User:Cheeser/Cheese N Rice
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Cheese N Rice
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Journal
23 March 2006
My name is Cheese N Rice. I am an employee with Necrotech. I can help.
I had just graduated with a bachelors degree in biochemistry when Dr. Maggi contacted me about work at NT. It sounded great. Much better than normal for just a bachelors degree. He promised to help pay for my continuing education if I took a break from college and started working right then, but that didn't work out. After I finished my doctorate I got back in touch with Dr. Maggi and had a meeting with him the day after I called him.
I started working for NT two years ago. It all seemed great. They were very progressive in various pharmaceutical advances and the studies of rare pathogens. Their study of regenerating organs was always appealing to me.
I never knew what was really going on until I saw the zombification studies. I don't know if I was intentionally uninformed, or if I just didn't want to put the pieces together myself. I regret my naivety now.
I walked in to a room where I heard Dr. Maggi arguing with Dr. Tippis about large scale testing. When they realized I had heard, they told me to ignore what they said, or I would become more "involved" with the zombie testing. So I kept my mouth shut. I saw and helped the R&D in their "testing." I am so ashamed of not speaking out, and letting them scare me into silence.
I have seen so many of my friends get attacked by zombies, or try to attack me as a zombie. Now I just want to make up for my cowardice. I have found a militant protection group up in Dulston. They call themselves... I mean, I am a member now of Dead vs Blue. They have been successful in cleaning this suburb and have even allied the other protective groups. And there is a plan to branch out to the outlying areas and finally start to end this horrible catastrophe. People need to live, I need to live, so that the truth can be told. And future "large scale testing" can be avoided.
25 April 2006
Well, it has been over a month since I have been able to write anything, but a lot has happened. I was promoted from a Tech to Lab Operator. Even in times like this, it feels good to earn that title instead of buying it like everyone else. Some of the other scientists can't stand the amount of bribery that goes on, allowing just about anyone to walk into a Company office and start using equipment as if they know what they are doing. I guess it works out though. Who else is going to meet all those infected and administer an MKII syringe.
Those infected have mutated. It used to be that we could hide behind a corner, or walk slowly up to a patient, and inject them quickly before they can attack us. Now their undead skin is thicker, and their nervous systems don't react to a quick injection. I tell you, pushing a needle into these people was creepy and scary as it was, now I have to hold and make sure they are completely injected. I hate it. But at least we got the upgrade to the scanners we have been asking for. Running only on intermittent generator power is no fun, but I am so proud and impressed with our equipment programmers, getting that update to us.
With the difficulty in administering medicine to the zombie patients, the quiet suburb here has sure gotten busier. Some of the undead are forming groups, and getting smarter. The place where we (Dead vs Blue) were holding up in got completely attacked by a mob of zombies. I wanted to help them, but I could only run. Some of the others were not so lucky, except myself and some others, were able to cure the affected members and bring them back to humanity.
The Dulston Alliance has become a reality. For so long here it was just chaos. Now the good people here are working together to keep others safe, and to help those zombies that let us revive them. We work together, but this place is still a living horror movie.
I almost forgot, earlier this month people heard wolves (they said werewolves) and I swear I was bitten by a vampire. I am convinced that some kind of nerve agent was leaked out into the streets. My hope is that it is something that NT is working on as a wide scale implementation of the revivification cure, but apparently it did not work. Why it would affect zombies and humans alike in the nervous system doesn't make sense. My fear is that it is actually a wide scale sterilization system for the city of Malton, and a little tiny bit escaped. I will do what I can to dig up some info, but that is getting more and more difficult as time goes on.
28 July 2006
I am tired. Last month a zombie group called the RRF (how can they be smart enough to group and name themselves?) attacked the 'burb pretty hard. We are getting better and better about our communication and organization, thanks in part to the radios and the hard work of the Dulston Alliance. These people have become my family.
I don't trust NT much anymore. I trust my fellow employees trying to help people, but the Company is doing things that don't make sense in an emergency state. Somehow they upgraded our scanners to tag and keep track of who zombies are and if their cortex is damaged. That's great and all, but why is it that they can learn and adapt this stuff, without providing a city-wide cure? Every upgrade or update is just to satisfy our expectation of progress. I am sure that they are holding out on this city. I know that I may be one of the last to accept this, but I had hoped that it wasn't true. It seems clear to me now that this city is nothing more than a medium scale testing site.
I have discovered that the MKII syringes are not what they should be. Why can an injection bring someone out of zombification, but not inoculate them from further infection? It's because the MKII is just a variant of the "disease." From what studies I have done and documents I have seen, the MKII syringe contains only three ingredients: Adrenaline, the virus itself, and an unknown virus modifier. People were led to believe that only the zombies carried the disease and the shot cures them, but actually it is in the syringe too. Every time we help someone, we are also keeping them infected. What I can't do is study the long term effects of someone who has been injected and is still alive because everyone keeps getting killed by zombies, and has to have another injection! I imagine that NTs desired product will be some sort of life extender. But this is nuts. People are meant to grow old and die. Helping people stay healthy, active, and comfortable as they age is every doctors desire. But robbing them of a timely death completely? This is insanity.
I hate my life, I hate who I work for, I hate zombies, I hate the lowlifes who kill the living. I have died, been a zombie, and have had a friend help me back to humanity. I want to die fishing, or in a comfy chair a long time from now. Naturally. Not from some flesh eating zombie. Hate, hate, hate.
But what will thinking like that get me? Nothing. I am here for the people. I am here with Dead vs Blue. I am here with my fellow staff.
But the secrets of Necrotech will not stay hidden any longer.
17 August 2006
I don't have much time. I have been able to gather a lot of info about what happened here just before the outbreak until now. I was wrong about the syringe contents, it's worse. I know more about the "General" I hear about now and then. I know that people that have gotten too close to the truth have disappeared, been in accidents, or turned to zombies, so I am very careful about who I share any information with. I am going through all these files and nothing in them gives any hope to this city's situation. We might be stuck in this endless loop of infection, dying, rising, reviving. I don't want to believe that. And I am not done gathering info, so who knows. More later.
20 November 2006
Has it really been three months?
September we had The Bash hit us pretty hard. That was bad. It took a good month to recover once they left. But we recovered. Actually, we are stronger and safer than before. I have had a lot of time to study, work, and cure people that have been zombified.
I really need to stop using that term, "cure." I get sick every time I think about what we are really doing here.
I had a friend pay a visit to Zulu lab. He was fortunate to get in there while it was still occupied by humans. He said there were hundreds of infected patients clawing to get inside the building.
He told me that since Malton still has no power grid, access to the underground lab is not possible. Generators just don't have enough juice to operate the doors and locks to the entrance. He did at least bring me back some project names that were priorities of the Blackmore Lab. Some I had heard of in passing, some were completely foreign.
It seems that the more I learn, the more I realize I know so little. I won't tolerate my own ignorance. At least now I have the time to put some of this stuff together. I have decided that I will put all of it together, and release it to the public, maybe even along with this journal.
19 February 2007
Was I really that ambitious?
Reading back on these sporadic entries, I find that I had fallen into the trap of despair I see on so many faces anymore, well, the faces that aren't looking at me with hunger on their undead minds.
I hid all of the information that I had gathered with the intent to understand and discover the secrets of Malton and Necrotech. That was months ago. I keep swinging from having strength to save the world, to pondering if saving my life is worth bothering.
What I have really come to understand is that I am here, in a quarantined city, living among a horror that I was partly responsible for. I can't expose all of NTs secrets, or the military connections, right now. That pursuit felt right to me, as a form of penance, exposing my shame and blame with the rest of all the Necrotech higher-ups. But I am fooling myself. I am not ready to understand the answers I search for. Besides, who cares? I have pumped so much MKII serum, bandaged so many bite and superficial bullet wounds, all anyone wants is a place to sleep that they can wake up in, still human. They are not ready to understand the answers that I search for. I know what I must do.
I will no longer sit in the shadows of who I refer to as heroes. The people in the Dulston Alliance that go outside everyday, protecting those that can't protect themselves, sometimes until they collapse from exhaustion in the open street. I tried to commute my cowardice to service by working in the lab, convincing myself that stepping outside for 10 minutes to sneak a needle into the back of some zombie's head was contributing to the solution. But it's not, not really. I know what I have to do.
I have to leave.
I am not alone. A few of the group just left a few days ago to start a DvB cell in Ruddlebank. It made sense. Take what works here to someplace that needs it too. I thought about going with them, but I would just be standing behind someone willing to take the bullet of a street murderer, or a zombie bite intended for me. I did that on my mission trip to Pitneybank, but not this time. It wouldn't be right. Leaving for a while is.
I haven't told anyone in the group yet, that I have to stop hiding in one of the safer areas of Malton. I used to cringe just thinking of every time I died from a zombie, rising to wander in an instinctive state. I don't cringe anymore, so I won't hide anymore. I have seen the real courage in this neighborhood. And I am going to take that to some areas that were talked about just this Valentines day. Bale mall, Stickling mall... Someplace like that. No group, no protection, just a bag full of MKIIs, my axe, and some other daily stuff.
I walked through the Whitlock building, just looking at everything. I don't remember the last time I just looked. I won't be back to this place for a month or so (as long as I survive) once I leave. These people are like a third family, Dead vs Blue being my second. I went to Downe Towers, played a round of deathmatch against Officer Murphy and Krimsin, said goodbye to the group leaving for Ruddlebank. No one knows how far my "goodbye" will go.
When I come back, I will journal some of what happened, but this journal stays here, at home. And when I do return, I will not let this city take me down with it. It will be reclaimed.
I am not afraid.
13 March 2007
Or the zombie Mall Tour will show up and I won't go anywhere for a long while now.
15 January 2008
Well the year went by. I took a little time off. Helped some random people when needed.
Honestly, I lost my mind for a bit. It all caught up to me. The epidemic, the constant killing, the constant reanimating. This should not be real. This should not be a life anyone should even think about. It's NOT FAIR
Careful, don't follow that road again Cheeser...
I guess I should be grateful that I held on to my sanity for as long as I did, and I am grateful that I have regained it, mostly anyway. I've lost the drive to care about the bigger picture anymore. Maybe it's still there, I don't know. Why do the keep us alive? Why keep the quarantine? Why not nuke us now and face judgment later? Our suffering would end, and no one would else would be infected. But that's the trick isn't it. They want us alive. They are watching and studying us. I notice when I get questioned about my activities; when my reports get deleted; when people die from guns and not from plague infections.
We all are the rats.
That realization is what finally fried me half a year ago.
But now I know that I still have a purpose that does not belong to the puppetmasters. I am still on the inside, and I still can help.
You can see more of Cheese N Rice in Krimsin's Dead vs Blue Webcomic.
