NationStates Jolt Archive

In the remote facility in the southern regions of Tennessee, a joint effort had been underway. The Schacht Biological Research Company working in conjunction with Schacht Pharmaceuticals Inc, and the Army Bioweapons Department, had been designing something, a virus so dangerous that it could linger in the air or on a surface for weeks, perhaps even months, and still be potent when taken into a living host.

It only took about three hours for the virus to multiply into sufficient quantities in the hosts’ body, and then after this, death would ensue in matter of minutes.

It was the deadliest virus ever made by man, and it had a side affect, the dead didn’t stay dead, they would rise up and seek out the living, and attack them. The virus was the IG-BS Enhanced Strain (E strain), a virus that the Czar had forbidden to be even simply researched, let alone developed and produced. But it had been carried out in secret, and it would have stayed as such, had something awful not happened.

However there was a catch, about ten percent of the Mississippian population was found to be immune to the virus after tests were performed on various convicts and other criminals. But this only meant they wouldn’t suffer the initial infection phase, if the virus infected them after death, while enough cells in their body were still alive, they could become zombies.

It was May 2nd, 2005, when one of the guards on a routine patrol noticed a minute amount of smoke billowing out of one of the armories, he pushed the door open and rushed in, heading towards the back area where most of the grenades and spare ammunition crates were stored.

Already it was out of control, the blaze was raging over a stack of about 500 old Mississippian Assault Weapons digest magazines which had for some reason, been in the armory against regulations. It didn’t matter that one of the captain’s had stacked them there so he could sell them to the enlisted soldiers and make some extra money. They were there, and it was this that would doom the facility.

As soon as the guard noticed how close the blaze was to the grenades which themselves were near the C-4 and other explosives, he raced out of the armory. He was slamming the door just as the grenades started to cook off, sending a shockwave that hit the explosives and sent a massive shockwave that shook the base to its very foundations.

One of the lab technicians was slowly opening the valve on one of the 50 gallons drums of the virus, slowly so it some of it would be dispensed into 2 gallon container for specific tests. The virus was in liquid form now, and it wouldn’t crystallize yet, since it was being dispensed into an equally cold container.

As the building shook though, his hands slipped on the valve and it went all the way to the side, he flew off of the valve and his hands dropped the container he had been holding. The liquid spilled as the container fell heavy against the floor and splashed out of it. Now the rest of the 50 gallons were also spilling out of the drum.

One of the scientists on duty in the nearby sealed observation room was smoking a cigar, which immediately fell out of his mouth when he saw what had just happened. He slammed his fist hard against the red button on the wall after he pushed the glass container up and off of it. Immediately around the base, large steel reinforced doors began to close, sealing the base off. There was no evacuation plan for an accident this severe, and few knew it. He knew it though, and he knew the base had to be sealed down.



Immediately as the alarm went off and the sirens started to sound, and the red lights flash, partially illuminating the now darkened hallways, one of the new arrivals, a corporal from Mississippian Egypt raced forward and slid under the steel door as it was coming down from the ceiling. He had just made it and he realized it as the door crashed down, locking in place with a thud. But there was one more door to go. His legs carried him swiftly towards the exit, an elevator that was about to be sealed off by two doors closing in from both walls; they would meet and lock together.

The man pressed the elevator door button and the doors slowly started to part as the other doors were closing rapidly. He dove forward and rolled into the elevator, hitting hard against the side.

He had to get out of here, already he’d seen people coughing and hacking in the hallways as they started to convulse before collapsing. He didn’t want to stay around to find out what was going on. He knew the facility did a lot of classified research, but he had been told two months ago when he was hired, he wasn’t being paid to ask questions, and so he asked none.

The corporal was now at the surface of the facility, running quickly towards the car garage. He stopped for a few seconds as he paused to cough into his hands, he felt dizzy but he shook it off and continued on towards his car.


The scientist who had triggered the alarm was sitting down in a chair now, reclining back and moving forward every few seconds. Shaking back and forth, he knew he was doomed and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The whole base had been exposed… But that wasn’t important, it just mattered that they’d been sealed in and nothing would spread out of the base, they were sealed in, nobody had ever had the chance to get out.

He also knew he didn’t want to be up rising around as a brain dead zombie. And for that matter, he didn’t want his colleagues to suffer that fate either. He pressed a button under his desk in his private office, where he was sitting now, and then entered in a six-digit code when the keypad was revealed as part of the desk rose and the keypad came into view. The facility was now being flooded by VX gas; it would kill everybody before they ever had the chance to be mutated into zombies.

He looked up as the gas started to flood into his room, he didn’t want to wait that long though, he took his pistol out of his holster and pressed it vertically against his chin…


The corporal was now in his car, flying down the dirt road leading out of the facility, which was built under a weather station as a cover. The car kicked up swirls of dirt and dust as it flew by the large satellite dishes and antenna towers. The last thing that happened was the car crashed through the chain-link gate which was only latched with a padlock so as to keep up the cover it was just a low security weather research station.



Within twenty minutes of the incident, the MSAAS had dispatched two entire regiments, over two thousand soldiers, to seal off the entire base and make sure nobody got in and nobody got out.



Baldur was sitting in his mansion’s bunker as a guard took him aside and whispered, “There’s been an incident in the lab in Tennessee, IG-BS Strain E…”

Baldur shook his head and quickly said, “Nobody in or out, contain it… Don’t let the MSAAS inside the facility, but if they get in, see they don’t figure out what was going on in there, make sure nobody gets inside but if they do, don’t let them out, or at least don’t let them out with knowledge of what was going on. If you have to, activate the facilities internal defenses…”


The guard nodded his head and replied, “Sir, it’s already contained, nobody got out and the MSAAS appears to be not intent on going in, just sealing it off. Sir, just between the two of us, what was going on in there?”

Baldur shook his head, as he replied, “Nothing much, just some random research for antibiotics, nothing too serious…”

OOC: Looks good. Reminds me a little bit of "Dawn of the Dead"

Roger was pacing back and forth in his bunker in Jackson City, the walls had been shut tight, the city was sealed; he wasn’t worried that the leak would spread into the capital, his capital… But still, he was worried, concerned, this couldn’t be good. Whatever it was, whatever Schacht claimed it was, he didn’t believe him, not fully anyway.

Roger spat and slapped his hand against the door before he kicked a nearby drawer, sighing before saying, “Alice, what do you make of this? Baldur claims it’s just a boosted version of Anthrax…”

Alice frowned before replying, “Dear, you know full well that it is more than that, much more, don’t be so trusting…”


Roger nodded his head before saying, “Yes, you’re right, tell the MSAAS to make entry into the facility, it won’t matter, nobody made it out so it’s totally contained, nothing will result from this… I just want to know what happened down there.”




As they were talking, in a small town in Neshoba County, a car was swerving back and forth on the road, the driver, a man in the bloodied corporal’s uniform, was having a terribly difficult time keeping his car on the road. His vision was blurred and he was coughing and wheezing as he spat up small trickles of blood.

He was almost continuously wiping sweat from his brow. The thick beads of perspiration were forming almost as fast as he could wipe them off. Even with the air condition on full power it still didn’t see to help.


Suddenly he blacked out, falling back hard into his seat as he went up and over the curb and crashed through the main doors of a grocery/hardware/gun store. People started to gather around, curious onlookers and rubbernecks alike.

Within ten minutes, the paramedics had arrived and taken the body away, the man was dead, well at least they thought he was. But he stank of rotting flesh, and his arms were covered with black blotches as though the skin had been ready to fall off at any second.

Once the dead man was at the hospital, which took about four minutes, things were already too late, he was stirring in the bag. One of the paramedics was shocked and quickly unzipped the bag, much to his dismay the man rose up on the stretched and then lunged at him, sinking his teeth into the paramedic’s neck.

The driver tried to turn around and fire a pistol as he also tried to stay focused on pulling into the garage properly, but he bungled both, hitting his unwounded friend in the arm and then crashing the ambulance into the garage wall near the door, effectively blocking entry/exit from the hospital vehicle garage.

The driver finally managed to get unbuckled and fell into the back part of the ambulance in time to be bitten in the chest by the, the, thing, that was all he considered it. He had no idea what it was. He flailed about as he struggled to shoot it, firing his pistol, a Beretta 92F, at least twelve times as his arms flew back and forth. He managed not a single hit.

His wounded friend, who he had shot, attempted to strike the beast with a fire extinguisher, but the blow was poorly coordinated and lacked strength since he was using his left hand and really needed both, but his right was useless from the wound.

The zombie then lunged at him and bit deep into him…

Twenty minutes later when a security guard and doctor came walking by to see what was going on and why the ambulance was not at the unloading point and what the garage door was registering as jammed for, they were shocked when they saw the ungodly sight. Four, things, creatures, falling out of the back of the ambulance before slowly rising and staggering forward towards them.

The doctor shouted for the guard to fire his gun at them, and he did so, drawing his 1911 and firing two rounds into the chest of the nearest thing. The rounds simply tore into the chest, splattering out a small stream of blood and eliciting a light moan and hiss from the beast.

The guard continued to fire until it was too late, his slide was locked open, the gun clicked empty. He reached for his backup gun, a Walther PPK, since a new magazine for the 1911 would take more time to manage and get into the gun.

But he wasn’t quick enough, two of the zombies were on him and took him down to the ground and immediately began devouring him.

The doctor turned and ran off as fast as he could. But unfortunately for him, he didn’t watch where he was running too, he ran right into a parked truck and was unconscious before he knew it. The next time he’d rise, he’d be a staggering zombie, in search of the living.

Within an hour, the forty or so zombies that resulted from the parking garage encounters, would pour into the hospital and begin attacking the staff and patients, adding hundreds to their numbers. Nobody was expecting this, and it would be a disaster. Most hospital patients were unarmed, and it varied for the staff.

bump for more to read, update probably later today.

Tag; very very nice job. Your a great writer. Reminds me more of Return of the Living Dead; with the zombie gas :P

I can't wait for the next update.

At a church right across from the hospital, a far extreme Reformed (Calvinist) church, the sermon had been going on for about four hours thus far and was in the last few minutes. The services would soon shift to the Lord’s Supper and then the congregation would leave and head home.

The church was of the standard Calvinist sort, no idols, no paintings, no statues, no crucifixes, nothing at all that might be considered an idol. However this church was a bit more radical in doctrine, not in that they didn’t let women preach or even speak in church, no Mississippian Calvinist church did. This church was one which preached that the end was nearer than most accepted. (Most Mississippian Calvinist churches believe the end is coming within 100 years, this church preaches the end is coming in a matter of years)

A woman who was standing near the back pew and glanced over her shoulder to see three men staggering into the church. They seemed drunk, but they were very odd, she could smell them from across the room, rotten flesh and blood. She shook her husband’s shoulder and tried to whisper something, but he sighed and said, “1st Corinthians 14:33-38, keep quiet in the church dear, you know better…”

She sighed and tugged his arm and then physically turned him around so he could see for himself. They were now less than twelve feet away. The man immediately panicked as he pushed his wife between him and the wall, shouting, “Trouble!” as he drew out his Beretta 92F pistol and began firing at the heads of the approaching… things…

He managed to down the last of the three just as it was less than three feet from him. The thing went down with a stream of blood erupting out the back of the head, where the exit wound had been drilled.

He sighed as he turned around and looked at his wife, asking her, “Are you okay dear?”

She nodded her head but kept quiet, they were still in church after all.

The elder had already drawn his Glock 17 and most of the other male members of the congregation were busily readying their guns and had set to work barricading the doors and windows.

Outside of the church, the nearby houses were a blaze of orange and yellow flames, large pools of smoke floating off of them into the angry sky which with the low hanging clouds pressing down on the Earth. The stench of dead and decaying flesh carried in the air into the church, it was a repulsive odor of death, the worst most had ever experienced before.

The moans of the undead could be heard, hundreds, if not thousands, around the church… Too many to count.

A young boy of about 14 was keeping a silent watch over the rear door, his AKM clutched tightly across his chest in his small, sweat covered, hands.

The elder was walking back and forth, his gun swinging to and fro in his hand as he started to recite from revelation, “Revelation 6:7-8 “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. “

He then shouted, “Elect of God, remember the words written so long ago, the time has come! These are the end days! We are in the end times, beloved, we are in the end times!”

He again recited from the gospel, “2 Peter 3:3-10 “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

He smiled before saying, “And I told you all not to fear, as you watched and suffered through the sin of the turn of the millennia, through the years of nobles having advantages in the courts and being able to get away with rape and murder. The Elect will be vindicated! The Reprobate will all perish and hell shall be split so wide open to fit them all in. But fear not, fret not, God has predestinated all of this, the end of the world is upon. Ready, beloved, ready! The Second Coming is here!”

After he finished the recitation, he smiled before tucking his pistol back into his holster and raising his arms up towards the sky, shouting with a smile, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

The elder then turned to the nearest window and fired off a burst at the zombie trying to climb in through the shattered glass. He then yelled at a nearby teenage boy, “Patch that window up, get some wood boards on it, okay?”

The boy nodded his head and immediately set to the task that the elder had given him.

Alice was asleep, twisting and turning in bed, her unconscious thoughts, her dreams, all of death and destruction. She could see an underground lab, in a rural area, then her dreams shifted and moved to a vision of a cemetery, the gate was broken open despite warnings that none should enter and all the vaults had been cracked opened, the dead rose from them, coming forth again to walk the world as undead.

Then suddenly she was back at the facility above the lab, some sort of weather facility was used as the cover operation for the underground site.

A raven was sitting on the ground pecking at a dead deer, Alice was actually in her own dream, walking closer and closer towards the desolate and seemingly deserted base. Each step she took kicked up a small swirl of dust and dirt, which was blown in a funnel shape as it scattered into the wind.

When she got closer, the bird suddenly turned at her, eyes glowing red, and let out a blood chilling, “Caw!”

She jumped up in bed, gasping and panting. Roger had been awakened by this and he gently put both arms around her, patting her on the back as she rested her head on his shoulder. “Don’t worry Alice, it was just a dream, are you okay?”

Alice shook her head but said, “Yeah, I’ll be okay… But Roger,” her voice had grown very solemn and serious, “You need to tell me, what is going on? Something is going on somewhere near that base…”

Roger shrugged his shoulders, asking, “What do you mean, dear?”

She sighed, “Roger, what is going on? Tell me they’re not going in there, are they?”

Roger nodded his head, “Yes, they’re going to reopen the lab, opening the doors, and they’re going in, to find out exactly what happened in there…”

Alice shook her head hard back and forth, “No!” she nearly shouted, “Don’t do it, please, Roger, tell them not to go in. There are less than a few thousand of those beasts now, the base is sealed, tell them to bury it with concrete, don’t let them open the doors!”

Roger sighed and frowned. “Don’t worry Alice,” he said as he put a hand around the back of her head and another resting on her back, patting her lightly, “It’ll be okay, just go back to sleep and try to get some rest… It’ll be okay.”

Alice nodded her head and laid her head back down on her pillow, slowly drifting off to sleep. Shortly later, Roger fell asleep as well.


As she started to drift into another dream, Alice saw the raven circling, this time above Jackson City’s Imperial Command Building, the center of the government seat of power. It cawed again before two words echoed throughout her head, “I’m coming…”




At the base, the cover facility above the lab had been secured, the few zombie animals that had been around the area were killed, as were the few rural woodsmen who were either zombies or still alive but too curious.

Six companies of MSAAS had secured the area, the finest soldiers around, and they were here to do business, and they meant business. Business was killing and business was good.

The colonel in command of the operation had just stepped off of an Mi-24 helicopter as his personal bodyguard squad of six men piled out of the helicopter as well, forming up around him and moving slowly forward. Already two platoons were in position to enter the lab.

One of the men was trying to enter the override codes into the computer to gain access to the general base security, but somebody had locked out all access codes, effectively sealing the base.

The colonel sighed when he learned of this, and with a displeased groan, shouted, “Then get cutting torches, and start cutting, now!”

One of the platoons of the MSAAS had brought twelve cutting torches, and they quickly set them up and got ready, with each cutter putting on a special facemask so as to not go blind from the tools.

As they progressed into their endeavor, one by one, the torches began to fail, until none were left working. The colonel was in a rage, shouting and stamping his feet. “How could this happen!” he shouted.

One of the soldiers looked at the doors, replying, “Sir, they’re nearly done, maybe we can blast them in, eh?”

He shrugged; he hated the idea, so he replied, “What? Are you crazy, and risk spreading this thing by blowing it into the air?”

Suddenly one of the torches came back to life. The soldier began to finish the cutting, saying, “Must be our lucky day, huh…”

OOC: Is this really happening in NS MS, or is it just a story?

OOC: Is this really happening in NS MS, or is it just a story?



Ooc- It's in Tennessee right now, but yeah, it's happening.

OOC: Also, about the title - isn't it Pestilence, not Plague?

OOC: Also, about the title - isn't it Pestilence, not Plague?


Depends on the translation you use.


Any further OOC stuff, please direct at me via TG or IM.


Thank you.

Schacht was pacing back and forth, Eva had just confirmed it, there was no natural immunity, the studies done on the convicts failed to take into account various environmental conditions they had been exposed to. Mostly dangerous radiation and mining conditions, for some reason, the dust in their lungs seemed to slow to a snail's pace, the progress of the virus throughout the body.


It had also been realized, if exposure was minimal, an infected person could live for up to two days, possibly even three, exhibiting symptoms common to either anthrax, influenza, or possibly Ebola, depending on the individual and other circumstances.



The soldiers at the bunker doors with the cutting torches had finally cut their way in. One of them made a swift kick against the door before part of it collapsed in, in the shape of what they’d cut. A resounding “Hoorah!” went up throughout the platoon, but this was quickly ended by the company captain screaming, “Shut up you pissants! Get your asses inside and secure the facility, reestablish the primary power and secure the command and control center!”

The men immediately moved off, in four man teams, into the darkness that waited within. One of them, the point man of the lead team, was advancing slowly, his G-36 slung across his chest, one hand on it, the other hand on his motion detector. He was taking slow, cautious steps, forward. The man behind him, carrying an MP-5, whispered loudly, “Come on, pick up the pace, we have to get to the central command room…”

As they were walking along, the rear guard, holding an SPAS-12, was shocked and horrified by something so awful that it brought him to a halt right in his tracks. Everybody turned around immediately after he started hysterically screaming. They saw the walls, dripping with blood, but it was unclear where the blood had come from.

The corporal of the section immediately spoke heavily through his respirator suit, “Shut the fuck up! It’s nothing, you’ll be okay!” as he put a gloved hand on the man’s shoulder.

The man finally regained his composure and came to his senses. He nodded his head and resumed his spot in the line, the men continued slowly advancing into the depths of the facility.

One of them asked another, “So, what do you think all is down here, anything that can move fast?”

His comrade never had a chance to answer as something moving as swift as lighting crashed into him. Then the man who asked the question wizzed around, firing blinding into the darkness, just before something else crashed into him.


The man on the ground was trying desperately to fend off the beast, kicking and thrashing at it with his knife. He turned to the private with the shotgun and shouted, “Johnson! Help me! Help! Get it off me!”

The man with the SPAS-12 looked around, his eyes darted back and forth. There were at least a dozen more of those slobbering dog like creatures moving fast in his direction. Johnson panicked and started shooting wildly as he ran backwards. He impacted hard against a wall, wound up dropping his shotgun, and finally pulling his pistol and running into the first room he could find, slamming the steel door tightly shut and locking it.

The team leader was screaming and cursing as he went down fighting off the swift beasts, G-36 gunfire the sound of the fight, and silence the sound of his death.

The man with the pistol was panting and breathing heavily. He couldn’t believe it, things that could move that fast, he’d known dogs were fast, but those things, they weren’t dogs, they were ugly, mutated, almost turned inside out. What were they even doing here? How did they get here?

He cocked back the hammer on his Beretta 92FS and slowly moved deeper into the room he had run into, wondering what he would find inside the pitch black depths of the foreboding hell that was the bunker. He held his pistol weaver style with his flashlight in his left-hand, under the right-hand which firmly held the pistol. His left-hand however, was almost shaking uncontrollably. He then suddenly remember something, he cursed himself for forgetting, how could he be so dumb... He flipped his NVG down over the eye shield of his NBC mask and then turned the goggles on. Immediately he had a better view of what was going on around him, he had stumbled into the records archive and data storage room, a massive room that was actually ten rooms, at least one hundred and forty thousand square feet, and comprising several floors.


The second team had just come up to the area the first team had been destroyed in. The point man was shaking in his boots, he was afraid of the unknown, and he knew something was terribly wrong. Weapons were lying around, and blood had been splattered on the walls, even the ceiling, and the floors, but there were no bodies, no sign of anything or anybody. The dogs had finished their meals and moved on, nothing was left save for the weapons and large pools of blood.

He gave the hand signal for the other three men to follow him, they were going to turn right down the hall and go to the central viral storage room and make sure the containers were sealed and the seals not compromised.

The second man on this team was the one with the motion sensor, which had been acting up all day. He kept slapping it as it was obviously giving them false readings, it was telling him things were closing in fast, all around, but that just couldn’t be… Nothing was down here…