The unsettling question, the one with bigger implications than all others Lucas had thought to consider so far, had few possible answers. But before such answers would be entirely appropriate to consider, establishing the details of a basic timeline mattered. With rising trepidation as each new tidbit gathered seemed to support the uncomfortable notion, Lucas could feel each sensible alternative becoming less and less likely.
Careful study of multiple news sources verified what had up until now only been an unexamined and implicit assumption. As far as Lucas could verify, the absolutely earliest report of what the media dubbed infected was in San Francisco, California at 4:54 PM local time the previous day. According to the local media, a zombie attack in Portland was first reported at 4:57 PM.
Within a short window of time of only a few minutes, a total of twenty four places in eight different countries had isolated reports of the characteristic spreading attacks which were undoubtedly confirmed. While not every initial account had been in only big population centers, twenty one were in large cities where there were lots of potential eyewitnesses to see the first attacks by the infected. The final early sighting was- according to the reporting- within a small town in northern Montana.
While attacks in those first places continued to spread out and the infected swarms grew over the next several hours within many of those initial places, in others they were completely beaten back and quickly eliminated as individuals fought against the attacks. Many terrified people hid indoors, which kept the number of new infected to a minimum. Those early attempts to flee or fight had mixed success, but reports indicated that bravado often added to the tides of undead. There was no obvious pattern to who survived the ongoing regional outbreaks, but the initial panic had clearly led to confusion which did not help matters.
But beside the ongoing initial confrontation, the major characteristic of later verified cases came from smaller towns, within rural areas and suburban neightborhoods. Not everywhere in the world, but in more places than where those first attacks had been reported, new confirmations trickled in. Some small communities had mysteriously been cut off from outside communication and when someone checked up on the area, they were discovered to be plagued with the diseased. As if the whole town had been caught unprepared for what was being actively reported on in the media and displayed all over the Internet. Perhaps their calls for help were unnoticed in the panic.
Many more places were completely untouched by the zombies than seemed to have them, but those attempting to flee blighted zones for a safe area unintentionally brought the spreading disease with them. Some traffic jams were credited to car crashes caused by attacks from infected passengers riding in cars. Lucas curiously noticed that Portland was supposedly cut off due to a couple such wreckages. Perhaps that was what made the coming military response delayed until tomorrow.
In either case, it did not look like it was a good idea to flee. Given what he had read, it made sense for the CDC and the government to ask everyone to stay inside for now.
And finally, there was another wave of new reports, coming from only a few places so far and only beginning a few hours or so ago. A few places were starting to report infected moving in huge swarms. These weren't from the already known ongoing outbreaks, but totally new and uncomfirmed sources. Supposedly, one zombie had caused a large outbreak somewhere that had simply not been reported until the mob had reached that size. There were only a few of those. That implied that in some areas of the world, the phenomenon had been overlooked for some time before it was noticed.
Lucas gathered these notes as he had made them on his computer. It was not a trivial task to accomplish this, although several other people had done similar things. Since there was a great deal of misinformation caused by understandable terror, it also wasn't likely he had a complete record. But Lucas had enough for his own purposes.
Given the basic timeline Lucas now had, whatever caused these zombies, there was reason to think it had begun in individual, isolated pockets. Then as attacks spread the infection from person to person and the hordes of undead grew, it began to be reported in more places because some zombies had been initially overlooked. Otherwise, the appearance was sudden. With nothing like it known prior.
That only led to two possible conclusions Lucas could envision and both made his skin crawl. Something had created those initial zombies at a precise moment in time. That meant this was potentially deliberately caused by something intelligent. Or it had to be something natural that was so vast, so far beyond the scale of an ordinary person, as to be indistinguishable from a planned planetary event.
And so far, this appeared to be far too random and chaotic to indicate there was any kind of planning involved.
