Incident Report

Base: Rockford, Illinois

Date/Time: February 29, 2003/0400 hours

Incident: "The Runner."

Last year (9/27/03) a possible vampire was spotted mid-town in Rockford Il. After questioning the man who filed the report an investigation was initialized. To better understand the situation, some background is necessary. My name is James M- and I work as a building inspector for those new suburban homes that all look alike. Me and my co-workers spend much of our time working at night to keep what's left of our sh*t-hole town in one piece. I run a faction of fifteen when all assembled, though that has never been necessary. Mostly Shadows, we specialize in sneak and peeks, crawls and prowls. The unofficial name of our little faction is "The Steel Rose," named after our founder, who was notorious for the Morning Star he always carried with him.

Back to the task at hand. We questioned the witness who spotted the flea and took his statement; he was wise to the FVZA so no cover-up was necessary. The story held no leads and sat dormant for almost a year until something similar arose.

At 5 a.m. Sunday we were scanning the police channels as per normal procedure when we picked up on a zombie report. Specifically, a man in Freeport, Il., was seen bobbing his head on a park bench in Krape park, bleeding all over the place. Me and my counterpart Kurt (cigar and ball cap kinda guy) took the truck and drove balls out to the scene to get there before the paramedics (an impossible task but we came close). We even managed to save one of the EMS guys. The only good news is that the site of the attack was isolated from the park and the kids.

The zombie was dealt with quickly with a few swift baton hits to the head. He was a suit (explaining the soft skull) and had a laptop in his general area. The paramedic guy was dealt with the same way. A long while ago we stopped carrying guns unless wearing proper protection; one of our team found out the hard way how quickly and easily disease can spread in shower of gore, regardless of bites. I'm sad to say we had to deal with him too.

The crime scene had the two of us scratching our heads. The suit had some horrid bite wounds and bruises from a pair of hands that could crush a golf ball. The attack pointed to vampire in all ways but the victim wasn't really showing the expected symptoms. We burned the two bodies on the spot and returned home. That night we returned with another team of three in biosuits and shotguns. From the scene of the crime we fanned out north and west in a spiral moving east (standard counter ambush).

It took until 1:43 in the a.m. before we found anything. Anything being the sound of a jogger's footfalls coming toward us (we were not blessed with the cash to afford night vision). Myself and Kurt decided to detain and question the man. We waited off the path, but when he neared enough to see in the moonlight he hastened his pace faster than either of us could hope to match. Now, in my clan we strive for peak fitness and any one of us can run the ten minute mile, but this thing ran right in between us and was out of our sight in a second. I radioed the sighting and we converged on the path with Keith, Eric and Dave converging on the opposite side. For four minutes we ran flat out until we heard muzzle bursts and yells.

The fight was over when we arrived. We found the other team standing over the jogger. I slung my MP5 and wiped the sweat from my head as I bent down to roll the corpse. From the debrief I learned that it had snuck up on the other team and both parties panicked. Keith was grabbed around the shoulder and almost dragged into the woods. His shoulder was dislocated and wrenched around his back but he's alive.

On the spot examination revealed that that Jogger who outran all of us was in fact, a zombie. Very fresh in terms of decay, it was an extremely fit man in his twenties. The brain was in remarkable shape for an undead, with an obvious sense of fight or flight and only attack when cornered. This was very unsettling to all of us, even the veterans of more then fifteen years, myself included. Such a monster could take any victim it pleased. We were lucky to say the least. The only problem being, this is Freeport, not Rockford, more than 20 miles from the first spotting. Making this a situation that can and has repeated.

More to Come,

James Mateika

Shadow of the Steel Rose, "The Steel Rose lays rest to wandering Souls."