by Gary Chesla
“Not on these photos, Doc,” Chervy replied. “Like I said when we first discovered that someone had taken food from the crate, the satellite images taken at night are not very good. The satellite that we are able to access wasn’t designed to take night photos. I was able to adjust some of the programing to take night shots by finding and displaying shapes created by body heat to help us look for survivors, but there wasn’t much I could do about the image quality.”
“Maybe our visitor heard something,” Davis suggested, “and that scared them away from the food.”
“That could be one possibility,” Doc added. “But I have a feeling there is more here than we are able to see.”
Chervy continued to click the arrow on the keyboard, scrolling photo after photo across the screen giving the illusion of a jerky motion picture as the small green human shaped image moved across the screen.
“The blurry human shaped image on the screen now seems to be moving in a different direction on each photo,” Chervy said sounding puzzled as he continued to scroll through the satellite images.
Finally, the light green glowing humanoid shape that identified the visitor’s presence, moved off the screen and no longer appeared on any of the remaining satellite photos.
“Could it be the visitor just got nervous and decided not to approach the food crate last night?” Davis asked.
“I don’t think that was the reason,” Doc replied. “The visitor found and took food the night before. I don’t believe they just got cold feet and left. After what they have probably lived through up until now, it would have had to have been a lot more than a case of cold feet to make them walk away from food.”
“But the movements on the last few pictures didn’t make sense,” Davis added. “It was like our visitor couldn’t decide what direction they wanted to go in.”
Doc thought for a second.
“Do you remember playing tag when you were a kid?” Doc asked.
“Yeah, why?” Chervy asked.
“If we were to trace your motions on a sheet of paper when you were playing tag, what would the resulting picture look like?” Doc asked.
“It would look like someone scribbled all over the paper,” Chervy replied then looked at Doc, “I guess it would look something like the path our visitor was taking. You’re not suggesting that our visitor was being chased?”
“It would account for the seemingly random movements we saw on the satellite images,” Doc replied. “It could also explain why our visitor never made it to the food crate.”
“But what was chasing our visitor?” Davis asked. “The night vision photos, even if they aren’t capable of showing a clear image of anyone at night, would have shown some kind of heat signature if an animal or another person was there.”
“I think Doc is suggesting something else,” Chervy said.
“Not one of the infected?” Davis asked. “We haven’t seen any of the infected moving around for a few days now. I thought that they had all finally died off.”
“I guess it would be possible that there are still a few of the infected around,” Rogers added. “But according to the pictures, our visitor seemed to be moving all over the place. Why not grab the food first and then run? If our visitor was just wanting to get out of there, why not just run? The quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line. Why run in circles?”
“Chervy, are we able to view the pictures taken from the motion detector camera’s yet?” Doc asked.
“I’m downloading the pictures now,” Chervy replied. “I should have something in a minute.”
“I hope the night vision cameras we took out to the drop site will show us more detail than the satellite night shots,” Rogers said.
“The camera pictures should be almost photo quality, except they will be greenish looking,” Chervy replied. “It will be like looking through a pair of our newest night vision binoculars. The cameras will be close to the subject instead of being hundreds of miles away, they won’t have to deal with cloud cover or haze in the atmosphere. If everything went right, the pictures should give us a decent view of our visitor and what had scared him away.”
Chervy watched as the download progress bar reached 100 percent.
“Download complete, now let’s take a look at what our cameras saw last night,” Chervy said as he opened the file and clicked on the first picture.
“This was the first picture taken, it was triggered by the motion sensors probably about the time the visitor was about ten to fifteen feet away from the food crate,” Chervy said as the picture appeared on the screen.
Everyone stared at the picture in silence for a moment, then Rogers spoke.
On the screen was a view of a girl with long hair. Her hair was tied into a ponytail that hung down over her left shoulder.
She was crouching down behind a tree, looking towards the crate of food.
Her facial features were plainly visible in the picture.
It was hard to tell her age through the greenish glow, but she looked to be maybe in her mid to late twenties.
Based on her facial features, the calm look on her face and the lack of any sign of fear or hesitation, it appeared that she had done this sort of thing many times before.
“She’s beautiful,” Rogers said.
“In a green sort of way,” Davis chuckled. “But it’s definitely a girl. I really didn’t expect to see a girl.”
“Why not? Don’t you think a woman can survive as well as a man?” Doc chuckled.
“Well, of course a woman could survive, but women aren’t as strong as men,” Davis replied. “But in this environment, the strong survive and the weak perish. I just assumed our visitor would be a man.”
“In nature, as well as in my own personal experience,” Doc smiled, “the female of the species is often much more cunning and ruthless than the male. Strength can be defined in many different ways. As we saw back at the base with our battle against the infected, brute strength isn’t always the answer. This young lady is either very intelligent and determined or she has been very lucky.”
“Move on to the next picture,” Doc said.
Chervy tapped the keyboard and the next picture scrolled across the screen.
“Look at her posture,” Doc said. “She is looking off to the right and away from the food. She must have heard or seen something off in that direction. See if the next picture, will show us what had distracted her.”
When Chervy brought up the next picture, all four men gasped and cringed at the sight on the screen.
“My God,” Chervy said, “It is one of the infected. Where the hell did he come from?”
“How come his image is darker than the girl’s image?” Rogers asked.
“Because he is dead, no body heat,” Davis answered.
“That’s right, I keep forgetting that,” Rogers said as he continued to study the screen.
“So now we know what spooked our visitor,” Chervy said.
“Maybe,” Doc replied. “but from her composure, I don’t think just one of the infected would be enough to make her turn and run. I think we are going to see something more on the next photos.”
Chervy brought up the next picture.
This time a dark ghoulish face of a woman appeared, her arms outstretched, her mouth open, as the image of the woman seemed to catch her in midstride.
“What camera took this picture?” Doc asked.
“Camera #4,” Chervy replied. “It was located to the left side of the food crate.”
“That makes two, one on our visitors left and one on her right,” Doc said.
After studying the image on the monitor for a few more seconds, Doc said. “Go to the next picture.”
Chervy brought up the next picture.
“This one was taken by the camera right behind the food crate,” Chervy said as they all stared at a picture of two of the infected that seemed to be battling each other to be the first one to reach the visitor.
They both had
their arms stretched out in front of them, their mouths open as they struggled to reach the living flesh a few feet away from them.
“How many of the infected were out there last night?” Chervy asked. “Do you think she saw them or she was just reacting to sounds in the darkness around her?”
“That is hard to determine from the pictures alone. But this makes four of them that we have seen so far,” Doc replied. One on her left, one to the right and two coming straight at her.”
“Keep going,” Doc said after studying the picture for a few moments. “How many more pictures did we get last night?”
“It looks like the motion detector was triggered ten times last night,” Chervy said as he brought up the next picture on screen.
“Just move through the rest of the pictures slowly so we can see what happened next. We can go back and examine each one in detail later after we see what happened,” Doc said.
Chervy nodded and began to slowly scroll through the remaining pictures.
A total of eight pictures of the infected flashed across the screen.
Each picture contained a gruesome image of two or more of the dead, each determined to reach the one living person that had come to the food crate.
When Chervy brought up the next to the last picture, he began to swear.
“Damn it, they got her!” Chervy swore as a picture of the female visitor appeared on screen.
Two of the infected creatures had grabbed on to each of the visitor’s arms and they appeared to be in the process of dragging her to the ground.
“Shit!” Davis swore.
They all grew silent when Chervy brought up the last picture.
The last image was a picture of the backs of the infected as they appeared to be climbing on top of something or someone on the ground.
“God, she never had a chance,” Davis said. “How many of the infected did we see out there?”
“I counted eight,” Rogers sighed.
“Why did she have to try this at night?” Chervy asked. “I know we said she probably wanted to keep from being seen by anyone, but it is also a lot easier for someone to sneak up on you. She ended up getting herself surrounded before she knew they were even there. I bet she never saw them until the last minute. She probably heard the sounds of them moving around but couldn’t figure out which way to run.”
“Maybe she felt like we did, that all the infected had finally decomposed,” Davis replied. “She probably thought she didn’t have to worry about the infected any longer and could go out safely at night.”
“None of this makes any sense to me,” Rogers said. “We haven’t seen any evidence of the living around here and if she believed, like us, that the infected had all decomposed and weren’t a threat any longer, then who was she hiding from that she had to come at night so she wouldn’t be seen?”
“In the scenario you just described, I would say she was hiding from us,” Doc replied. “Not us personally, but from whoever the people were that had put the food out there that she was trying to get to. She may have believed that the drop point was a trap and the food bait. The cover of darkness would then give the best chance to reach the food undetected.”
“Unfortunately, we now know why the food wasn’t touched,” Chervy added after a long pause. “So this brings us to the question of where in hell did all the infected come from. I also find it disturbing to see that these dead bodies were all in such good condition, as far as dead bodies go that is. It was as if they had just recently had become infected. I’ve been scanning this area every day for the last week and I haven’t seen a damn thing moving anywhere.
This sudden appearance of the infected, after all this time of not seeing anything baffles me.”
“I would normally agree that the unusually good condition of the infected bodies would indicate that they had just become infected,” Doc said. “But for that to be the case, that would mean there had to be a group of survivors somewhere nearby to become infected. This also brings up another problem and that is how did the living become infected if all the carriers of the virus have died off?”
“We know there wasn’t any survivors anywhere near Stone,” Chervy replied. “I’ve spent days using the satellite’s cameras and even using the satellite’s infrared sensors at night, there wasn’t the slightest hint of a living body anywhere around here. A group as large as the one that attacked our visitor should have been visible.”
“As we all know by the fact that a living person showed up at the food drop,” Doc sighed, “our equipment and search methods are not fool proof. We have been using trial and error to find a way to discover any survivors. All I can say is that they were out there, but we weren’t able to detect them. What is concerning me is how did they become infected? I felt the infected would decay and not be a threat any longer, but the unknown factor was how long the virus itself could survive. We may have additional unknown factors at play here.”
“I have one question,” Rogers said. “I apologize if it is a dumb question, but as I watched Chervy scroll the pictures across the screen, I noticed something that seemed awful strange to me.”
“Other than we just saw a shit load of infected dead bodies attack and kill the only living person we’ve seen since we left Fallon,” Davis growled, “What part of all of that seemed strange to you?”
Rogers looked at Chervy and Doc and asked, “Why were all the infected dressed up. In all the photos, the infected were wearing suits and ties or fancy dresses.
The infected back at our base were all wearing uniforms because they were soldiers at our base before they became infected.
The infected that swarmed over the base, even though we didn’t know where they originally came from, we knew from the rags and shredded clothes they were wearing that they had come from the desert.
These people were all dressed up like they just came from a New Year’s Eve party or some formal event.
Where would infected people dressed in suits and gowns be coming from?
Like I said, maybe it is a dumb question, but it struck me as being strange when I saw how they were all dressed.”
“I was focused on the condition of the bodies. I wasn’t paying any attention to how they were dressed,” Doc said seriously, “Chervy, take us back through the pictures again. I think Rogers may be on to something.”
“I hate to admit it,” Davis added, “What Rogers said actually makes some sense. We should mark this down on a calendar for posterity. Too bad we don’t use calendars anymore?”
Chervy pulled up the first picture that showed the infected man.
“You’re right, this guy was wearing a suit and tie,” Chervy said. “There isn’t much left of his pants, but from what we’ve seen over the last few months, that isn’t very unusual.”
Chervy brought up the next picture.
“This woman looks like she was on her way to church,” Chervy said. “My grandmother always would dress like that for church on Sundays.”
“All the old ladies dressed like that for church,” Rogers added. “The only thing missing is the dead fox that some of them had draped over their shoulders. When I was a kid, the first time I saw an old lady wearing a dead fox, it scared the hell out of me. I was in church and this old lady came in and sat in the seat in front of me. When I looked up, I was face to face with this dead fox skin. Those things were as creepy as hell, but that was definitely how all the old ladies dressed.”
The next picture was of the two infected bodies reaching out their arms, trying to grab onto the visitor.
“Again, these two are dressed in what looks to be their Sunday best,” Chervy pointed out. “The clothing appears to be soiled and torn, but you can clearly see that they were dressed up for something when they became infected.”
Chervy scrolled through the remaining pictures.
“Rogers was right,” Chervy said looking at Doc, “All these old people were dressed in suits or nice dresses.”
“Could they have all been
in church when they became infected?” Davis asked. “You know that people have a tendency to go to church and pray when times get bad. Could that be what happened to these people? They all went to church to pray for help and ended up getting infected? But if that was what happened, it had to have happened over a month ago. Why aren’t they decomposed and coming apart like all of the other infected?”
“What do you think Doc?” Chervy asked. “What do you think happened to these people? Based on how they were dressed, where do you think they came from? How could their bodies still be functioning and in the condition we just saw?”
Doc paced back and forth across the room.
“What’s wrong Doc?” Chervy asked. “I’ve seen that look on your face before when you were thinking through a problem.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” Doc replied softly, “because if I’m right, the implications are significant.”
“What do you hope you are wrong about?” Davis asked.
“Chervy, could you adjust the satellite’s camera to send us a live image?” Doc asked.
“OK,” Chervy replied a moment later and said, “the image on the monitor is now live, with a few seconds of delay of course.”
“Now guide the camera and begin to move north towards the main part of the town of Stone,” Doc continued.
Chervy typed in instructions to realign the camera and slowly the image on the screen centered on the edge of the little town of Stone.
“I see movement,” Chervy said. “It seems to be around that clearing at the edge of town.”
“Zoom in on that movement,” Doc said.
When the image on the monitor was focused on the clearing, Doc said hold it there.
The men stared at the screen for a few minutes until Davis finally said, “Doc, Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
