Degeneration (23 page)

Gen. Falton stared at the folder as it slid in front of him, afraid to even touch it; he knew what the folder entailed.

Admiral Rooks reached underneath the table and brought out an additional attaché case, a hardened metallic one. He handed the case to the president.

The president took the case, moving slowly, deliberately.

Admiral Rooks handed the president an additional sealed folder.

“And these are your codes, sir,” Rooks said, voice low.

DAY 2

1
4

             
A
t
1:00 A.M. the fires in the heart of downtown Raleigh were slowly starting to burn themselves out. Multiple buildings had been gutted by flames, while the smaller skyscrapers along the outer edges were unscathed for the most part. Burnt vehicles and charred corpses littered the downtown streets and layers of black soot covered everything in sight. Scattered hordes of badly burnt infected aimlessly wandered the streets, limping, giving guttural moans.

             
By 2:04
A.M. Glenwood Avenue’s affluent residential section (a few miles
away from downtown) was in chaos. Traffic was gridlocked in both directions
. Ve
hicles jumped the curbs and drove across residential lawns, flattened
hedges,
toppled
lampposts
, and even struck fleeing
pedestrians. Fires burned
uncontrolled throughout the neighborhood and turned once
beautiful Victorian architecture into flaming rubble. Some homeowners took to their roofs
in order
to defen
d their homes from looters and the infected, but
most
of the homeowners
simply
locked themselves inside and waited to be rescued.
Police and military helicopters circle
d overhead helplessly and directed
residents to
remain calm. The
announcemen
ts were drowned out by screams
, explosions, and gunfire as the virus spread rampantly.

             
At 2:19 A.M. two riot police battalions took position at Six Forks and
Atlantic Avenue in response to the widespread
looting in the area.
They quickly found out that the i
nfected were not fazed by rubber bullets, tear gas, and
police
intimidation
tactics. By
2:28 A.M. both battalions
had been
wiped out
and joined the ranks of the infected
.

             
It was
2:31 A.M. when FEMA’s Crabtree Valley Mall Safe Haven picked up its first positive temperature reading.
FEMA was trying to fill the last of their civilian evacuation helicopters despite the conflicting orders they received from Washington.

Elise Thompson,
age
7, registered a temperature of 100.8 at the south admittanc
e station. The soldiers in white hazmat suits
immediately restrained her and attempted to drag the screaming girl and her mother
in
to the isolation chamber. A
native
trucker
n
amed Billy DeMayo,
age
42, clearly objected; he broke
away from the line and drove his
right
fist through one of the white-suit’s
reflective faceshield. The other white-suits immediately
opened fire and killed the
ir
compromised
companion
, Billy
DeMayo
,
Elise Thompson
, her mother, and three other
innocent
by-standers
caught in the crossfire
. It was the spa
rk that lit the fuse.

A mob of people
rushed the south
entrance
checkpoint, trampling
over the white-suited soldiers
and
masked
riot police in the process. The crowd shattered
Macy
’s
glass entryway and poured into the mall
, toppling store displays and shattering glass cases as they swarmed past the frightened FEMA staff.

The three transport helicopters that were parked
on Crabtree Valley Mall’s
parking deck took off despite not even being half-way
full.

And then were quickly shot down by the Air Force.

             
At
2:45 A.M. looters struck the Glenwood Avenue Wal-Mart and cleaned the hunting, electronics, and jew
elry sections out. Two
coughing police officers watched he
lplessly since they couldn’t get dispatch
to respond over the radio and were out of ammunition. A
cross the street, a small strip mall went up in flames
.

             
By 3:00 A.M. RPD headquarters was overrun with infected. T
he virus found its way
inside the building
though
contagious officers.

O
ffi
cers covered in blood shambled through the building’s
darkened hallways while others
aimlessly ran from room-to-r
oom
in a feverish delirium
. The hall
way
s were littered with overturned desks,
toppled
chairs,
spent
shell casings, and
tossed
papers stamped with bloody
boot-prints
. Phones
dangled off of the hook, gun-smoke
h
ung thick
in the air, and the fire alarms wailed
.

The virus reached Cary at 3:17 A.M. Most of the residents were in their bed when the chaos overtook the city streets.

             
By 4
:16 A.M. all
of
Raleigh
’s
hospitals and clinics
were overran.

             
At 4:20 A.M. the outer
boroughs
of Raleigh
w
ere a lost cause and
the neighborhoods burned. Panicked r
esidents tried escaping on the b
eltline, but they were greeted with
a slew of
stalled cars and
a multitude of
pile-ups that rendered their vehicl
es useless. People left their vehicles
behind
and took to the
gridlocked-
street on foo
t, providing easy prey for the sprinting i
nfected.

             
The virus reached Chapel Hill at 4:40 A.M. and Carrboro shortly thereafter.

             
Shortly before 5:00 A.M., the virus reached the small town of Morrisville.

             
It was 5:07
A.M. when Troy Douglas, a pilot of ten years, decided to
ignore the military orders and
break the quarantine at RDU.
The
crowd
huddled inside RDU’s terminals had
started
to succumb to the virus and were giving
the police and military a fight. Troy refused to die
that
way. He snuck
onto
one of Continental
’s planes
, locked himself in the cockpi
t
, and started the trudge toward the main runway, coughing stea
dily.

Humvees chased after the Boeing 777.

Troy turned the plane onto the main runway and increased speed.

The Humvees slowed and fell behind.

The plane
ac
hieved lift and veered left.

Below Troy
, RDU gr
ew
smaller, becoming a bad memory. He laughed and started coughing violently, spurting
blood onto his gauges.

Sadly for Troy, he didn’t get far; a surface-to-air missile sent his Boeing
777
raining down in flames over the Brier Creek Shopping Center and across the I-540 interchange.

By 5:11 A.M., Garner was overrun as the virus started to spread across the surrounding farmland.

             
By 5:21 A.M.
frightened residents of Creedmoor,
a small town
located about 14 miles north of Raleigh, established a militia checkpoint on the main access
road, Highway 50. Anyone attempting
to drive into town was summarily executed.

             
Wesley Nelson, a 21-year-
old anarchist and publisher of a questionable newsletter, led a small group of like-minded individuals on a mission into Research Triangle Park
in-between Raleigh and Durham. It was t
here, he was convinced,
that the virus had been
created by one of the many ‘establishment controlled’ pharmaceutical firms. Witho
ut any police to stop them, Wesley’s group had successfully burnt
down the Bayer Crop Science campus, the GlaxoSmithKline campus, and part of IBM’s campus
all by 5:35 A.M. His group was
eventually located and eliminated by a sma
ll unit of coughing National
Guardsmen
.

             
By 5
:45 A.M.
infected hordes roamed the Triangle Town Center Mall. The mall’s FEMA Safe Haven had been overran hours ago
.

             
The virus finally reached the unprepared city of Wake Forest at 5:49 A.M. just as the confused residents were starting to wake up.

             
The virus reached Durham at 5:53 A.M., despite numerous police roadblocks, barricaded side-streets, and stringent military checkpoints.

             
By 5:58 A.M. Maj. Gen.
Yates moved his compromised forward operating base from the outskirts of Durham
deep in
to
the forest near Falls Lake. The large lake was situated
in-between Durh
am and the small town of Butner. Washington ordered him to stay in the area and promised him additional resources.

             
Half of Raleigh
’s power grid went dark around 6:02 A.M. The few households that still had electricity and were healthy enough to remain conscious watched an emergency briefing
from the Wh
ite House that was being broadcasted across all stations. The p
resident urged
the nation to stay
calm and in
sisted that FEMA had the North Carolina
situation under control. A
lethal viral weapon dubbed the ‘Piedmont Flu’ was being blamed
.
He said that the group responsible behind the brazen attack was a domestic terrorist cell. He promised
that a vaccine would be forth
coming, and asked everyone to keep those quarantined inside North Carolina in their prayers
.

             
At 7
:21 A.M. the
infection reached the military
quarantine line
on I-85.
T
housands
of frightened people were lined-
up at
the blockade and the lanes were gridlocked. Most people had abandoned
their veh
icles and had gathered at the front of
the blockade
to argue with the soldiers. Many in the crowd tried to barter their way through with money and even sexual favors.