!” one of the girls declared. “Because it’s the end of the fucking world and it may be your last chance to come!”
The other girl unlocked their front door and yanked it open. She then stuck her head outside and shouted, “Helloooo, is anyone out there?”
Both girls then sat in front of the webcam and put on a display of “just how fucked up” they could get by taking a variety of drugs and washing them down with vodka. Viewers hoped to see some men arrive soon, and the wild partying that would ensue.
Men did arrive, in fact, three of them. The only problem was that they appeared to have been dead for at least a week. The girls were so drunk and high they didn’t notice when the first man—who had a bone sticking out of his arm and a chunk of flesh missing from his cheek so that his teeth showed through—staggered through the doorway and headed straight for them. The other two men were right behind him, and they both were covered in mud and filth beyond description, as if they had just emerged from a sewer.
Many people tried to message the girls a warning, and both their cell phones started ringing. One of the spaced-out girls answered her phone and she listened for a few seconds without comprehending the nature of the danger. With the lead zombie just a few feet behind her, the frantic voice on the phone finally got through to her foggy brain and her eyes widened in horror. But the realization came too late as she jumped to her feet just an instant before the first zombie grabbed her. The filthy zombies grabbed the other girl a second later.
It amazes me to this day that people continued to watch the two screaming girls die an incredibly bloody, violent death. These same sick viewers then continued to watch for the next four days as the three zombies contentedly ate their fill. It wasn’t until the fifth day that a special detachment of the Quarantine Enforcement Team stormed the apartment and blew away the feasting zombies, then put a bullet in the webcam.
To many around the world, such repulsive and shocking scenes were their first experience with the horror of witnessing someone switching, and the feeding frenzies of those who had already switched. But they would all have firsthand experience soon enough. For as the residents of the Hudson Valley huddled in fear within their homes, infection was spreading like wildfire to every corner of the globe.
Those two weeks, as the Voice of the Hudson told anyone who would listen, marked the End of the Beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse.
House of Cards: Remarkable progress was being made around the world on anti-zombie drugs and therapies to both prevent and eradicate infection. As I look back, if we had just one extra month it could have made all the difference and prevented the apocalypse. Of course, I also have to concede that had the research started a month later, it’s likely that no one would have survived.
With conditions in the rest of the country going downhill fast, ZAP officials decided to extend the Hudson Valley quarantine for another two weeks. The original plan was to keep the infected residents of the valley from infecting the rest of the world. Now the quarantine extension was designed to “protect local residents from the growing threat” beyond the valley. In truth, they had no idea what they were doing, and hoped that the Hudson Valley quarantine would prove a success so they could quickly enforce other quarantines across the country.
It was initially feared that angry residents would storm out of their homes en masse and demand an end to their confinement, but an unexpected thing occurred. Messages came into the ZAP offices actually thanking them for the extension. It was simple human nature, really—if you keep people locked up because they are a perceived threat, they will protest. If you keep people locked up to shield them from a threat, they will be grateful.
I was grateful for the opportunity to keep working without distractions from the outside world. By the third week of quarantine, we were actually able to run live tests on some genetically engineered ZIPs that had been airlifted by helicopter to the roof of ParGenTech. The samples had come from labs in Amsterdam and Israel, and both looked promising for the co-infecting scheme.
However, the use of the term “live tests” was only half right, as we would be injecting samples in both humans with advanced infection, as well as those who had already switched. Lucky me, I had literally drawn the short straw and drew the duty of testing a pair of zombies the army had chained up in one of their infamous white trailers.
Betty and Barney, I had named them, as the short, stocky male and tall, brunette female reminded me of the Rubbles from the Flintstones. Sergeant Pelton, of all people, said the names would also be appropriate due to Betty and Barney Hill, who had allegedly been abducted by aliens in 1961 and were subjected to experiments. I told him I wasn’t sure I relished the idea of being compared to an extraterrestrial kidnapper, but the ZIPs certainly seemed alien enough.
Of course, the whole point of me giving the zombies fictitious names was because I didn’t want to know who they had been in life. I didn’t want to know that each of them had a family, tha
t somewhere they had children who loved them, that they had friends who missed them, that they led decent, ordinary lives, and that because of these despicable parasites they had been reduced to lab rats. I couldn’t have done what I did to them if I knew who they were.
We considered keeping Betty and Barney strapped to exam tables, but we wanted to give them freedom of movement to observe any changes in motor skills once we injected the co-infecting strains of ZIPs. Naturally, that meant we had to subdue them long enough to inject them, and therein lay another dilemma, as they didn’t respond to tranquilizers and anesthesia as humans did.
Based upon the success of stun guns that police had used in the early days of infection (listen to me, I’m talking about a couple of months like it was decades!), the armed forces had developed a yard-long Stun Baton. It was essentially a long-handled, high voltage, cattle prod that wasn’t too cumbersome to carry, but was long enough to keep a zombie out of arms’ reach. They were perfect for temporarily disrupting the electrical flow along the nexus of parasites controlling the nervous system of the victim, and well, quite frankly, they were fun to use.
Okay, maybe that sounds warped, but when you walk into a room and this growling, snarling, flesh-eating undead maniac is using every ounce of his strength to try to break his chain so he can break your skull open and eat your brains, and one touch of my Magic Zombie Wand drops him like a stone and makes him as helpless as a baby, then yes, I did get some pleasure out of it.
After knocking Barney senseless, I injected a hefty dose of the Israeli-modified ZIPs right into his spinal fluid. Betty received the “Dutch Blend,” which was actually two modified strains. Both injections contained plenty of eggs and larvae, as well as a substantial population of mature parasites, so any interactions between them and the Hudson Valley ZIPs would be brought about quickly.
Once co-infection was initiated, it was just a matter of observing Betty and Barney via the CCTVs, and taking samples of blood and spinal fluid every 12 hours. Our hope was that after a few days, the number of HVZIPs would decline as a result of competitive suppression. What I found on the morning of Day Four was that Barney was dead—and I mean for good this time.
HVZA (Book 1): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse Page 11
