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home, taking with them an unwanted souvenir.
    Aunt Koni spread the infection to the west coast of the United States where it would flourish with a rapidity that astounded health care workers. Others carried it shorter distances but with no less impact. From initial infection to death the times varied, but the one constant with the disease was its mortality rate.
    100 percent.
    B ut then again, it wasn't a complete death.
    Within a day of the virus spreading nationwide, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta was alerted and tried to take control of the situation. Some of its scientists went to work on isolating the disease to try and find a cure while others worked to halt the spread of what was now termed the HWNW virus. With the swift spread of the new sickness, due to its high communicability rate, they were overwhelmed within three days. They urged the President to take decisive action, such as nationwide martial law, but he deferred to the elected officials in the states reporting outbreaks. The election was coming up and one of the key issues was the interference of the federal government in state’s rights to govern themselves. Not wanting to be run out of office, or let his opinion polls drop any more than they already had, the President left the management of the crisis to individual governors, though he did pledge the help of FEMA.
    In Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, California and New York City, the situation deteriorated so quickly that the National Guard was called out to restore order and to suppress the infected individuals from further spreading the disease. Quarantine areas were set-aside for anyone who showed signs of infection, but the people showing up to them, or being forced into them, were few.
    Those who had been bitten were hesitant to go, as they could not bring themselves to believe that something as simple as a bite or a scrape that had come in contact with infected body fluid could cause them to go crazy. Instead, they hunkered down in their homes and tried to treat themselves. In the end it was always the same for these unfortunate individuals and those around them : death and reanimation.
    Followed shortly by the biting and eating of friends, relatives and strangers.
    The lack of volunt ary commitment to quarantine was also hindered by the fact that the mainstream media was downplaying the crisis or not reporting on it at all. No one knew the severity of the virus except those who were trying to find a cure and those who were dealing with exterminating the walking dead.
    Despite this hindrance by the media, word still got out via the Internet. Although most of these reports were honest and the public needed to be informed, this sword cut both ways as individuals reported in blogs and on their web pages that the quarantine areas were death traps. If you were found to be infected, it meant only one thing, death. It was reported that those people who were newly contaminated were held in containment areas until they died and reanimated and were then destroyed by use of electrical shock or a bullet to the back of the head. And if you were too far along in the progression of the disease, you were simply shot in the head. Those socially conscious people, who saw the reports and didn't want to spread the virus, turned themselves to whatever fate awaited them, but most did not. Thus, the sickness spread exponentially.
    A research lab was hastily set up in Nebraska , and the first few cases, consisting of people that were determined by the CDC to be in the early stages of the disease, were collected from the Q zone in Little Rock to be sent there for study. When the first fifteen at risk individuals were finally put together in a group, they were herded onto a C-130 transport plane and turned over to the flight crew.
    Not knowing what he was dealing with, and not having been told anything beyond the final destination by the escort that dropped their quasi-prisoners off, the pilot of the transport took pity