The tan tour operator thought for a second. “Dude, if I take you out there and we do get rescued, as a Congressman, you can get me like a reward or something right?”
“Sure, yeah, whatever you want, but we got to go right now.”
“All right, dude, you convinced me. Boat’s right over there, let’s go.”
Chapter 40
A Virus Which Feeds On Adipose Tissue
They arrived at the burned, smoldering, and partially collapsed headquarters of PCRC. A number of fire and emergency response vehicles remained abandoned, some still containing the bodies of those responders who could not escape the scene before it was overrun with infected Skells.
Outside the entrance to the building stood a tall man and a short woman facing different directions. Every so often, a Skell would come running towards them, but it would not get too close before the duo cut it down with multiple shots to the stomach—no more wasted ammo blowing off their empty heads.
The sounds of gunfire and sirens could still be heard in the distance, as well as the faint and failing mechanical voice of the airdropped public address systems repeating the same message about staying in your home, etc. Inside the building, within the cluttered, smoke damaged but still intact office of James Sullivan, Ivan was prying open a safe. Once the door had swung open, he removed a notebook, flipped through the pages in haste, to ensure he had found what it was that he was looking for.
He flipped through several pages and stopped to read handwritten notes near the back of the journal:
Initial exposure causes cellular modification, much like a cancer. The result is a stomach tumor that grows at an exponentially increasing rate. The malignancy grows veins to ensure blood flow, but then adapts further, forming its own neural network. The tumor attaches to the lining of the stomach and transforms itself into a secondary brain. The new stomach/brain absorbs/digests the host’s resources (fatty tissue) until depleted. This act of self-digestion is similar to the process I had attempted to induce during my cellular studies of obesity.
Secondary stage of infections appears to fuse to the host’s nervous system, eliminating the host’s free will, and creating a new entity with the sole purpose of seeking out and providing nourishment for the infection’s carrier.
This new entity seeks only to survive and replicate, directing host body to serve as hunter, gatherer and digesting mechanism, which is in a constant state of hunger and hunting. Perpetuation of the virus through transmission of the virus via bites is only the beginning; it seems now to be airborne.
Conjecture: Initial stem cell donors carried dormant H5N1 bird flu virus.
Virus, when introduced to ingested human stem cell M.E.A.T product, produced a hybrid viral strain that mimics H1N1 human flu method of perpetuating and transmitting itself.
New hybrid virus continues to mutate, modify, adapt and overcome.
Almost like a human version of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, only when Mad Cow melted the brain, it did not regrow a new brain in the cow’s stomach to supplant. This does!
Analysis: We’re fucked.
24 hours after ingestion of M.E.A.T
• 5% of subjects become violently ill, no further negative reaction
• 95% Show initial changes visible in stomach
• Subjects have stomach pains, nausea and diarrhea
48 hours
• Brain stem development visible, stomach exhibits signs of change
• Subject shows increased signs of extreme hunger, will consume all types of food every 15 minutes
• Stomach outer lining taking on brain like appearance
• Sign of infection seen in salvia and blood
72 hours
• Secondary brain achieves consciousness
• Struggle between primary and secondary brain begins
• Subjects noticeably thinner
• Subject’s body begins to feed on own adipose tissue, commonly known as fat tissue
• Subject extremely contagious, can spread mutation via blood, saliva, air?
Day 4
• Primary and secondary brains battle for control
• Subjects exhibit symptoms of extreme schizophrenia.
• Violent, aggressive, will attack non infected subjects without reason
• Some subjects observed attempting to cut out or remove own stomach
• 40% of victims die at this stage
Day 5
• Secondary brain achieves dominance
• Subjects are now skeletal in appearance
• Subjects seek fatty tissue from all sources
• Subjects will resort to cannibalism as soon as exposed to the non-infected subjects
• Subjects unable to recognize loved ones will attack family members if present.
• Primary brain has ceased functioning and is basically dead. Removal will not affect subject
• Secondary brain controls all motor functions but has no higher brain function such as speech, reason, fear
• Subjects only have ability to move and drive to feed on human tissue
• Only way to cease functions is to remove the secondary brain by removing stomach
Progression of symptoms appears to accelerate as infection is passed to each successive victim. Secondary victim will complete transition within 72 hours, third victim, within 24 hours.
NO ONE MUST LEAVE NEW JERSEY, THIS MUST NOT SPREAD.
Ivan walked carefully out of the debris and raised the book above his head. “Dr. Coleman’s journal,” he said.
He turned to Marifi. “One more stop, and then it’s time to pay Dad a visit.”
Chapter 41
Intersections
-----Original Message-----
TO: Post Conflict Restoration Corp Food Services Division
From: Marketing & Communications Department
Approval for M.E.A.T distribution is to begin immediately. All trucks are to begin delivery to their assigned Food Insecurity Zones. Pantries and distribution centers have been activated and are awaiting arrival. We are ready to pull the trigger.
Nick Letterman
Jerry combed the woods for almost an hour in the direction he saw Woodrow flee, but found no trace of him or the two men he was running with. He did encounter multiple Skells, which he calmly dispatched. Some of the infected appeared to have come from the burning PCRC building—medical techs wearing lab coats, some of the first responders who were overrun—, but none of the infected were the three men he was seeking. He made it all the way to the highway which was filled with fast moving cars, people attempting to flee the state, rescue loved ones, or rush infected friends and family to the hospital, all of which would prove futile. Jerry thought that the three must have been able to flag someone down and hitched a ride, so the best thing to do now was to head back to his truck and try to track down his brother Dan who, last he heard, was shepherding the Congressman to Ivan’s compound.
Jerry felt comfortable walking back through the dense woods with murderous creatures lurking in the brush, he had been in many such situations before. Jerry and Daniel were referred to as Irish Twins, meaning they were born less than a year apart. While less than a year older than his brother Daniel, his relationship was more like a parent to a troubled youth, especially after their own father dropped out of the picture. Jerry possessed the same lethality of Daniel, but none of the bravado or recklessness. Ever since Daniel was put into first grade with Jerry, probably prematurely but their parents wanted him out of the house, Jerry’s life had been filled with one scrap after another caused by his little brother’s big mouth and foolish actions, and he had long grown tired of it.
Their older brother James had left home before they were teens and their relationship with him mainly consisted of brief visits home from one war zone after another. Jerry had stepped into the role of babysitter, bail bondsman, and brawler. He was thankful when Daniel became friends with Ivan in high school, which led to Ivan’s father Maxwell
Gold assuming an almost paternal type of figure to the brothers and shouldering some of the burden. Maxwell saw to it that all three brothers and their sister Fiona graduated Holy Friends School, even when Sister Pugs tried to expel them. He channeled the boys into the military and Fiona into college and then medical school. For Jerry, Fiona been a confidante, but a falling out two years ago had led them to become estranged, something he regretted now more than ever, as the chances they would ever see each other again now seemed slim.
Meanwhile, Woodrow, Mohammed, and Smoothie were heading south on Route 1. They had been picked up almost as soon as they breached the wooded area and found the road.
Woodrow, in the front seat, looked over at their savior and again expressed his gratitude for actually stopping and allowing three strangers into his car.
“It was the Christian thing to do,” responded Reverend Bob.
They swerved around a small group of Skells in the middle of the road near Princeton University. The car tire hit the curb with a loud thud, then straightened out. They heard a second thud and the Reverend looked in the rear view mirror at his passengers in the rear seat.
“The rear bumper is loose,” he said to them calmly.
Smoothie and Mohammed looked at each other. They swore the thump came from within the trunk. They turned to look out the window as they passed the Princeton University campus.
Inside the castle like structure of Blair Hall on the campus, Colonel Tindall was hunched over his laptop, running software simulation programs that displayed models of toxic chemical plumes over New Jersey. The multicolored triangles and circles changed and shifted as he entered in differing weather and wind parameters, a scrolling ticker below the digital map spelling out casualty counts and blast radius.
He had hoped to get his wife and daughter out of New Jersey, but was turned back at the border and told to return through the chaos and take command of Army Forward Operating Base Prince, which now dominated the center campus of Princeton University. The temporary military command point was nicknamed FOB Brains.
He ran his cursor across the map, paying particular attention to the two-mile stretch of New Jersey from Newark Airport to Port Elizabeth, which was home to the largest chemical facilities within the state. He knew that if the military could not get control of this situation, one of the options under consideration was airstrikes on those chemical facilities. It would have to occur when the wind was just right, to ensure that the chemical plume would blanket only the state of New Jersey, killing millions of infected and uninfected alike.
This was only one of the many horrific options under consideration.
It had been two months since he’d heard about the first identified infected individuals in New Jersey, but the government had managed to keep it under wraps with the hopes they could identify and contain the source. The full scale pandemic outbreak over the last 48-hours had ended any plans for quick and quite containment. They had assumed they had pre-positioned enough assets around the state prior to the raid on PCRC, but no plan ever seemed to survive the first contact with the enemy, or the first bite.
Tindall looked out the window to see a ragged Skell shambling down the path, naked except for a bikini bottom. Her bare feet were shredded to the bone, she must have been walking for miles. She was skeletally thin, as were most of the infected, except for her one large breast. And that was all she had, one. The other was missing, and the remaining fake boob was a grotesque bag of silicon wrapped tightly by her overly tanned flesh. Somehow she had made it onto the campus, which meant one of the perimeters had been breached. She did not make it too far though, before a soldier walked up to her and shot her square in the stomach, dropping her immediately.
He looked at his watch; in about six hours, the president would be addressing the nation to assure them that everything in New Jersey was under control, but the truth was they could not even control the perimeter of FOB Brains. The state was a total loss.
The Colonel returned to his map and created a nuclear burst radius on the southern part of the state. The multicolored concentric circles of the simulated nuclear burst which indicated areas of thermal radiation radius, air blast radius, and fireball radius made him think of the infected woman’s singular bosom. He chuckled. He was getting tired.
Chapter 42
What a Day
The small dolphin spotting tour boat navigated its way through a ring of wreckage that floated less than a mile off of the Jersey Shore line. It was an almost impenetrable ring of destroyed boats, burning luxury yachts, shattered fishing vessels, shredded inflatable rafts and partially submerged aircraft and helicopters which had been brought down from the sky. All of this intermixed with countless charred corpses drifting in the wake. The two men looked pensively at the Naval blockade directly in front of them, the same wall of ships that had wrought all of this destruction upon innocent civilians attempting to flee the pandemic sweeping New Jersey. A pandemic that obviously the military was determined to not leave the state by any means necessary.
As the small craft ventured ever closer to the wall of surface warfare vessels, they could see they were all sporting weaponry more suited for taking out war planes in the Persian Gulf rather than the ships’ current location, aiming its weaponry at a mid-Atlantic vacation spot. The small adventure boat continued to sail closer to the onslaught of anti-aircraft missile launchers and deck mounted machine guns. Patrick, mentally and physically exhausted, walked to the front bow, raised his hand to his face, rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and muttered to himself.
“What a fucking day.”
Too far to give up now, it was time to rally. Patrick began waving his arms and yelling frantically to the ships in hopes that no one launched a barrage of gunfire. There was no response, in fact, no sign of people on the ships at all. In the distance they could hear the faint sound of the sirens still blaring.
“It’s the sirens,” Pat said to Jim. “The military must be planning on doing something, perhaps nuking the state. The sailors must be below deck to avoid the blast. They don’t know we’re here. If we keep quiet, we can sail right past them.”
They approached the ships in absolute silence; all that could be heard was the gentle lapping of the waves against the hulls. They soon were passing between two of the ships, which were so massive it seemed as if they were passing through a steel Grand Canyon. The boat drifted towards the steel hull of the ship on the right and the two men held out their arms to stop the boat from striking the vessel, not a scratch, not a thump, not a sound could be made. They needed to remain silent, pass by the ships, and be on their way. The water between the two ships was rough and it became a brutal game of keep away as they kept being lifted by waves and nearly dashed against the giant steel canyon.
The silence was broken by two fighter jets screaming above, racing toward the shore, obviously launched off of an aircraft carrier further out at sea and on either a reconnaissance, rescue, or bombing mission over Southern New Jersey. Startled by the sudden noise, the two men lost their footing and the small dolphin craft, lifted by a wave, slammed against the side of the ship to the right, making a loud, hollow clang, followed by a long, loud scraping sound as the metal hooks on the side of the raft scrapped down the hull with a grinding screech loud enough to wake the dead. The two men winced and held their breath, but it was too late. The sound of their boat striking and scraping the hull had been enough to alert the crew. Hundreds of footsteps running up metal stairs and across a metal deck could be heard, along with the murmur of a hundred sailors. It was over. The blond dude sank to his knees and hung his head as if his body simply gave up.
Pat waved his arms wildly. “Hello, I am Congressman Patrick Callahan! I am not infected! Do not shoot! Hello? Do you hear me, I am Congressman Pa—”
His pleas fell on deaf ears. Or more accurately, on dead ears.
The infected sailors reached the sides of the ship, leaning over the railings and extending their arms, grabbing, clawing a
t the air, as if their arms could extend all the way from the top deck to the water below. Their mouths gaped open, their eyes fixed and glazed, and the groans and screeches they made were beyond human. Some fell over the decks and plummeted down, slamming into the water. Some bit at the air in front of them and some stared without comprehension. But all of them were dead.
“Start the engine,” Pat said grimly to his shipmate. “We don’t need to be quiet anymore.”
With that, Big Jim started up his colorful craft and they sped away from the steel canyon of death.
“Where are we going?” Jim asked.
“Get me as close to Washington, D.C as you can.”
Chapter 43
Dead Man Walking
Virgil sat in the barber’s chair, covered in a white drape to catch the falling hair, the tic-tic-tic sound of scissors working away non-stop behind him. Tic-tic-tic as the barber clipped away his hair. The old Italian barber, shrunken by age to a diminutive stature, spoke incessantly while he clipped. The flow of dialogue did not cease as he reminisced of the old days when he was a boxer in Asbury Park. The chatter did not stop, even for the old man catch his breath.
“I tell ya, those waz the times, those waz the days, none of these moolies and thugs in the ring, it was a different game back then. I remember one time I was in the ring and…”
A recognizable voice came from the waiting area behind V’s chair. “What did you do, talk your opponents to the mat?” the voice asked. V looked into the mirror and saw that Tony Soprano was sitting behind him reading a People magazine. Or was that James Gandolfini?
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I did; I would talk their ear right down to the mat. I would keep talking till their ear was on the mat, that's what I did,” the old barber responded without missing a breath and spun V’s chair around to face his television hero.
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