Vegetable vengence

My career is over as a writer. I knew that when I got this assignment, but at the time I thought it was because I'd written an article that was political suicide and I was being sent to South America to fade from memory. Little did I know then that the story itself would guarantee that I never got another job. I have to write the story even though nobody is ever going to believe it.

I was sent out on this story with the idea that it was about some loggers being killed by natives in protest for the rainforest being cut down. A good story but not one that really propels a writer to fame and fortune. Still I planned to do my best on the story and hoped to do some good by making the plight of the natives more widely known.

That was in the early days. Long ridiculously hot humid days of trekking through the rainforest from camp to camp. Negotiating for passage, food, water, and guides into each new area. Many days involved hours on end of wondering if the latest group of militants would kill me rather than allow me through.

And I wrote. I took diligent notes. Listened in on every conversation I could hear whether in Spanish in which I'm fluent, Portuguese in which I'm somewhat less than fluent or any of several local languages in which I'm lucky if I can catch 2 or 3 words per conversation. I interviewed my guides at the end of each day, I set up interviews with local leaders of any group that would agree to speak with me. All very important, all necessary to the story. All pointless now.

The 5th week of my journey, about the time I became positive that I would never hate anything the way I hated the rainforest in South America, things started turning distinctly odd. My guide and I had managed to reach the area in which the attacks had taken place and we were haggling to get access to talk to the locals about it when the first bit of oddity started.

We were talking with a local leader when he used a phrase I'd never heard. Near as I could tell it was something about moving trees. My guide gave me a nervous look, changed to a local dialect I didn't know and began talking very quickly and quietly to the old man. The conversation went on long enough that I tried to interrupt twice unsuccessfully as my guide became more and more pale and nervous. Suddenly he said something rather loud and angry, stood up and said we had to leave immediately. All he'd say as we left was that the old man was obviously drunk or on drugs and that we were in the wrong area of the forest.

After that I got nothing useful out of the trip for about two weeks. It became more and more obvious that my guide was hiding something important from me and worse was actively trying to get me to leave. I tried to find another guide but somehow the word had gone around that nobody should work with me. With the locals unwilling to work with me and a guide who was clearly working against me I eventually had to give up.

The last couple of days were increasingly odd. My guide became so nervous that he was almost unintelligible in conversations. Some sort of stress was clearly eating at him causing his face to look progressively more haggard and his skin to turn almost gray. Fewer and fewer people were to be seen in the village and I heard several people use the odd phrase about moving trees. I tried to talk to people as they left town, but my broken speech and their obvious fear made for even more confusing conversations.

I got the idea that some sort of slaughter was happening to the south and that the killers were moving north killing everybody they found. It tried to find out more about the attackers but the conversations always broke down at this point with babbling about moving trees. Finally I thought I'd figured out that the phrase I'd thought was about moving trees was the name of the protesters that were killing the loggers. I started trying to get someone to introduce me to the group so I could talk to them about their protest and what kind of demands they were pushing with the hopes of talking them out of slaughtering people.

Then the refugees began to arrive. Every one of them was mangled in some way. Some were so torn up it was miraculous that they weren't dead. Many died trying to continue north out of town. Every vehicle and animal that could be ridden had been stolen by this point. By the time I got back to the hotel the only person that seemed to be left in town was my guide. The only thing he would talk about was our single engine plane and how now was the time to use it to get out of here before we died.

Very quickly the combination of his constant talk of leaving and the refugees I'd seen early began to make me nervous. Nervousness turned to fear and then dread. About an hour before sunset I decided I'd had enough and allowed my guide to talk me into leaving. The eerie silence and oppressive feeling in the air as we walked through town created a creepy feeling and need for haste that crawled up my spine and lodged in my brain.

We began to run. A growing susurrus began to the south as we ran. Like a localized hurricane far away but moving quickly closer. We ran faster a rising fear of death beginning to overtake my mind. Now booming and crashing sounds could be heard along with the rushing torrent of sound. Adrenaline burst through our bodies as we reached the plane and with frenzied speed tore away the chocks and jumped into the plane.

The plane being a well cared for corporate asset it's engine caught immediately and I'm sure every flight instructor I'd ever had spun in their graves as I completely ignored all safety precautions in my near insane haste to just get the plane in the air and away from this place. The noise completely overwhelmed even the sound of the prop.

As the tires left the pavement there was a horrible moment of vertigo as the plane seemed to suddenly accelerate radically. We were approaching the trees at the end of the runway entirely too quickly, far more quickly than the plane could possibly travel. As I reached for the throttle to try to slow our acceleration enough to give me time to get above the trees my mind was suddenly wrenched with a brain splitting visual shift that nearly made me pass out. Desperately I pushed the throttle to full and pulled up with all my might on the stick.

I swear we passed within 5' of the grasping upper limbs of the trees as they strode with ghastly speed across the fracturing ground.

Get on the Hope Train.

Nobody really remembers anymore who originally had the idea to use the train. Most figure it was Thud, because he thought about this stuff long before the disaster. We'll likely never know now since all the people that were around in the beginning are dead now. Hell, Thud bit it holding the door while the first group got on the train once it was fitted out the first time. The rest have died over time, same as will happen with the rest of us.

Whoever thought of it, it's worked out brilliantly. Once the solar panels for PV and heat were installed, and the outside of the train was a bit better armored, it was damned near fool proof. No danger of running out of power, so we can always leave. Nothing is big enough to keep us from moving down the tracks. No number of zombies would be able to stop the train, and they aren't smart enough to pull up the tracks. We sure can't move fast because the tracks deteriorate over time, but they'll last years without any trouble.

The best part is that we have no reasonable limit to what we can pull. So we've got dozens of sleeper cars, a few extra engines, dozens of storage cars, pretty much anything we need. The chainlink fence attached car to car makes it so the walk between cars is safe from the zombies and is easy to maintain. Nice and flexible so even curves aren't a problem.

And when we need more food or water, we just pull up to the loading docs of the big warehouses and send in a heavily armed and armored group to get supplies. See, we've got a couple of cars that are full of vehicles we've modified for just this purpose. Forklifts with fully enclosed cabs, bobcats fitted out the same way and even some SUVs we've modified so we can transport more people. We've got enough people and enough vehicles that if we can see someplace we want to raid, but the tracks don't go directly there we just fit out a raider group and send 'em over.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Even with all the precautions we take
we occasionally lose people. And of course we have to have a two day quarantine on anybody that leaves the train, in case they were infected. It's amazing how small of a wound can cause an infection. If you're really unlucky you can even get infected without a bite or wound, but that takes a pretty new zombie for that to happen. And mostly we wear face masks and protection to avoid all that. But it's amazing how seemingly clever zombies can be pretty much just by acting randomly. We found one climbing in through the sewage system!

Recently we've had some very good luck and some good news. We managed to find some government research train cars a few months back, so the few scientists we had were able to make more progress on researching what is happening with the infection. And then just last month we saved a group trying to fight there way out of a hospital when we stopped to get more medical supplies. Turns out they had been holed up in there doing research on the infection for months, but had finally run out of water and didn't have much food left. We just happened to roll up to the underground rail dock as they were about to try a desperate run on a warehouse about a mile away. Suicide trip, they didn't even have any armor on their vehicles, just normal cars and a small mail van.

So we're making some great progress, and finding out all kinds of new data on the infection. Turns out the zombies will eventually die out from lack of food if they can't get living humans to eat. We occasionally see them try to eat animals, but it doesn't work for long. Animals don't become infected either, or we'd be toast.

So as depressing as it is, our big hope is to gather as many people together as we can and keep them uninfected and just wait for the zombies food supply to run out. We're still hoping for a vaccine, but that won't help the zombies...dead bodies don't recover.

Ok, enough blabbing...time to suit up. We're hitting what we hope is a large warehouse full of scientific equipment. The more tech we've got the better our chances of our docs finding a solution to our problems. This raid is going to be a bit more hairy than most...for some reason the building is pretty much surrounded by zombies. Could mean people are holed up in there, but we're not sure.

Anyway...peace.

Contingency Planning.

A story:
Following the contingency plan was simple when the alarms went off. It was well written, concise and obvious. When I reached my assigned place I discovered the next stop was to read "Green Book Number 17". Green Book Number 17 was difficult to find at first because it was so small. Merely a thick paper cover and a single sheet of paper.

The single sheet of paper said only "Find box 17 on the lower shelf and follow instructions."

Box 17 was one of only a few boxes on the shelves and was about the size of a shoe box, only made of heavy metal locked with a combination lock. Likely the combination lock for the 6 digit number I'd been told to memorize last year.

The top of the box had a 3"x5" card on top that said "Open box while alone in locked room immediately." Simple enough, the room I was assigned for emergency use was just down the hall so I stepped in and locked the door. Everyone outside was going about their duties in an orderly fashion so no need for me to interfere.

Sure enough the number I had fit the box I had. Inside the box was quite a surprise, not what I'd expected at all. A box of syringes, a small mirror, a headlamp, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of sterile wipes, a 9 mm hand gun and 4 boxes of shells. Also a sealed red envelope with INSTRUCTIONS printed on it.

Inside the envelope was a set of simple instructions I found hard to grasp. Simple to list, difficult to execute.

"If you are following instructions which have led to opening this box, the base will be completely sealed in less than 10 minutes. Follow these instructions as quickly as you can, time is against you.
1. Look in the mirror. If the whites of your eyes have any bright yellow coloring find your next in command and give them this box. If not follow the rest of these instructions.
2. Inoculate yourself immediately.
3. Find your next in command and check their eyes. If no yellow is visible inoculate them immediately. If their eyes are yellow at all, shoot them in the head.
4. Repeat these steps for every person in your section of the building.

If in 4 hours no others have developed symptoms use the intercom to begin trying to contact Central Command.