The smoking gun that the internet conspiracy theorists needed had finally been produced. Strangely though, only a few hours after Murkin posted his account online he mysteriously disappeared. The natural assumption among the few thousand who had read his entry was that the government had intercepted his messages and made him disappear, but the truth of the matter was a little more compelling.
The powers that be were content on allowing Murkin's posts to go unchecked because they realized that any involvement in censoring his story would reveal their guilt. Further, one persons tale of being present while a forced occupation took place could easily be disregarded as an attention seeking work of fiction. The official stance was that Murkin's account was just another yarn spun by another whack job attempting to "blame the government" for the inconvenient circumstances of their life. So Who then was responsible for silencing Murkin? who besides the government had anything to lose if the information got out about their involvement in the plague? The answer was no one.
After a few weeks of silence one of the members of a message board called ZOMB-USA sent an email to Murkin's parents asking them to check in on him. When Murk's parents arrived at his apartment they were surprised to find everything in its right place. There were no signs of struggle but there were also no signs that anyone had been living there recently. When Murk's dad investigated his closet he noticed that some of the luggage they had bought for their son many years ago was missing. He also noticed that a few bald hangers were hastily tossed in the clothes bin inside his closet.
Murk's mother however was responsible for the biggest find by far. After a little noodling with his computer password she was able to figure out that the code was the name of his favorite movie spelled backwards. Once inside she looked up his internet search history which linked to a message board inbox containing a single personal message.
MURKIN1978 claimed to be present when an actual extraction took place. He was a cousin of one of the disappeared families who was visiting at the time when the military showed up. It just so happened that the Stewart household was equipped with a fully furnished attic and it just so happened that Murkin was sleeping up there when the green men arrived.
Screaming emanating from one of the lower levels of the house roused the frightened visitor from his slumber. After he took a few moments to collect himself he ran to the attic hatch and popped it open to have a look. From his perch he was able to glean that the individuals who were occupying the house were of some level of official authority. Murkin had an extensive rap sheet predominantly for breaking and entering and theft under $1000 which made him take pause instead of rushing to aid his family. Although crimes of a non violent nature were all but overlooked in the modern epidemic entrenched America, his fight or flight instinct signaled him to hold his position.
It was a wise decision because later he heard his family members begging for their lives. Murkin laid down on the uneven attic floorboards and cautiously pressed his ear into one of the large cracks. What he overheard was a struggle similar to the one Luis and the Alvarez family were entangled in with a poignant phrase bellowed over and over again "Please don't inject me, please don't inject me."
Facebook, Twitter and independent chat forms grew wild with debate. Tumblr and Reddit quickly started churning out zombie themed memes to show their support or disdain for the unfounded views of their fellow internet users. Eventually a trend developed among many of the chat forum contributors, the story of how the families on their streets disappeared. 37 accounts of the identical thing happening was no random act. Coincidence, bad luck and ignorance of the effects of the disease could at best explain 5 of the reported instances. The rest of them were suspicious at best and damning to the government at worst.
Popular conspiracy threads all had evidence to support the claim that the families who disappeared from their streets were not infected prior to the military canvassing the area. In the case of BIGJUGZ_LVR21 he was best friends with one of the people who was taken. His information proved very useful when he confirmed that he was ushered away from his friend Steve Thomas' house on numerous occasions when he stopped by to check on him and his parents. According to BJL-21 a plain clothes special agent threatened to kill him when he was skulking around in the bushes of the Thomas' backyard late at night. Of course all of this information paled in comparison to what a user named MURKIN1978 had to say...
Due to the world wide embargo on American travel and the growing fear within the country that everyone was contagious life in the United States went virtual. In the years leading up to the outbreak we had been retreating to technological devices more and more. We were cut off from each other but the devices were mobile so we were able to express that disconnection in all sorts of snazzy locals. The onset of the condition set the country back 30 years relegating us to surf the internet indoors like a collection of freaks and dorks from the 1990's. On the bright side, texting while driving fatalities were almost non existent as were the number of dumb shit pedestrians who were hit by cars because their faces were buried in their Iphones.
Another pleasant side effect of the whole ordeal was a surprise increase in the overall intelligence of Americans competing in the game of life. Apparently there was a limit to how much porn, club music and LOLCat videos that the average American could ingest. Once the internet was viewed as a necessary component of life rather than a departure from it, a new age of thinking was born within the lower forty eight states, an age where useful information became valuable.
The problem with informed people however is that they tend to have more thoughts, thoughts which become opinions with a need to be expressed. It didn't take long for a wealth of Americans to begin airing their beliefs on what really started the zombie apocalypse. Most of these theories were quickly dismissed by the masses as hair brained conspiracy theories. However, one theory about the government colluding to herd, contain and destroy millions of our beloved family members began to gain a little traction.
#14
The city streets were empty, the condition was no longer a joke. Like terrorism or global warming America was not able to laugh off the situation and deny its progression until it went away. Even worse there was no room in a non existent economy for products or profit to exist. All we had left were valuable shared resources to ration out.
Solar panels never made it. The corporations had decided that it was more important to invest money in the vital food we were shipping in from other countries rather than use the time and man power to proliferate the existence of alternative energy sources. We no longer drove because we couldn't and we had no where to go anyway. We rarely left the house because our growing paranoia that the condition was "out there" kept us indoors wearing SARS masks huffing the same, contained recycled air.
Luckily the powers that be were able to con a few sad sacks into generating electric power and water for the rest of us. Stacks upon stacks of government issued I.O.U's were printed on fancy paper with official stamps and signatures. They were handed out the the "heroes" who elected to risk early contraction of the condition so that their children and children's children might live comfortably after the whole epidemic thing blew over.
Unfortunately there was one hidden side effect of secretly infecting entire families with the condition. As the country grew more and more sick people had been getting to know their neighbors more. For the most part everyone sought to genuinely help their fellow country men but the hidden agenda of many of us was to keep a watchful eye on people with sick members in their families. Half of us were scared of what the sickies might do while the rest of us were genuinely interested in the progression of the disease and wanted to know what to expect for when the effects when it inevitably took hold of our bodies.
When families started disappearing we took it as a sign that the disease had evolved and was now contagious. After four plus years of living in harmony amid the rapid decline and forced isolation of the country America finally began to turn on itself. The government held the key to diffusing the situation but they elected to stay mum on the topic after doing the "extremely difficult" math. Apparently it was better for the little people to be fearful and suspicious of each other and to look to the government for guidance rather than have the little people overthrow the controlling forces and think for themselves.
Women and children, husbands and wives who repeatedly refused the generous donations of food in exchange their infected loved ones were being gathered and restrained in handcuffs. One by one each member of the household was tied off with a length of rubber just above their forearm and injected with a zombified mixture of y18 laced saliva.
The "conversion" process took about three days. Most families who were injected did not realize what was actually happening to them. In the case of the Alvarez clan Luis took it upon himself to beg and barter with the army men post injection. He assumed that he had merely been drugged in order to comply with the army and give up his son. He didn't know that he was already dead and neither did the rest of his family.
The side effects of the injection were similar to going cold turkey off of heroin manifesting in chills, shakes, hot flashes, vomiting and seizures. The injected had to be restrained and detained until they crossed over. Men in uniform were covertly switched under the cover of night with plain clothes handlers posing as doctors who would oversee the remaining process. The military did not want the local townspeople connecting the government with the condition and uncovering the conspiracy before they were able to gain full control.
