Windsor Park: A City in Crisis Chapter 1

(Note, all credit goes to Jacob, I'm just posting this here with his permission so you can all enjoy it)



A Note from the Author: All the names and situations in the story are purely fictional. Any similarities in real life are coincidence, and purely unintended. Also, this is just for enjoyment, and not intended to educate or be taken seriously. Other than that, enjoy!

Introduction: Aftermath



It’s been 6 months since the first infection was confirmed. When I say that though, none of us truly know when the first actual case began.

My name is Peter Boyle, M.D. I work, for the most part, for the CDC in Atlanta as a forensic pathologist. Today though, I’m part of the search and rescue for what few people remain in the city of Windsor Park.

My job is to interview the survivors, and take down their stories so that we at the CDC can get a better understanding of how something as horrible as this could happen, and to be better equipped for something like this in the future.

What we can tell from the interviews so far are that the virus was fast hitting, waterborne and possibly airborne, and easily contracted. Its incubation period is approximately 48 hours, with death resulting in approximately 24-36 hours. Onset symptoms included fever and chills, accompanied by pain in the infected area at hour 1-5. By hour 6-10 high fever, dementia, vomiting, increased heart rate, and headache. Hours 10-15 showed worsening of the previous symptoms, and lowered blood pressure and numbness in the extremities. By Hour 16, the patient slips into a coma, and begins to bleed from the eyes, nose, and ears. This continues until death of the patient. For those not infected in the virus, we note that many suffer from advanced stages of post traumatic stress, and are generally catatonic in state from the amount of stress endured over the last six months.

What follows are the stories of those we have found alive.
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Survivor 004, Group 1:
Justin Maxwell, Age 26
Occupation: Emergency Room Intern
Found in abandoned warehouse in Center Valley
Injuries: none, immune to Solanum Type II Strain
Notes: Interview is being taken in Interview Tent 1, subject appears to be extremely distant, likely still in shock

We were in that warehouse for about 4 weeks… give or take a day… been stuck on the north side ever since they blew up the bridges… If only they’d known that they could cross the water. That… that they don’t need to breathe…

All… all those people…. And the blood… the screams…. Every night you could hear the screams….

Sir… it would help us if you started from the beginning…

Well, all I remember is what it was like the first time I had seen one of the infected. I was working a double at the Downtown Metro in Emergency. Everyone there was so nice. It’s… it’s just so hard to them of them being…

The little girl, her name was Ophelia or something. They brought her into the ER… low vitals, high temperature, and severe pain with the large bite on her leg. As the medics brought her in, I remember that she looked like an angel sleeping so peacefully… but also I remember how odd it was for such a large bite to have so little blood. I figured it was just from low blood pressure or that it had already started clotting… it made me so sad to think that someone had let this girl stay like this for so long.

What hit everyone though was that the cops that came in with her kept acting like she was a serial killer. I mean, here’s this little girl, maybe 6 or 7 with a huge bite in her leg, meek as a lamb, and cops act like she’s about to kill everything in sight. They had her strapped down and handcuffed to the bed, and their guns pointed at her head. She was clearly asleep, and none of us could figure out why such measures were being taken.

I was about to ask them why and that’s when I saw her eyes open. I knew those eyes… anyone that has worked in a trauma center knew those eyes. That glazed stare that was never really focused on anything, with their grayish blue haze over the pupils, forever dilated and never needing to blink. Those... were dead eyes…

As I turned to Julie, she gave me the same look I must have had on my own face.

Fear. It was simply pure and utter fear. Here was this beautiful little girl with dead eyes, the eyes only a truly dead person could have, moving around just like you and I are.

But that was just a drop in the bucket to what happened next.

What happened next?

…It was Dr. Franklin’s shift, so he became his exam on her. Dr. Franklin was such a kind man… he’d helped me study for my intern exams, and always brought us food for the every holiday, even when he didn’t have to come in for work. It didn’t take a genius to tell he knew exactly what the girl’s vitals were… everyone knew… but procedure is still procedure.

I remember it took all of us to hold her down. I mean six grown people to hold down a little girl! We’d had junkies in the middle of detox that couldn’t pack as much punch as this girl when we got near her. I remember how cold her skin was, like she’d just been swimming in ice water. She was snapping at everyone… biting, thrashing, trying her best to claw her way at us.

As he finished his exam of her, that’s when Dr. Franklin said the most bone chilling thing I’ve ever heard working in medicine. He… he said that the little girl had no pulse. Even though we knew that it had to be the case, it still struck us hard…

It was a second after he said that when… when…

When what, Mr. Maxwell?

…when the little girl sank her teeth into the hand of one of the cops holding her down. There was blood everywhere. She bit him so hard we could hear the metacarpals in his hand snapping under the pressure. It didn’t take long for the officer… Lt. Harding I think his name was, to get sick as well.

It only took a few hours for us to find out what was happening. When…. when the infected got loose… and…. well… it’s crazy to think that Julie and I were the only ones to escape… w-w-we had to go through the maternity ward…. all… all…. those little….

I’m…. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can do…. I just can’t….

That’s fine Justin. We can stop for today. We can continue whenever you want.

-END INTERVIEW-