Slick Joshua's Page

I failed you. My Team failed you and the government entrusted to protect and to serve failed you. We had contingency plans and the people in place to deal with this. But, fuckin’ politics got in the way. My only atonement can be to ensure that all the facts are released.

When I first briefed the National Security Advisor on The Threat, her facial expression showed me she was incapable of believing such a tale. She had spent far too much time studying Russia and ignoring anything that did not nicely fit her World view. But, I have to give her a lot of credit, when the facts had changed, so did her reality. She funded my team and we did our job. The number of false alarms diminished, but the number of Lightning Strikes had markedly increased as well as the development of a couple Brushfires. Each and every time we had managed to contain The Threat.

Eight years later with the change in administrations I once again briefed a noob National Security Advisor. He was livid. He wanted to upgraded my intelligence briefings to the cabinet level and fully inform the President. My recommendation was that was a VERY BAD idea. My team would have to occasionally do some very unsavory things and it would be best to isolate the President. Worse, I did not want the extreme prejudice that we operate under to be compromised by the whim of politics. Whether it was a Republican or Democratic administration in charge, there was still a job to do. And but for the grace of God and the efforts of my team could we ensure that this would not be the last administration.

If the National Security Advisor was livid, the President was berserk. I can still hear the ringing in my ears as the President had me ripped out of the Oval Office by the Secret Service and ordered me held on murder charges. I could handle being called out on the carpet and subsequent defrocking. But, what I could not handle was thought of vulnerability. Just like an electrical storm, Lightening is almost never one and done. The next day we met again with cooler heads. It came down to a basic impasse of Philosophy. What I considered a Threat, they considered an American citizen which was not dead until my team shot them. The CDC were the experts in communicable diseases and would be put in charge. Where I led a well funded execution squad, the CDC would isolate the outbreak, treat the infected, cure them and eventually find a vaccine. I told him that was a noble idea. But, the only reason idealists were free to preach was because there were people like me and my team that eliminated the wolves before they could come growling at the door. There were things that go bump in the night and sometimes we have to bump first. If there was so much as a 1% chance that one of these things makes it to a major population center that risk is just too great.

My team would be pulled off the line.

*****You leave my team out of this. I have seen how the definition of what is and what is not torture change over time. I have also seen changes on how Blackwater has been treated. The State Department continues to hire them and order them to conduct activities that were done five years ago, while now prosecuting them for those activities. When we had to deal with a Threat on American soil, I was the only one who gave orders and I was the only one to pull a trigger. Of course, if you ask them, each one will stand up and claim to be Spartacus. Hell, I even bet the Rook would say he pulled the trigger and he was not even deployed with us. ******

October
“You Lost a few zombies?”
“We have been over this, they are not zombies. They are American citizens and they are sick and need our help.”
“Call them zombies. Call them sick. Call them God’s chosen people. I do not care. In any case, what they are is highly infectious and if one of them gets to a population zone, the problem is going to escalate exponentially. Your current Brush Fire will be a full blown Forest Fire in few days or even less. If it is a major population center with travel avenues that reach out globally, with anything less than Divine Intervention Hell Fire will scorch the Earth. Your “do no harm” CDC couldn’t even handle a few Shamblers under controlled laboratory conditions. What are you going to do with a city full of panicking people, hyper-aggressive Runners and an ever-expanding number of Shamblers. “
“People can hold up. Barricade themselves in until Emergency Services...”
“No place is safe! Any place where people hold up to get away from the aggressors will surely have Carriers or newly infected that have not displayed any symptom present. Even if defenses are not breached, it will only be a matter of time before one of those time bombs goes off in the fortified area starting the process all over again, and again, and again.”

“It might be a false alarm, but we are picking up police chatter consistent with the description of a Runner.”
“Fuck, you lost a Shambler and now you have a Runner. Shambling is a one way ticket. They do not get better. The only way you can get a runner is a newly infected Mundane.”
“Mundane?”
“Human. They are not necessarily the enemy, but in a Wild Fire situation, there are no civilians. Anyone of them could become a weapon of Mass Destruction at any time. Mr. President, you have to deploy some shooters now. The average speed of a Shambler is only a couple of miles per hour. But, they are easily distracted and rarely head in a straight line. Mobilize the airborne to set up a containment zone. They can be deployed ready to fight in a matter of hours. They are well trained and well led. In addition, they are trained for the chaos of being behind enemy lines. If the situation becomes FUBAR, there won’t be any lines.”
“Posse Comitatus. I cannot just deploy US troops on American Soil in a Law Enforcement capacity.”
“I am so fucking tired of arguments by definition. Congress has not declared war in more than half a century, but Commanders in Cheifs have been sending men and women into obvious combat zones saying it is not a war, it is a police action. Now we are in a crisis situation that has caused more casualties on American Soil than anything else since the Civil War and you call it a Law Enforcement problem. Right now, it is a desert with sparse vegetation. You will have great visibility. This can still be contained. But, if it spreads to tree cover or urban sprawl, it will be much harder to identify targets.”
“Mr. President, these reports are coming from Las Vegas.”
“This is escalating bigtime. You will have to make the hard choices even faster now. What you do in the next few hours will affect the lives of all Americans, hell with an international airport it affects the lives of every human being on the planet. You may have to lock Las Vegas down with area denial weapons.”
“Area denial weapons, you want me to mine the desert? Hell, no!”

“No, Mr. President, I want you to carpet it with VX. Conventional wisdom is that a Shambler can only be stopped by decapitation or other massive trauma to the brain. These things are not magic, they are biological and that means nerves and muscles. Cut off the head and separate the electrical signal between the head and body and the body stops. Cut and arm off and separate the electrical connection between the arm and the rest of the body and the arm stops. VX will stop them cold.”

You want me to use Weapons of Mass Destruction on the American people?


Draft of an idea. Wrote in first person because that is how I free right. If I pursue this, I will most likely edit it to third person. LOL, I wrote this before hearing about the Universal Dead webisodes. I guess deranged minds think a like.lol