Bulleit
“We gotta get them out of here!” Lifeline was leading the evacuation of the wounded from the Pitt. The controlled chaos of moving injured out of the base and onto waiting transportation calmed his nerves, “Critical on the Tomahawks. Everyone else ambulances.” The last patients were being wheeled out.
“Lifeline, it’s all clear we need to go, now.”
“Okay, Bulleit.” He takes one last look before jumping in the last transport. Bulleit hops in. The Humvee ambulance was carrying one soldier strapped down to a gurney and one sitting in a jump seat as well as the driver, a medic, and now Lifeline and Bulleit.
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The Pitt.
One of the most secure military installations in the United States. Once the base of operations for the elite G.I. Joe team. Now it’s in total confusion and disorder as the virus that reanimates the dead has taken hold. The spread of the infection was terrifyingly fast. The Joe medical team had agreed to allow a single infected into the base for observation following a strict protocol of containment. It only took one minor mistake; a nurse getting too close, getting bit, trying to hide it, then... chaos. It spread like wildfire. Each victim became a new enemy. The base’s MPs had a hard time firing on support staff that they had worked with for years. Battle-hardened Joes struggled to keep the infected at bay. They too didn’t want to hurt people they thought of as family.
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I was there when The Pitt fell. The Medical Team had agreed to let a single infected person into the base for study. They’d set up strict protocols on how to be around it. Basically, no one was to get within biting range and everyone was to wear full hazmat PPE.
You know in bad horror movies they’d show some incompetent ass breaking protocol? Yeah, that didn’t happen. They studied it for weeks. Watched as it deteriorated but didn’t die. They found out the things don’t rot, something about the virus that animates them keeps them from rotting. Hell, other than the zombie virus these things are contaminant free. Nothing lives on them. People have millions of microscopic things living on them, eating dead skin and stuff. Not the undead. It’s just the virus. They tried giving it a secondary infection, but nothing. Rabies, flu, freaking Ebola, and the ZV infected the invaders and just created new strains of the reanimate.
No, The Pitt fell because a horde had amassed outside and despite having some of the best security technology and best-trained people, the undead don’t quit. Ever. They breached the fences. It was all hands on deck. We fought them back for hours. Once the first Green Shirt got bit it was all but over. The infection spread fast. Chaos took over.
Lifeline organized the evac of the injured and wounded. As his partner and unofficial security, I was with him the whole time. We got in the last meat wagon and high-tailed it out. The thing is we didn’t know that a number of the wounded in the convoy had been infected. When the first Humvee went off the road, we knew it was bad. When I heard the guy strapped down to the stretcher in our ride start groaning I put a round in its head.
Lifeline was damn near losing it when I did that. Only three of our convoy of over 20 ground transports made it. I don’t know if they all had infected. I don’t know how many we lost when they crashed into other vehicles.
We bugged out to a secondary location. The helicopters that had the critical patients had made it. We got there and Lifeline went into action alongside Doc, Psychout, and Talbot.
I don’t think Lifeline ever forgave me for killing that guy in the Humvee. He saw a patient. I saw a threat.
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“Go! Go! Go!” The fence came down and for the sixth time, the team of doctors, combat medics, EMTs, security personnel, and support staff were trying to move patients to bug out. At the lead was Lifeline. At his side, Bulleit, his shadow and security. Each time it got harder. Fewer and fewer survived. All the critically wounded they’d brought from The Pitt had died after the second evac. The wounded that were left were the recently wounded, people they found along the way suffering from; broken legs, broken arms, lacerations, and gunshot wounds. They were down to two Tomahawk helicopters, four Humvee ambulances, and a single gun truck, a Humvee with a mounted .50 cal. They were low on medical supplies and lower on ammunition. Their dwindling security had started fashioning hand-to-hand weapons from things they found along the way, baseball bats and spears making up the majority of their armaments. The Tomahawks were in the air and the Humvees were rolling, it was another 50 miles to the next spot. The choppers would be there in minutes. The ground transportation, hours. At the onset, the roads were choked with abandoned cars. It would be several years before survivors cleared the broken asphalt of vehicle carcasses. For now, it was slow going. Bulleit took the long ride as an invitation to bring up a subject that no one, Lifeline especially, didn’t want to admit, “We can’t keep doing this?”
Lifeline continued to stare out the window watching the smoke from some small town miles away fill the air. “We keep losing people. Either they get bit or go AWOL. We’ve gotta come up with a different plan.”
Lifeline shifted in his seat. He turned to look at Bulleit and removed his green-tinted sunglasses. “I know.” He sighed.
“Wait? What?”
“You’re right. This is untenable. I just don’t know if we should find a building and try to hunker down or if we should split up.”
“What?!”
“I’m starting to lean towards going our separate ways. I’ve got family up in Washington State. I want to get to them. Help who I can along the way.” Saying the words allowed him to relax. The tension he had carried for the past months was swept away by the release of emotion. “What about you? You’ve got family, right? Mom, Dad, a younger brother in Connecticut?”
She had tried not to think about them as they moved from place to place, instead focusing on the mission. Now though, “They’re gone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Not positively but look around. All the big cities got hit hard. My family wasn’t exactly prepared to get through this.”
“Isn’t it better to hope they made it? Maybe someone like you is helping them.”
“Maybe. But I doubt it. We’re so far from Connecticut now that even if I could get to them I’m not sure I want to.”
“Huh.”
They finished the ride in silence.
The group got together and they decided the next best steps. Whoever wanted to leave could. Those that wanted to stay would stay.
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