Friggin Zombies by N.C. Reed

never once been guilty of trusting the good judgment and common sense of its citizens, yet suddenly we're on our own? And that's when it hit me.
    We were on our own. He had basically just told us that it was every man for himself from here on out. Sure it was camouflaged with the diplospeak and just enough of actual truth to make it plausible, but no martial law? No rationing? No travel restrictions? There was just no way this was right!
    “This is bullshit,” Connie said suddenly, drawing me away from my introspection.
    “What?”
    “This is total bullshit,” she held up the pad she'd been making notes on, nodding to the screen. “This is the standard drill for shit like the flu, Drake. I tell this stuff to patients every day. It's some of the oldest precautions known to medicine.”
    “So? I mean a reminder isn't a bad idea under the circumstances, right?” She was shaking her head.
    “No, you don't understand. This should be treated as a Level Four quarantine. There's a whole different set of rules for that kind of thing. A virus that spreads through fluid contact, no vaccine, no cure, no Patient Zero, nothing . The precautions for something like this are through the roof. At a minimum we should see travel bans and curfews until this is under control. It's the best, safest way to try and prevent the spread of the virus.”
    “Well, that answers that, I guess,” I leaned back, head resting on the back of the couch. She turned to face me, hooking one gorgeously tanned leg over the. . . not now, not now, not now , I told my traitorous inner voice. Anyway, she looked at me questioningly.
    “There was no travel restrictions. No rationing, no curfew, nothing. Absolutely nothing. No precautions announced outside the financial sector and that's something that everyone would have expected. He just left the nation wide open to a mass panic and didn't announce a single precaution to prevent it. If we could see . . . .” I got up abruptly and went to get my laptop.
    “Wh. . .what are you doing?” Connie demanded but I was already on my way back. I sat back down and brought up a camera from the courthouse in town, courtesy of the local paper.
    “Look,” I told her, turning the screen where she could see.
    It had started already, people running to grab what they could from where they could. We watched for a few minutes before turning to a news channel from the nearest city.
    There were already riots in the streets, fires burning out of control and people screaming about government conspiracies and biological attacks.
    “That last might make sense,” Connie admitted, looking at the notes she'd taken.
    “Really?” I asked, surprised to say the least.
    “Yes,” she nodded. “I doubt that it is in all honesty, but it's always possible. It might be an engineered virus that escaped a lab where it was being developed. That happens a lot more than people might think,” she told me flatly.
    “Why do you doubt it's an actual attack?” I wanted to know.
    “No locus,” she replied, and I'm sure the dumb look on my face was what prompted her to explain.
    “Look. A biological attack has to be widespread to do any real damage. It's too easy to cordon off an area or just firebomb the hell out of it to kill the virus and stop the spread. To prevent that, you have more than one release area. In fact you have a dozen or more if you can, all in public areas to infect as many people as possible. It guarantees the virus will survive and that you get the maximum possible spread of infected people. Who in turn carry the virus somewhere else and spread it further. All of that establishes patterns which in turn can be traced to precise locations of initial infection.”
    “Wow,” was all I could think of to say, both about the facts she'd given me and the fact that she had them to start with. Be still my heart.
    “Anyway, there's nothing like that here,” she went on. “That makes it more likely that it's either naturally