Famous Cases | Historical Tales | Vampires | Zombies
| |
Famous Cases | Historical Tales | Vampires | Zombies |
Base: [redacted], Montana
Date/Time: Summer 2010
 |
| A defunct VX nerve gas facility |
After a few months in Afghanistan I'm back in the states and getting more missions than ever before. We have been tracking a strain of HVV named DX-1129. It is vaccine-resistant and has an incubation period of about a week before the earliest symptoms appear. We have been bouncing around the U.S. to control hot spots.
Two weeks ago, we performed a search and destroy operation in (redacted) Arizona. Yesterday, I was doing the same thing in (redacted) Montana. We found that ZX-7 is preferable to VX as it has a better propagation pattern.
In [redacted] I had my platoon set mines along the road and the surrounding area. We put on MOPP 4, which was becoming a sort of uniform for us. The day before we got a new set of MOPP; the fabric was noticeably thicker and I was told that it was a new form of cut with bite-resistant Kevlar. The entire suit is level 3A body armor and over that I wore my interceptor vest and helmet.
We had the mines set up and just as we were going to get out the ZX-7 a civilian truck came down the road into town and out stepped two men in level A suits marked "Santa Rosa Institute." I was about a pound of trigger pressure away from blowing one of the the guy's heads off when he managed to fumble out some clearance that showed he could be there.
We went about our duty as usual all the while having them watch us intently. When the gassing began, between 10 and 20 vampires stumbled out into the street and began what we call "the dance." About 10 seconds later, a round smacked one of my sergeants in the chest. He survived thanks to his body armor. I immediately gave the order to fire and I could see a man in a Russian-made chemical smock clutching an AR (a rifle-ed.) and running down the stairway to the main floor. Fortunately, command had the foresight to bring in air support: we had two AH-64D Apache attack helicopters on stations. More rounds started winging downrange at us. There were about 20 to 30 enemies on the roofs shooting at us.
I started calling in fire missions left and right. Captain C was on the horn for reinforcements. I was busy directing fire for the Apaches when they got out the RPGs. A couple started to fly toward one of the Apaches when the F-16 CAS (close air support-ed.) we had been waiting on for the last hour finally showed up. We were easily inside danger close and all our air support was backing out because it was too hot from all the RPGs. I pulled a colored smoke grenade from my vest and tossed it toward the town; about 20 second later, the F-16s turned around and dropped a couple of 2,000-pound bombs, leveling the whole place.
When we searched the bodies we found that some of the townspeople had a cross-like brand on the inside of their wrists. Quite a few of them were military people who had deserted their posts and we confirmed that every one of them were vampires. And they were not dicking around: they had tactical vest radios and some serious hardware. I had seen the same mark on a man from the Arizona op. There were only about 10 of them there.
I don't know what you will make of this.
Comment from Dr. Pecos: The cross brand is associated with the order of the Broken Cross, an old vampire cult. We have long been worried about a revival of the Order inside the United States. There are some vampire prophecies that foretell a return of Nephilis, the Order's inspiration, and recent intelligence suggests that his body is in the United States right now. It's difficult to speculate on how this might relate to the Santa Rosa Institute, since the Institute went underground several years ago. Perhaps a person inside the lab spirited away some of their modified viruses. Maybe a test subject or a person bitten by a test animal got out of the lab. Or perhaps it's just a fanciful tale. Regardless, it bears watching.