by S. Ganley
When Mrs. Carpenter felt that Miranda had pulled herself together and they had cleared the air a little with some more small talk about where she was from and why she had decided to move to the area, the conversation turned back to the business at hand. Mrs. Carpenter handed Miranda a series of promotional items that showed the size apartment Miranda had expressed interest in with more detail than had been available on-line. Miranda was happy to learn that this was a pet friendly environment although an extra deposit was required of any pet owners. She informed Mrs. Carpenter that while she currently did not have a pet of her own right then, it was something she had considered looking into. Maybe a cat or something smaller like a bird, she had contemplated that option as a way to help alleviate any loneliness she might feel with living on her own in a new town. Mrs. Carpenter told her that was a wonderful idea and even offered to help her find some local shops where she could browse for just those types of animals after she had settled in. Moving back to the descriptions of each apartment, Miranda explained that she was interested in the three bedroom furnished units, preferably something on the first floor if that was possible. It turned out that she had a unit fitting those needs that had been vacated just the prior week and they had just completed a thorough cleaning, repainting and had even added a brand new ultra-modern refrigerator that she was just positive Miranda would fall in love with on first sight.
Leaving her bags in the manager’s office, Miranda followed Mrs. Carpenter on a roundabout walk around the grounds to see the assortment of community buildings as well as the nicely landscaped property and numerous outdoor areas available to tenants. Miranda immediately fell in love with the environment, during their walk they passed by several small groups of people gathered around tables or communal barbecue grills, all of them talking, laughing and seemingly enjoying themselves on what was turning into a lovely evening. Most people stopped and said hello to both of them as they passed and there were even two offers of hamburgers or grilled chicken extended. In a little less than thirty minutes Miranda already felt completely at home here and was pretty sure she had made her decision before even setting foot inside her potentially new home.
The apartment was a bottom floor unit as promised, the front doorway was nestled into the face of a building that included seven other apartments of similar size. Miranda loved the little covered porch and short sidewalk within easy distance to the parking lot. Mrs. Carpenter explained how each resident in this particular building was allocated a single reserved parking spot with their apartment number painted on the ground inside the appropriate spot. A guest parking lot was located on the opposite side of the manager’s office and had ample room for extra vehicles and visitors. She told Miranda that they did have their own security guard during evening hours and he was always happy to escort guests from the visitor’s lot if needed. Entering the apartment, Miranda was even more convinced that this was the perfect place for her, everything from the wall hangings to the modest but well maintained furnishings and appliances was immaculately clean and already made her feel right at home. She was surprised to find that the actual square footage of the three bedroom unit was larger in person than she had pictured just by going with the available measurements. It was more than enough room for her and she could even see herself comfortably hosting small gatherings here once she started making some friends. The sliding glass door leading out back from the living room opened onto a concrete patio with an outdoor glass table and seating for four. Discreet privacy fencing extended out from the side of the building to enclose a generous plot of freshly mowed grass. The smell of the grass clippings tingled her senses making her feel even more at home. After walking Miranda from room to room and explaining the various appliances and their intricacies, Mrs. Carpenter showed her the shared laundry room just a few doors down as well as a roomy storage area where the management kept a variety of outdoor tools for use by tenants.
When Mrs. Carpenter started in with explaining how she would be glad to give Miranda an exclusive hold on the apartment for up to two days while she viewed other complexes in the area, Miranda cut her off and said that would not be necessary that she had made her decision and would like to take the apartment and move in as soon as possible. This sudden jump from shopping around to an on the spot decision seemed to catch Mrs. Carpenter off guard. She explained that her quickest close with a new tenant had been one full day, now she was about to beat that record. Since it was already after banking hours on a Saturday, Miranda's credit check would not be completed until Monday at the earliest. Normally this would mean having to wait to move in until at least Tuesday, but Mrs. Carpenter felt she was a good judge of character and instead of seeing the poor girl, who knew no one in town, have to spend more money checking into a hotel for a couple of days, she agreed to accept her first and last month’s payment as well as a security deposit in the form of a personal check. Back in the manager’s office there were several forms that needed to be completed and Mrs. Carpenter refilled Miranda's coffee cup while she quickly dove into the short pile of documents, signing and initialing where required. It was approaching six in the evening when Miranda affixed her final signature to the last of the documents and Mrs. Carpenter handed over two copies of keys for her apartment and a key FOB that would allow her access to the common rooms and pool gate. Since it was clear that Miranda would be moving into a new apartment that lacked even a bread crumb in the way of food, Mrs. Carpenter extended an offer for her to join her husband and herself for dinner that evening. She explained that she lived in one of the townhouse buildings several rows down from Miranda's new apartment and her husband should already have a nice rack of ribs coming off their own barbecue at any minute. Before Miranda could offer any argument about imposing, Mrs. Carpenter had already picked up a phone and called for their night manager to deliver Miranda's bags to her apartment with the golf cart parked behind the office building and to use his master key to place them inside the living room. Miranda dropped any pretense of an argument when her stomach growled loud enough for Mrs. Carpenter to hear. She realized that after the events of the day she had lost track of the last time she had eaten anything other than a bag of chips while waiting for her flight out of Philly. Accepting the invitation to dinner, Miranda waited for a few minutes while Mrs. Carpenter finished up a few last minute items of paperwork and closed her office and then the two of them started off for the short walk to her townhouse.
#
Stretched out on a couch in a small office next to the main floor of the crisis center, Dr. Woods awoke with a start as he tried to determine how long he had been sleeping, the waning sunlight outside told him that at least two or three hours was a good bet. He had just swung his feet onto the floor and was reaching for his glasses on the nearby coffee table when Dr. Martin burst into the office red faced and excited.
"They have overrun the checkpoint, we are getting our first feed from the recon drone now. It’s bad." He exclaimed.
Before Dr. Martin and others on his staff had finally convinced him to get an hour or two of sleep they had been trying every few minutes to raise the commander of the National Guard unit at the primary checkpoint in New Jersey. They had known that contact with refuges coming out of Browns Mills inside the quarantine zone was imminent, but had been unable to raise anyone from that unit for updates. Atmospheric interference with their satellite radio gear was a constant problem with these National Guard units since they never tended to have the most up to date equipment like their active duty counterparts. Realizing it could take up to an hour or longer to find and fix the problem, Dr. Woods had agreed to close his eyes for a little bit with the explicit instructions that he be awoken once contact was reestablished or any significant developments came in. He now realized that Dr. Martin had let him sleep through several significant developments and well past any normal amount of time to correct a malfunction with their communications equipment. He considered chastising the man about it but let it pass as he realized that the extra rest
had left him much more refreshed and able to think more clearly. Had something developed that needed his personal attention he was sure his team would have roused him, as it was, the news was not good, but he also accepted that his team was capable of handling the updated information without him.
The first thing he did while walking back into the command center was scan the computerized map on the wall that was in place to track confirmed or suspected areas of outbreaks. When he had retired to the office for his little nap, the only red spots on that map had been in the south central New Jersey area and one tiny blip at a hospital in Camden. Looking at the changes that had occurred in the last three hours he stopped in his tracks and felt sweat began to form on his brow and his pulse shoot up several levels. The map now looked like it had sprouted a case of the measles, single red dots and clusters of red smudges showing larger concentrations of possible outbreaks. A look at the world map just above the close up of the United States showed four dots in other countries, there were two in London, England, one in Paris, France and another in Panama City, Panama.
"What? How did this happen?" Exclaimed Dr. Woods as he rubbed at his eyes with the backs of his hands hoping he was viewing the map with a sleep induced haze and he could rub all those red dots away for a fresh look. But they remained in place, glaring back at him and now he had rubbed his eyes so hard they almost appeared to have a flashing strobe effect to them.
"Each confirmed outbreak outside of Philadelphia has been reported either at an airport or a medical center within fifteen miles of an airport that had a flight originating out of Philadelphia. This includes a very public incident involving shootings by airport security right here at Dulles. That one is already being splashed all over news outlets with speculation about some type of terrorist attack. We have also lost all contact with officials at the hospital in Camden where our little intern popped up and reports of outbreaks at medical centers in that surrounding area have tripled in the last hour." Reported Dr. Martin.
"My god, it’s burning its way across the globe faster than anything we have ever seen before. What about the White House? Have you been updating the situation room on these developments?"
"Yes, hourly. The President and his staff are unavailable in a cabinet meeting and General Page has continued to deflect everything we have provided him back to finding a cure in conjunction with the CDC. I don't know if he is just not taking us seriously or if we are not conveying to him the actual seriousness of this outbreak. I get the impression he is still judging the virus as something related to influenza and is just not that worried about it." Replied Dr. Martin.
"Leave it to the army to drop the ball just as this thing is starting to gain momentum. If we don't have the support of the administration, we cannot effectively coordinate our response, especially now that this thing has jumped international borders. With the reporting systems in Europe and Central America being way behind our own, you can bet that the numbers of confirmed cases in Europe is two to three times what we already know and more than five or six for our Panamanian friends. Third world cases are going to be much worse, with hospitals being as primitive as they are and spread so far apart. Most victims are going to just die at home without any authorities ever being aware of it, and while they are in their own little villages they will be spreading the virus just as effectively as if we were to crop dust them with the infection."
Dr. Martin cleared his throat to direct Dr. Woods’s attention away from the map board for a moment.
"That is one thing you needed to see, but this," he indicated the nearby computer monitor, "is something else altogether. Since losing contact with the National Guard command center we had been looking into the possibility of a technical issue with our communications gear. We have been unable to find any problems with the gear but during our systems check we received an automated reply from the Reaper drone that had been on station over Browns Mills."
Dr. Woods remembered the last images he had seen from the drone before retiring to the couch. Overflights of the town had proved his suspicions of a lot of activity in an area that they already knew had been subjected to at least a 90% or higher mortality rate with their proximity to the raw elements of the virus released from the nearby sand mine. Instead of just seeing bodies littering the streets and sidewalks, the drone had beamed back images of hundreds of townspeople walking aimlessly about through streets, parks and surrounding countryside near the town center. Using his zombie theory as a baseline for explaining the peculiarities with this virus, he had not been at all surprised by these images. Once the drone had spotted that large crowd of people moving out from the populated areas towards the National Guard checkpoints he knew in his bones that they would find similar activity inside the town itself.
Dr. Martin continued his report once he saw that Dr. Woods' attention had returned to the monitor, "The last set of orders beamed to the drone from the controller's on the ground included a default timeout for it to return and land automatically if no further orders were received after a specified time period. It appears those orders were carried out and the drone returned to its take off point. It landed just a few minutes ago and continued to transmit video. That is the main reason I woke you when I did, I think this is something you really need to see."
Adjusting the controls on the screen Dr. Martin brought up the view he wanted to share with Dr. Woods. The camera mounted on the underside of the Reaper had adjusted itself for landing by swinging upward and giving a view directly off the nose of the drone. They were now looking at the checkpoint from an angle just off to the side of the Eastbound lane of traffic where the drone had landed. The entire checkpoint area looked like it had been hit with a tornado, barricades were upended, pushed aside or completely smashed to pieces in some cases, weapons and equipment littered the ground along with a few clearly visible spent shell casings from some scattered weapons firing. The real shocker to this scene was the bloody and tattered human remains splattered all over the field of view from the camera. Blood soaked pieces of clothing were mixed in with tendrils of intestines and severed limbs. A hand still grasping tightly around the grip of a discarded rifle sat no more than two or three feet away from the camera, the ring finger sporting a wedding band that glimmered in the light of the setting sun. Dr. Martin pointed to the far upper left hand corner of the screen where he now noticed the severed head of a man with its face turned sideways to the camera, as he watched there was an unmistakable blinking of the right eye and movement of the mouth.
"My god! It’s still alive?" Dr. Martin.
Dr. Woods studied the bodiless head for a minute, several more blinks of the eyelids and a momentary slip of the tongue past the lips confirmed for him what he was thinking.
"It makes sense, the only reliable method to kill a zombie is a catastrophic blow to the brain. Looking at the remains here it appears this persons head was removed from its body but the brain itself was not damaged during the attack. It will continue to thrive even in that condition until its brain is destroyed or, well I don't know what else, I can’t tell you if these things can die of thirst or hunger for that matter. That head may just keep on living in that state forever for all I know."
