Return to the Facility

I had to go back to the government facility again to see if I could learn anything more about what's happening. I prepped my gear and headed out with the sunrise. I wanted all the time I could get. It was an easy trek through the city. I ran into three draggers but was able to dispatch them handily with the .22 semi-auto from the daycare. It works surprisingly well for the head shots on slow ones and I can carry ten times the ammo without adding weight. As I neared the facility I drew my pick-hatchet so I could remain quiet should I run into another zombie.

I rounded the last corner before the facility and took up a concealed position behind a burned out car. I could hear a vehicle approaching. As I crouched behind the wreckage I saw a prison bus pull into view. It was full of inmates! They were still in orange county uniforms and chained. A soldier sat behind the wheel and another couple stood guard at the front gate of the bus. They were followed by a military Humvee. The two vehicles entered the parking structure under the facility.

I crept through the alley along the facility trying to find a place where I could observe without having to get in again and where I would not be seen. As I looked it dawned on me that it made perfect sense for inmates to be alive. They were in a modern day fortress under armed guard and most of the prisons had ways to maintain electricity and services of their own so that the inmates would not escape or riot if a disaster hit. If you could find an emptied prison and had a crew of survivors together you could probably live there quite comfortably.

Then I spotted something that pulled me out of my daydreaming. There was a row of basement windows along the back of the building. I wasn't sure but I thought from my time inside that it was probably where the lab coats had taken us for the "demonstration". I began to cautiously approach the first window. As I got closer it became apparent that I wasn't going to see in. It had been spray painted from the inside. I worked my way along to the next one. It was the same. As was the next and the next. As I turned to walk away from the fourth window a glimmer of something caught my eye. I turned back to the window and studied it carefully. There was a tiny oblong spot that the painter had missed. It wasn't much but it was enough that I could get my face close and see what was happening. I crawled down into the window well and peered through the opening.

They had some of the inmates in the lab already. They were being restrained one at a time by several soldiers while the others where chained and held at gunpoint. In spite of the guns the inmates where still protesting very adamantly. The soldiers tied them down to stainless steel tables with restraints like the ones you see in movie hospitals or psychiatric wards. Once tied down one of the lab coats would inject them with something and they would be unconscious within minutes. During this process one of the inmates tried to break free. He took a swing at one of the soldiers and the armed guard shot him dead. This seemed to quiet all the other inmates quite well. The inmates body was quickly taken to another part of the lab out of my view. The soldiers and lab coats resumed their work without so much as a blink.

Once they had all the inmates restrained and sedated the lab coats began wheeling in zombies on restraint tables. The zombies were gagged in addition to being tied down. They placed one next to each of the inmates. A lab coat was stationed with each patient (or more appropriately victim). One by one I watched as a lab coat would un-gag a zombie and offer it a part of the sedated inmates body to bite. One did a foot, one a hand, upper arm, lower leg, head, neck. Each inmate was bitten only once in one major part of the body then the lab coat would grab his clip board and a stop watch and wait. The inmates one by one started to come too. The one that had been bitten in the neck started to convulse. I don't know how long it took for him to die but it wasn't long. He was bleeding profusely. The bite must have gotten into his jugular. He lay still but only for a matter of minutes. His eyes opened and he began wildly trying to bite the lab coat. The lab coat just calmly wrote down some notes on his clip board and made a note of the time.

The other inmates that had awakened began to scream in fear. They all began to realize what was being done to them. They tried to break free but it was useless. They were so afraid. The terror in their eyes was unimaginable. No matter what their crime they didn't deserve this.

The soldiers came around and gagged them all to quiet the room somewhat. I stayed at my perch the rest of the day watching in horror. A few more of the inmates died and came back as I watched. It seemed if they were injured closer to a major artery the infection would spread much more quickly. As I watched they brought in more inmates. They injected some with blood drawn from freshly reanimated zombies. This didn't seem to have much effect in the time I was there. But when they injected them with saliva the inmates began to show signs of the infection as rapidly as the men bitten.

One inmate they took to a table right in front of my window perch. He was sedated. They had him bitten on the hand by a zombie. They then proceeded to amputate his arm at the elbow! I turned from the window and vomited. I couldn't watch any longer. These were people. They were just using them like laboratory machines. They wronged society but what they did was nothing compared to what these lab coats and soldiers were doing to them. It was wrong -

Something moved in the alley. I pulled myself out of the window well. I didn't realize how long I had been down there. My whole body ached. It was starting to get dark. I was still looking down the alley where I had seen the movement. My eyes were not adjusting to the light right because I had been peering through that hole so long. I began to back toward the nearest cross street. I stepped back onto a bottle. It flung out from under my foot and I went down. As I raised my head I saw what had been moving in the alley. A thorpe stepped out from behind a dumpster with the remnants of an animal hanging from it's mouth. It charged. Without thinking I raised my rifle and fired. I shoot four rounds before one connected with it's head. It dropped at my feet. Then I heard a thundering of boots inside the facility. I had to move fast. I got to my feet and ran. I could hear a team of soldiers burst from the building just as I jumped a fence into a yard a block away. I ran as fast and as long as I could. I finally slowed about a block from Jan's. I thought my heart and lungs were going to burst but I didn't hear any soldiers following. As I approached Jan's door I realized I had dropped my pick-hatchet when the thorpe attacked me.

I stepped inside Jan's and was greeted with concern and hot soup. As I write this I have compiled a small list of things to ponder.
1. I need more cardio.
2. Tethering your weapons to yourself is probably a good idea.
3. If you can find others that are friendly stay with them.
4. Those bastards at the facility will have to answer for what they're doing.

Daycare.

This plague - it's not only killing people and raising the dead - it's driving the living insane.

I went out to scout for food and any more information on what the government is doing at the facility. My searches are taking me further and further from Jan's place as supplies run lower. A couple of nights ago my search took me into a small neighborhood of conservative little houses. It was eerily quite on the street I was walking. There were almost no zombies to be found. All the houses seemed empty. Many of them had been cleaned out of food and supplies but not ransacked like I had seen in other places around the city. I continued on down this quiet street until I came to a brightly colored house at the dead end of the street near a park. With it's yellows and vibrant blues it seemed out of place in the muted earth tones of the other homes in the neighborhood. Then I saw why. It had a sign out front that read, "Rita's Daycare: Preparing Your Little Ones For the Adventures Ahead!" I stood staring at the sign stifling a chuckle when I heard movement coming from the back yard.

I readied my rifle and my mind for action. I walked around the side of the house with extreme caution. There was no way to prepare a mind for what awaited me. As I turned the corner a fence came into view. It was topped with razor ribbon. Inside the fence - inside - contained within there was playground equipment and - children. What used to be children. There must have been fifteen of them. They were all, every one of them, dead - zombies. I was in shock. I lowered my gun in disbelief. Everything started to get fuzzy. I realized tears were streaming from my eyes. I couldn't let this stand. I had to put them down. I had to.

I stepped right up to the edge of the fence in a stupor and raised my rifle. I heard the pop of a round go off. Then another. But they weren't my rounds. I turned toward the house as I heard her scream, "Get away from my children!" She fired again and this time I felt the tug and burn as a bullet tore the skin and clothing of my right leg. I rolled to the left and got to a knee as this woman ran towards me. I took careful aim as I shouted, "Stop lady! I don't want to hurt you! Stop!" She raised her rifle. My bullet struck and she fell.

The children - zombies - had gathered at the edge of the fence closest to me. They were moaning and scraping trying to get at me. It was an awful high pitched moan unlike any I had heard previously. I stood. My right leg was beginning to hurt but it was not what I was thinking about. I went to the fence once again, raised my rifle, and...

When it was done I went to the woman and retrieved her rifle. It was just a small semi-automatic .22LR. I was running severely low on ammunition myself so I thought it best to keep it. Walking into the house I figured out what had happened to the rest of the neighborhood. The kitchen was filled with all the food stuffs from the surrounding homes. There was far more than I could carry so I loaded my pack with what it could handle. I then went into the living room where I made another horrifying discovery.

There was a fireplace on the wall. It was filled with bones. Next to the hearth was a large chest freezer. I didn't want to open it because I was fairly certain of what I would find. I had to be sure though. As I raised the lid I had to fight back the vomit and tears induced by the smell. It was full of more bodies to be burned. I am sure they were the residents of the neighborhood and any other zombie - or person - who had threatened the "children" here at Rita's Daycare.

I completed the search of the house finding a couple thousand .22LR rounds and some much needed medical supplies to treat the wound on my leg. It wasn't bad but with the condition of my clothes I would have to keep a close eye on it to prevent infection. I limped wearily back to Jan's. I haven't slept the two nights since. I keep seeing the faces of those kids in my mind. It will pass - I hope.

She speaks!

The girl has spoken! The girl - I should say Bianca. Her name is Bianca. She's 11 years old. I finally got her to talk by blatantly cheating at a board game we were playing. She just shouted out, "That's cheating!" Her outburst even startled herself.

I started asking her some generic questions about what she likes and things like that to try and ease her into conversation again before I got into anything heavy. Bianca likes puppies more than cats. She also thinks vanilla ice cream is way better than chocolate even if it is just "plain". Then I - it was so hard to ask this sweet little girl but I had to know what had happened to her in case there was any information that would help all of us survive. I turned on a digital recorder I had picked up from one of our scouting trips. Here it is in her own words.

"It was dark."

"It's okay Bianca. We're here and we're safe now." She looked from Jan to me and then she began again.

"It had been dark for a few days. There was no electricity. My Mom and Dad - they had put boards up on the windows and on the front door. It was late but we were waiting up. We were waiting up for Daddy to get home. He went out to get some food for us and Mom said we could wait for him to get back before we went to bed. She was in the kitchen walking back and forth by the door. She wasn't even looking at me any more. She was just saying, 'Bring him home. Bring him home," over and over again. Daddy had been gone a really long time."

She paused and looked down at the floor.

"Daddy came home. He came to the back door in a hurry. He was bleeding. He was bleeding a lot. There were the monsters following him. Mom almost couldn't close the door because they were trying to push in. Daddy was on the floor in the kitchen. He stopped moving. Mom turned around when she got the door closed. She got down on the floor and held Daddy. She was crying a lot. Daddy started to move again - but - "

She begins to cry.

"It wasn't Daddy anymore. He became a monster too! He started to hurt Mom. She punched and kicked but he was biting her. Mom grabbed a big knife and started stabbing. She stabbed and stabbed until the daddy monster stopped. Mom was bleeding so bad. She came to me. She put the knife in my hand and said, 'You hide sweety. You go and you hide. Mommy's not going to be okay for very long and you need to hide from the monsters.' I ran and found a place to hide. I heard Mom going out the back door and then I heard a bang and a hissing sound. I hid. I crawled far back into my place and I hid."

At that point she broke down. She cried for what seemed like hours and then she slept.

Jan explained to me that the bang and hiss that Bianca had heard was a flare that her mother had shot up. It was her mothers last act to try and attract some one's attention to save her little girl. It worked. That flare is what brought Jan.

Bianca. The poor child. I can't imagine how she could have survived such a thing. I hope when she wakes up she'll still be willing talk to us. I hope she'll forgive us for asking her to tell the story.