[b]Pais Vasco, Spain[/b]

Muffled tapping sounded from without the bus. A soft, intermittent rapping against the riveted metal sheeting that comprised the roof increased in pitch gradually until a steady pitter-pattering could be heard reverberating into the bus. Outside it had started to rain, Julio concluded. For the first time since he had stepped aboard the vehicle some three hours ago, he had some indication of what was happening outside the bus on which he found himself.

He had been flown from Madrid to the smaller regional airport at Bilbao. It was there that Julio had been joined with a group of prisoners of some fashion hidden from sight within the interior of another hangar. There, he and his new companions were herded aboard what had once been a prison or school bus. Regardless of whoever it was originally built to transport, the vehicle had been requisitioned by Spain's Ministry of Health obviously enough as the ministry's name had been stenciled in bold, black Castillian for all to see. Save for for the foreboding lettering and the windshield, every surface of the vehicle had been painted over a uniform, drab gray. Even the windows had been covered with the same coat of thick gray, allowing only a faint glow to shine in from the outside.

Though Julio could see nothing outside the bus, he had some idea of where he was. For much of the drive, he was pressed into the backrest of the minimally-padded bench that passed for his seating and the engine could be heard rumbling angrily beneath the corrugated metal flooring as the bus crawled up a seemingly endless number of inclines. The bus moved slowly and he felt himself being forced out into the aisle or pushed into the shoulders of the neighbor he had been seated with as the vehicle negotiated what could only be switchback turns. They were driving east into the Basque County - the rural foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains - to Arratzu.

Julio could recall the senatorial hearing that had given the Ministry of Health free reign to do what they wished with their new facility at Arratzu. The [i]Instituto Arrazua[/i], as the senatorial paper-pushers had called it, had been built in the late 1930s as an insane asylum. The crisp, clean air of the remote Basque hill country, the psychiatrists concluded, would have palliative qualities that would ease the misery of the irreparably deranged and retarded. Within two decades however, the Institute was abandoned and sat vacant for nearly thirty years. By 1977, Spain's Ministry of Health decided that giant brick edifice, being so far removed from any centers of large population, would be a safe place to quarantine the victims of the disease that destroyed the immune systems of all those it infected - the plague brought back from the barbarous heart of the Dark Continent in the bodies of Spanish soldiers returning home from the Rio Niger Intervention.

Julio Zuraban was swollen and bruised from the preliminary "interrogation" meted out upon him by the Oficina de Inteligencia Militar, but he was no sick man and the 30 odd people he shared this bus with appeared no more ill than he. From underneath a lump of his swollen, purple eyebrow, the exiled senator's eyes flitted about the interior of the bus in what dim, gray light could make it through the windows. It was a diverse group - a sizable minority of them dressed in black business slacks and wrinkled button up shirts. Some among them might had been working in offices in the glittering canopy of Madrid's [i]Distrito Manzanares[/i] just hours before. Others still were of blue collar persuasion, perhaps a doctor and nurses still clad in their scrubs; Julio was almost certain he had seen a priest dressed in a plain black clerical suit. Indeed they came from all walks of life, but among them all there was but one thing that united them.

Hushed, worried murmurs floated through the stuffy and uncomfortably warm air amongst the patter of raindrops and and the whine of the engine. Snippets of conversations found their way to Julio's ears.

"This must all be a great misunderstanding", he had heard numerous times.

"Our names must have been swapped with the infected or something to that effect. We will simply tell them that they have the wrong ones."

"So help me God, the Ministry will be hearing from my attorneys!"

In this way the other passengers kept themselves reasonably quieted. Though worry manifested itself as trembling in their voices, their assurance that this entire affair was a colossal mistake kept the passengers from erupting into complete panic. Julio, however, heard no such denial from the man seated beside him. In a dejected torpor he sat, staring listlessly at the raised bumps pressed into the metal floor. It was Julio's suspicion that he too knew why he found himself on a bus bound for a remote stretch of the Basque Country; that there had been no mistake in his sequestration. The benchmate, like Julio Zuraban and every other person seated on this bus, had somehow vexed Alfonso Sotelo. Arratzu now served to contain a new infection: dissent.

The patter of raindrops against the roof of the bus had intensified into a constant din as what little light passed through the paint-obfuscated windows all but died out as the skies outside darkened. A distant, rolling thunder distracted the passengers for long enough to forget that the bus had slowed to a crawl. Their murmuring was silenced briefly as they felt the vehicle jerk to a stop. With a pneumatic hiss, the bus had at last come to a halt. No sooner, the inside of the bus erupted into uproarious chatter as the passengers demanded to be let off as many struggled to their feet. The driver, hidden away in his separate cabin of one-way mirrors at the fore of the vehicle, offered no response.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROkbUTPQT7k&t=01m44s]((Suggested listening))[/url]

It was then that the handle on the back door of the bus began to rattle loudly - immediately muting all aboard and drawing their undivided attention to the back of the vehicle. The rear exit of the bus was drawn open and a snarling doberman leaped into the center aisle from outside. Frothy spittles dribbled from the hound's sneering maw as it let forth a savage volley of growling barks. The passengers quailed at the attack dog and pushed themselves as far away from the beast as they could humanly get and Julio and his neighbor both bolted to their feet.

A humanoid figure wearing a variation of the Great War gas mask, dripping from the pouring rain outside the bus clambered up into the rear of the bus after the hound. With a short leash in one hand and a long, cylindrical cattleprod in the other, the guard stole the attention from even the growling doberman bouncing against the taut leash.

"Get off!" The masked figure ordered, no less authoritative for being muffled by his headgear. The retractile door at the front of the bus slid open, offering an outlet for the passengers that they took with gusto. Even with the passengers nearly climbing over one another to get off the bus, the masked guard was not satisfied with their pace and jabbed the diodes of his cattleprod into the back a white-collar office worker unlucky enough to find himself at the back of the bus. An anguished yelp and the smell of ozode filled the bus, providing Julio that much more motivation as he pressed his way into the current of panicked passengers scrambling for the front exit.

The passengers forced themselves violently through the door of the bus, expulsing Julio out into the world and face-first into a gravelly puddle at the foot of the bus. Immediately, a gas mask-donning guard armed with a cattleprod descended upon him.

"On your feet!" Julio heard over the fat drops of rain falling down upon his body and the puddle he was half-submerged within. Before he could regain his footing, a burning, stinging sensation on his asscheek sent his entire body flailing about like a beached fish.

"On your feet, damnit!" The guard demanded, stabbing the diodes into the puddle this time. With an arc and a popping buzz, the entire puddle was electrified and Julio screamed and floundered about as the water turned into a million burning needles.

"[i]Carajo![/i]" Julio rasped. "Fucking stop it already!"

A powerful gloved fist yanked Julio out of the puddle by the collar and dragged him onto his feet after the other arrivals. His gait was floppy and uneven, as his muscles still quivered from the jolt of electricity. Even so, he moved as quickly to avoid another round from the electron baton.

Rising up from the wooded hills surrounding it was a massive, featureless building built of red brick and mortar. No windows or architectural frivolities were to be found on its facade. One might have mistaken it for an oversized and misplaced warehouse were it not for the guard towers, spotlights, and double perimeter of fencing crowned in razorwire. One would be challenged to find a prison as well equipped or defended as Arratzu was; flashes of rumbling thunder only served to make the structure that much more imposing.

The new arrivals were herded through a wide double door flanked on either side by guards accompanied by growling attack dogs - the only feature of note on its frontal exterior. Like cattle, Julio and the other thirty or so were directed into a holding room where a cadre of masked guards pressed them all against a cinderblock wall. With their backs to the door and their palms on the wall, the guards took boxcutting knives and sliced through the back of their garments. Julio felt a deft tug on his collar followed by a loud, rip just behind his ears before his shirt fell off his body in a sopping, muddy heap. Another slice against the hem of his pants sent those too falling around his ankles, leaving Julio in his underwear, socks, and a muddied pair of pants hanging limply at his feet. It was apparent that several a handful of the other arrivals had soiled their undergarments. The arrivals were then instructed to remove the rest of their clothing. Those who tarried felt the sting of an electric baton.

A jet of freezing water lanced into Julio's back, eliciting a welp and a grimace as icy water poured down his exposed back . His hair matted into a curled, stringy mop of frigid water and dripped with each shiver. As the rest of the newcomers were hosed down and deloused, a gloved hand seized the former senator by his quivering arm and dragged him away from the others to the corridors within the heart of the cavernous building. Julio's head spun and the world was becoming darker and fuzzier around him; the cold had sent him tumbling into shock.

"Senator Zuraban." A softer-tongued man addressed him as he was led away from the others into a nebulous haze. Julio was in no position to respond - he could do little more than keep his head upright and his eyelids open. "We have some questions we would have you answer..."

He descended from consciousness as his captor spoke again.