InsaneJournal

I feel the air around you, it's kinda closing in-
Characters: West Coast Avengers!
Setting: L.A. then who knows?
Content: Zombie violence and stuff
Summary: It's time to abandon ship



What they wanted from her was impossible and Wanda had known that, even when she'd offered, but she'd had to because it was the best she could do and back then- a little near to two weeks and it seemed so long ago already- there had still been hope. The city of Los Angeles had taken applaudbly proactive measures, after all. As early as the sixteenth they'd closed down their school districts and begun evacuations on the nineteenth, one of the first cities in the nation to actually do so. The LA Emergency Management Department and Health Department set up emergency evacuation centers with aid from FEMA and the Red Cross and urged citizens to leave the city. As soon as it appeared that things were worse than officials initially thought, the refugees who sought safety in centers were rounded up and moved to a massive shelter complex in the middle of the city with access to a hospital and plenty of rations. The boundaries were closed off with military personnel to guard them and new refugees allowed in at orderly check points where doctors were on hand to check every newcomer for traces of the virus. Those unfortunate enough to be infected were taken into quarantine- at first.

The early days were anxious but organized and it actually seemed as if there was the slimmest chance of riding this out with the promise of a cure in the near future and the assurance of health officials and city officials that medical science was working feverishly on the task all around the globe. The flood of evacuees soon became a trickle as the city around the center shut down and the infected and reanimated dead swelled to greater numbers. In the beginning they tried not to take out the infected and only the walking dead, but even that was not enough. Soon, there was no choice then but to stop sparing the infected and protect the shelter, with guns and artillery and, at the request of the center leaders, the aid of superheroes. Mutants and metahumans volunteered, offering everything from healing to guard duty to whatever else they could help with.

That was where the Avengers came in and, after a failed attempt to heal the infection that ended in an unfortunate and grotesque human combustion, Wanda made her offer to shield the compound, instead. She stretched a dome of energy high overhead, dropping it at hour intervals through the night and day so that she could rest and the people inside could get some fresh air. The work was incredibly draining and Wanda spent night and day in a small room at the top of the tallest of the evacuation compounds building, visited by shelter administrators and the other Avengers offering her news. Wanda was too focused, and too exhausted, to try to hold out any kind of hope for the promised cure that seemed more distant with every day that passed.

There was no hope left now, no hope for that cure and maybe only a small chance of survival. In mere minutes the shelter went from a safe haven to a death trap. All it took was one bite, a single bite to a doctor studying the infected the compound still had kept in quarantine. The infection spread like wildfire as he bit his colleagues who turned and started infecting others. It was all they could do to get the sirens on and then it was sheer panic, all of that careful planning crumbling instantly.

The wails of warning sirens snapped Wanda from a stupor, her hands aglow. Footsteps pounded outside the door of her little room and she lurched to her feet, ignoring her exhaustion and opening the door to peer into the corridor. "What's going on?" she asked a breathless man running by. He paused only long enough to shout over his shoulder, "Infection inside!" and then he was gone round a corner. Wanda dropped her shield immediately, knowing that what had before been a protective barrier had now become a trap for the people in the center. What she had to do now was help to get the refugees out. The moment her shield was down, Wanda knew there wasn't going to be much help she could give. With the constant flow of energy leeching her own, it had been only her powers keeping her from being overwhelmed by fatigue and her breaks over the past several days hadn't been enough. Flattening herself against a wall, Wanda wobbled unsteadily on her feet as a group rushed passed her and tried not to collapse. She needed to find the others and they had to escape.