The 28 Days, 28 Years On (Part 1)
This work of fan fiction charts the course of the Rage Outbreak from its beginnings in Berlin, Germany to the destruction of continental Europe. Told from a British perspective, it takes the form of 10 retrospective articles, all written in advance and released biweekly for the next several weeks.
Mods permitting, I’ll post each separately while maintaining links to each part as the story progresses.
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Part 1: Exposure (20^(th) May)
Part 2: Expansion (23^(rd) May)
Part 3: Commitment (27^(th) May)
Part 4: Panic (30^(th) May)
Part 5: Response (3^(rd) June)
Part 6: Evacuation (6^(th) June)
Part 7: Breach (10^(th) June)
Part 8: Reckoning (13^(th) June)
Part 9: Containment (17^(th) June)
Part 10: Silence (20^(th) June)
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Part 1: Exposure
On the eve of the anniversary of the outbreak of the Rage Virus in central Europe, Sky News journalist and award-winning author Alex Boyle re-assesses the human, political and economic devastation wrought by the biggest disaster in humanity’s history. In the first of our long reads marking 28^(th) anniversary of the 28 Days, he revisits the confusion of the initial outbreak, the terror that followed and the impact that the fateful day in March 2002, still shrouded in so much mystery and secrecy, continues to have…
Unlike other major events in living memory, such as the Kennedy assassination or the destruction of the World Trade Centre, relatively few people can say with certainty where they were or what they were doing on March 2^(nd) 2002. What this should demonstrate to us is the degree to which an event which has come to define the lives of everyone in our country, whether they were alive to see it or not, came seemingly out of nowhere. I can only say for certain that I had recently secured a ticket for Arsenal’s Champions League clash with Juventus in Turin, a match which would have been my first away trip to watch the Gunners in Europe, had it ever happened. Like many, I look back on this planned trip to the continent with a mixture of horror, guilt and relief that stubbornly refuses to fade even three decades on.
One of the reasons that this day, possibly the single most famous and fateful in all of human history, does not leave such a personal mark in the memories of many is that even now, it is difficult to be certain of exactly what happened, when it happened and why. In the past several years, this mystery has fuelled speculation, investigation, protest and finally action. Last year, Prime Minister Henry West relented on the long held position of his government that files relating to the initial outbreak of Rage would remain sealed long after the standard 30 year classification period had elapsed in the name of national security. He did so in the face of unprecedented protest and dissent, largely driven by students and a new generation of citizens less accepting of the militant caution that has driven government policy in Britain since the destruction of Western and Central Europe.
The hope of many was that the limited release of files authorised by Downing Street would provide not only answers to the long held questions of the public, of those who fled Europe and their families and the wider world. Rather that they would also provide a conclusive justification for either the continuation of the isolation of the destroyed nations or their reclamation, depending on one’s alignment in this most polarising of debates.
Unfortunately, perhaps even inevitably, these files have raised more questions than answers as they are pored over by politicians, scientists, historians, journalists and others. And of all the contentious parts of Rage’s history, of nothing is this more true than its origins in the heart of one of the old Europe’s busiest cities.
Even before last year’s file release, it had long been speculated that the virus originated from a breach at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. Accordingly, the release of some of the surviving German records effectively confirmed this. Those who had hoped that the files might reveal something more than a containment accident were of course to be disappointed, as were those who speculated that whatever experiment might have produced the virus was part of an international research effort. The continued suggestion that Rage was developed in multiple laboratories, and most explosively of all, the suggestion that one such location was Cambridge University, were of course never addressed by these files and neither were they likely to be.
In the modern world, protection against Rage is a multi-trillion dollar industry. The proliferation of surveillance, tracking, weaponry and mechanisms to seal locations off is an accepted part of life in the developed world and nowhere more so than the UK. Nonetheless, even in this hypervigilant world, experts both human and AI conclude there could scarcely have been a worse ground zero for Rage than the densely populated neighbourhood of Berlin that authorities in the doomed city first responded to, and even in our world an outbreak in such an area would be almost impossible to contain. It is no surprise then, that to a city completely unprepared and uncomprehending, to whom instantaneous transmission of a virus was thought an impossibility, Rage was a lethal and fast acting poison.
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Caller: 'Anja K.'
Operator: Berlin Fire & Rescue Call Centre
Timestamp: 23:37 CET, 2 March 2002
OPERATOR: 112, what is your emergency?
CALLER: People are running— I don’t— I can’t tell what’s happening...
[CALL TERMINATED]
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Records like the one above were commonly cited in the immediate aftermath of the release of last year’s files. Certainly, official sources were keen to emphasise them as supporting the long established narrative that authorities in Berlin were presented with fragmented information, impossible to meaningfully decipher until it was too late. However, as the evidence has been sifted, even this curated evidence base reveals that there may have been more information before the authorities both in Germany and beyond than has typically been disclosed.
For example, there is reason to think that Berlin’s police had recognised from a fairly early stage that they were dealing with something outside of their experience. This police log demonstrates that as early as 20 minutes after initial contact with the infected, some police units had recognised the unusual and highly uncontainable aspects of the threat:
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LSPD–Südost Division
2 March 2002
23:42 – Multiple reports of violent individuals near RKI perimeter.
23:51 – Officers report 'extreme aggression.'
23:53 – Officer Brandt injured. Bite wound.
23:57 – Brandt mobile again, attacking civilians.
23:59 – [REDACTED]
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Certainly, what were initially reported as “violent disturbances” did attract immediate attention from the world’s media. Despite taking place at nearly midnight in the now defunct Central European Time, reports on the disturbances began to appear on news stations across Europe only an hour or two after they began. However, these initial reports had scarce information to base their reports on. Frequently, this involved hastily arranged phone calls with bewildered correspondents more used to reporting on political, economic or sporting matters. Newsrooms scrambled for German‑speaking staff; correspondents were woken from hotel rooms; camera crews drove blindly toward cordoned streets. From about 1:30 AM, they found their way blocked by armoured police units and later by the army. Some viewers, particularly in European nations, reported seeing live footage which never appeared again of some news crews coming into direct contact with what they later came to recognise as the infected. However, the veracity of this has never been conclusively established, and some have attributed these memories to backward projection by people later to endure their own traumatic escapes from the virus.
In any case, for most of Europe, this initial calamity went largely unnoticed until the following morning, with most who were awake to see initial reports assuming that this was some kind of riot and with the majority of the continent asleep. Even the media, the civilian institution most alive to the situation, struggled to gain a clearer picture in understaffed, overnight newsrooms and in a time before modern smartphones, without even the modern benefit of footage captured by the public.
It has always been assumed that official knowledge of the virus, particularly outside of Germany was minimal or non existent. The first official communication to London that we are aware of came in the form of this brief message from the British embassy in Berlin:
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FCO Cable — British Embassy Berlin
Classification: SECRET (Declassified 2029)
Timestamp: 01:05 CET, 3 March 2002
Situation developing rapidly in Berlin... Symptoms inconsistent with known substances.
[Several Redacted Lines]
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Those committed to the many Rage conspiracy theories that have saturated Western society since the outbreak were quick to seize on the word “symptoms” in this communication, claiming an unrealistically quick perception of the crisis as a virus or biological contaminant. However, just as many supporters of official doctrine point to this source as a demonstration that the British government was, as others were, caught completely unaware by this rapid escalation of crisis.
The first demonstration of Rage’s incredible and terrifying power came as the sun rose over Berlin on 3 March 2002, revealing a city that already ceased many if not all of the functions of civilian life. German authorities would stubbornly attempt to reassert control over the doomed city and protect the exodus of its population for another several days before the existential nature of the threat to the wider nation and continent commanded the effort be abandoned. Across the continent and the world, humanity was waking to find itself, quite unexpectedly and quite decisively, in the world of a nightmare.
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Author’s comments:
· Unlike the original 28 Days Later film, in this story the outbreak occurs in March rather than mid-summer. This choice was made to accommodate some later plot details, but also with a potential 28 Weeks Later alternate history sequel in mind. The original 28 Weeks Later film largely ignores that it should take place in mid winter and despite its title is clearly more likely to be set at least a year on from the original outbreak based on the season depicted. In this alternate history, setting the outbreak in March allows the sequel to take place in the autumn of 2002 which would prevent mid-winter conditions from being a plot consideration.
· The movement of the setting of the outbreak means that some events referenced later in this series, such as Jim’s coma, were also moved to the earlier timeframe. As this is an alternate history, dramatic licence to do this was taken.