April 12, 201X
Dr. Megan Davis ran her fingers through her long red hair. Usually, it was kept in a tight bun at the back of head, but it was after midnight now as she poured over the latest reports coming out of Afghanistan. She adjusted her reading glasses on the end of her nose as exhaustion made it even more difficult to focus on the words.
She realized that at forty-two she looked exactly like every man's fantasy of an old maid librarian. It was not too far from the truth actually, except for the librarian bit, of course. Megan was a psychiatrist. Her specialty was PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and she had spent the last decade working as a civilian contractor for the military, helping returning service men and women to process the ravages of war that they had seen.
It was a job close to her own heart. Her father, what little she could remember of him, had been a victim of what they still called Shell Shock back then. His time in Vietnam had eventually cost him not only his wife and children, but his life at the end of his service revolver. Megan was determined to do her best to keep other children from the same fate.
But what she had never counted on was this latest, a new plight that was baffling the best scientists. They had not even been able to agree on a name for it. Instead it was simply called Codename Zombie. The Center for Disease Control was working along experts from all branches of the military to identify the pathogen, but with no luck. Bacteria, virus or chemical agent, no one could decide.
It was called The Zombie sickness because of its unique physical symptoms. From what little, the doctors could find out it began almost like the common flu with a high fever, body aches, chills and a killer headache. But unlike a flu from which most people recovered this illness progressed rapidly. The soldiers quickly showed signs of memory loss and lowered inhibitions, psychological symptoms which necessitated her skills.
But worse was to come. Boils brook out across their bodies that burst and seeped pus. Their core temperature dropped to something that would usually be incompatible with life, the low to mid fifties in Fahrenheit and their skin took on a greyish appearance. Over the course of a couple of days, the subject's mental faculties deteriorated to the point that they were more like our primate cousins than the honorable men they had once been.
And that was the other thing, the disease seemed to only effect males. At first everyone had assumed that it was because the strict military combat restrictions prevented females from coming into contact with whatever anti-gen was causing the illness. But this new report noted that two women had been in the same platoon as the latest victims of the disease, but they showed no sign of developing the sickness.
Megan stretched and rubbed her hand across her face. She should go to bed, but she could not. While she might play a minor role with this team, her job merely to find some way of communicating with the victims once the disease progressed so that the other scientist could collect as much data as possible, it was a task that weighed gravely upon her. What she could not forget was the ultimate outcome of the disease, autopsies showed that the frontal lobe, the portion of the brain that made us uniquely human, capable of higher level thoughts and moral reasoning, was virtually liquefied in the final stages of the illness.
Megan stared at the report forty-seven deaths to date, another two dozen in various stages of the illness, and five missing and presumed dead. The numbers might seem small, the whole thing top secret and hidden as of yet from the American public. Even the families were not told how their loved one had died. The military simply explained their deaths had been so horrific it felt it best to cremate the bodies. She shook her head, a couple of families had protested that it was unprecedented, but they had been silenced somehow.
Her vision blurred for a moment, whether from tiredness or the tears that landed on the dark green folders spread across the table she did not know. She knew she was past the point of logical thinking, she would do no one any good in this state. She opened the top three buttons on her plain white silk blouse, her ample breasts straining against the soft material of her bra. They ached.
It had been days since she had even partook in her ritual of nightly masturbation. She knew she should do so now, but she was too tired even for that. Promising herself she get her fix of endorphins when she woke, she stretched out on the couch in her office. A quick nap, a fast orgasm and her head would be able to focus better upon this problem, she promised herself.
July 5, 201X
The whole facility was abuzz. The medical teams had managed at last to transport one of the victims to their Level Four Biohazard facility. All previous attempts to transport a subject for testing had been considered too dangerous or had resulted in death during the process, except for one any way. That subject had escaped during ground transport from Andrews Air Force base to Fort Detrick, but that had been months ago. Major Martin Littlefoot, an Army doctor woh had first disovered the sickness, had been one of its earliest victims and was presumed dead.
This subject was a young corporal, who was still relatively early in the disease progression. He had not as yet even completely lost his ability to use language, although according to the report his speech had reverted to something closer to a two or three year old, simple three to five word sentences without proper grammar. But it was hoped that by bringing Megan into the research process this early she might find a way to communicate with him even once expressive language faculties were gone completely.
Because most of the subjects exhibited super human strength and speed as the illness progressed, it had proven extremely dangerous for the doctors and researchers to collect samples. Two men had already been killed while trying to collect blood and urine samples, their necks broken like twigs. Of course, the scientist had tried to sedate the victims but Diazepam, Ketamine, Thiopental and even Rohypnol had all proven ineffective.
Now it was up to her. Megan needed to find some way of calming and soothing the subject in order to collect the samples that the scientist hoped would offer some clues to the cause and possible cure for this disease before it was too late. Its spread was accelerating. Two-hundred and fifty-two deaths and another one-hundred and four diagnosed in the past two weeks. If something was not done soon, the fear was that news of this new sickness would leak out to the media.
Megan sighed as she walked into the specially prepared room. It reminded her too much of something out of a bad Hollywood movie. The first room was full of computers and monitors, half a dozen of her colleagues milled about looking at the screens and talking quietly amongst themselves.
Against the far wall was a tiny eight foot by ten foot room. It had only the basics, a bed built into the wall like those used in prison and a shiny metal toilet. In fact, the area looked very much like what she had seen in the Super Max prison where she had once visited a patient before his execution for murdering several civilians in a dissociative state brought on by extreme PTSD.
She nodded to her colleagues as she walked across the room. She watched the young man pacing nervously like a wild animal within its cage. As she approached the creature, man no longer seemed to accurately describe what she saw, it raised its head and furrowed its brows as if sniffing the air. She smiled at him, it, as she approached the thick Plexiglas that she knew served as a biological as well as physical barrier for the positive pressure facility in which the subject was enclosed.
