Breach 2

The quarantine zone has been breached and I do not know if this can be contained...

The National Guardsmen went to the office where Mr. Stanton had escaped the blue smoke. They crept up a steel staircase from the shop floor on the north end (Alpha Group) and the back interior stairwell to the office hall on the south (Delta Group), four men in each group. They came armed with flash bang grenades and small automatic guns bigger than uzis, but much more compact than the AK-47s I saw the militia men carrying when the ebola outbreak took me to Africa two years ago.

I was able to listen to the whole operation through a walkie talkie Davolo borrowed for me from one of the Guardsmen stationed by our little quarantine area. I was told I could only speak on matters directly related to the contagion and was warned the radio would be taken back if I tried to speak for any other reason.

Delta Group reported seeing the blue smoke as soon as the entered the building standing about three inches deep on the floor. Alpha Group saw nothing on the shop floor, but reported the same mist when they opened the door to the upstairs hallway where they also saw Delta approaching from the opposite end about 100 feet away. Both units said it was odd how the smoke seemed to be increasing in piles at their knees as if it were climbing them, but neither worried as they were all outfitted with gas masks.

The groups converged on the door in question and two men took positions on the wall opposite, aiming their weapons at chest height on the door. Another pulled a flash bang and aother prepared to kick in the door. There was a quick three count while everyone covered their eyes. Then the kicker threw all his weight into the boot heel that struck right by the doorknob. He fell back to the floor , swinging his gun to the ready as he did and the crouched soldier beside him simultaneously lobbed the grenade into the office and thrust a foot in the doorway to keep the swinging wood from bouncing back.

There was a moment of silence, and then a pop came over the radio, the explosion of the grenade. The guy who had lobbed the grenade counted to three very fast then apparently rolled out of the way for the others to charge in the door. Two went through, eyes still closed to avoid being stunned by the flash. One of the next in line said “Oh my lord....the smoke...it’s falling out the door like a...like the room was filled with water...”

At the same time, some gurgling sounds started coming over the transmission that I later learned were the two men on the floor choking in the mist washing over them. It is safe to say the gas masks did not do their intended job.

There was a scuffle, and two more men were ordered through the door while the last two pulled their fellow soldiers off the floor. The man in the lead through the door was struck by something that pushed him back through the air, colliding into the man behind him and sending them both to the floor and pinning the man in back against the far wall.

Gunfire erupted inside, and glass shattered. A spotter in the alley reported a Guardsman falling out the window, blue smoke trailing behind him all the way to the ground.

Animal sounds came through the radio as if something was attacking the remaining soldier in the office. There was more choking and gurgling, more sounds of struggle, and a sustained burst of automatic fire that must have emptied the gun firing it in seconds.Honestly, there was nothing one could do to discern anything in the confusion coming over that little speaker.

And then, for a second, all was silent.

Someone on the outside began barking orders for a report, but the only response was wheezing and choking. The outside spotter reported the blue smoke continued pouring out the window , not at a trickle, but like it was being forced out by a huge industrial fan. It flowed to the north end of the block, and then swept west through the alley and out of sight. I wish I could say it dissipated in the wind from there, but if the Greenland cloud is any indication we have not seen the last of it.

Ambulances that had been waiting two blocks away converged on the building while a third group was sent in to retrieve the soldiers from the first two groups. They entered from the shop floor and paused at the door that opened to the office hallway. Looking through the window in the door, they reported seeing no blue smoke at all, but they did see four of their comrades on the floor outside the door.

One was sitting upright against the wall opposite the door with his legs splayed. Another was sitting on the floor in front of him, between his legs as if they were lovers sitting around a campfire. A third was halfway through the door, facing away on his side, and wrapped around the frame like a drunk’s car around a tree. The fourth lay spread eagle on his back on the floor to the near side of the doorway with a considerable pool of blood forming a halo around his head.

The third team opened the door to the hall and moved forward cautiously with their weapons raised. They paused to check each of the soldiers outside the door. None were breathing.

Two of the third team soldiers stood and put their backs to the wall on either side of the door frame. They raised their weapons gave a three count, and charged in. In the center of the room, they turned back to back and swept the muzzles of their guns around the room. One shouted “clear!” and the other got out to about “cle--” before dropping to one knee and vomiting violently everything he had eaten for the past three days, sounding as if he were pulling food from his soul to surrender to the scene.

One civilian slumped against a filing cabinet beside the shattered window. His forehead was missing from just above his eyes to his hairline. His brain peeked out, exposed and cooked, burns surrounded the opening. This guy has apparently caught the flash-bang that started the melee right between the eyes.

The other civilian, our missing teen, lay on his side beside the door. When he was rolled onto his back it was easy to see how he had died. Bullet holes started in his right thigh and ran in a straight zipper up the center of his torso and finished with the most lethal shot: a neat little hole right above and between his eyebrows.

One soldier lay slumped over the top of the desk. No wounds were visible but blue smoke was so thick in his gas mask that they had to pull it off to be sure of who he was.

Another Guardsman was face-into the wall on the right side of the room. His legs were behind him, flat on the floor. His pelvis was jammed into the corner, bent 90 degrees the wrong way, allowing him to “sit” upright. The back of a wooden chair lay on top of his legs as if somebody with superhuman strength had driven the chair into the base of his spine and folded him backwards into that crease.

The final two soldiers lay on their backs in the center of the room. They were mirror images of each other, their feet about three feet apart and their heads opposite. One had a bloody bullet hole in the front of his gas mask right over his left eye, the other had suffered a bullet tearing right through his Adam’s apple. It was like their target had run between them while they were firing, causing them to take each other out simultaneously.

With no blue smoke to report and everybody dead, the third team became the cleanup crew. I will spare the gruesome details of that operation, but suffice it to say that there is nothing worse for military morale than to have to clean up bodies of soldiers after a failed operation.

The bodies have been brought back to the pier for autopsy, and while I will still be in quarantine I will be able to supervise the examination by computer video link. Hopefully we can ascertain something about this contagion before this thing gets too out of control. Though I fear that the mist cloud is already drifting to claim its next set of victims while we do this.

I know this little journal of mine has already acquired a small set of followers, and to you, all I can suggest is that you pray and if you live on the East coast, you may want to take this opportunity to cash in on any vacation time you may have coming.

Hope against hope

Guardsmen with gas masks were sent 20 minutes ago to investigate the office Stanton reported his encounter. I nervously await word. If there are two people trapped in that office as Stanton suggested and one is Stanton's employer, hopefully the other will be Brian Phelps, suggesting the contamination has been limited.

We have managed to secure and equip ten more shipping containers for quarantine. These are just the standard heavy plastic bubble setups like you see in the movies, not the plexi boxes like I am in. Because of this, I have ordered the patients placed in these units strapped to their beds so they do not tear the containment bubbles if they become violent like our Patient Zero.

Excerpt from an interview with a man brought to quarantine

TIME OF ARREST: 07:32
AGE/GENDER: 34/M
NAME: Marcus Stanton
NATIONALITY/LINEAGE: American/Italian
NOTES: Displays no sign of infection despite possible contact with contagion; ordered to quarantine for 72 hours; interviewed by Henry Pierce

“I knocked and opened the door a crack and said ‘Hey boss, you need me to do anything else before I clock out?’ the way I always do before heading home. I was looking at the floor, not wanting to invade his privacy or nothin’, and this blue smoke starts pouring out about six inches deep on the floor.

“That was strange enough, but it looked like it was starting to crawl up my leg. I stepped back out of it, but it was like it clung to me. Not a second later, something slams into the door and starts clawing at it like a dog was scratching to be let out but if it was a dog, it was a damn big one because the scratching sounded like it was at shoulder height.

“I was freaked and took another step back. I looked down again, and that smoke was winding up just below my waist like something out of a movie. The scratching was furious, and now sounded like two things were clawing the door. The night time darkness, the animals, the smoke climbing me...it all just seemed too weird, so I booked it out of there.

“The smoke stayed with me for a couple steps, then seemed to wash behind me in the breeze.

“I ran down the steps, out the door, and jumped in my car. I looked down to put the key in and turned the engine over. When I looked up, there was a military dude in front of the car with a big gun pointed at me. Another one was outside the driver’s door, tapping on the window with the barrel of his gun hollering for me to ‘turn it off and get out of the car NOW!’

“I did what he said and he told me to lean on the car with my hands visible. He didn’t frisk me, like for weapons or nothin’, but he looked me up and down real good and told me to turn around.

“He asked if I had been attacked by anyone, and I said no, I had been working the machines all night but somethin’ strange was going on in my boss’s office on the second floor and I wanted to get the hell out. He told the other guy to stand guard and wait for backup, and then led me back here at gunpoint.”

Box, sweet box

Davolo just left my temporary home. He sat for a while on the other side of the inch-thick lucite box that lines the back two-thirds of this shipping container, making up the containment box that keeps any germs I might be carrying safely away from the outside world. He read my vitals from the terminal on his side of the box and cheerily proclaimed me “not dead yet.” Yet. At least I have no typical symptoms of infection.

Actually, none of the quarantined guests are showing any signs of an infection, at least not any they did not carry before any of this started. Davolo joked that one of the fishing boat crew -- a surly middle-ager aptly named Fischer -- is near to tears rubbing his crotch and begging for some salve for his “flea bites” as he calls them.

But after the initial pleasantries, Davolo got very solemn, a demeanor he generally only adopts in the lab when we are fighting a particularly bad bug. He explained that “Christian Slater,” whose real name is apparently Brian Phelps, escaped the area and remains at large. The National Guard troops have set up a perimeter one mile from where our patient zero came ashore, but that is a huge area to try to contain completely. There are not as many people in that space as if it had been a residential area, but it’s still enough to fill the containment shelter that has been set up in a warehouse about two blocks up the road from here. If you have never tried to contain a large group of dockworkers, security guards and shift managers, Davolo assures me it's something nobody would ever want to do

Breach

INSTANT MESSAGE TRANSCRIPT

12:18:32 DocBruceSteve: Was that guns?

12:18:56 HawkeyePierce: yeah, someone attacked the perimeter guards on the beach

12:19:15 DocBruceSteve: A gawker get out of hand?

12:19:40 HawkeyePierce: no, swimmer.

12:19:52 DocBruceSteve: Swimmer? Explain, please.

12:20:25 HawkeyePierce: kid came out of the water, attacked one of the g-men, grabbing and biting

12:20:46 DocBruceSteve: Teenager, dark hair, 6 feet tall, big gash on his arm?

12:21:05 HawkeyePierce: yeah...friend of yours?

[More gunshots are heard]

12:21:20 DocBruceSteve: OH GOD

12:21:36 DocBruceSteve: That sounds like the kid that attacked me on the boat...situation?

12:22:15 HawkeyePierce: how could that be? christ, he must be bulletproof...took at least 8 shots. One in the leg has him limping, it’s like the rest had no effect.

12:22:48 DocBruceSteve: HE MUST BE CONTAINED

12:23:22 HawkeyePierce: 2 g-men down, 2 others in the area tending to them, kid is limping off to the street, nobody else in the area

12:23:56 DocBruceSteve: LISTEN TO ME: the guards MUST be quarantined

12:24:10 DocBruceSteve: Kid MUST be stopped and quarantined also

12:24:25 DocBruceSteve: Anyone approaching must use EXTREME caution -- avoid direct contact at ALL costs -- infection is AIRBORNE -- kid is patient zero

12:24:56 HawkeyePierce: understood. will try. g-men aren’t really equipped for that

12:25:11 DocBruceSteve: Then God help us all.

Good news, REALLY bad news

The good news is that we returned the fishing boat crew to shore with no incident. None of them appear to be infected with anything worse than they put to sea with, which is to say four venereal diseases, two colds and a case of severe diarrhea due to some very spicy Mexican food that was consumed on the way to the crewman getting on the boat.

The bad news is that I just woke up in quarantine. My staff provided me with a laptop with a wireless connection so I could keep abreast of the situation and report my status or any symptoms I develop on an hourly basis. Basically, I am on work-from-home status and ‘home’ for the next seven days is a shipping container turned isolation chamber, under protocol that I dictated while driving to Baltimore.

Since I have a bit of down time here, I may as well relate as much of what happened as I can in the interest of keeping a good history of the situation.

Four members of my team, the two National Guard security men and I boarded the motorboat and sped out to the cabin cruiser. Two of my team (Davolo and Pierce), one of the security guards (Ephram) and I boarded the boat with the dead teens and sent the rest of the team with the motorboat over to the fishing trawler. They immediately tied off, boarded and began checking the fishermen for any unusual symptoms.

Davolo and Ephram went below to make sure the rest of the boat was clear, Pierce and I began our investigation at the bow, following orders from Admiral Davies to not approach the victims without someone with a gun watching over us. Over the radio Davolo reported that there was nothing below but a lot of blood and obvious signs of struggle as if someone had been fighting off an attacker while bleeding from a very bad wound. Ephram did not “report,” but it was obvious the muttered “Oh shit” and “My God” expletives that came over the radio were from him.

I looked toward the stern of the boat and noted a neck injury on one of the girls that could have easily sprayed most of her blood around if she were the victim in question. While I was looking at her, I swear one of the boys -- a hulking kid that had to be on the football team -- shifted his vacant stare to me, but I dismissed it and returned to examining the bow.

I told Davolo to stay below and keep cataloging what he saw with one of the video cameras we brought along for that purpose. Ephram was to come on deck and stand guard while I examined the bodies of the teens and then sealed them for transport to a lab where they would be fully autopsied in search of cause of death.

I approached the kids and caught that eerie feeling again of being watched. Again I dismissed it as the feeling you get when the eyes in a painting seem to be following you across a room.

All four kids were obviously the popular types from their school, and the fact that they were on this boat suggested money as well as good looks. I scanned the camera from left-to-right, feeling for a pulse on each as I did. None of them had one.

The first was a boy about six feet tall and 145 pounds. He was probably not into sports, he seemed instead to be one of those guys that never plays on a team but still hangs out with the preppy athletic crowd. Handsome with dark brown hair, he made me think of Christian Slater in his earlier days.

Second was a waif of a blonde. If she was not a cheerleader and homecoming queen, I would eat my lab coat. She was the one with the hole in her throat big enough to pour out all the blood she had in under a minute.

Third was the football player with his buzzed light brown hair -- as true to the Biff Tannen image as you could get without getting sued by Amblin Entertainment for copyright infringement.

Finally there was the girl with the auburn hair that reminded me of a Graduate Assistant named Gretchen that helped in my freshman chem class all those years ago when Eugene and I first met.

I moved closer to Christian and scanned him with the video camera from top to bottom, noting any wounds I encountered. That done, I took a step to the right and began repeating the process on the cheer queen.

I leaned in to get a close shot of the neck wound which was difficult since the light from the camera was throwing strange shadows in the darkness, and I wanted to have the most accurate record possible. As I concentrated on the image in the camera, Ephram shouted behind me, “Look out Doc!” and I suddenly felt something clamp on my right bicep.

I looked around and saw Biff clenching my arm. His eyes were still completely dead, but his mouth was now open, teeth exposed, a bit of blue smoke wafting from the back of his throat and spilling out over his chin. A gunshot sounded behind us and Biff and I both turned towards Ephram.

“Get your fuckin’ hand off the Doc right now or the next one doesn’t miss!”

Biff launched up from his seat, pushing me back and dropping me to the deck as he went. He flew amazingly fast toward Ephram who fired a shot into the boy’s shoulder. Bits of bone and tissue and surprisingly little blood erupted from the bullet hole. Biff twitched a little, but continued as if barely effected by the bullet.

“Stop or die!” Ephram screamed. He let Biff take another step and then put a bullet through his head. The football player lumbered forward on inertia, but fell quickly and crashed into the wall beside the door leading below deck. The force of his head hitting the wall caused it to crush flat like he had been crowned with a mallet that would make Gallagher envious.

I started to say “Oh my G--” when I realized the other three kids were falling on top of me. Reacting only on instinct, I got my right leg cocked, put it on Christian’s chest, and kicked him backwards. He teetered on the brink for a long second and then fell overboard.

Blondie had one hand on my knee, one on my ankle. She forced down with all her weight and her lips pulled back from her teeth like she was a dog about to bite its way through the rope that held it. This I saw from one corner of my eye.

The horror in the other corner was no less terrifying. In the same instant, the Gretchen-esque girl pinned my shoulder under one knee and lifted my gloved right hand to her face with such strength it was like I offered no resistance.

I heard Ephram shout “Back away, goddamn you!” but neither girl so much as paused. A shot exploded from his gun and Gretchen’s head erupted in spray of brain tissue and some blood and she slumped over onto Blondie just as the cheer queen bit through my biohazzard suit and into my shin.

I had time to notice blue smoke pour from Blondie mouth toward my wound, then another gun crack and my head swam and I passed out.

I was told later that one member of the second team jumped into the motor boat, collected me, took of my suit hood and attached an oxygen mask to my face that we had brought for the fishing boat crew. He rushed me to the dock as fast as the motor would push us.

I awoke here about two hours ago. Davolo told me that the cheer queen had been shot in the heart with the blast that I heard and stood to rush Ephram. She made it two running strides before he put a second bullet in her left temple. She dropped and did not get up again.

Davolo went on to explain that the team had dressed my wound, put me on every vital monitor we had at hand, and kept me on the respirator. So far, he said, nothing was showing out of the ordinary, but they planned to keep me in quarantine for a week per my protocol. I did not try to argue, I only asked that they keep me in the loop as much as possible, and he said that was the plan.

So I guess I am poised to run this hot zone from my sealed contain---

I think I just heard gunshots. I will write more after I find out what’s going on.

Fingers crossed

We are in Baltimore at the docks. The fishing boat is still reporting in and so far there have been no incidents to make us think any of the crew has been infected.

My staff is setting up a trio of quarantine units in shipping containers right on the wharf. If all goes well, the shipping boat crew will be in them in a couple hours.

Admiral Davies is here and has commandeered for us a motorboat for travel to and from the boats. He has also brought a troop of National Guardsmen that have sealed off the wharf. Two of them, will be going to the boats with us to act as security. None of them volunteered for the security detail, but the two men ordered by the Admiral to accompany us seem capable and brave. As a civilian going out to investigate, I feel better having them with me.

I have to admit I have a bad feeling about the whole situation. I have certainly had the pleasure of touring my share of hot zones, but I would be lying to suggest I was not still shaky from the events surrounding Eugene's ship.

It is time to get suited up. Pray for the best.