Blurry scary zombie! Rawr! Word count: ~12,000
Was really just grasping at straws today as this super subpar excerpt will verify. Big ups to the people of Paxton for their contribution.
The catastrophic moment — the event that turned this whole thing from a “Oh, wow, this is another crazy pandemic but one which will eventually fade away and become just a chapter in human history books†kind of thing to a “Holy fuck, we’re all going to die!†kind of thing — took place at the CDC Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. I remember hearing about it and thinking, “Wow! Just like in The Walking Dead!†But, I was disappointed to learn, the CDC HQ is nowhere near as cool looking as AMC made it out to be — the building they used was just some performing arts center. The actual CDC campus consists of 13 buildings, many of which look like regular, run-of-the-mill office buildings. The most interesting shit happens, as with everywhere else government-related, deep underground: precisely 2 miles underground.
Besides making for a more secure environment, well-suited to ward off chemical, biological and nuclear threats, terrorists, direct military sieges, and nosy media types, having your labs that deep in the Earth allows you to save serious money on your energy bills. Warmed by the heat from the Earth’s core, and using geothermal generators for electricity, the CDC was really one of the more environmentally friendly government agencies, God bless them. With a state of the art ventilation system, a dozen clean rooms, safeguards out the ass, fail safe devices for their fail safe devices, the CDC was one of the most secure buildings the United States had ever built, even boasting one of six safehouses scattered across the country for use in event of total devastation to house the President, his family, his staff, and other top-ranking government officials. Had the choice been made to actually move the President into this particular protective housing, untold numbers of staff would have been displaced, probably leading to the deaths of most of them. Fortunately for everyone at CDC HQ (and, if you’ll forgive some political editorializing on my part) the rest of the nation, President Romney was mistaken for a zombie and killed by a member of the Paxton, Illinois Volunteer Zombie Protection Squad during an ill-advised surprise visit to the town. The sniper who pulled the trigger was never identified but was memorialized in a statue, lovingly and pain-stakingly handcrafted by town artisans who did so at their own peril. Who carves a marble statue in the midst of a zombie insurrection? That’s some serious dedication right there.