World of Ashes II (16 page)

Joanne stifled a laugh. “Can you imagine, a zombie T-Rex?”

“I’m just glad the infection isn’t communicable to animals.” Daniel changed the subject from defeatism. “There would be very little scarier in this world or the next, than a pack of zombie Chihuahuas. They’d skitter around the posh suburbs of Beverly Hills, mauling living Barbie dolls until there’s nothing left but skeletons and silicon.”

“Well now I’ll have nightmares for sure.” Joanne played along. “Are you boys going back to the docks today?”

“Might. We’re not sailors, there are lots of other guys who can fix a boat, we’d just be in the way. The sailor they found onboard is quite a riot though, you should listen to him sometime. I’d say seventy five percent of what he says is bullshit, but it is entertaining.”

“Oh, yeah, that Russian Marine you said.”

“Yeah, they’d left him behind to scuttle the ship, so he says. Only the charges didn’t work or something and the ship came in here on the storm surge. Do you guys get a lot of hurricanes down here?”

“Is this Florida?” Joanne gestured around.

“Indeed. I think today I’m going to look into making myself useful. If you don’t have anything for us to do around the house, Jose and I might take shifts on the checkpoints. Most everyone else is and we don’t want to appear useless.”

“You want a change of clothes? Kaylee’s father, my Simon… He’s about your size. Maybe a little wider.” She smiled. “I’ll go fetch you something.” Joanne wandered away quickly, the mention of her son was so casual she hadn’t thought ahead to avoid it.

Daniel felt terrible for that, then suddenly even worse realizing that if his mother was still alive she would have already gotten his Missing Person’s notice. Then again, since he wasn’t lost in combat she may not have heard anything at all, and that would be a million times worse, similar to the agony of him knowing his father probably hadn’t made it this long.

Chapter 6

This is what we do know:

Not every
recently
deceased person is inherently infected with the Envier Virus, (EV-1). Fauna is immune to the cannibalistic, predatory effects of EV-1, but are still seen as prey by Plague Victims. Tests performed by injecting infected blood into live animals result in nearly instantaneous death 100% of the time. EV-1 is communicable through saliva, blood, and other bodily fluids. Ingestion of infected liquids is not always fatal, depending upon concentration of EV-1 spores in the liquid. Ingested EV-1 spores diluted by less than 100 parts per million have caused varying degrees of illness, followed always by death. No acknowledged cases of resurrection have occurred because of ingesting water where an EV-1 infected corpse had been present, but their corpses continue to poison local water supplies. The ability to ingest and survive <100 parts per million is possibly due to stomach acids affecting the spores, but more research is needed. Sexual, or indeed any intimate physical contact with Plague Victims
in any stage of the infection
is not recommended. No data exists on sexually transmitted cases of EV-1, as it is not considered likely anyone has survived the experience.

There are two stages to the Envier Virus:

In the first stage the virus reaches the brain via the bloodstream. This can take anywhere from mere moments to more than two minutes depending on the location of the point of infection. If the initial infection is on an extremity such as fingers, hands, arms, feet or legs, amputation within 30 seconds has been shown to prevent the virus from reaching the brainstem or spinal column. This is not a guarantee, however, and those who’ve suffered amputation may still die of complications unrelated to the virus without swift and competent medical  care. Proper precautions for triage should be taken if amputations are performed. Once EV-1 reaches the brainstem the victim will experience a nearly immediate spike in body temperature accompanied by violent hyperactivity, confusion and garbled speech, and then finally homicidal aggression. This last stage is most commonly referred to as the Rage Phase. The brain “boils” as the temperature of the victim rises steadily over a course of several minutes, causing insanity and incoherent behavior. Infected going through the Rage Phase do experience pain, but it is doubted they can rationalize it in ordered thought. Rage Phase victims can still use simple tools, open doors and even follow specific prey. Higher order functions such as operating firearms or machinery have not yet been documented and it is considered unlikely reports of “smart zombies” are accurate to any degree.

Stage Two begins between one and ten minutes after the victim’s heart or brain ceases activity from the extreme conditions of the body fighting the Stage One infection. A chemical reaction then occurs in the Envier spores, signaling them to, for lack of a better word, hijack the cells and neurons around them. Within this incredibly short incubation period the virus links itself throughout the body, effectively creating a new, yet primitive nervous system. After gaining control of the host body, the Envier Virus then begins to use its new host’s body by stimulating the hijacked nerves and muscles with a chemical it excretes that we have yet to fully identify. It is presumed these After Death Movements, or ADM’s, are a function of the virus attempting to spread itself to a new host. Though slower, the Resurrected Corpses remain hostile to all mammalian and reptilian life. They again, do not respond to pain directly, but do appear to have a limited sense of touch, smell, hearing and sight. Rumors that infected persons are somehow endowed with extra strength can be debunked simply by reminding living people that without a sense of pain, the human body is capable of extraordinary strength. However, the infected individual in question would not technically be any stronger than they were upon their time of death, and rot and decay will eventually sap their strength.

The Center for Disease Control highly recommends the civilian and military populace fighting the Envier Plague restrict their movements to daylight whenever possible. There is no evidence EV-1 is hindered by adverse weather conditions such as fog or rain. As it is not yet winter, little evidence is available on the effects of cold on the infected.

What We Don’t Know:

How Patient Zero contracted it.

How EV-1 is able to live without the need for circulation or respiration.

Is it Manmade, and is there an Inoculation?

And… is anyone winning this war?

Daniel put the local paper down and tried not to think about what the columnist thought the pertinent questions to life were. They were all very good questions, but then perhaps they were also the most irrelevant. Did it matter anymore how Patient Zero, an American transsexual exotic dancer named Victor “Noizy” Traylor, had become infected? Friends said that one night
she
went out drinking and was having a good time, she disappeared for about an hour, then reappeared again in the early morning. When they went to retrieve their friend from a supposed hard night of drinking, she was eating her boyfriend’s face in the hotel laundry room. At first the incident was blamed on the synthetic drug that mimics cocaine known as “bath salts,” but just like the original case in Florida involving a naked man eating a homeless man’s face, the M.E. concluded later that
Miss
Traylor had likely never used any kind of designer drug except estrogen, and had only imbibed enough alcohol to equate to three beers or one shot of liquor. The world would probably never know what happened to Patient Zero between the hours of 11:45pm and 01:12am when the first 9-1-1 call was placed, the story of Patient Zero was buried quickly by the media frenzy over the Nogales Riot developing the next morning, but Daniel remembered. His father had called him to talk about it that morning, his trip to England had only been days away at the time.

For the answer to the second question posed in the newspaper article’s Things We Don’t Know section, the only plausible explanation Daniel could think of was a silicon based life form from outer space. It was good nobody was looking to him for answers, Star Trek had warped his fragile mind at an early age.

On the third, it again didn’t matter anymore if the virus was made by an armadillo getting its freak on with Man-bear-pig, or if some mad professor with crappy clown makeup smeared all over his face was cooking up a doomsday potion in his mother’s cobweb covered basement. Man or Nature, the culprit had won. The final question posed in the article, was anyone winning this war? That, Daniel could answer outright. No.

“So whatcha doin?” Jose poked Daniel with a yardstick from across the table on the deck of the
Sonya
. Construction crews had left tools all over the place, giving the mischievous man-boy lots of things to annoy his friend with.

“Catching up on the news. I’d let you have it next, but you know… Reading.”

Jose tried to slap Daniel with the yardstick, but Daniel grabbed a long screwdriver meant for repairing tractor trailers and the fight was on. Neither of them knew how to sword fight, but they’d both seen
Pirates of the Caribbean
a million times. The boys smacked at each other back and forth for a while until Daniel landed the tip of the screwdriver on Jose’s knuckles and he dropped the metal yardstick like a hot potato, cursing loudly.

“What? You started it.” Daniel said unsympathetically.

“Both of you, cut it the fuck out.” Captain Harrisburg said, testing the intercom on the bridge. It worked fine.

“Yes, Ma’am.” They responded like good Privates should.

The deck of the ship was becoming more level and it wouldn’t be too much longer before they were supposed to go below and inventory the ship’s armament. Captain Harrisburg made another announcement on the intercom that Daniel accidently tuned out, and seconds later a plume of black smoke billowed from the exhaust funnels above the ship’s port side, startling him. They now had thrust and main power back with one fully operational engine. The other, waterlogged and in a typically Soviet state of disrepair, would take longer. It occurred to Daniel, and probably Captain Harrisburg as well, that if Russia still existed they may be doing little more than fixing the enemy’s ship for them. That was, of course, assuming Russia was an enemy. For now, at least, they were just victims too, perhaps just a colder-served version of Vic’s favorite entre.

Before lunch Daniel and Jose were able to inventory the pitiful supply of ammunition Sonya had brought with her. The main gun, a Cold War copy of an American single barrel 5” turret, had exactly 48 shells left, and a dozen of those had water damage. They were marked as Reserve and left to dry in the sun. The ship was still fully stocked with minesweeping equipment, which included modern depth charges and two very intimidating looking torpedoes. Daniel’s great grandfather had worked in several different shipyards during World War Two after being wounded early on in the Battle of Britain.

His Hawker Hurricane riddled with German bullets, Harold Sawyer had belly landed below the Cliffs of Dover on a slim and hard to access strip of sand. He had not been rescued until after he’d been forced to use a pocket knife to slice the rest of the way through the tendons on his left leg, smashed between the control yolk and the firewall. All the while the plane’s engine threatened to ignite the remaining fuel. Now unable to fight, Harold worked at a shipyard where he was charged with disarming captured German, and then later Soviet torpedoes. The only thing Harold had ever said about Russian torpedoes, late one night about a year before his death, when he’d had too much to drink, was that they were made by the lowest bidder after his competitors had all been sent to the gulag for bidding too high. The story went, when he left his building for lunch a junior worker who had been repeatedly warned
not
try to disarm a torpedo without Harold present was in a rush to get home and ignored Harold. The resulting explosion was localized to building where the torpedo was stored, but all thirteen men working in the facility were vaporized, no remains ever found, their caskets empty. It was therefore Daniel’s opinion that the torpedoes be loaded carefully on a couple boats nobody would miss, and then be sent out to sea. Captain Harrisburg naturally overruled, even after hearing the lengthy and possibly irrelevant story.

As for the rifles, the ship had perhaps twelve thousand rounds aboard. More until the fight had broken out, but it was a treasure trove for the survivors of Crystal River. For the next day, Daniel stayed on the boat and became Captain Harrisburg’s defacto Master at Arms. He and Jose took turns like regular crewmen, spending only about a day onboard at any one time. Daniel suspected Jose was either claustrophobic or got sea sick easily. Chief Kuzma was brought back onboard to translate, a local teacher fact checking what he said on a Russian to English dictionary. So far he hadn’t lied, though some people were likely to never fully trust him.

Late in the afternoon some two weeks after
RFS Sonya
washed into King’s Bay, the communications station was overwhelmed on a higher frequency band by a squawk for help from a cruise liner in the Gulf of Mexico. Captain Harrisburg was about to respond when Chief Kuzma snatched the radio from her hand. She nearly bludgeoned him to death with her steel coffee mug, but he was shouting that they must not respond and she hesitated.

“Why not?” Harrisburg demanded to know. “Those people might need help.”

“And who are we to help them?” Kuzma argued, acting like she was not the captain, or at least not
his
captain. “This boat will not make it out of your bay. Is too shallow.”