Medora: A Zombie Novel

by Welker, Wick

  “Yeah, I always feel ill right after I eat at places like this.” Keith was staring out the window, watching the lunch rush of people on the sidewalk. “Who were you texting in the meeting?”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. It was Lindsey’s sister.”

  “Who?”

  “Come on, you know her name.”

  Keith stared blankly, aware of what he was doing.

  “The girl I’ve been dating.”

  “Right, right. There’s just been quite a few lately.” He laughed.

  “Shut up. It was her sister texting me that she hasn’t heard from Lindsey since yesterday morning. I told her I saw her last night, but after that, nothing. I’ve been trying to call her all morning but she won’t answer. She probably went to the beach. It is kind of nice having a break away from her, since I was thinking of ending it anyway.”

  “Either way.” Keith wiped his mouth and emptied his tray in the trash. “Let’s go. We’re late and Janice is going to flip.”

  They walked outside into the sun where a man fell into Dave’s chest, grabbing at his arms and neck.

  “Hey, hey, what the hell! Get off of me!” Dave pushed him off and the man recoiled with sweat running down his face and tears dripping from his eyes. He had a suit on but his tie was undone and it was barely hanging from the collar. He breathed out a few incoherent words and fell right back into Dave as if he was fainting.

  “What the…?” Keith grabbed him from behind, underneath the arms and slowly lowered him to the pavement. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Damn it, he got sweat or snot or something all over me. He’s just a crazy ass, let’s get out of here.”

  “Would you hang on a minute?” Keith shook his head at Dave. “Jeez, the guy is in pain. Look how much he is sweating.”

  The man was lying on the sidewalk, staring at the sky with sweat pouring down his face. Fluid was coming out of his ears and nose with a constant flow of some white discharge and his head looked like red oozing membranes of sweat and mucous. The sidewalk was wet with moisture from his drenched back. He sat up and attempted to get his legs underneath him to stand up as people walked by pointing. There was an oval shaped spot of sweat on the ground where he was laying. He placed his hand on the ground to get up, but his elbow cracked at the joint and hyper extended backwards. Screaming out loud and long and looking down at his elbow, he saw that it was now fixed in one straight position. He tried to bend it with his other hand but it was stuck.

  Keith bent over him, “Hey there, sir, I think we should get you to a hospital.”

  The man swiveled his head upward, “Ye…yes, I will go… the hospital. Where?”

  “We’re going to call an ambulance for you.” Keith reached for his cell phone but the man got up onto his knees and then stood up. “No, I think you should lie down, because you look pretty sick and your arm looks like it… ah… well, you just need to see a doctor, now.”

  The man turned and started running, pushing through the crowds while holding his elbow. He knocked over a blonde girl on a bicycle and then stepped on her arm as he started to run away.

  “What is wrong with that guy? Did you see his arm? It snapped like a twig!” Dave laughed, pulling his phone out to text.

  “Hey, can you just think about the guy for one minute without pulling out your phone to text somebody about it?” Keith angrily walked in front of him, towards their building.

  “Okay, relax.” Dave shamefully put his phone back in his suit pocket.

  The crowd, watching the scene, adjusted quickly and again started to move in normal fashion.

  They made it back to the office without Janice noticing that they were late. The office consisted of a dozen cubicles all facing inward, towards each other. The unnatural lighting from the fluorescent bulbs made the grey carpet on the cubicles even duller. The employees shuffled back and forth from the cubicle desks to the drinking fountain and the break room.

  Keith stared at the Dilbert calendar hanging next to his computer. He fixed his eyes on it without reading it and regretted lunch. The remnants of a tasteless hamburger started to make its way back up his throat in gaseous belches. He pondered the possibility of vomiting in the near future, but quickly started to fumble with the computer mouse as Janice lumbered her way up between the cubicles. He closed out of the current game of minesweeper that he was playing and brought up a graphic design for the cough syrup campaign. She stopped at the threshold of his cubicle and rested her arm on the top of the wall.

  “Hi Janice, what’s up?”

  “Where is Dave?” She let out a very intentional sigh.

  “I don’t know. He’s here somewhere, because we just came back from lunch together.” Keith noticed sweat was accumulating in the furrows of her blonde eyebrows.

  “Well, I haven’t seen him since this morning and I need to talk to him.” She slowly lifted her doughy bloated arm to her forehead and wiped off some sweat.

  "Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. If you see Dave, tell him to come see me.” She lumbered off.

  Keith quickly resumed his minesweeper game but saw that he had failed to find all the mines in time.

  *****

  “Hi, do you have those little animal vitamins? You know the chewy ones?” Ellen leaned her elbow on the shopping cart as she watched the skinny stock boy investigate the row of children’s medicine.

  “Uh… I’m not seeing it. I don’t know…” The boy slowly glanced up and down the rows of colorful boxes, feigning a search for the vitamins. There were numerous gaps of supply amongst the cough syrups, Band-Aids and fever suppressants. “There has been a lot of people buying medicine and stuff the last day or two. Everyone is scared of the flu season. I think we have been a bit under stocked.”

  “Okay, thanks.” She wheeled her way to the cashier and began placing her items on the conveyer belt.

  “Hi, how are you doing today?” A cheerful and unusually enthusiastic cashier with a cascade of freckles and double chins greeted her.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

  “Yeah I think so. Oh, except for some little animal vitamins for my little girl. I think you guys are all out.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I think you could probably get some around the corner at the gas station if you need them real quick.” The cashier started to weigh some pears at the cash register.

  “No, it’s fine, there's no rush.”

  “Well, you might want to make sure you get some flu medicine for your kids too. I think every person in my family is at home sick with the flu right now. It’s going around.”

  “Oh, I know I’ve got plenty of stuff at home for that just in case.”

  “Oh good… Okay, it’s $32.76.”

  “Here you go.” Ellen placed her bags in the cart and made her way to the parking lot. There were a few ambulances with a huddle of EMTs surrounding someone lying on the ground. Ellen stopped for a closer look and saw an elderly woman heaving her chest and kicking her legs into the air. The woman’s hair was wet and matted on the front of her face as she shook her head back and forth across the pavement. Ellen glanced back occasionally at the ambulance as she loaded the groceries into the back of the car. The medics finally injected the white haired woman with a syringe and loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

  Ellen climbed into the driver seat and heard her phone ringing from her purse.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is this Ellen Sanders?”

  “Yes.” She switched the phone to her other ear and turned on the ignition.

  “Hi, Mrs. Sanders, this is Gary from Winsor Carpets. I was just calling to let you know that we are still planning on being at your house around two. Does that still work for you?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m going to be home in a bit so I will be there to let you in.”

  “Okay, we will see you soon.”

  She flipped her phone closed and pulled o
ut of the parking lot. Low rays of sun were streaming from scattered clouds. She could see a low cloud system moving in. Her mind suddenly projected to picking up Jayne later that day from school in pouring rain. She knew the men from Winsor carpet were going to take a few hours to get the work done in the basement and she frowned at the thought of leaving them alone in the house when she would have to go pick up Jayne.

  Chapter three

  After lunch, Dr. Stark sometimes had a drink. He used to carry a flask with him but he felt too much like an alcoholic so he just reverted to keeping a bottle of Jack in the left drawer of the desk in his office. That kept things simple. He walked up the flight of stairs from his office in the University of Chicago medical school with a Coke from the overpriced vending machine. Bursting from the stairwell doorway, he stumbled upon his secretary Denise.

  Denise had a thinly masked smile on her face. “There is a message for you from the Secretary of Health. I have it on my desk.” She paused, waiting for his reaction.

  “What could they possibly want?” Stark leaned against the wall.

  “It was Secretary Rambert. He said he wanted to talk to you about your work with CJD so you need to call him back right away.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, sauntering away from the desk.

  “Where are you going?” She asked with a taunting tone.

  “I’ll be right back, jeez.”

  Stark went into the break room and poured his Coke into a Styrofoam cup, wondering why anybody would care about CJD. His work with CJD was what had essentially destroyed his career. Dr. Reginald Stark had devoted nearly 12 years trying to prove CJD was caused by something else and was consecutively mocked in every conference he gave about likely origins the disease had. He was lucky that he still had an office on the sixth floor, kitty corner to the morgue. The smell of formaldehyde creeping into his office every day was welcoming, considering the alternatives.

  He went back by Denise’s desk. She just sat and glared at him with scolding eyes.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll call back now,” he said, walking into the office.

  Stark didn’t' have time to pick up the receiver before the phone rang.

  “Dr. Reggie Clark, how may I help you?” Denise announced to the caller. “He just stepped in, I’ll send you right over.” She hit hold. “It’s him.”

  “Who?” He asked, already knowing who it was.

  “Rambert. Secretary Rambert himself is calling.”

  “Oh, okay, send him through.” The red light on his phone started blinking. “This is Dr. Stark.”

  “Dr. Stark, this is Larry Rambert, Secretary of the Department of Health. How are you?” The voice was friendly yet hasty.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Secretary. It’s a pleasure and a surprise to hear from you. What can I do for you?” Stark cleared his throat and suddenly felt a nauseous stomach creeping up on him.

  “Dr. Stark, I have been recently reading through some articles that you published concerning your research with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or CJD?” he paused.

  “Okay, yes.”

  “The reason that your articles came to surface was that you published a completely different theory of the cause of CJD than the now widely accepted theory.”

  “Yes… How did you find those articles?”

  “I had to dig quite a bit to find them. Just so I understand correctly, could you quickly brief me on your findings and how they differ from the other research?”

  “Well, yes, I wouldn’t mind but can ask what this is in regards to? I mean those articles weren’t exactly well received.”

  “I understand that, Dr. Stark. There are recent events that might be relevant to your research and I need to know to what extent. A briefing of your research would be extremely helpful at the present time.” He paused again.

  “Well, I don’t really know where to begin. A lot of time and research was put into all this. At the time, when people started getting symptoms, it was originally thought to be bipolar disorder or a severe case of depression. The families of the patients describe them as being uncharacteristically sad and having a lack of enthusiasm. But when the patients started to lose coordination and visual acuity, everyone over there started thinking that it was a neurological disorder, right away.”

  “Over there?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. The first cases started in England and Scotland. Supposedly, people over there were getting CJD because of Mad Cow disease. A lot of young people started showing symptoms. All at once about two dozen cases happened, where these kids in their twenties started to lose coordination. They would have spasmic episodes, forget who they were and there was even a specific case where a girl started chewing on her fingers, having no idea that she was doing it. She had to have her hand amputated.”

  “Did you ever see any of these cases personally?”

  “Personally? Or course. I worked at a hospital there back in the eighties that had about three or four cases of it. I saw the complete degeneration of a high school kid who was a star cricket player with scholarship offers, but became so affected by CJD that he gouged out his eye with shards of a Coke bottle. It is a terrible disease to watch”

  “Did the patients ever attack anyone?”

  “No, not really. Rarely. Their motor skills became too slow. They did, however, have to be restrained on a number of occasions.”

  “So they never attacked anyone?”

  “No, no, not to my knowledge. What exactly are these new findings that you’re talking about?”

  “Please, Dr. Stark, if I may, what did your research suggest about the nature of the disease?”

  “Well, it’s now generally accepted that people were eating the meat of cattle with Mad Cow disease which was caused basically by cannibalism of the cows. The farmers were feeding the cows the entrails of other cows. It caused major neurological problems for the cows, because it made them susceptible to a particular protein that attacks neural tissue. People would eat the meat of the diseased cows, and suddenly, you had a disease that crossed species into CJD.”

  “And your research doesn’t conclude that CJD was the cause?”

  “I never once thought that it was caused by CJD.”

  “Really?”

  Stark was silent for a moment and then spoke. “There is no doubt in my mind that whatever was happening to those kids was not caused by Mad Cow or CJD.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “What they had wasn’t a neurological disease at all. Well, it is in that it does infect the brain, but I think it affects every cell of the entire body. CJD affects only the brain. These patients had a massive shutdown of every body system, not just the brain. The body no longer coordinates with itself. Each cell can suddenly produce its own energy without the help of the rest of the body. In a sense, every cell in the body became a rogue cell.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes, they no longer were one person made up of many cells, but a mass accumulation of cells that no longer work together to form one organism. That’s why the patients couldn’t walk, talk, or think straight. They were no longer themselves and they essentially lost their identity as a person. In other words, they became senseless animals.”

  “Was there ever a vaccine found?”

  “No. Hell no, they were never cured. The patients all died. A few clinical trials in England took in a lot of these patients. I’m not sure what they tried with them exactly. Maybe some new medication at the time. Obviously, it didn’t really work out.”

  “Do you know the name of the company that did the trials?”

  “Oh, no. It’s been a long time now. I do remember working with a doctor that was involved with the pharmaceutical company that did the trials. I believe it was a Dr. Crimmel, although I didn’t get to know him very well.”

  “I see.” Rambert paused to jot down some notes. “So how was it controlled, what prevented an epidemic?”

  “Every single one of the patients was quarantined and taken away to an off
site facility. They contained it very well. They also claimed that the laws they enacted to stop farmers from cannibalizing the meat stopped the spread, but I never really believed it.”

  “Why didn’t you believe it?”

  “Because I performed autopsies on about a dozen corpses and every single one of them had died with some type of cancer.”

  “They all had cancer?”

  “That’s right. Don’t bother looking that up, because you won’t find a single report that says so. All the researchers denied it.”

  Rambert cleared his throat. “Dr. Stark, did you ever see people with CJD ever act… cannibalistically?”

  “Again, I don’t think it was CJD. I always asserted that it was something entirely different, and no, they never did anything like that.” Stark breathed heavily with impatience.

  “Yes, okay. I was also wondering about your career prior to getting into medicine. You studied physics for quite a while?”

  “Yep.” Stark was becoming briefer in his answers. “I received my doctorate in electromagnetism from Caltech. I taught for a few years there as well.”

  “Wow, that is very impressive. What made you switch over to medicine?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to waste my life in a lab, so I went to medical school. Now I’m wasting my life in a lab.” He laughed.

  Rambert returned his laugh and then spoke more sharply. “Dr. Stark, your research may be relevant to recent occurrences and the Department of Health requires your assistance in the matter.”

  “Okay, sure. I can fax you over some of my personal notes.”

  “No, no we need to you to come to Washington immediately.”

  Stark paused and looked at his calendar, stalling. “Uh, well, I’m looking at my calendar, I’ll ask my secretary to see when I can make a flight out. It could be a few weeks.”

  “Flight accommodations have been arranged to leave from Chicago O’Hare Airport in two hours to bring you to Washington. You will be debriefed when you arrive, not over the phone, since all details at this point have become classified. I will leave the flight itinerary with your secretary”