Epidemic

I wish I could say that I had nothing to do with what happened to the world. But I'd just be lying to myself. A lie that I frequently played in my mind, hoping to find some other outcome. No matter what, it always led to me being part of the reason the dead walk among the living.

You see, the last five years of my life I spent in an underground facility working for the government. We were working on a top secret project dealing with bioweapondry. They called it X9H8, but now I call it project death. All they told us was that we were looking for a way to mutate a portion of the human gene in order to make better soldiers.

I knew this was ethically wrong, but if someone ever questioned the project, they were never seen again. One perk of the government I suppose.

Six months ago, we started human trials. At first nothing would happen when we injected the mutated gene. We thought maybe we were looking at the wrong sequence. Figured the drawing board was back in our future.

That was until subject B097 died on the table. I watched from the room above as the heart monitor flat lined. His body went limp and the doctors didn't bother trying to save his life. Why would they? He was just another number easily replaced.

I remember sitting back in the chair watching a they cleaned up. Wondering what I was doing, and wondering why I made the choice to dehumanize people. I never wanted that. I was just a senior biochemistry major, freshly picked by the government.

I had no one at home to miss me, I basically fended for myself since I was seven. So I figured it was a good opportunity. Boy was I wrong.

My eyes had glazed over as I continued to watch the people below work. That's when I saw the mans hand move. First I just assumed it was a postmortem twitch. Until he sat up, the sheet sliding off his body.

What I saw was blood curtailing. His eyes were now cloudy, his skin greying. No one saw it in time. By the time someone came in that thing... Had already ripped through the four people inside.

I remember standing there in shock as I watched. Blood was everywhere, people screaming. When the squad opened the door to subdue the man, he charged and ended up barreling through the door taking out the tray of the serum containing the mutated gene.

As it smashed into piece on the floor, the liquid inside sprayed everywhere. Coating the people inside trying to stop the man. It even was close to the vent and I remember hoping to myself that it wasn't airborne.

I didn't stick around much longer once I started seeing the people he killed start getting up. I ran like a coward, I ran and never looked back. I just grabbed the things I was working on, shoving them in a cryogenic case.

The alarms started going off, and the red lights flashed. What ever happened in that room was out of control.

Stuffing my lab coat and government ID into my bag, I swiftly ran the five flights of stairs to the surface. Never once did I look back. Never once did the screams echoing the stairways stop.

When I hit the surface I jumped onto my bike and took off.

That day the mutation hit the outside. It only took a week before all of the city was contaminated and people were panicking. By the following week radio announcements said that the outbreak had reached England. That Friday all news stations ended their broadcasts, saying to get to the nearest city. That the CDC was working on a cure.

So that's where I headed. I packed only what I needed and took off for Atlanta. The CDC didn't know what they were up against, I at least knew what we were dealing with.

Well I thought I knew what we were dealing with.....