By now, they had circled around to the rear side of the R&D center building.
There was a relatively isolated building here with a sign that read "High-Risk Sample Processing and R&D Laboratory Building." Most of its windows were sealed shut or covered by heavy curtains.
"Jenson, Bossie, stand guard. Cover the main entrance and our side," Calista ordered.
"Copy that." The two broke away from the group to look for suitable high ground nearby.
"Eddie, are you familiar with the structure of this kind of facility?" Calista asked, turning her head toward him.
Eddie studied the building. "Every building's a little different, but in places like this, the important stuff is either underground or at the very top, wherever security is tightest.
Judging by the power lines, most of the load runs toward that annex in the back and underground."
Calista nodded and pointed to the annex. "Then we'll go there first. Stay alert."
The annex door was a heavy blast-proof door. The lock had long since failed, but something was bracing it from the inside.
A rotten smell of formaldehyde and chemicals drifted out through the crack.
Calista nudged Carver with her elbow.
Carver pulled a battering ram from his pack, flexed his muscles, and swung it hard several times.
After a few heavy impacts, the door was finally forced open.
Inside was something like a prep room, with a disinfection basin and cabinets for hanging protective suits.
Documents and shattered glassware were scattered across the floor.
Dark, dried splatter marks stained the walls.
Calista stepped in first. They crossed the prep room and entered a corridor.
Transparent observation windows lined both sides, and the vague outlines of laboratories could be seen beyond them, with instruments knocked over and strewn around.
At the end of the corridor was a sealed airlock door. The red warning light above it had long since gone out, but the handle had been wrapped tight from the inside with a thick iron chain.
"There's something inside," Eddie said in a low voice after catching an extremely faint sound.
Calista heard it too.
Carver stepped forward on his own and wedged a crowbar into a gap in the chain, then signaled Shane to pull with him.
The two strained together.
"Creeeak."
The chain snapped, and the door opened a crack.
The smell of formaldehyde instantly became overpowering.
Once Carver and Shane moved aside, Calista took half a step back, then kicked hard, sending the door flying fully open.
The scene inside made their scalps crawl.
It was a surgical observation room combined with a sample processing area.
In the center were shadowless surgical lamps and an operating table, surrounded by all kinds of monitoring equipment and sample freezers.
And now, on the operating table, on the floor, and in the corners, six or seven "people" in full white protective suits and face masks were lying or leaning in disarray.
No. They were walkers.
They seemed to have stopped moving long ago. Their bodies were severely shriveled and dried out, tightly wrapped inside their protective suits.
Under the transparent masks, their faces had rotted down to dark brown skeletal outlines and withered skin. Only their mouths still opened and closed.
What made it even more chilling was that one walker slumped beside the operating table was still clutching a pen and an open hardcover notebook filled with messy handwriting.
Beside another walker curled up in the corner lay several shattered serum vials and a syringe.
There were no other active walkers in the room, only these bodies that seemed to have "settled" into silence.
"Oh God..." Eddie's voice trembled.
Calista forced down her discomfort, walked to the operating table, and carefully picked up the notebook with her tactical gloves.
The pages had yellowed. The handwriting was warped and looked as though it had been written in a hurry, but it was still legible.
[Date unclear, presumed to be May 12, 2010]
Sample source confirmed. A special rabies case reported by a remote clinic in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Area has been sealed off.
Symptoms are highly abnormal. Extreme aggression. High resistance to sedatives.
After seventy-two hours of continuous observation, the infected subject suffered complete organ failure, but the brainstem and parts of the spinal reflexes remained abnormally active, far beyond medical explanation.
We have named it "Neuro-Hyperactivity Case Zero" and attempted to isolate the pathogen, but conventional culture media are ineffective.
The virus appears to be highly integrated with the host's nervous system. Has it even altered basal metabolism?
That's impossible...
The company Safety Committee ordered the research terminated and all samples destroyed.
But the doctor insisted this was the "discovery of the century." He secretly kept the last active tissue sample and serum, trying to reverse-engineer a "neural enhancer."
He's insane!
Something went wrong!
The storage tank leaked.
The doctor and two assistants were the first to show symptoms.
They became extremely aggressive and bit a security guard...
The entire research team has been infected!
Weakness, low fever, hallucinations. It's far worse than rabies!
This isn't rabies at all! Why is the government hiding it?!
We locked ourselves inside. The company sealed this building from the outside.
I hope we can be saved. Or at least that we don't become those things outside this room!
If anyone sees this, it means we failed.
The virus cannot be controlled. It is reshaping life itself.
God forgive us!
...
The notes ended abruptly there. The last few pages were soaked through with dried black stains.
Calista slowly closed the notebook, her heart pounding heavily in her chest.
May 2010.
Long before the Wildfire virus fully broke out, a leak, infection, and disaster had already happened here, inside this pharmaceutical company.
They knew nothing about Wildfire. They thought it was some new virus from nature that had yet to be discovered, tried to study it in secret, suffered the consequences, and chose to cover it up and seal it away.
"Calista, these freezers..."
Michonne's voice pulled Calista back to reality.
Some of the nearby freezer doors had been smashed or pried open, and the interiors were empty.
But the innermost silver, specially made freezer labeled "Absolute Zero - Original Sample" still had its door intact despite the power having been cut off long ago. It was even secured with three physical locks.
"The original sample mentioned in the records may be inside. Or it used to be," Calista said with unusual calm. "But we don't have the time or equipment to handle it here.
Mark this location and seal this room. Take every written record and hard drive with us. Be careful not to touch any bodily fluids or residue."
Her gaze fell on the researcher walkers.
They had been "silent" here for nearly a year, unlike ordinary walkers that wandered around.
Was it the protective suits cutting them off from outside stimuli?
Or had some leftover chemical in the room suppressed them?
Or perhaps... as early, maybe even "first-generation" infected, they were different by nature?
No, they probably were not the earliest.
After all, the Wildfire virus had leaked from France. The original infected should have been in France.
Still, they could have been the first generation on U.S. soil.
This discovery was too important, and too horrifying.
"Calista, we've basically finished clearing the roads around the Pioneer Pharmaceuticals main building and the surrounding area. The drone found a large pharmaceutical warehouse and some intact medical equipment production lines!"
Bossie's voice came through the communicator, cutting off her thoughts.
"Copy. We're coming out now."
Calista took one last look at the room that had buried early secrets and the remains of ambitious men.
"Seal this door. No one enters without my direct order and the highest level of protection!"
She led the team and those heavy discoveries out of the annex.
By noon, the fighting in Blocks A and C was largely over. There were no casualties, and the gains far exceeded expectations.
Block A had precision machine tools and testing equipment, enough to raise Rock Fortress's industrial capabilities to another level.
Block C had valuable pharmaceuticals that had not been looted, medical equipment, and medical production lines that could be restored.
...
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