Raccoon City, USA

[What was once a large and bustling city in the American Midwest has only just begun to make a slow recovery after suffering one of the worst outbreaks in the early days of the Great Panic. This rebuilding effort is largely thanks to the decision to set up Headquarters in the area by the Umbrella Corporation, the world's largest private company dedicated to researching the undead virus. One of its founders and lead researchers, Doctor Hannah Ferral, has been dealing with the infection since its early stages where she served as a field scientist for one the American "Alpha Teams". Sitting in her office now, she appears to be like any other middle-aged worker in her field, save for the Beretta pistol she keeps holstered just under her lab coat]

Our new orders came abruptly, with current missions being effectively cancelled as we were all told to immediately return to the United States to await what was to be an re-tasking. They came as a surprise to us all, even given everything that had been picked up or even witnessed by Special Operations in the days leading up to the assignjment, none of us were really in a position to put it all together. Compartmentalizing information can have that sort of effect. There were rumors floating around of course, small talk about strange events that had been happening within our purview, but even among those who had encountered the undead firsthand, no one knew for sure what it was they were dealing with at the time.

No one thought they were dealing with the undead? Even after seeing them firsthand?

Permit me to clarify: SOME of the teams had one kind of encounter or another with what would become known as "Zach", but they were very much in the minority. And most of those who did see them were after the fact, the corpses if you will, where they could tell something wasn't quite right with them but didn't know exactly what. Those who did come across "living" examples tended to shoot first and ask questions later. Again, they could tell they'd come across something strange, but there wasn't even a hint about this being a zombie epidemic or the dead coming back to life. The government had far more pressing concerns at the time, and the soldiers had jobs to do that didn't involve looking into possible biological outbreaks.

Had none of you heard about the Warmbrunn-Knight report?

Not until after the Israeli's made their announcement before the United Nations, at which point it would have become largely useless as whatever curious thoughts we'd spared about these bizarre incidents were shown to be sometime far greater. It was like a thunderclap to specialists in the field like me, as if we'd somehow missed the rain falling on our heads and now floodwaters were threatening to swallow us up.

You were that concerned at the announcement?

Yes, but not for the reasons you might think. We'd worked with the Israeli military before, and while they could be prone to some paranoia when it came to threats against their nation, the decision to effectively give up large portions of their territory and put up a literal wall between them and the rest of the world was too dramatic a step to just dismiss out of hand. To be sure, I wasn't certain that I believed the idea about the dead rising to devour the living, but the argument that an infectious disease could cause enhanced aggression in humans was already possible with similar strains such as Rabies. A faster spreading version of that disease would certainly be cause for alarm.

Still, it seemed to be a medical concern, not a military one unless it had already gotten so widespread that proper quarantines couldn't be put into effect without armed force. Which was why it was more than a little concerning when my team, along with many others from both the CIA and JSOC, suddenly found ourselves with top secret instructions to join a special task force whose sole purpose was to suppress outbreaks of this disease.

This was the beginning of the Alpha Teams.

"Joint Task Force Alpha-Five" was its official designation, but the term "Alpha Teams" became a blanket term used by the higher ups and was the name put out to the media once our existence was leaked to the public. It was an initiative started by the Joint Chiefs that would help curb the spread of infections via covert applications of force. You stop a potential epidemic from overrunning an entire region, while being able to keep your entire population in the dark about anything being wrong. At least, that's how they hoped it would work.

I understand that was only supposed to be a stopgap measure to buy time for a larger mobilization effort.

Really? Hm, a shrewd decision even in hindsight had it been followed through. To be honest, we were given insultingly little information from beginning to end from our higher ups. Our initial briefing consisted only of a basic overview of what the infected were, or rather what little was known about them at the time, and that our mission would be to covertly insert into specific locations to exterminate all that were within the area. It didn't matter if they looked like noncombatants or even children, they had to be put down.

What were the reactions to this?

To the information regarding actual zombies or that we'd likely be killing children?

Both.

I can't speak for the entire group, I wasn't a social butterfly that everyone wanted to talk to about their feelings, but from what little I picked up it seemed to be a mixed bag. Some were horrified, others were in denial about the whole thing, while others grimly accepted the task without any public showing of their inner thoughts. None were particularly happy, that much was clear, but these were some of the most experienced fighting men and women in the world. They knew their duty and would carry it out.

For my part, I was absolutely consumed with curiosity and questions. The kind of virus that was being described was truly unlike any ever previously encountered in modern medicine. It's easy forget after two decades of living with the undead just how astonishing such a phenomenon is. All it takes is a single bite, and then not only does your body die in every sense of the word, but you also somehow resurrect with only the most basic functions to cannibalize your own species along with any other animal you may encounter. Your flesh and bones still decay as if you've been long buried, you may even completely lose vital organs such as your heart and lungs, but so long as your brain is still intact the hunt continues. It turned once living, thinking, breathing humans into the closest we've ever seen to a real monster. I wanted more than anything else to get out into the field and begin my observations.

You looked forward to it?

Oh yes. The team I was serving with had unknowingly had a run in with the infected before, although I had not been with them to see it as field scientists would only normally deploy under special circumstances, so all I had to work from was their limited descriptions along with the few blurry photos that had accompanied our initial briefing. But I needed more to start forming a proper hypothesis for how to treat or counter the virus. Human biology was my specialty, you understand, with Virology being a subject I was more than qualified of tackling. I believed if anyone was qualified to crack the mystery at this stage, it would be me. You'll note that I'm still here twenty years later, still trying to accomplish that same goal. That should give you a hint as to the herculean task it truly is.

Our first deployment was to a small village in Iraq, not far from the Jordanian border. We still had many informants in the area to help with the ongoing war on terror and knew that there had been some heavy refugee traffic from Asia proper that had come through. It was decided we wouldn't take any chances with Operational Security, and my team was ordered in when one of the villages suddenly stopped communicating with the outside world. We were still operating under the usual tactics back then, which meant a repelling down from a helicopter in the middle of the night at a point that was within easy reach of the village without being so close it would draw attention. Quick, quiet, and stealthy. At least, that was how it would be if we were facing human opponents.

But Zack isn't handicapped at all by darkness, and with their enhanced senses, they can pretty clearly hear and figure the direction of a helicopter's blades chopping through the air. We weren't on the ground even five minutes before we had a welcoming party of over two dozen shamblers coming right at us. We were lucky enough to have a commander with as much brains as brawn, and he ordered us to retreat about a hundred yards and set up a firing line in a nearby clearing, turning what could have been bloody disaster into essentially shooting fish in a barrel. Other teams weren't as lucky in those days, those who had leaders who thought aggressive action was better than a patient approach ended up having a lot of wasted lives.

Were there any survivors from the village?

None that we found, and we did as clean a sweep of the place as we could. From what we were able to piece together, the village had taken in some sick refugees and tried to care for them without having any idea what they were welcoming into their homes. Hospitality turned into a massacre once people started turning and biting others. There were a few corpses of infected that hadn't been killed by us, but it looked like whatever armed resistance was mustered had been overrun before figuring out that they needed to go for the head.

We logged our findings with the Task Force, then bugged out. The next day, the Iraqi and US Governments put out a statement that the village had been massacred by a group of insurgents. It was the first, but certainly not the last time I had a hand in covering up on of the outbreaks. They started popping up like small wildfires, getting larger and more numerous as time went on. Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe. Every time though, the truth was buried beneath a cover story or enough red tape to suffocate an elephant. Don't want to spook the American people of course, just assure them that the danger is too far away and someone else's problem.

You couldn't keep those kinds of incidents secret forever.

You'd be surprised. America wasn't the only country in the world trying to keep a lid on things, and pretty much all countries were happy to play along just so they could keep their own populations calm too.

But we're talking about thousands of deaths, dozens of incidents, and from your own story entire settlements that could go missing. How was no one talking about it?

Oh, there were plenty of people talking, even the most effective propaganda machines in the world couldn't have stopped that, the key was that the talk wasn't widespread enough to have a massive impact on society. No official sources ever acknowledged that there was a problem, so most people were content to go about their lives and not give a single thought to the rumor mill. It was an arrangement that worked out well for governments, until they couldn't pretend the issue didn't exist anymore.

After incidents like Cape Town.

Exactly. But instead of coming clean with the truth, governments simply shifted their tactics from a complete cover up to just mass distortion of the truth. Forced to admit that there is some kind of virus out there? Simply say that it's a novel form of "African Rabies", nothing that hasn't been seen before and can be easily controlled. And when that fails to dispel all your woes, whole heartedly endorse a placebo vaccine that does nothing but encourage the imminent collapse of your civilization.

I take it you're not a fan of Phalanx.

If Breck Scott were in front of me, I would beat him to death just to save ammunition. Even if I set aside the greedy way in which he profited from the greatest disaster mankind has ever known, he nearly singlehandedly set back medical research more than any other factor in history. The Catholic Church in years of old would be jealous of the way he slowed down scientific advancement. Phalanx convinced so many that they were protected from the virus that it actually led to research budgets being CUT the world over. So many thought that the problem had already been solved that investors didn't want to hear anything about putting more money into it. Even today, the survivors of the war look upon groups like Umbrella with suspicion because they think we will be just the next ones to lie to them about whatever discoveries we do make. No, I am not a fan of Phalanx.

But Scott alone isn't to blame. American society up and down the chain had a role to play. Politicians, the Media, the armchair "scientists" who thought they knew more about medicine than professionals despite flunking their high school science class. Above it all, these lies made it harder for the Alpha Teams to do their jobs. There was talk about making Phalanx a mandatory vaccine for the Military at a time where we were actively fighting the infected in a way that proved it was completely useless, but that's not what the average American thought. Even when outbreaks started happening right in our own backyard.

When were the Alpha Teams deployed to tackle infections in the US?

Almost immediately, one of the few things that was actually done right in those days. When it became clear that we couldn't prevent Zach from showing up within our own borders, and that the monumentally incompetent "training" that had been given to local law enforcement wouldn't be nearly enough to curb the spread, nearly all members of the Task Force were called back operate exclusively in country. Which came with its own set of issues.

Such as?

We were still under the same rules of engagement as overseas. If they had turned, they needed a bullet through the head. If they were bitten, then we needed to conduct a mercy killing. As it turns out, many within our ranks those orders are a lot harder to carry out when it's your own people at the other end that barrel. Other times our opponents were the living, armed civilians and sometimes even local police would engage in shootouts with us rather than less of us do our jobs.

They would shoot at you? Why?

Because no one likes to think that something like that could happen to their own family members or friends. Or that they'll somehow be the exception and be immune or otherwise find a cure as if they were the main character in some kind of movie. To them, it wasn't the infected that were the villains, rather it was the big scary black ops team that had come to tear their family apart and they had to stand up to. The absolute worst of these kinds were those who would take their infected on road trips in a futile search for a clue of some kind or some herbal remedy that had just been overlooked.

Others didn't think that the infection was real at all, or that they were protected from the virus because of that fucking Phalanx. I don't know how many people pleaded with us for their lives saying all of those things, or how many parents were eaten alive by their own offspring because they tried to hold them one last time.

[She pauses, and looks to a framed picture sitting on her wall]

…I didn't understand why they were acting so irrationally, why none of them couldn't see the terrible truth for themselves. Not until I had a family of my own, and knew the lengths I would go to if I thought I could protect them. Now imagine billions of people thinking in exactly the same terms, in exactly the same kind of environment which encouraged having hope where there was none to be found, and you'll find the reason why the world seemed to all go to hell at once.

Is that why you think the Alpha Teams failed?

We didn't fail. Despite everything from fighting a largely unknown enemy, having to travel anywhere in the world in a race against the clock, to even overcoming the obstacles our own government set in our path, we had an unparalleled success rate with remarkably few casualties. But there was never enough of us to truly stem the tide, never enough resources given to us to actually solve the problem. We were never expected to eradicate the virus, not by the Administration, the Joint Chiefs, or our own commanders. The best we could do was keep things swept under the rug, and that's what they wanted us to do.

It left us frustratingly inept despite the successes. The other Field Scientists and I were left to do our research on the fly with no time or equipment given to carry out a true study of the infected. That wasn't considered a priority. Understanding what it was we had to fight wasn't a priority. The incompetence on the medical front of these operations were so abysmal that it hurts to think about even to this day.

Were any of the undead ever captured for study?

Only a handful, and almost none of those that were made it to any actual facility for observation since it was considered too high of a security risk. I was forced to carry out experiments while on operations. Seeing how they reacted to sounds and smells, destroying different parts of their bodies for reactions, even testing if certain chemical agents had any effect on them. Combine that with the combat data the rest of my unit acquired across our deployments, it was still a valuable chunk of information that could have saved many lives had we been able to share them with the world.

Imagine if we hadn't been muzzled, or held back? What if we could have taken those who had been recently bitten back for more intensive study? See how long reanimation took place between the young and the old, fresh blood samples in real time as the change occurred, even perhaps pulling open the torso and watching the internal organs react to the spreading infection.

[Doctor Ferral's eyes shine with every word, sending a shiver down my spine as her suggestions bring a final question to my mind]

When the existence of the Alpha Teams were exposed to the world just before the Great Panic, there was quite a lot of backlash from the population, as they said you often took things too far or were guilty of executing innocent and often healthy people. Is it true that you killed people who simply got in the way of your missions?

It's quite easy to lob criticism at those doing a job that you don't understand. To cry for justice when all you see is an obituary. Yes, many people died who were not infected during those clearing operations, and yes they very often by our own hands. They were often good people, innocent people who truly believed that they were trying to save their loved ones from death and were willing to sacrifice their own lives in the attempt. They either couldn't or wouldn't understand that those they tried to keep us from were already gone, either having already turned or soon would. There wasn't time to reason with them, nor to find another way to put down the infected. They all wanted an easy answer that both assured their own safety while not conflicting their fragile views of morality. No one wanted to listen when we said there was no such answer. Were we cruel in our execution of our goals? Heartless in the way we had to shoot friends, siblings, parents and other loved ones to prevent millions of others from being turned in the same way? Perhaps. But those tactics saved lives. Even if it was only for a short amount of time.

[She looks at a file lying on her desk, with an attached photo of the Raccoon City outbreak at its bottom, streets aflame as the infected devour hundreds within a single frame]

I don't hear anyone complaining about such tactics anymore.