It had been another day, and it once again was night. They were right on the edge of the desert and life was beginning to return to the landscape. They saw some search lights and decided to go there to look for food and fuel and water. What they came across was burned ruins. The only structures remaining where a few towers with search lights and an archway with a phrase engraved on it that marked the entrance to the walled in perimeter, Work Keeps You Immune.
"You know." Bill said, "The last time a phrase like that was used to welcome people to a walled in facility, it wasn't good."
"Yeah." Dallas replied, "Smells like something died in there. Or a lot of things."
"I know this does not look good." Louis said, "But we need supplies and they might be in there. Come on."
They all walked into the walled in area silently. It looked like somebody torched the place. Nothing was left not burned. It was almost like walking into a Nazi death camp and the ancient ruins of Pompeii all in one go. There was not a single infected or living thing in the base. The whole facility was frozen in time. Ash covered remains of people and infected telling a grim and bloody story of what was happening in the very rooms the survivors walked through. Then they heard laughter.
This was not sane laughter. This was the kind of laughter you heard before a mad man with a knife murdered you. The survivors opened a closet to find what appeared to be a Jockey, hunched over in a corner mumbling to itself, holding its knees close to its chin and rocking back and forth slowly. Surprisingly though it could talk and second it was not attacking the survivors on sight.
"Um…" Zoey said, "Are you alright sir?"
The Jockey leapt to its feet and stared at Zoey. Shaking in that schizophrenic way most jockeys do and looking absolutely horrified. Then it started looking at its own hands, as if it was trying to keep them from hurting people while he spoke.
"Ha ha… You shouldn't be here…" The jockey said, "This place is the first of many. But it is only for carriers and those who haven't turned yet."
"What is this place?" Zoey asked, getting on her knees and staying eye level with the jockey.
"Old Nazi trick! Ha ha." The jockey shouted, "Tell them if they work, making weapons, we will keep them immune. Ha ha! But if they show signs of turning, then we just take them out back and shoot them! Ha ha ha… Throw them on the piles with the rest!"
The Payday Crew looked at each other confused then finally decide to let Wolf talk to the jockey. Wolf told Zoey to let him have a try at getting something coherent out of the jockey and got his gun ready in case the jockey became hostile.
"Hey." Wolf said, "Do you know if there is any food or gasoline around here? We kind of need it to get somewhere safe."
"Safe?" the jockey replied, "Ha ha… He thinks there is somewhere safe! Nowhere is safe. Not after they launch them. Then the whole world be gone! Nowhere safe! Ha ha! Nowhere safe!"
"Launch what?" Wolf said, looking slightly concerned.
"Nukes!" the jockey shouted, "Boom! Ha ha… Paris, Moscow, D.C., Beijing, Tokyo and everywhere else! Gone. Ha ha! Nowhere safe! They launch tomorrow…"
"Is that what happened here?" Wolf asked, "They dropped a face melter?"
"No. No." the jockey replied, "I called in a napalm strike! Ha ha… Bunch of people turned at once and started wrecking up the place. I called them in and they burned everything! I hid in a freezer! Ha ha!"
That was all the jockey could get out before Louis shot him. Everybody looked at Louis in shock. Louis looked back at everybody like he did nothing that surprising.
"I don't mean to be negative." Louis said, "But that laugh was getting on my nerves."
They all kept looking around the base. Along with the charred corpses and singed machinery on the factory floor, there were rooms with incinerators, and behind the incinerator buildings were piles of corpses so high that they would qualify as small hills. Around the back of the walled off areas where mass graves. The most disturbing part of this being more than half of the bodies that were not burned beyond recognition were human, not the pale and deformed infected.
They paid their respects to the dead, they gathered what little was left that they could use and continued on their way, knowing if they do not reach Doomsday Mountain; there won't be anywhere else on Earth left to hide.