Jack leafs through scientific reports that are connected to private Jessy Mcallie. Medical charts and other diagnostic reports that describe Jessy from head to toe. Poor soldier thought Jack. He turns to the summary of all the reports. Private Jessy Mcallie sports several new scars from his last physical. His muscle and bone density is also statistically higher than last recorded. Genetic reports indicates that his telomeres are towards the upper end of length for his age group. Scientist have also found over 100 different new species of microbes in his gut and skin. It’s is currently unknown what these microbes do but he and others exposed to him have shown no negative symptoms. The carbon dating on Private Jessy Mcallie’s cells show nothing anomalous disproving several scientists theories. The only proof that Private Jessy Mcallie’s was telling the truth was the healing around a broken forearm that has healed up all the way. The orthopedics looked at the scars left by the wound and determined that it would have taken around 3-4 months for the forearm to heal to a usable level. Private Mcallie confirmed this stating that two months ago he had his cast removed. The fact they those inside the barrier can still produce casts and take care of the wounded provided good evidence that things inside the barrier were not as bad as those outside thought, they were wrong.

Private Mcallie went on to tell his account of what occurred during the formation of the barrier or as those on the inside call it “The Great Separation”. Jack skips forward a bit in the tape as the current interview was medical based and nearly summarized in a document he had in his hand. The tape resumes with Private Mcallie looking in much better shape. His clothes were fresh and all his bandages were clean and fresh as well. Private Mcallie began to relay his story about the day of the Great Separation.

“The first time we noticed something was off was when we could get in contact with command. I was out on a PT run with my platoon when the barrier appeared. The brass sent runners to round everybody up and get them armed. With communication down all communications was delivered by runners. We did know about the zombies until it was too late. The horde was already in the base by the time anyone knew what was happening. The current officer in command was Colonel Bradshaw and he ordered to take up battle positions around the central ammo depots. With communications down our two Blackhawk helicopters were out of action as they could not coordinate with the ground teams. The horde kept coming for several hours. Bradshaw’s gambit to fortify the ammo depots was successful. There were so many undead bodies by the end of the day that the ground was litter with them. 25% of the bases staff was taken out or turned, leaving us with around 6,000 warm bodies left. The next several days involved a lot of clean up and hazmat suits. We burned all the bodies we found and quarantine protocols were put in place. With the initial horde dealt with Colonel Bradshaw had us refortify the rest of the compound and got the engineers working on communications. One of our engineers found that short range radios still worked, though the internet was down as well as wifi. After taking stock of supplies we had enough food for two weeks at most. The next day is when he’ll really began to break loose. A tide of little green beasts that looked like video game goblins charged the base. The herd wasn’t large maybe 500 but Colonel Bradshaw was greatly disturbed. The next few days we began to get survivors and the news they brought wasn’t great. The remaining analyst believed that around 50% of the surrounding area’s population were either zombies or dead”. A deep intake of breath was heard off screen interrupting Jessy. He began again. “Over the next week we began setting out to find survivors and supplies. We didn’t find many people, well living people that is. The Colonel sent out the more veteran squads on eradication missions to wipe out any large groups of zombies before they turned into hordes. The base contained 5 strikers which allowed for relatively safe incursions into no man’s land. By the time we reached the two month mark supplies were getting low but our population kept growing. We were currently closing in on 12,000 people and were beginning to run into issues with supplies. Colonel Bradshaw and his command staff were debating on how to handle the emerging food crisis and the possibility of a zombie outbreak. After several weeks on debating that decided to start training up a militia force. Zombies were no longer very plentiful but there were still plenty of those green bastards and bigger. My team was attack by a troll which resulted in 5 dead and 10 wounded my self included. As I only had a broken arm I was switch to training duty for the militia. Try to train up civilians was difficult, though it helped that Colonel Bradshaw had allocated larger rations to the fighting men. The next three months were a blur of training. Eventually it was decided to let the militia have a run at supplies. I was leading a band of militia when we were attack by what I can only describe as stonemen. Literal men made of stone. I remember fighting and taking the survivors and driving back to camp. All I remember after that is waking up outside the barrier with most of my men dead”. Jessy’s face began to drop as his story unfolded. He look dejected and deeply troubled at his failure as a leader. The recording ends after that. ‘Looks like I am going to need to pay this Private Jessy a visit.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.