Fractured: Outbreak ZOM-813 (9 page)

“This place has always been below the town’s feet?” I asked.

“I guess you could say the town is a façade. The military owns it,” Jaxon explained. “We use it for training operations, all the while running it like a regular place.”

“What can I get you guys? We have food, water, showers…” Sergeant Brooks looked at us for answers, and I cut him off.  “Survivors. We’re looking for my family.”

“We think they were picked up by a military convoy in Los Angeles.” Dan continued for me.

“Were any survivors with the group from Mesa? Have you taken in any new survivors?” Jaxon asked the sergeant.

Sergeant Brooks walked over to a desk and picked up a clip board. He scanned it, flipping a few pages, and scanning some more. From the expression on his face, I was getting a really bad feeling.

“No. A few doctors with a security detail came from Mesa.” He continued to scan his papers. “But your wife wasn’t…”

“My wife is dead,” Jaxon said. His tone was flat, and the look he gave Sergeant Brooks said ‘Move on.’

Sergeant Brooks did just that, “I’m sorry, sir.  No, no survivors have come through here in the last few days.”

My gut twisted hearing those words.
No survivors.

Jaxon looked at Dan and me with concern and disappointment for us. He then looked over my shoulder to the guys. “Jesse, Carl, why don’t you let Sergeant Brooks take you to get cleaned up and eat something,” Jaxon suggested.

“That would be great, thanks.” Jesse and Carl moved past us and went off with the Sergeant.

“I’m really sorry. Who knows? Maybe Fort Coulee will have better news for you.”

“Then we have to get there.” I was so anxious that no other thought crossed my mind.

Dan rubbed my back and let me have my moment of panic. These dead ends were so disappointing and emotionally draining.

“Let’s get you guys fed, cleaned up, and rested. Tonight you’ll get a good night sleep. We’ll plan to get you to Fort Coulee in the morning. I’ll also put a message out to the base.  We’ll see if they can verify whether your family is there or not.”

Jaxon escorted us to the living quarters for the rescued civilians. It was another basketball court size area with bunk beds lined up one after the other with mere inches between them. The room was packed with people. When we entered, Jaxon did all the talking for us. He spoke with a woman in medical scrubs, giving her our names, what city we came from, even telling her the names of our family members that were missing.

“This is where I’ll leave you for now. I’m going to get Ethan and me set up, and let’s say we’ll meet in the mess hall in about an hour?” Jaxon looked at his watch.

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Dan said.

“Go to that window, get some clothes, and they’ll direct you to the showers,” said the woman who took our names.  I didn’t even bother to get her name or look at her name tag.

Our clothes were filthy. We were covered in dirt and dried blood. The last time I had showered or even changed clothes was before we left our home during the beginning of the outbreak. None of us thought to bring what we packed in the truck, so, we walked over to the window where a gentleman asked our sizes and handed us standard tan t-shirts, cargo pants, and boots. He then directed us to another door that read, SHOWERS. There was a room for men and one for women.

“I’ll take Mayhem in with me.” Dan took the leash from me.

The shower room was something you’d see at a gym, only there were no curtains or walls between the showers. It was just a tile room with showerheads, and a female soldier posted on duty.  I presumed the soldier was there to watch for any bite marks or injuries that could be signs of infection. She stood next to hampers with a sign that read, DIRTY CLOTHES.

There was no one else taking a shower, so this left the soldier focused only on me. I would have to get over any modesty very quickly.
So this is what it’s like to get 20 to life
, I thought to myself.

The water pressure wasn’t perfect, but as soon as the warm water hit my body, I forgot about it.

I got dressed, dropped my dirty clothes into the basket by the soldier, and headed back to the sleeping area.

Dan and Mayhem were waiting for me outside the shower room.

Then the same woman from before directed us to the back corner of the room where two cots were empty.

“What’s on your mind, honey?” Dan asked. I guess my stress was written all over my face.

“I’m not happy about this Dan. I’m not happy we’re wasting a day down here. An entire day when my family is still out there! Every second counts now. And we’re losing valuable time!” I was just vomiting words.

“OK, OK. This isn’t time lost.”

I took in a big long breath and exhaled slowly.

“Honey, Jaxon is going to make contact with the other base and see if Mel and the family were brought there. I bet he’ll even have an answer by the time we see him for food,” Dan continued.

“I’m still not happy about this.”

“Look around, Harmony. No one is happy about this. Above us is a world full of walking dead people. Everyone here is probably looking for their families or lost them.”

Dan made a good point, and I realized how I was experiencing tunnel vision in my selfish quest to find my family. So much so that I wasn’t thinking that I may be putting myself—and others— in danger if I didn’t slow down.

“OK fine.”

“OK fine what?” Dan asked.

“OK fine, we’ll stay here today, make a plan, and leave tomorrow.”

With that resolved, Dan and I walked with Mayhem, exploring the facility until it was time to make our way to the cafeteria to meet up with Jaxon and Ethan.

Camp Glen covered a massive area under the city. It was a spider web of tunnels that connected to one another. The area was divided into large areas for military and civilians to live somewhat safely and somewhat normal. There were security guards on duty at most exits, and the others apparently weren’t in use. Every exit led to a safe room first. Only after sealing and locking the internal doors of the safe room could you open the external door that led to tunnels and ultimately the outside. The base was packed with people. The military work areas were blocked off from the civilians by guards, but we had access to everything else.

When we arrived at the mess hall, there weren’t many people eating as we were between breakfast and lunch. No one told us we couldn’t bring Mayhem in, and I was thankful for it. There’s no way I could leave him in an unfamiliar place like this.

We went to the meal line and walked along the buffet style serving stations. They were still serving mostly breakfast, but a few lunch items were beginning to appear. There was everything you’d expect at a regular restaurant; eggs, waffles, bacon, cereals, hot oatmeal, and toast. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of an appetite, and from the looks of Dan’s plate, he didn’t either.

We sat down at an empty table away from the scattered few that were eating. Jaxon and Ethan weren’t far behind us. They got their plates and made their way over to the table.

“Hi Ethan, are you all settled in?” I asked as he sat across from us.

“Yeah.” His eyes were focused on his plate.

“Are you guys all settled?” Jaxon asked.

“As settled as we can be, I guess,” Dan said.

“I did a quick brief then called out to Fort Coulee for you. They said they didn’t have your family’s names in the log, but not to worry because they had quite a few people they were still working through, including the newer arrivals paperwork.”

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Thank you, Jaxon. We’re so grateful to you for doing that.” Dan spoke for me.

“Harmony, there’s thousands of people at Coulee. It’s the biggest base of survivors.” Jaxon was trying to reassure me, but it wasn’t easy; all I wanted was a solid answer.

“I really appreciate it, Jaxon. Thank you,” I said.

“I understand if we can’t know details of what’s happening, but is there anything you can tell us?” Dan asked.

“Well, if it’s appropriate to discuss in front…”

Jaxon was aware of my concern for Ethan, quickly reassuring me. “No, no it’s fine. His mom and I have never kept anything from him. And now that we’re not running for our lives, we can actually have a conversation.” Jaxon took a bite of his food and sipped his coffee. “We all know the outbreak started in the skid row area of Los Angeles. At first it was nothing, a virus that looked like others with flu symptoms, breathing troubles, chest pains, even coughing blood…”

“Like the tuberculosis scare?” I asked.

“It was the TB scare. But when the patients were tested, it wasn’t TB. TB was an easy way to prevent wide-spread panic. People have heard of it before, so they understood it. But covering it up with a story of TB would only last so long.  So, the city of LA called for Federal help. That’s where my wife comes in. They treated a few cases with success. The unsuccessful were transferred to Fort Mesa.”

“Wait,” Dan jumped in, “You said there were some successes? So there’s a cure?”

Jaxon continued to take bites of his food between our questions. “No. Early on a vaccine was developed, but the virus mutated before we could put it into circulation.  Subsequent vaccines failed almost as soon as they were developed. The treatments never really worked. Given the speed at which the virus was changing, the government used the victims of the disease as test subjects. No one listens or cares about homeless people. It was easy to get away with since they’re cast off as mentally unstable anyway.”

Mayhem wiggled his head between Dan and my touching thighs and whimpered, taking us out of the conversation. Dan gave him a piece of bacon.

“His food is in the car,” I said.

“Sorry Jaxon, please…” Dan brought his attention back to the conversation.

“We’ll see what they have for dog food around here… So, the virus mutated and began attacking the brain. We still saw the majority of cases in neighborhoods like skid row. The illness was always associated with high drug use; sharing needles was the big cause at first. Handfuls got sick, and with the incubation period lasting for up to 48 hours until they showed signs, it was hard to keep up. These patients became violent, attacked others, suffered from delusional behavior, high fevers.”

“And you blamed these incidents on drugs.” It was all coming together.

“The local police didn’t know any better. With new drugs like bath salts hitting the market…”

“It was easy to get away with.” I finished his sentence.

“Very easy. The Feds continued to blame drugs, but then the infection spread into hospitals, mental institutions, and jails. It wasn’t just on the streets anymore. The government tried to keep it under control, but they started losing track of patients, and others were becoming sick too fast. Then the virus mutated again, and the more disturbing phases of the virus were speeding up within the timeline of symptoms. Some have reported a matter of hours to mere minutes from moment of infection with the virus until people changed into the monsters we’re seeing now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dan whispered to himself.

“So, the riots?”

“Another cover story. The riots were the biggest outbreak we had seen in a central location. When that went down, we knew we had to let local authorities in on it.”
“Wow, so those news stories on the bath salt craze and YouTube videos showing people losing their minds on the stuff?” I blurted out.

“Some were drugs, and in most of those cases the Feds swooped in and tested the patients for the virus. Most of the methadone clinics are really Fed fronts anyway, and they quickly set up new testing centers for TB, HIV, Hepatitis—all efforts to attempt to identify the infected early.  It just spread faster than we imagined.”

“The government really does keep some scary secrets.” Dan chuckled nervously, looking around the room, shaking his head.

“You don’t know the half of it.” Jaxon finished the last bite of his meal. “The shit my wife was dealing with around the world would make most people never want to leave their homes.”
It really made me think about all the conspiracy theories I had read about, laughed at, and seen on the news. Most people brushed them off as silly nonsense and looked at the theorists as paranoid, attention-seeking nut jobs. We really didn’t know what the truth was and what was just fluff manufactured by the Feds. Military actions, political conspiracies, past outbreaks were all coming into question now. Everyone always knew there were secrets for our own safety, but this one had clearly done more harm than good.

“How does something like the bird flu, or I don’t know, any other virus for that matter, get out there?” Dan asked.

“Most of the new viruses that are jumping from animals to humans are simply mutations of existing strains. The unknown in the beginning is whether or not we have cures or can control their spread through government action. Regardless, in most cases the authorities can at least explain how it’s spread,” Jaxon explained. “The powers must’ve just assumed it was too hard to try and describe a virus that, for all accounts and purposes, kills you but keeps your body alive enough to eat your loved ones.”