Walking Dead

Part 5: Omega Facility and Omega Facility breach

Appendix C: Eyewitness account to plague of the walking dead

At the request of the directors, the committee has compiled this appendix to the full report, on the events in and around Omega Facility in December 2046 and January 2047. The committee has concentrated on the activities at Omega Facility, the possible disposition of materials and documents from the facility, and the potential dangers from said material. In the process of the investigation, the committee identified four living persons who were present at the scene of the disaster. Of these, two could be located, and only one was willing and able to provide an account of the events. His story is the body of this appendix.

After locating and interviewing several hundred former inmates and personnel of Omega Facility (see Report, part 5), the committee finds that a number of statements by national and international authorities are in error. Early statements by Albanian sources that the facility was a WMD manufacturing plant are almost entirely false. While some machinery suitable for manufacturing is known to have been maintained at the facility, it was inadequate to produce even the agents that the facility itself stored and used. The primary function of the facility was research and development, particularly animal and human testing. WMD development was less important to the facility’s work than is generally thought. It is the estimate of the committee that at least 55% of the time, space and resources of Omega Facility was instead devoted to the F projects, designated combat enhancement. These included the breeding of WMD-resistant horses, performance-enhancing drugs, and the supermen program (see Appendix B).

Representatives of Serbia maintain that fewer than 500 human subjects were used at the facility, that these were all volunteers, mainly from the Serbian military, and that maximum effort was used to keep them alive and in good health. The committee finds this to be substantially true. However, all former subjects and many former staff interviewed report serious abuses, including providing misinformation to prospective and current volunteers, and denying requests to withdraw from a test or from the program as a whole.

There is ample evidence that the facility also received at least 3,000 human cadavers from 2043 to 2046, only a fraction of which can be accounted for by normal, approved means of medical supply. Representatives of Albania and Kosovo have claimed that these represent victims of massacres against ethnic Albanian soldiers and civilians. The committee finds no evidence for this. This collection occurred in fact during a lull in paramilitary hostilities. The committee finds substantial evidence that many cadavers were obtained in ways in violation of international law, including the unauthorized retention of the bodies collected from combat areas. The purpose of this massive collection of cadavers is unknown.

The individuals most responsible for the running of Omega Facility were Gen. Sergei Mihailovic, head of the Serbian WMD program; Lt. Col. Danni Rausch, administrator of Omega Facility; Dr. Arnault Chablan, chief medical adviser, sometimes called Dr. Nibeaux; and Zaratustra, a paramilitary convict and test subject apparently entrusted by Chablan to oversee security and tests on other inmates. All four were connected to each other through a religious/political group known variously as the New Bogomils, the Aryan Ophites and the Church of the Serpent. Mihailovic committed suicide immediately after the surrender of Serbia. Zaratustra was taken alive into UN-EU custody immediately after the destruction of Omega Facility, from which he escaped after having a digit amputated. It is the opinion of the committee that an unknown party aided the escape. He has since been identified with high probability at least 5 times, including 3 crime scenes. Rausch and Chablan are officially listed as missing, presumed dead. Based on the narrative below, the committee recommends that they be reclassified as confirmed dead. Lt. Anton Princip, status and location unknown, has been identified as a person of interest.

The only direct, official Serbian record recovered of Omega Facility operations is a log of communiques kept at the headquarters of the Serbian Defense Ministry headquarters (Appendix F). These communiques represent reports of shipments, personnel and documents sent or received. Unfortunately, they provide no information on use or contents of same. What they do provide is an invaluable record of the progress of Omega Facility’s projects and major events within the facility, up to the time of its destruction. The following records are deemed most relevant:

September 2041: Report received on successful animal trials of biological agent Yp103.

November 2041: Request approved for study of improved tertiary dispersal of Yp103, designated F34.

March 2042: Subject Zaratustra received for F23 trials.

May 2043: Request received and approved for F34 implementation.

May 2044: Request granted to begin F34 trials.

August 2044: Report received of successful F34 trials.

September 15, 2044: Additional personnel sent for cleanup of containment breach. (Coincides with five known evacuations of nearby civilians.)

September 23: Containment reported restored. Request sent, received and approved to postpone F34 trials until procedural difficulties are resolved.

February 2046: Report received on new F34 procedures. Request for reactivation of F34 trials approved.

November 2046: Report received on F34-Yp103 operational deployment. Request for implementation denied.

December 20, 2046: Personnel sent for evacuation of Omega Facility.

December 23: Report of infantry engagement received

December 26: Query sent for report on situation. No response received.

The testimony which forms the body of this appendix comes from Corporal Carlos Wrzniewski, one of only two survivors of Long-Range Reconnaissance Team 557. He is a citizen of Australia, discharged from active duty in 2048, and as of late 2052 is a professor of paleontology and herpetology. His only living relatives are two half-sisters in the Philippines. He is not in regular contact with any other parties involved with Omega Facility. Five researchers without UNCOST credentials and clearance are known to have approached him requesting information on the incident, but all were refused. It is the conclusion of the committee that he does not pose a security risk. However, he will remain a person of interest in all present and future investigations into Omega Facility, and his whereabouts and activities are being monitored. His service record has been declared classified, as long as these official investigations continue.

ii. Carlos Wrzniewski’s introduction

So, you fellas want to hear about the zombies? Well, I wrote everything down in a report ten years ago. It should still be nestled away somewhere. Oh, you’ve already read it? Then why do you want me to tell you the same thing over again? You don’t need to answer. I can guess. You think the stuff in the report can’t be true, and you’re wondering if I’ve had any doubts about what really happened. You want to know if I’m sure that I saw a thousand dead bodies walking around. I can’t blame you for that. I’ve told the same story to well nigh a hundred people, and not one has believed me- and that’s including one as was actually there. If someone else was doing the telling, I don’t suppose I’d believe it either. But I know what I saw, and if you expect me to recant, then you can consider this interview over. I’ll tell you my story. I’ll even tell you some things that aren’t in the report. If you want to know what really happened, then listen to what I say, instead of trying to convince me to say what you want to hear. Then you can decide for yourselves whether you believe me or not.

Something that has to be remembered is that it’s easy to get the wrong impression of the region. The perception is that the area’s always in turmoil. But it’s probably closer to the truth to say that outsiders only notice it when it’s in turmoil. The reality is that most of the time, they seem to get along well enough. You go through the old books- a few guys in my unit used to pass excerpts around the barracks- you see Serbs and Croats and even Bosnians and Albanians talking about solidarity. It’s like the world’s longest-running domestic disturbance: 90, 95, even 99% of the time, they’re lovey-dovey, it’s the remnant of the time one has to worry about. Our perception is a matter of ignorance. We’d also do well to remember what cops say about domestic disturbances: If you come to break it up, there’s a good chance they’ll make up on the spot and turn on you.

It’s commonly assumed that religion is the main cause of the place’s troubles. I’d put the problem with that in terms of geology: Sometimes, geology is the cumulative effect of history, like a canyon carved by steady erosion. But at other times, geology is history disturbed by something younger, like a fold or fault that disrupts all the strata laid before hand. The major religious and national divisions are far more like the latter than the former. Except for the Albies, all the Yugoslav nations- Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro- are very close on the ethnic level. In fact, at one time, Montengro and Bosnia-Herzegovina were parts of Serbia. Then in 1389 the Turks defeated the massed forces of the Serb empire in the Battle of Kosovo. It was only afterward that major religious divisions emerge. Bosnia , Herzegovina and Albania threw in their lot with the Ottomans, and to varying degrees became Muslim. Croatia allied with the Holy Roman Empire as a Roman Catholic nation. What are now modern Serbia and Montenegro remained eastern Orthodoxy. The damnedest thing is that, to judge by body count, the worst feud in Yugoslav history is between Crotes and Serbs, if only because of an exceptionally nasty episode in WW2. Before they invaded Russia, Nazi Germany conquered Yugoslavia. The Nazis left a Crote faction called the Ustasha in charge, and they started killing every Serb within reach. There’s no precise, indisputable figure of how many; half a million would be the median figure. But it is a matter of record that the Nazis complained!

I think the biggest misunderstanding about religion in the Balkans is that it’s assumed that, whatever their religion, the Slavs must be very devout. In fact, the Bosnians are the only people who make a point of public piety. Even there, it’s not what it used to be. The Slav nations as a whole treat religion like we would Parliament. They consider it important, and they might fight tooth and nail if anyone tried to get rid of it, but on a day-to-day basis, they don’t have an interest in getting involved. There can be a kind of piety in that. Most people in most times and places have preferred to worship their gods at arm’s length, which is what I myself have always considered the most respectful thing to do. But some of the worst killers and hate-mongers in the Balkans really don’t give a rat’s cock about any god. Take the story of an Ustasha who said, For my past, present and future deeds, I will burn in Hell. But at least I will burn for Croatia!

Speaking of religion, one can’t tell the story of the Balkans without mention of a Christian sect called the Bogomils. The one thing we know for sure is that they were persecuted as heretics by the rest of Christendom. That’s why Bosnia and Herzegovina sided with the Turks; the Bogomils there figured the Ottomans would at least give all infidels equal treatment. What no one knows for sure is what reasons there were for the charge. Some accused them of no more nor less than opposing both lords and clergy on principle - no doubt heresy enough in that time and place. But others say they taught that that there are two gods: One is a good god, who created human souls, while the other is an evil god- more like a rebellious minor demon- who created the world to imprison souls in human bodies. Now that’s just plain fucked up, and that’s me saying it! Something that’s going to be important to my story is that there’s a group in Serbia calling itself the Bogomils that does teach everything the original Bogomils were accused of teaching. But, it’s general knowledge that the new Bogomils are really the Slav branch of the Aryan Ophites, who are an outgrowth of neo-Nazis.

What I would say about the causes of Balkan wars is that blood is thicker than ink. National boundaries, names, even creeds are nothing but ink. It’s blood that sets the real boundaries, and these come down to who one’s ancestors are, and whose ancestors were trying to kill them. And that leads into something else I should discuss. The Balkan nations may be the last Western nations to preserve the belief in vampires, not just in folklore but in practice. There’s documented cases from after the First World War of communities exhuming corpses and running stakes through them, just like in the movies.

There isn’t much resemblance, though, between what they believed in and what we think of as a vampire. In Serbo-Croatian, these things are called