"Terry, I think you're missing the point," Kenneth said.
"What point?"
"That someone had the equipment and the means to set something like that up. And it definitely wasn't something spur of the moment. Setting up those shatter proof panels and wiring up the fencing took time." Peter stated, deep in thought about what they'd seen today. "So it's not really a matter of someone else having survived. It's a question of who they are and what they know about everything that's gone down."
"What makes you think they know something about what's been happening?" Nicole asked, taking a seat next to Terry.
"It's got to have something to do with the government, or the military, someone in a position to abuse power." Fran muttered. She'd worked in television news as a producer for long enough to recognize a potential story as it emerged. This would have been a great Emmy winning story ofcover-ups, probably involving some illegal biochemical weapons shit.
"This doesn't really change anything," Ana stated quietly.
"What was that Ana?" Michael asked, as usual, he'd maneuvered himself to a spot near her.
"I said it doesn't change anything. These guys still managed to get our helicopter fueled up so there's no reason to change our plans. In fact, it might allow us all to fly out of here in groups, no buses, no boats. How do we know that whoever set up those fuel pumps the way they did are still alive? And if they are, who says they didn't purposely do it to help out people like us?"
"She's got a point," Michael declared. "Unless something concrete changes we should move forward with our plans. How are things coming with the island hunt?"
"We've only got about three islands left to check out, Harper, Craggy, and Gull. The rest we've checked all had those things on them. If none of the three check out, I'd say we head towards Spencer Island, it looked like it had the smallest population ofcreatures on it, we could probably take them out, secure it for ourselves until this all blows over," Andy told them.
Michael nodded and declared, "Well that's it then, let's get back to work."
"I don't think that will be necessary," an unfamiliar voice rang out.
Almost as one, the group from the mall whirled to look. On the far side of the food court,
slowly coming into view was a small group of camouflage clad soldiers, all with weapons at the ready. The woman in the lead spoke again. "We're here to get you all out." The soldiers came to a halt, spread in a half moon position, around the mall survivors. "Who's in command here," the woman spoke again.
Michael stepped forward. "There's no one 'in command' we're all just trying to help each other stay alive."
Sighing, the woman slung her rifle over her shoulder and reached up to remove her kevlar,
revealing auburn hair. She stepped closer, taking in the survivors with piercing blue eyes. "I'm Sergeant Briggs, my team is here to airlift you to our operations headquarters where you'll be safe." As she spoke three more people arrived from the direction of the stairs. Kenneth couldn't contain his shock.
"Henry!" He pushed past the soldiers, who tightened their grips on their weapons, and wrapped the equally large black man, clad in civilian clothing unlike the rest of his party, in a huge embrace. "I thought you were dead, when I heard that the Fort had fallen..."
The other man smiled, returning the embrace, pounding Kenneth on the back. The others could only stare as they recognized the resemblance between the two men. "It's all right brother, I made it out just fine."
"Where are you going to take us," Nicole asked, her voice shaking.
"We have a secure location on Gull Island that we're using as our base of operations," Briggs replied, finally signaling her troops to lower their weapons.
"Why's it taken you so long to get here?" Kenneth asked, looking his brother in the eyes.
"Your location was spotted just before Ft. Pastor fell," he replied, "it looked to be relatively secure, and all teams were under orders to concentrate on those in more dire need of airlift. And with what happened at the Fort, you were definitely better off here Bro."
"How did the post fall?" Fran demanded, "You're supposed to be the goddamn military,
professionals, why couldn't you keep the post and the people on it safe?"
"For the same reasons that medical and aid facilities were the first to be overrun. The injured were brought in for treatment, either people couldn't put two and two together fast enough and realize that the bites were how the plague was spreading, or human nature took over," Briggs responded.
"Human nature?" Ana sounded a little shell shocked, thinking of her friends, co-workers in the medical field for the first time, and what must have happened to them.
"It's a fact of life that human nature dictates to most that they try to help the sick and the injured. And most people can't face the idea of watching a family member, a loved one, be shot in the head even if they are technically a walking corpse already. They allow their emotions to rule their judgment, and in the end, they ended up dead too."
There was a moment of silence from everyone following her cold-hearted, yet on target assessment of the situation. Thoughts of how André had worked so hard to keep Luda's infection a secret from the rest of them just to bring his child into the worldspoke volumes, all backing up every word she had just said. Finally Michael asked, "So are you the ones who put the barricades up around the fuel pumps."
"Nah, Command took care of that, let us know about it's existence when we were given our directives to continue the search and rescue operations. The barricades were put up at the same time the Gull Island facility was appropriated, once we knew that the contagion had spread beyond the East coast,far more rapidly than the braniacs seemed to have thought it would, plus, it seemed to be mutating over time as well."
"What do you mean the facility on Gull Island was appropriated?" asked Peter, suspicious of the soldiers in front of them.
"The facility was formerly under the control of the Department of Agriculture, a research facility for the study and prevention of diseases in domesticated animals."
This time one of the soldiers spoke, Randall, according to the name on her uniform. "Don't you think it's about time you came clean with the whole story Sarge. How many of your own troops know anything about secret facilities, and command directives?"
Henry and Briggs exchanged a look. "Do you want to handle this or should I," Henry asked.
"I got it." Looking around the room, Briggs grabbed a chair, swung it around, straddled the seat and leaned forward, her arms folded across the back before beginning her story. "Just over three weeks ago a canister of an experimental agent was damaged en route to a testing facility off the east coast. According to the biochemists in charge of the testing, the agent went airborne, contaminating everything within a 10 to 15 mile radius before it dissipated. Until the first reports of illness began showing up they thought the effects would be minimal, it wasn't supposed to be transmittable like a regular airborne virus, but that's how it appears to have spread. The symptoms of infection started slowly, affecting people differently.Had we acted sooner, in all likelihood it could have been contained. By the time the chemical whiz kids realized what was happening, it was too late. You see the initial gestation periods varied, the closer to the spill the victim was, the faster they died and became reanimated, but it took us awhile to catch on. The next round of victims, those the originals had bit, showed us that gestation periods varied based off of the location and severity of the bite. Anything in close proximity to the heart, neck wounds, that kind of thing, could take a person over in a matter of minutes. Lesser bites to the extremities, it could be days before the infection spread severely enough for a person to die and come back. Much like your typical virus, the weak and the young also proved to be more quickly affected."
"You said that it appeared to mutate," Peter cut in, "how so?"
"When the first victims started to become reanimated, they were slow, stiff, almost like they were battling rigor mortis to keep moving."
"Like the ones we saw in Philly," Roger said.
Briggs ignored him and continued, "As the virus continued to spread throughout the country, the victims were different, like the ones outside this mall. They began showing more speed, quicker reflexes, it's almost hard to believe that they really are the walking dead. Well, exceptfor the smell."
"How do you know so much?" queried Ana.
"I'm not regular Army, actually, up until this all started up I hadn't been Army for almost 7 years. The government reactivated me to duty, kinda pink slipped me from my real job. Masters over there was brought in at the same time I was, same situation, Henry was just about to be activated to the Corp when Pastor fell."
"What is your actual job?"
"That I can't say, and it's kind of an irrelevant point now anyway, for all intents and purposes, I'm now Army."
"You didn't answer my question about who else knew about this 'Sarge'," Randall spat.
"Masters and Henry as I already said. Davis and Steele were also part of our original team. We lost three of our people during the fall of Pastor, so we made the executive decision to replace them with you three," she pointed in the direction of Randall, Ramirez and Walker. "You'd shown you were capable of handling yourselves when you managed to make it to the helipads in one piece, and we needed the manpower."
There was silence for a few moments, everyone trying to fully take in and understand what they'd just been told.
Tucker finally spoke from where he sat at the Hallowed Grounds bar. "So what happens now."
"We'll take you back to HQ and you'll be kept safe until we can bring this thing under control," Henry stated. "If you're all ready, we can get airborne and be there by nightfall."