This wasn’t what you signed up for, you signed up to see the world on the government’s dime, to get money to pay for college which you would go to once you finished and maybe spend a few weekends a year training with the guard and a being called up whenever a natural disaster happened. You expected to he helping with tornado clean up, to deal with flooding or at worse help local police in the case of a riot.
Now you are standing on a highway overpass with the sky scrappers of New York city semi visible through the distance smoke.
A rumble of tanks and armored vehicles as they formed a defense line as you walk along the seemly endless stream of cars all trying to get out of New York. They were trying to escape the infection in the city and the army was trying to contain it.
Outbreaks in New York, LA, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans and other major cities was pushing the army and the marine core to it’s limits. The Navy was forming blockades around infected cities, but it was the job of the army and marines to contain the infected-on land. They were spread too thin to go on any offensive to retake ground. So far the only real offensive was being done by the air force which was firing bombing their own cities in an attempt to slow down the spread and to stop it.
You didn’t want to image how many people where being killed in the cities who where not infected but so far it had kept the outbreak from spreading.
Word leaking in from other nations was the India had fallen into total disorder as cities in the millions where totally turn and containment was broken. Russia wasn’t doing much better, they had tried a counter offensive to retake Moscow it failed and now the infected where spreading out of control. All of Southern Italy from Rome down had been surrendered to the infected. No one had heard anything from China but there where dark whispers of mushroom clouds rising over multiple cities there.
There where also whispers that among the infected where former members of tear 1 special forces, Delta, rangers, Seals and the like. They had been sent in first to help put down the infection when it was still small and now work to spread it. That could be, you had been briefed that infected kept knowledge of their human life, they could use key pads to open doors and police who where turned could follow their still human comrades on the radio. You where scared of that and it showed on your face just like everyone elses.
“Keep calm.” Ordered your Lieutenant who looked as much as a kid as you do. “We need to scan you.”
“I will not let you touch our children!” yelled a very tired mother of what looked to be five kids in a van with a barking dog.
“We don’t have to do that unless they are infected.” Stated the lieutenant as he held up a thermal scanner. None of the kids showed any signs and neither dead the mother. “Move along.”
That was something they had learned quickly, the infected had much hotter temperatures during the normally short time that their bodies tried to fight off the virus.
Most people turned within minutes, but some did take an hour or so and there was word one person was infected for almost two weeks before succumbing to the transformation. During that time their bodies burned much hotter, almost 110 degrees F. Now that could also be a very bad fever and not the deadly plague but anyone with a temp above 102 was to be taken and isolated.
“NO….I AM NOT INFECTED!!!” yelled a man nearby as he struggled as a different squad pulled him out of the car. As they did his suit jacket came undone showing a deep dark red stain on his white under shirt. “I…I can explain…”
He didn’t get a chance as a grizzled Sargent put a rifle round through his head, just as he did the first patches of fur began to around the man’s neck. Most of the squad then had to push the car he was driving to the side of the road. That was getting very full now, they had been seeing more and more infected in the past couple of hours.
“Private…go check out that next car.” ordered the Sargent as you head toward the next car in an endless stream of cars. As you did some big guns behind you opened up. That meant that a drone had spotted an infected group only a few miles away. Soon you would have to stop trying to save people and worry about holding the line from infected.