Part 27 (1/2)

The President came on the news; his wife and daughter pa.s.sed away. He didn't look good. Maybe he should have gone into a safe location.

Rolling power outages due to lack of employees caused the news to be sporadic and only hourly until eleven p.m. I caught a segment on body disposal. The federal government was no longer responsible for bodies. There was very little news about other countries on the stations. I guess everyone worried about themselves.

The newscaster spoke as handy dandy tips on what to do with decreased family members scrolled the screen as if directions for baking a cake.

Each community was responsible for their own body landfill.

Each family was responsible for their own deceased. They had to prep the body, wrap it, and bring it to the landfill.

It was odd because I saw a similar scene in a Vincent Price movie, an old black and white movie that was later redone with Charlton Heston. I remember Vincent Price's character carrying his wife or daughter to the landfill and rolling her over the hill where a perpetual fire burned. Workers kept the flames going as if it were some steel mill.

From the station wagon to the pit. His heart broke. He wanted to roll down that hill and join her. The world was void of caring people. No one really cared when the world around them died.

I suppose that was happening now.

I remember seeing that film and thinking that they were far off, that would never happen. But it was happening. Like in the movie, so many were dying there weren't enough left to bury the dead.

When it is all said and done, and I pray there are still many left, I believe there'll be too many bodies to remove. I believe cities will be torn down, burned. Forgotten. All those people who lived lives, dreamed, and loved would never be any more than a statistic.

Over dinner, Del expressed concern over the lack of news. What would happen when it stopped? How would we know what to expect when we emerged?

We run on generator power, and above us are cameras. We can watch the lobby, outside the center, and a little of the street. I declined watching.

The news is reality enough. I didn't need to see the world outside.

I wasn't ready.

Day 97 of the virus 55% infected 64 days until I am forced to see what lies above.

Time Stamp 10

Andy's Journal

April 3rd

The United States sits at the highest infection rate. Russia is rapidly catching up. We never heard anything from them regarding a vaccine. China, however, seems to have pulled through. From their underground 'doomsday' lab, they seem to have cracked the code. They believe they have what they are calling the morning after vaccine. It works before exposure and within twenty-four hours of exposure. They started testing.

Phone contact isn't guaranteed; Chad is hoping for results soon. Chad could create the vaccine and test it down here, but even if it worked, there was no way to produce more than a hundred doses here in the facility.

A hundred doses was really nothing.

China and India were still on the low end of the infection rate. They told Chad that if the vaccine proved successful, they would inoculate all those within the facility and go topside by overriding the seal. China could do that. We could not.

Even if we could, the United States didn't have the resources or the bodies to ma.s.s produce the serum. We lost all power two days ago. While we still had generators, the rest of the US lives in the dark.

China's plan was to ma.s.s-produce the serum with help from India and j.a.pan. However, best-case scenario was three months, realistically six.

A little too late for this side of the world.

Day 108 of the virus 68% infected.

53 days left until the seal is broken.

Time Stamp 11

Andy's Journal

April 30th

It took Chad Walker nearly two weeks to copy the serum successfully. He refused to believe, despite what the Chinese had told him, that it worked, and then he ran simple lab tests. It looked promising.

China had informed him they had already moved into ma.s.s production.

They had power, they had news, and we had dark.

Five days ago, four people volunteered to be test subjects. Two would get the vaccine before exposure, two after.

Del was one of those people. I was so angry. He and I had just actually started to become friends, and he did that.

It angered me that his reasoning was weak. He owed it to n.o.body to be a guinea pig, but he did anyhow.