In Max Brooks' World War Z (novel), there are oblique references to "China Lake" - apparently, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a major US military base located in the Mojave Desert of California.
After the United States east of the Rocky Mountains was overrun by zombies in the first year of the war, China Lake seems to have been top-level installation for research on zombies.
Exactly what was done at China Lake, however, is left to the reader's imagination - all that's confirmed is that "those sick fucks" at China Lake had a high suicide rate over what they were doing.
It's possible that they were tasked with dissecting live zombies, or more probably given the revulsion to them, that they were testing anti-zombie virus vaccines by infecting human prisoners - or perhaps something even worse.