Free The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak by S. Ganley

have something to work on or keep himself busy with he started to get jumpy thinking that there must be a task that he had forgotten about or let slide through the cracks. One thing he still needed to do today was to unload his camping gear and spread it out back for a good cleaning. This was another military habit he was going to have a hard time breaking, constantly cleaning and maintaining his gear after every use. When he grabbed a cup of coffee and walked out onto his small back patio he knew that any cleaning would have to wait, heavy storm clouds were on the horizon and the first drops of rain were already starting to fall. His tiny backyard had only a thin layer of grass so after a storm like the one that was coming, he knew it would be a mud pit until at least a full day of constant sunshine dried it up. There was little use laying out his gear only to have it get dirtier than it already was. If the heavy stuff would hold off for at least another hour he thought he could get in a good run to get his day started, a light drizzle actually felt nice during a hard run and it would ensure that he had the route he ran pretty much to himself.
    He changed into his running clothes and had just plopped down on his couch to tie his shoes when something on the television caught his attention. He usually turned the set on first thing in the morning as he was waiting for his coffee to finish brewing. He enjoyed catching up on the news and was always on the lookout for any special reports from the Middle East where his former unit was even now in the middle of a deployment back to the badlands of Afghanistan. With embedded journalism these days once in a while he would catch a segment from a reporter in an area he had spent time at or even catch a glimpse of personnel from his old unit during the report. This time the special report on CNN had nothing at all to do with action in the Middle East. The reporter was standing on a highway over ramp looking down on a swath of interstate below him. As the cameraman panned from one side of the bridge to the other, viewers were able to see traffic backed up for miles leading up to a cluster of military trucks and a handful of state police cars parked across the east bound lanes. As the line of cars approached the roadblock they were being directed to turn around over the grass median and turn back down the west bound lanes which were eerily devoid of any traffic coming from beyond the checkpoint. What really caught Garrett's attention to this particular story was that the soldiers manning this checkpoint were decked out in complete chemical warfare gear. Not only were they in complete protective gear but each one of them was also carrying a rifle, something unusual for civilian traffic duty. To round out the entire scene the cameraman panned across to show a grassy rise just off the side of the road from the checkpoint, parked on top of that rise was a pair of armored Bradley fighting vehicles, one of which was oriented in each direction down the highway. The imposing 25mm main gun of each armored vehicle was aimed down the lanes of traffic in both directions sending a clear signal that whatever their purpose was along this stretch of road, they meant business. Garrett could not recall any other time he had ever heard of chemical warfare equipped soldiers backed up by armored vehicles manning checkpoints on a roadway inside the United States. While scenes like this were everyday occurrences in war torn places like Iraq, it was not what you wanted to see back here at home. Garrett forgot about his run for the moment and instead grabbed for the remote control and turned the volume up to follow the narrative of the reporter.
    "National Guard elements as well as New Jersey State Police officials will only tell us that yesterday's earthquake in the south central region of New Jersey may have uncovered an underground pocket of methane gas which is being vented into the atmosphere. As a precaution