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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/FarmWhich4275 on 2025-08-11 12:11:30+00:00.
(( Continued from this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1mha43l/the_humans_survived_how/ ))
I glared at Calbanith confusedly. “Okay… So I take it you found the trigger mechanism?”
“The Red Death.” He replied.
“LOCKDOWN!! QUARANTINE LEVEL-F…” I started to bellow.
"SHUT UP!! He yelled back, interrupting my orders and shook me vigorously.
He then dragged me towards a nearby microscope array and shoved my face into it to look. He put a sample in and made me look. I looked at it, making it focus. And there it was, tiny, small. The viral strain that looked like a cluster of worms entangled around a large shorter worm. We both looked at the results, looking closely at the sample in front of us.
“No freaking way…” I said.
“Indeed! So now, Reginald… I must ask… Do you have any viruses that compromise or violate the human immune system?” Calbanith asked, looking at the human who was blankly staring at us.
“Uhh… yeah. A bunch of them actually. HIV, AIDS, Lupus, SCIDS, a few more. Even a new strain of antibiotic resistant Tuberculosis appeared a few years ago. We aren’t nearly as strong as you make us out to be. There’s way too many viruses on this planet anyway. I think. I dunno. Maybe the zombie plague killed them all off? No idea. Haven’t exactly had the chance to check, what with the whole ‘don’t wanna be eaten alive by my neighbour’ thing.” Reggie replied.
“This all stems from that last event for its evolution. Someone, somewhere found it and tried to do something with it, and somehow created a strain of virus that reconstituted dead flesh…” Calbanith said.
“Well I have no idea what that is but I can tell you where the outbreak started. Ground Zero as it were. You got a map of the planet? I can point to where it started, or at least where the news said it started.” Reggie said. “I read posts on news outlets and figured my way through the bullshit. If I remember right, it started in a virology lab in North Dakota, somewhere in the mountains.” Reggie said.
I immediately grabbed a holo screen and showed him how to use it. “Here’s a map. Just drag your finger on the screen to move it. Pinch to zoom out, you can figure the rest out yourself.”
“Oh! Hot damn just like my old car GPS. Okay lets see… North America… Canadian Border… Dakota… North. Here.” He drew a circle around a specific spot in a mountainous region. It was a big circle, hardly surprising, but it was better than scouting out the entire planet.
“DEPLOY SCOUT DRONES TO THAT REGION IMMEDIATELY!!!” I bellowed, causing the crew to immediately scramble into a work frenzy. “As soon as we have the location in hand I want a full team deployed to search the area. Kill any infected you find and set up a perimeter. That place looks reasonably defensible, we can use it as a stronghold for future operations. Calbanith, I cant afford to have you on that ground team, stay here and keep working. We don’t have data for a cure, but I want to make sure that non-humans cant be affected by this thing. I’m going to put a new protocol down.”
Reggie’s head spun with how fast everyone moved. He just shrugged and returned to Stacie’s side to keep her calm.
The ship became a bustling hub of excessive activity and operations could finally start anew. Reggie, Stacie and the medical data we had so far were all moved off our ship and onto the Medical Frigate for proper study and containment. With professional grade equipment it didn’t take Calbanith long to create an emergency serum for use in case of infection, and within hours we located the facility. A team was already deployed, carrying blaster rifles instead of plasma weapons.
I was watching through the camera feed of a drone that was following the commander around. The team landed in a parking lot of some kind. it took us a tremendous amount of self control to not get distracted by the military machinery that was called a ‘tank’, but we made our way through the area. It didn’t take long to find the first few zombies. The creatures completely ignored the team as they always had. the team had orders and our blasters made fast work of the creatures.
The team lead yelled out “Pick your targets! Infected only and shoot at only what you are guaranteed to hit! No collateral!”
The blasters fired and within seconds twenty or so zombies were now inert biological matter. The bolts impacted one poor bastard’s head and it just evaporated into a cloud of mist, then the creature just flopped to the ground dead. The zombies were crowding around the entrance to the facility and their corpses had to be dragged out of doorways so the team could enter.
“I’m starting to hate human architecture… I feel so cramped in these places.” The team lead said.
“Unsurprising. The average height of a human is a meter shorter than us, I don’t really think they expected us to be around. Can you see anything?” I asked.
“Blood. Everywhere. Skeletons… Looks like some humans here were eaten completely. Damage patterns consistent with heavy combat. Ballistic munitions probably. Power is completely gone so I have to use local light sources.” Team Leader replied.
“Sweep and clear. You are looking for laboratory equipment or a vault of some kind that keeps plagues on ice. Be careful. We don’t know what they have stored in here, for all we know with how these humans work, we might find something worse than the red Death.” I commanded.
“Understood, proceeding.”
The team moved forward. The zombies here were in a state of inertia owing to an advanced state of decay. They had been here idly shambling for months, most of them unable to move very far owing to the amount of damage they sustained. Dispatching them proved trivial at worst and the team cleared the building room by room. The most notable aspects of this building were a boardroom of some kind filled with twelve skeletons surrounding a large table. The scanners on the troops were able to determine these people willingly consumed a beverage of poison before the zombies ate the remains.
In one of the bathrooms, there were clear signs of a heavy struggle. One human had been ganged up on by a few zombies. Judging from the struggle pattern and blood stains, the poor person had been literally torn to pieces before being eaten. Some humans had managed to barricade themselves in the canteen, but ran out of food in short order. The debris told us how they held out here for a time before attempting to escape using the ventilation system. Considering the amount of dried blood that had leaked out of the vent shaft, it would be safe to assume they never made it.
Another room, this one slightly more interesting than simply telling a story. This one looked like a small sample laboratory, blood samples judging by the red stains inside untouched test tubes. The team swept in, finishing off a zombie that was shambling around trying to eat the wall, and made scans of everything they could find. We were instantly flooded with a truly astonishing amount of information not only from the machinery in that room, but the quantity of documentation the humans kept around.
The team rummaged in drawers and cabinets and scanned every document they could find. I messaged Calbanith and sent him these documents and scan data. He got so excited he let out a most unprofessional squeal of delight that nearly made my aural receptors melt. The unit continued operations and eventually found the thing we were looking for: the main lab.
“Found something. Solid steel door. Sign says ‘main lab’. Scans can’t get through it…”
“Wait, your scanning equipment can’t penetrate the door!?” I asked in shock.
“Negative… We ping and soft scan it. Nothing. We can’t see behind that door. We have to open it the hard way.” They said.
My engineer looked at me with a sign of both shock and awe. “Proceed. Destroy it if needed.”
“Understood. Heavy Blaster forward! See if we can find the hinge point on this thing!” He said.
The team procured a heavy Bolter Blaster and fired five separate shots at the door. The door itself shrugged off the first three blasts with not a scratch. The last two bolts found weak points in the seal, and they took advantage of that weakness, blasting the door out of its frame enough to be forced open manually. The team entered and found a human, uninfected, female, wearing a dishevelled lab coat and a determined expression. She looked unbathed, broken. The lab part of the facility was a lot larger than it looked from the outside and we came to the conclusion the outside area was administration of some kind.
“DONT COME ANY CLOSER! STAY AWAY!” She yelled at the team.
“Human female, uninfected. Agitated. Set for stun.” The team lead said.
“I SAID STAY AWAY!” She bellowed.
Before she could do anything else she was hit by a stun bolt. She crumpled onto the floor and lay there. “Target disabled. Alive. Stable. Calling for a retrieval team.”
“This is Call of the Sundown, we have our antidotes and base prep, we have a team available. Sending through, will transfer directly to the medical frigate.” A radio comm barked at us. The Sakhandi were listening in on our comms already. I guess they tapped themselves in. Sneaky devils.
“Copy that. Area is hot, hostiles do not use words or communication, they simply grunt and growl. The zombies are the animals, the humans are not. Understood?” I replied.
“Understood, will check targets. Shuttle on the way, full medical team on board. Sundown out.”
"Good… Did som…
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