Degeneration (54 page)

Day 4

34

             
D
owntown Butner was situated along a two-way street. The street was desolate and there was not a car in sight. Boarded-up storefronts and empty parking lots lined the street on both sides. The streetlights and the town’s one stoplight were dark. The entire town was powerless. Flames lapped out of the Dollar General in the heart of town, illuminating the surreal scene in an ominous orange flicker. Near the edge of downtown, a darkened BP sign displayed gas prices at ‘NO’ a gallon for unleaded and ‘GAS’ for diesel. A thin layer of ash covered everything.

There was not a single person in sight, infected or otherwise.

             
Past downtown, there was nothing except dark farmhouses, acres of forest, and the state and federal prison facilities that paved Butner’s roads and put pennies into the town’s coffers.

             
Aside from fallout, the distant nuclear blasts left Butner untouched for the most part. ‘PT-12’, however, was not as forgiving.

35

Butner, North Carolina

48 hours earlier…

             
“M
ay I have your attention, please,” the crackled voice repeated through the speakers mounted on top of the army truck for the hundredth time. “This area has been exposed to a toxic biological agent. All residents are ordered to report to the Granville County High School immediately for inoculation. Please, remain calm. There is ample supply of vaccine. If you are sick, we can help you. Report to the Granville County High School immediately. If left untreated, the biological agent is deadly. If you are already ill, disabled, or otherwise unable to drive, we will be checking house-to-house and will provide you with safe transportation. Inoculation is mandatory. Attention, attention, attention. This area has been exposed to a–”

             
The National Guard truck continued east along Butner’s main artery past a trickling procession of slow-moving cars headed towards the high school. Helicopters hovered overhead, observing the cavalcade below. Army flatbeds drove house-to-house along the town’s side-streets and loaded-up wheelchair-bound residents and elderly retirees.

Guardsmen wearing respirators and toting assault rifles stood watch at sentry positions along the curb while hordes of people, many coughing, headed towards the high school’s gymnasium in a mass exodus in the early morning sun.

Near the edge of town, at the North Carolina state prison, the inmates were getting restless inside their cells. Overnight, the guards had abandoned their posts and the dayshift guards never showed up for work. The inmates screamed and banged against their cell doors, desperate to get out. Their FM radios picked up nothing but static. Ironically, it was the inmate’s isolation from the outside world that kept them protected from the horrors of ‘PT-12’… initially.

A few inmates in the segregation unit, oblivious to the events outside, resorted to lighting their mattresses on fire inside their cells. They thought that the guards were purposefully refusing to serve them their morning meal. Within the hour, all one-hundred and forty-two of the inmates inside the state prison’s segregation unit succumbed to smoke inhalation.

A general population inmate inside one of the housing units managed to bash his cell door off of its hinges. He stumbled out of his cell wielding a prison-made knife, or ‘shank’, in each bloodied hand, ready to fight. He was surprised to see that the cellblock’s control station was empty and the door was open. He ran inside the control station and stared at the control panel. Smirking, he pressed the door controls. All of the cell doors made an audible click and slid open.

Granville County High School’s parking lot was filled with flatbeds, Butner police cars, and even a few tanks. Civilians parked their personal vehicles in an adjacent grass field and were led single file into the school’s detached gymnasium by soldiers wearing gasmasks.

The entire gymnasium was covered under a clear plastic dome with large machines pumping air into it, keeping it inflated. A steady procession of civilians marched through the open slit near the gymnasium’s entrance, flanked by armed CDC white-suits.

Inside the gymnasium, people were amassed in a massive line that wrapped around the gym. At the front of the line, men in CDC white-suits injected person after person with the newer version of the antivirus serum they had kept in storage.

The gym was decorated with balloons, orange lights, and a large disco ball. At the front of the gym, a banner read ‘Welcome to the 20
th
Annual GCHS Harvest Dance!’ The gymnasium had a DJ booth sat up in the corner. The white-suits had CDs, previously reserved for the school’s dance, playing in a continuous loop on low volume in an attempt to keep the restless crowd pacified.

“Attention, please,” one of the CDC officials announced over the loudspeaker, “after you receive your inoculation, please go to the left side of the gymnasium and have a seat in the bleachers. We have to keep you under observation for thirty minutes. We promise that we will have you out of here as quickly as possible.”

A handful of townspeople muttered and shuffled over to the left side and climbed up into the bleachers as instructed while pop music played overhead.

             
Behind the gymnasium, soldiers wearing white-suits unloaded red gas canisters labeled ‘Hydrogen C
yanide
’ off of a flatbed parked next to one of the machines pumping air into the plastic dome. The military had their failsafe, should the antivirus fail.

             
“How much more time do you guys need inside?” one of the white-suits asked over the radio inside his suit. He sat down the red container down and groaned; the canisters of gas were heavy.

             
“About ten minutes. Then we’ll have mostly everybody inside and will be able to see if the symptomatic ones display any sort of improvement and monitor for allergic reactions,”
a voice crackled back over the radio.

             
“What about Butner’s public safety department?”

             
“We’ve started inoculating the local police and fire crews. We even–”

             
Deafening screams rose out from inside the gymnasium, startling the soldiers standing outside. Automatic gunfire quickly followed.

             
“SEAL IT! Seal it and PUMP IT! Do it NOW! It changed them into– into– PUMP THE
–
”

             
The voice on the other end was cut-off abruptly.

             
A few miles away, six military jeeps, loaded with armed white-suits, pulled into the parking lot of the maximum security federal penitentiary, USP Butner. It was situated a few miles away from the abandoned state facility. The
penitentiary
was a massive two-story cement building surrounded by double razorwire-topped fencing and eight guard towers. The guard tower windows were pitch-black and the outside patrol vehicles that drove around the perimeter fence were gone. Every prison window of the facility was dark and the parking lot was mostly vacant. Similar to the state prison, most of the staff at the penitentiary abandoned their posts during the night.

             
The six jeeps slowed to a halt and the armed white-suits disembarked towards the prison.

The prisons would not be evacuated. The government had other contingencies in mind.

             
In downtown Butner, a white van adorned with the CDC logo sped down Butner’s main artery, headed east out of town towards I-85.

             
“I knew this second batch was rushed from the start,” the CDC white-suit muttered to the passenger. “Fighting the virus with another virus? Didn’t the Wilmington tests teach them anything? Atlanta is getting desperate to contain this thing.”

             
“Yeah, but, still… the lab tests were good. It just doesn’t make sense. Either the anti-serum mutated, which is unlikely, or ‘PT-12’ mutated again into a new virulent form that adversely reacted to the–”

             
A Butner police car pulled out from behind a vacant house with its blue lights flashing and siren wailing. It came to a stop in front of the white van.

             
The van’s driver slammed on the brakes, sending the steel crates piled up in the back sliding forward.

             
The van’s tires squealed as the vehicle skidded to a stop only a few feet away from the police car. The two CDC white-suits inside the van struggled to calm their pounding hearts.

             
Two men, one hispanic and one black, wearing orange jumpsuits exited the police car, each armed with a Remington shotgun. The orange jumpsuits read ‘NC D.O.C.’

             
Before either of the white-suits could react, the inmates raised their shotguns and opened fire on the CDC white-suit in the passenger seat.

             
The buckshot shattered the windshield and peppered the white-suit, shattering through his clear plastic visor. He convulsed and collapsed against the dashboard.

             
The inmates turned their guns towards the driver.

             
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” the driver begged as he raised his hands.

             
“Get out of the fucking van!” the black inmate shouted as he racked another shell into the chamber.

             
The driver opened the door and staggered out of the van in his bulky white-suit, shaking.
             

             
The second inmate, a heavy-set Mexican national, spun the white-suit around and shoved the barrel of his shotgun against the man’s plastic visor.

             
“Please! Don’t kill me! I can help you!” the white-suit begged.

             
“Shut up with that bitch shit and tell us what is going on before I aerate your face.”

             
“V-vi-viral outbreak! It’s a new strain, airborne, and very contagious! We’re here to help you!”

             
The two inmates glanced at each other. It was the same story that the two soldiers told them right before they executed them.

             
“I can help you!” the white-suit stuttered again. “I-I can get you out of here safely! Everyone is leaving! The military is pulling out of Butner, we’re done here. I-I-I can take you with us! I can hide you in the back! B-both of you can fit! I won’t tell anyone! I promise!”

             
The Hispanic inmate pressed the shotgun barrel the white-suit’s visor, bending.

             
The black inmate stared at the CDC logo on the van, coughing.

             
“What’s in the back?” the black inmate asked, staring at the van’s rear doors. “Is someone back there?” He raised his shotgun towards the rear doors.

“N-nobody is back there! It’s just stockpile of a cultured counter-viral vaccine, but we just tried this batch and…”

             
“A vaccine? Guess we have what we need.”

             
The hispanic inmate immediately opened fire.

             
The white-suit collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood, twitching.

             
He racked another shell in his shotgun and walked over to the back of the van, joining his companion.

             
The inmates opened the rear doors of the van together and brought out one of the large insulated steel crates labeled ‘TST BATCH 002 – BUT’.

             
“Well, let’s get this shit back to the DC boys. We’ll divvy it up with your crew and make things right. After this, the virus shit can’t touch us and this whole fucking town is ours,” the black inmate, a gang lieutenant, said. He erupted into a coughing spasm.

             
The hispanic inmate, a lieutenant of a rival gang, nodded and grinned. He quickly raised his shotgun and opened fire on the DC lieutenant.