by S. Ganley
The current on duty supervisor at the CDC office in Atlanta was an asshole, his subordinates knew it and his superiors knew it. Appointed to the position because his father was a well-known and respected superior court justice, Brian Cansler had spent six years working towards his bachelor’s degree in management from a state university just outside of Atlanta. When he finally graduated, his father made some calls and pulled some strings to get him placed in the CDC offices working on the personnel side of the house. Over time he had threatened, bullied and coerced his way up the ladder until he finally landed a supervisory position overseeing the nonscientific staff that kept the center running. It was not the most glamorous of jobs, but it paid well and gave Brian the satisfaction of showing his old man that he was putting his degree to good use.
Normally Brian would never have anything to do with the operations side of the house within the CDC, his position was designed to oversee personnel such as grounds keepers, electricians, computer techs, janitors and mail room workers. The standard operations guide for CDC functions was very specific in terms of how things were to be run in the event of emergencies like the one they were now facing with a rare and dangerous viral outbreak rapidly spreading throughout the nation and now across the globe. During a crisis such as this, regulations specified that the monitoring and control centers be manned by a ranking supervisor at all times. Under typical day to day conditions, only a single supervisor was required during normal working hours, generally from 9-5 and the skeleton crews covering the center overnight could make due with a much more junior ranking supervisor. Due to federal budget cuts in the past two years the CDC had been another agency forced to tighten its belt and make due with less. One of those cuts dealt with personnel, after an independent personnel audit identified thirty six positions that were described as redundant, the US Department of Health and Human Services followed the recommendations from the audit and started working out early retirement plans to several senior staff and offered generous severance packages to others who did not meet the criteria for early retirement. The result of these cuts was that the CDC was left at the most minimal staffing levels authorized under their charter. Once the alert level was raised in response to the outbreak in New Jersey, the CDC's protocols concerning support personnel supervisory responsibilities came into effect. These protocols called for someone of department level supervision or higher to be on the on duty authority within the monitoring and control center for each shift. That loophole in their own standard operations manual ended up leaving Brian in a position to be the senior authority for the night shift when the field center alarm came through.
Every oncoming shift was required to carefully review the logs of the shift they were relieving to bring themselves up to speed on the latest events. Brian considered that too much of a mundane task and instead he spent the time he should have been reviewing those logs updating his personal Facebook page and catching up on some posts from college friends. All he knew about the current emergency was that one of their field units had been deployed in response to a possible flu outbreak and that the crisis center in DC was their superior authority and calling the shots. As such, he was unaware that the virus had already reached beyond designated quarantine zones and that their own people had shifted their efforts from containment to development of a vaccine. With this knowledge in hand a more experienced and reasonable supervisor would have taken a measure of discretion when applying the carefully scripted response steps that had been drawn up in the event of a manual or automated alarm activation at any of the mobile field centers. Brian was neither experienced in any aspect of managing the monitoring and control nerve center of the CDC nor was he anyone would ever consider a reasonable person. When he was made aware of the alarm a mild degree of panic set in, while he relished the opportunity to be put in charge of such an important piece of the CDC's apparatus, he had never really considered that there would come a time where he would be required to make any actual operational type decisions. He had envisioned the entire crisis blowing over in a day or two and then he would be able to brag to his father about what an important role he had played during the crisis and possibly have him make some calls to see about a raise or a nicer office. He thought it might also make a good story over a couple beers in his favorite downtown dive bar, it might even get him a little action with the ladies.
Now that he was actually facing a true to life situation, he could feel his armpits soaking with sweat, a migraine starting to build in his temple and he suddenly felt as if his tie was tightening around his neck. His saving grace came in the form of the communications operator when the man handed him a binder open to the correct section detailing the step by step procedures to be performed in this type of situation. He had to hand it to the government, for any possible eventuality one could dream up you were bound to find a laminated procedure guide that laid out exactly what actions needed to be taken, when they were to be taken and by whom. Reading through the guide he started to feel a little easier, the steps actually seemed reasonably simple, as long as he followed the guide and there were no surprises, he thought he just might be able to pull it off. As his confidence returned he considered how his actions in this emergency could add to his contributions and further impress his father with his coolness under pressure. Step one called for the communications center to attempt to establish contact with the facility.
Brian instructed the communications operator to get in touch with a supervisor at the field site either by phone, radio or instant messenger. What they would never know was that while more than half of the field center's staff were alive and well in a secure section of the facility out of immediate danger from any contagions in the central lab area, their communications systems were not accessible to them. Since the alarm had locked down the field center at the evening shift change, all the surviving personnel were either in their sleeping quarters, in the rest room or the chow hall, and those where the three areas that no one had considered including phones or radios. The operational procedures of the field center always called for more than half of the staff to be on duty in the labs or examination areas at any time, all of their communications gear were in those areas.
When the zombie that attacked Amy Benson wedged the airlock door leading out of the central lab open with his arm, the airlock cycle was unable to run its course. With the activation of the alarm system, all corridors connecting each individual section automatically went into an airlock cycle, the doors on either side of those corridors were sealed tight until the system registered that the cycle was complete and released the locking systems for all of the doors. What had never been taken into consideration in this design was exactly what had happened in this case, a single door being wedged open and not allowing the cycle for that corridor to complete would prevent any other corridor door from being opened anywhere in the facility. With the outside doors locked automatically in response to the alarms, the remaining personnel were trapped in those three sections by doors that would not open due to a faulty design in the programing for the air locks.
The communications operator continued trying to reach the field center without success on any system. Brian referred back to his step by step guide and noted a highlighted disclaimer under that first step that told him that if communications were not established they were to immediately move on to step six which included instructions for logging directly into the closed circuit camera system of the lab. Using those controls they could also access atmospheric readouts and determine if a contaminant was present, what type it was and at what levels. Brian read the instructions to the equipment operator and waited patiently while he fed commands into his computer terminal to access the security cameras and monitoring systems throughout the field center. What they didn’t know was that when security guard Tristan Gant had overrode the security systems in the examination room so he could shirk his duties and watch a couple movies, the entire security system went offline from the network. When the operator in the CDC communicat
ions section attempt to log in to that system he received a network notification that the system had been taken offline. Referring to the code provided by the network notification he could see that a security guards access code had been used to take the system down. The reference code for such an activity indicated that security personnel on duty at the field center were required to disconnect all network communications when the field center was at risk for being compromised by a contagion. The logic behind such a procedure came from an incident during a training run near Miami, Florida two years earlier. A civilian hacker had penetrated their systems firewalls and gained access to the camera and monitoring systems of a field unit. Since it was an exercise the monitoring systems had been programmed to report that a lethal biological agent had been released in one of the labs. The hacker had taken it upon himself to pass this news on to an Internet newsgroup and it spread like wildfire that the entire Miami area was in danger from a biological agent. The backlash from the local government over the impact this incident had on their tourism levels that spring and summer had prompted the CDC to take action to ensure it never occurred again. Brian once again referred to his laminated instructions which indicated that if step six determined that a contaminant was present, and it gave a list of levels of contaminations and other codes that were not pertinent in this scenario, or if the system was determined to be offline, they were to skip down to step nine. He had to take a couple deep breaths as he read what they were supposed to do next. Step nine was the start of the remote incineration process for the entire field center. It did make him feel a little better when he read that once the process was remotely started, audible and visual alarms would sound throughout the center allowing ample warning to anyone capable of responding to establish contact with CDC. He rationalized that if no one made contact with them, then there was more than likely no one left alive to do so and the destruction of the facility was justified after all.
Brian's inability to think for himself instead of reading an instruction sheet verbatim and without any independent initiative was one of the things that sealed the fate of the survivors trapped inside the field center. The steps on the check sheets that his instructions had told him to skip where the ones that would have told him to contact the CDC command staff as well as the crisis center in DC. Had he taken even the slightest level of extra initiative and made one of those calls he would have been informed of the big picture with the virus being out of control and the importance of the field center continuing their work in searching for a cure. He would also have been made aware that the only known source of immune human samples was located inside that facility. Instead of continuing on with the checklist in this case the decision would have been easily made to dispatch a team to their location to determine the status of the field center and preserve all samples of immune tissue and blood available. As it was, there was nowhere in the instructions he followed that dictated he should make any calls outside of the communications center before reaching the incineration stage of the check list. Having the knowledge that there would be a warning of several minutes to anyone still alive at the field center removed any misgivings that Brian may have had and that would have possibly caused him to consider making a phone call for a second opinion on the actions he was about to take. Starting the process was as simple as clicking two virtual buttons presented on the computer screen, since it was the supervisor’s responsibility to carry out this directive, Brian took control of the mouse from the computer operator and clicked the first button. This prompted a red box to appear on the screen urging caution and asked if the user was sure that they wanted to initiate this process. He hesitated only as long as it took him to read the warning and then he simply clicked on the yes button, telling the computer that yes, he was sure he wanted to initiate this action. Other than a countdown box that appeared in the upper corner of the screen starting at the five minute mark, there was nothing else that happened to show that he had just condemned several of their top scientists and last real hope at a cure to a fiery death. Had alarms sounded and lights flashed, it may have shook him up just enough to pick up the nearby phone and call for a second opinion. His job with this crisis done, he returned to his own computer station and started writing up a log summary of the situation and his actions, he would spend the five minutes remaining in the lives of over a dozen men and women working on a spin to make himself seem heroic.
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Amy Benson was still doubled over on the floor in the corridor just outside the central lab. The pain from her severed finger was still radiating through her body and making her sick to her stomach, but there was something else along with the pain that was even more disturbing. She could actually feel the virus moving through her veins and corroding her internal organs with the first tendrils of inevitable death. Within only a few minutes of the attack, a wave of nausea washed over her and she didn't miss the fact that the dark chunky remains of her last meal were heavily coated with dark and tacky blood. As she felt the toxins coursing through her body the tears running down her cheeks changed from tears of pain and agony to ones of a broken heart from the realization that she would never see her beautiful twin girls grow up and turn into women. As she thought of all the milestones in her daughters lives that they would experience without their mother at their side she cried even harder. Her sobs at first prevented her from noticing the changing tone in the ringing alarms sounding throughout the field center. It took her several moments to realize that something was different and she bit down on her lower lip to try and stifle her own sobs long enough to interpret the change in the alarm tones. Flashing back to her last training mission she recalled that all of them had been subjected to this particular tone after two failed exercises which resulted in simulated release of infectious agents inside the lab areas. There was no mistaking that sound and what it represented, someone had triggered the incinerator protocols for this station. Suddenly it hit her that the last moments of her life had been reduced from a period of only a few hours to now less than five minutes. In a way she felt some measure of relief, the prospect of dying alone and covered in her own vomit in this small corridor only to return from the land of the dead as one of those horrible demons was not a fate she had any desire for. Now, with the incineration process starting, she would die in a brilliant flash of flames, an instant of intense heat and it would all be over. The temperature levels the field center would be subjected to would ensure that nothing, living or dead, could possibly revive. When it was over, all that would be left would be ash and melted slag. She took a small measure of comfort in knowing that even though she was about to die and that her girls would never see their own mother again, at least she was dying as a human being and not a terrifying monstrosity.
The alarms continued to blare but she tuned them out and instead closed her eyes tightly and thought about her husband and her daughters, she tried to revisit birthdays, Christmas's past, her wedding, the arduous eighteen hours of labor she spent giving birth to her beautiful twins. The deeper into her memories she was able to go the less she noticed the pain coursing through her body and the more at ease she was able to make herself. She had already accomplished so much in her short life that she would be leaving this world a proud and fulfilled woman, she had left a mark, people would know that she had existed and her name would live on. Her family would grieve for her, no doubt about that, but they would know that she died working to make their world a better and safer place to live in. How things would eventually pan out in the face of this current virus outbreak she had no idea, she could only offer up a silent prayer that someone would be able to continue her work and find a cure. She didn't allow herself to entertain the notion of what would happen to her own family if this virus continued to spread out of control, it was something she pushed from her mind and instead told herself that they were safe and would come through this just fine. What Amy didn't realize was that while some of the data she had generated had been transmitted to the computers at the CDC, the majority
of it was still sitting in memory in various computers spread throughout the field center. Once the facility was destroyed it would be back to square one for anyone coming along behind them trying to recreate their work.
As the chime on the alarm changed to signal that it was now ten seconds from ignition of the incinerators, Amy squeezed her eyes shut tight, she searched her memory for the most pleasant image of her family all together one last time. In those final seconds of her life she held tight to that image and let it flood her thoughts while leaving room for nothing but that one single image of her family together. The rumbling groan of all four incinerators firing up at the same time was drowned out by the laughter of two young girls and their smiling father. Amy died with a smile on her face and peace in her heart. For the others trapped in different rooms inside the field center, they met their end for the most part screaming at the top of their lungs for help while pounding futilely against the magnetically sealed doors trapping them inside what was to become an oversize urn for their ashes.
