World of Ashes (16 page)

“We don’t have any doctors in the studio
with us, the closest we have is an EMT named Joshua Robinson. He’s just stepped into the studio with me and will tell us what he can. Josh, how are you this evening?”

The microphone picked up the sound of a chair moving and someone clearing their throat. “
Paranoid.”
The show’s guest had a baritone that was hard to hear over the static. “
But then if you’re not paranoid these days, you’re on some powerful drugs.”

“Ain’t that the tru
th. You, your girlfriend and your kid have been spending the last month here with us. And before this you were…”

“
Waiting things out at home, until a swarm made that not an option. Look, if you don’t have to run, don’t. But lucky for us we ended up in your town, and you guys opened the doors for us when we were in real trouble. Thank you, Joe. I owe you more than just my own life. But, before all the crisis, I was attending college. I needed a better job. The usual, ya know?”

“Been there. So, Josh, what can you tell us about these Zombies?”

“Well, Zombies as we traditionally know them from film are actually living people, Joe. The closest we’ve got in popular fiction to what we’re seeing in the streets is Mary Shelly’s
Frankenstein
, but only in that the Frankenstein Monster was technically a reanimated corpse. These people… These infected corpses, Joe, are dead. D E A D Dead. The person, the human being, is gone. We don’t have an MRI here, but the topic of the Infection was a hot issue before school was cancelled. The Center for Disease Control put together briefings on an infected individual who was subjected to an MRI in the early stages of the outbreaks. We learned from this scan, albeit only after the Administration was unable to keep it out of
WikiLeaks’
hands
,
that all brain function in the infected person begins a rapid shutdown upon the virus reaching the brain stem. Kinda like the biological version of wiping a hard drive, the virus erases all cognitive thought patterns. First documented by a pair of Romanian medical students studying at the Maricopa Medical Center, they labeled it the
“Inviere”
or
Resurrection
Virus. The effects of the viral compound on the human nervous system are nearly instantaneous. Our white blood cells are actually pirated, turned against us and forced to carry the plague to the brain. There it seems to absorb into brain tissue, taking its shape right down the cellular level, but like a bone becoming a fossil the remains of the brain tissue, now transformed but fundamentally dead by any known medical standard, seem to function like a puppet driven only by the most basic level of function. Maybe a really bad copy of the brain tissue would be more accurate, like a child’s Play-Dough rendering of a model of a brain cell.

“Now, it’s also fair to say t
he battle between the protective white blood cells and Inviere Virus is what causes the fever. The elevation in temperature boils the brain at an astonishing 115 degrees Fahrenheit. After the victim is deceased and begins cooling to between 100 degrees and 85 degrees
Inviere
takes complete control of the autonomic nervous system. All bodily fluids exposed to the
Inviere Virus
are lethal to all forms of life if ingested. However, the virus only targets humans. We don’t have a theory for this yet, but it could be, and I emphasize this is wild conjecture folks, that the virus feeds on whatever it is that separates sentient Man from Beast. There is also evidence to suggest it is a weaponized version of rabies spread by Islamic Terrorists and failed North Korean attempts to destabilize South Korea. In the last year we’ve dropped nuclear weapons for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an act of war, and Iran and North Korea no longer exist. Yet we are no closer to finding the culprit, Joe.”

“For those of you just tuning in this is Joseph Khu
r on 550AM GZLE, The Daily Gazelle, broadcasting to you live from our Branson, Missouri studio. I’m on with a man I’m literally trapped with, a Paramedic Student and EMT, Joshua Robinson. Josh, what can you tell us about Zombie Safety?”

There was a laugh.
It sounded like a hyena. “
Well, Joe, during the Rage Phase, when the person’s cognitive reasoning fails they will resort to baser instincts. They’re already scared, and the viral effects on our fight or flight instinct is probably what drives them to attack. Once a person is bitten, say on a lower extremity, immediate amputation has been known to save individuals. However, I don’t recommend you start hacking at each other’s fingers. Unless a skilled surgeon is present I wouldn’t attempt it at all. Within two minutes the infected will be unable to reason. They will become aggressive and panicked, thus imitating some initial symptoms of rabies. It’s really not rabies, though. We don’t have any idea what it actually is, just to be fair. We only think it’s viral, though that is probably an oversimplification. It’s oxygen independent, feeding perhaps only on glucose or other compounds already in the host. This makes Zombies who aren’t floating a hazard under water, so if you’re a pearl diver, I’d find a new line of work.”
Josh joked. It was a shitty joke. “
The virus, it seems, is what might be consuming the corpses. I read of control group studies that showed though the decay process is slowed due to the vast majority of microbes and insects having no interest in the infected whatsoever, the infected still decay. I can’t give an accurate timeline yet, but they won’t last forever.

“People need to stay safe. Stay hidden. Remember, the people in the rage phase aren’
t always the greatest threat. They scream a lot and already cannot reason. If you’re far enough away, Ragers can be easy to put down if you keep a level head. It’s the resurrected zombies I’m most concerned with, Joe. They seem to react only to outside stimuli. If you leave one in a locked room with no noise or movement they will simply hold still regardless of the position of lights or furniture. They are as equally effective at hunting at night as in day, so night isn’t always your friend. They have no pain response. Some may not even feel it when touched, but any disturbance to their visual spectrum, or if they hear you, they will begin expelling air from their lungs, if they have any lungs left, and begin following the movement or sound.”

“We have reports that some zombies seem… Super Human, almost. Can you dispel any of that, Josh?”

“Absolutely, Joe. Zombies don’t have super powers. They’re dead. When they’re raging, it’s more like someone on a bad Meth high. They go berserk and begin attacking people or things. There is no apparent response to pain stimuli, such as gunshot wounds to anything but the head. Until they burn themselves out, or enough damage is caused to their brain or spinal column, they are extremely lethal. They can break down doors, bust open car windows, rip hatches apart and wooden doors to splinters… But once they’re dead they become almost benign on their own. Sure, they will attack you, but they can’t move more than two or three miles per hour. They have only what strength can be pulled from their muscles, but don’t appear to become fatigued at any point in time. Their grip on prey will maintain so long as they can feel the prey. Whether or not they feel movement or heat is speculative at best. In one control group, a zombie with no eyes, ears or olfactory senses was placed in a fenced area next to five other zombies with only either eyes or ears to hunt with.”

“And how did that turn out? I know I was there, Josh, so no sarcasm, this is for the audience.”

The hyena laugh again.
“I know, Joe. The zombie with no senses but that of touch was unable to track prey that did not touch it first, though once disturbed, air was drawn in and expelled through the lungs. The vocal cords were not removed and the corpse began moaning. However, it did not start moaning until poked by a hand. Sticks and even a gunshot before the other zombies were introduced yielded no results. Score one for the heat sensing conspiracy theorists, Joe. The zombie moaned for approximately twenty minutes on three different occasions, but only after physical contact with flesh, until ceasing vocalizations. After that the others were introduced in adjoining cattle stalls, some with walls, others with fences depending on what behaviors we were trying to illicit. We provoked the zombie with no eyes, ears or tongue until it vocalized. Those that could hear responded with a matching moan and attempted to reach the first zombie even six hours from the time of the last moan. We can only assume this single minded pursuit of prey is the parasitic part of the virus attempting to spread itself to a new host. It makes sense really, Joe. The virus can’t think, it’s just pure instinct. The zombies that should be responding to visual stimuli did not move until sighting a living person. Two with sight attempted to attack livestock, but gave up pursuit after losing sight. They don’t give up chasing people, though. We have recorded zombies lurking outside doors where they suspect prey for as long as a month, maybe even longer. Those that could not see but only hear attacked only sounds made by the living. We can’t tell for sure if they can smell us yet, but I strongly suspect they can. Back to you, Joe.”   

The radio went on for some time after
that, but they were all asleep despite the haunting wails of the undead, pleading to devour their flesh. By morning, as the first light cracked over Ethan’s eyes Keith and Lee were already on the roof with .22’s popping zombies in the head. They had taken a supply of beer with them and were more or less making a sport of it. The only travesty was this was Ethan’s last case of Bud Select. After this finding a box with a “Born On” date that was after New Years would be impossible.

“Can we see any fires from town?” Ethan a
sked, picking up the binoculars and pressing them to his sunglasses. The light was unusually strong today.

“Only a couple, but if I reckon
direction right, they’re at checkpoints where bodies might build up in front of machine guns.” Keith pointed lazily towards the Northeast. “We’ve been hearing machinegun fire from The Hill too, so I think most people fell back to there.”

“Fuck.” Ethan flopped down on the slightly angled roof and popped open a beer too. “How many are around the house?”

“Oh, a hundred or so. We’ve certainly got enough ammunition to take care of them, but fuck dude, that’s a lot of bodies to clean up. We’ve just been shooting the ones that are too close to the house. Maybe we can lead the others away. Let ‘em fall over a cliff or some shit.”

There was a long silence before Lee spoke. “
It took a while, but I think I get it now, Ethan. Why you left...”

“So you
were
drafted back in?” Keith looked up at Ethan, he had to put up his hand to block the rising sun. He’d left every last one of his vast collection of hats on the first floor. “Can I assume you didn’t come back voluntarily when drafted?”

“Yeah… I had already
spent enough time in the company of death.”

“Still quoting movies, I see?” Lee smiled. “Whatever. I’m not here to fight wit
h you. I had a few draftees in my unit. Let’s just say they had no business being back, and it got them killed.”

“
Since you haven’t asked, I’m sure you’re just waiting for me to say it,” Ethan swallowed hard. “Our whole family is somewhere in Oklahoma, even Nicole. They got taken along for the ride during the retreat.”

Lee’s heart sank and he tipped his tattered
, filthy patrol cap forward over his eyes. For a moment he tried to control himself, but he broke down into tears anyway. Ethan moved to comfort his brother, but Lee would have none of it.

“No. Leave me alone!
I failed them, I was supposed to get here but I didn’t. Our barriers fell… My platoon never had a chance.” They waited for Lee to calm down as he went into a violent shouting fit, shooting wildly at the zombies with his .22 rifle. Once he had to reload he seemed to revert to a calmer state. “There’s maybe one safe zone per every couple of states… There’s rumors of holdouts in the Rockies and the higher Appalachians, but nothing the Army knew about for sure. Texas and Alaska seceded and took whatever troops they had with them, then they went just as dark as North Korea.”

“When did you leave?” Ethan pressed for more.

“Ethan, c’mon. Your brother’s been through a lot.”

“After the Tactica
l Operations Center was overrun. My company was on the outskirts of Chattanooga, trying to clear a college campus so we could use it as arracks when we heard the XO on the radio. They had a couple of well armed gangs to their North, and the whole of infected Chattanooga to their East. The undead killed all of them… the gangs and the brigade commanders and the airlift squadrons too. There were no armored units close enough to protect them. We were given the order to disperse and seek refuge by whoever was left at Division HQ. A politically correct term for surrender. The fight’s over, we lost.

“After that we were cut off from any kind of support.
We didn’t have any radios with enough power to call for air evac, not that it would have come in any event. This gung-ho captain we’d been babysitting gave the order to finish clearing the campus we were on, get an antennae on top of a dorm, and start squawking for help. Why we needed to clear the entire campus I don’t know, but back then rank still meant something.”

“Who would have come if
you could call out?”

“I have no idea.” Lee shrugged. “That’s why I ordered the platoon I was walking with to shut and barricade the doors to the closest building
with us inside. It cut us off from the rest of the company, but then that’s what saved us, you see. Captain Clair was a high-speed motherfucker. Reckless even when we were fighting the Taliban, even worse when it came to clearing IED’s in Iraq. Kind of a George Armstrong Custer type, ya know? Captain Clair ordered snipers and sharpshooters on the rooftop of the building he was in to start shooting anything that came within three hundred meters. Naturally all the gunfire just acted like a dinner belle. They swarmed the place like it was a Woodstock concert giving out free LSD.”