Het Madden, A Zombie Perspective: Book One: WRATH 2012 (Volume 1)

by Calvin A. L. Miller II

  “General Spicer, what can be done to cure them? We have to tr...” one woman said.

  “Nothing.” He interrupted. “The infected will continue to spread the disease all over the world. Like I said, here at home the coasts are hot. Between the Rockies and the Appalachians there are many clean areas, but they won’t last at this rate. The plan to move north where it’s cold and the virus won’t spread is still in effect. The V-RAFs can’t function in the cold.”

  He goes on to tell about groups of V-RAFs that herd together and roam the country by the thousands killing at will. Herds... huh? Rather disrespectful. The Army was doing all it could but our numbers are so great, totaling in the millions, that even using low grade nukes isn’t entirely successful.

  “The sheer terror given off by an enemy that devours those it fights has many of our service men and women scared to death.” He pauses. “Pit that with the fact these are fellow Americans they have to kill, sometimes friends, family, and soldiers, and we are nearly helpless in the infantry.”

  “We must find a way to eliminate the infected from the inside!” said a man in a white lab coat. “We can’t shoot them or burn them in large enough quantities, so we have to find a large-scale weakness to exploit.”

  “And how do we do that, Mr. Einstein?” someone said.

  “I don’t know yet, I just don’t know. There is no limit to how long the viral reanimation will allow the dead to walk. It could be months, but it is more likely years. We assume that food is used by the infected body to feed the virus, nourish the muscles and drive the beasts. We need more of them to study. We need more time.”

  “You don’t have any more time” said a man who looks a lot like the man who kidnapped me and put me on this boat. Only he was obviously uninfected then. “No time at all. My name is Dimitri Maslow and something needs to be done to save American lives. These are citizens and we can’t let them die”. Then the General fires his pistol in the air and screams “No nonsense! We have to organize now and head north to reestablish Government!” Then the video file ends.

  “Maslow?” I groan. “Maslow!”

  He comes into the cabin. I ask him what he meant in the video.

  “I don’t remember Mr. Madden.” He says. “I find it hard to concentrate on the past. We all, the ones who took you, are infected as well. But you knew that. We need to work together Mr. Madden. We need to find more answers.”

  “Tell me all you know!” I demand.

  “In time I will tell you everything.” He says. He leaves and brings back a small man, a Healthy, scared to death with his mouth gagged. “Will you join me for dinner, Mr. Madden? We eat and kill the man, pouring the blood from his heart into two glasses. We toast our new, if uneasy, alliance and watch him die.

  Dimitri Maslow is not a man of few words, but his friends almost never speak. They simply do what they do for him.

  “Look up ahead Mr. Madden, New York City! Still beautiful!” He says smiling. “You will find this city is nothing like Washington. It is unprotected except for Manhattan, which is heavily guarded and free of the infected. We will be heading into the city itself. You will be surprised at what you see, I assure you.”

  We continue on and I can see the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Bloated bodies float in the water and gulls pick at them.

  “Eating the flesh doesn’t necessarily infect them, the gulls, Mr. Madden. But they, and other animals, do get the virus--with increasingly strange results.” Just then we are ready to dock. 4 or 5 people come toward the boat. I was instinctively ready to attack, but I see they are also infected.

  “They are the same as you and I. New York City, for the most part, is ours Mr. Madden.”

  “Aren’t you scared of the Healthies. What if they decided to attack here, nuke the city.” I say.

  “We live guarded lives in anticipation of that day. We can only hope their desperation doesn’t overtake their good sense.” We leave the boat and walk to a large building. It is a jail.

  “The cells here are full of healthy food for us. You will find we have a nice establishment here.” He proudly says.

  I have to ask. It’s burning in my head. “What are you going to do to me? Cut me up like they did to my friends to find out if I hold a cure?”

  “Of course not”, he says, “We are going to try and help you remember. You are worth nothing to us dead and everything to us, well, alive. We believe you hold all the answers in your head, Mr. Madden, and we intend to do everything we can to allow you to save us all.” We walk to an apartment building and go upstairs.

  His home is tasteful and quite bloody. Rotting flesh is strewn across the floor and furnishings, almost as if on purpose, but that doesn’t bother me in the least. I like it. I love it. It is a reminder of all the Healthies I have slaughtered. We sit down and a man comes in, this man obviously not infected.

  “Mr. Madden I am Dr. Stout. I need you to relax so I can ask you some questions.” I figure I have nothing to lose. If they wanted to kill me, I would be dead already.

  I lay down and am quickly injected with something by Mr. Maslow. Before long I become completely relaxed. I am almost in a trance.

  “Where did you work when you were alive?” the Doctor asks.

  Man they don’t mix words do they? I tell them I was a consultant contracted to work at GenCap Biotechnical Corporation. I hear the words come out of my mouth and can’t believe it. I had worked there for over 3 years. How did I not remember this when I watched the video file on the boat?

  Sensing my confusion Dr. Stout says “Wrath plays tricks with our memories, Mr. Madden. We forget the obvious at times and can move from intelligent to, well, zombie in an instance. Wrath was used to take over the world, so we are up against a formidable foe.”

  I had worked in the Reanimation Experimentation Division on-site with Bob. Our job was to find a way to bring frozen tissue back to life. When human tissue freezes ice can form between cells, causing mechanical and chemical damage. This means that when a person who is frozen becomes thawed, cells have been destroyed by the freezing process. If this problem could be eliminated people, could be frozen and unfrozen at a later date.

  Other things, like adverse effects from solutions added to tissue to stop intracellular ice formation, extracellular ice formation in the areas outside the tissue cells, and cellular dehydration can also occur. They freeze people now, and have been doing it for years but the process depends on vitrification and cryoprotectants, which are not exact sciences and are for the most part, unreliable. Vitrification provides the benefits of cryopreservation, or freezing people, without the damage due to the ice crystal formation. In clinical cryropreservation, vitrification usually requires the addition of cryoprotectants prior to cooling. Cryoprotectant solutions are circulated through blood vessels to remove and replace the water inside cells with chemicals that prevent freezing. They act like antifreeze and lower the freezing temperature. They also increase the thickness or viscosity. Instead of crystallizing, the syrupy solution turns into an amorphous ice — i.e. it vitrifies. Unfortunately cryoprotectants are highly toxic and the damage they do is not reversible with present technology.

  Our job was to come up with a way to fix frozen cells that were damaged, eliminating the need for unreliable vitrification and cryoprotectants. The applications for this would be endless, and included freezing the sick until they could be cured, for example, while waiting for a donor. In addition, donor organs--and even blood could be frozen instead of just refrigerated, and kept for much longer and more inexpensively. Long space journeys would be made possible by freezing astronauts, like in the movies.

  We first tried to remove water from the cells before chemically freezing, then rehydrate them afterwards. This did not work. Then Bob and I... Bob worked on this with me, I just now remember that. We talked to a GenCap group that was working with genetically altered insects that could be used to kill other insects that were harmful to crops. They had success reanimating dead insects usin
g a virus. The idea was to ship the insects in a dead state to comply with customs regulations. Once on-site, the insects would be reanimated and would attack the harmful bugs.

  No mention was ever made to us of any animals eating the insects, dying, and reanimating like the documents Maslow gave me had confirmed. We only saw possibility. Needless to say, we were intrigued. This could take freezing out of the equation altogether! What if we created a virus that could duplicate the genetic code of cells and then the cells were killed instead of frozen? The virus would duplicate the cell itself and imitate it; replace it. Stem cells would then be injected in with the dead cells and the virus would aid the stem cells in recreating the dead cells based on the virally stored genetic code. Then the body would regenerate, kill the virus, continue replenishing its own cells and REANIMATE. This was only a first draft, of course, and it was very imaginative and would be a stretch to model. But it was a first step.

  We eventually succeeded in engineering a virus that would take the form of any cell it contacted, duplicate the genetic code, and replace the cell. We called it Doppelganger. We infected a mouse with the virus and it slowly took over the entire body. Then the mouse became terribly ill and died. We expected flu-like reactions but not necessarily death. We tried many different methods to try and make it non-lethal. The one idea that worked was to bond the DNA of a starfish, an animal who’s cells regenerate, into to virus itself. This should make the virus duplicate itself independent of the subject. Therefore, it shouldn’t kill said subject.

  After various experiments with this, one day we watched the mouse die and, frustrated, took a break. When we returned, the mouse--the same mouse, was moving. It worked! Or so we thought. The mouse became extremely violent. We put another mouse in with it and it killed and ate it. It stopped sleeping. It took no water. It had vital signs but didn’t seem to breathe regularly. We put it in a complete vacuum and it survived 2 hours before we took it out. The mouse was dead, but it wasn’t dead. We did several experiments with many mice, and each time the same thing. We were bitten on one occasion when we mishandled the mice. But didn’t get sick so we assumed the virus either couldn’t be passed or couldn’t be passed to a different species. We thought we’d proven the latter was true when mice were biting mice and infecting them. We had an In Progress Review with our DOD client, and the next day the military came in and took everything. That was almost a year ago and I hadn’t worked on it since.

  “I, we, didn’t mean for this to happen!” I shout. Mr. Maslow and the Doctor nod, but looked disgusted.

  “Maybe you didn’t but your colleague, Robert Abbott certainly did. He spirited some of your data and some of the Doppelganger virus back to your offices in Manassas. He worked behind your back hand in hand with the DOD taking money and aiding in their research on a project to use Doppelganger to keep dying soldiers alive until they made it to a medic or hospital. Mr. Abbot believed this was his goal at first and completely cut you out. He got it to work, in a way. The soldiers would not remain alive. They would die, and come back Mr. Madden. Only they were ‘different’, just like your experimental mice. When the DOD asked, and by asked--I mean paid a large sum of money, Mr. Abbott to turn Doppelganger into a virus to be used as a weapon he readily agreed, and Wrath was born. Imagine reanimating dead infantry and sending them back out. Abbott even had your friend Miss Michelle Gibbs helping him by, uh, entertaining NATO officials to get more funding. She also helped in the research. How did you not know what was going on, Mr. Madden? It doesn’t seem possible that you knew nothing. You now have to help us find a cure. Surely you had started work on the cure.”

  I have no idea if I had. And now I didn’t feel I was really able to. But I sense that if I say “no” they may no longer have any use for me, so I lie.

  “Of course we did.” I answer confidently. “We had extensive files on that on our computers and in our lab back in Manassas, but they are probably all gone by now.”

  “Mr. Madden, everything from your lab is the room behind you”. I freeze as they point to the door. I open it and it is all there, my computer, journals, everything. Bob must have kept all my work.

  “Adrenaline seems to help our kind think. We gave you some before we hypnotized you, and we have plenty.” The good doctor gives me another shot and says “Please get to work. We will bring you dinner shortly.” He leaves and I hear the door lock behind him. It looks like I am no longer free, but I am at least safe for the time being.

  How was I going to find a cure when the Government couldn’t? I still don’t think well and I am certainly not as smart as I used to be. I am a God Damned zombie and I am trying to save the world from... me... Worse case, I don’t find a cure and they kill me.... Best case, I find a cure and save my people. Here’s to hoping for the best case.

  Days turn to weeks as I try to work. The adrenalin shots do make me more alert but I still have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. I can’t write well to take notes. The Doctor soon realizes that locking me in is of no use. He knows I want to succeed and soon begins helping me.

  Mr. Maslow brings me fresh Healthies to feed on, and I have a quite comfortable life, save the way I push myself. My work basically consists of me injecting infected mice with mixtures I create in the lab. I create nothing new; I just reverse formulas I find in my journals, I am mentally unable to work at my former peak.

  After many experiments on lab mice I stumble upon something I had previously created when I was alive. It was used to clean an area of a viral infection before we infected it with a new one. An antiviral that caused the virus to attack itself until it was eradicated and there was nothing left. I had called it Eraser.

  I begin testing.

  When tested on healthy mice, there is no lasting damage. When tested on mildly infected mice, they get sick but recover. But when Eraser is tested on completely infected mice it drives them into a Frenzy like I have never witnessed. They kill and eat each other and then after a few days or weeks begin to eat themselves. But they will not attack healthy mice. I theorize that Eraser causes the entire infected organism to act like an Eraser infected virus, and only kill itself.

  More time goes by and the adrenalin I am being given is allowing me to regain a large portion of intelligence, but concentration still remains a little difficult. I realize killing the virus is only a first step. Right now, killing the virus in one of us could mean killing all of us. It could cause us to not only kill each other, and ourselves, but to STOP killing Healthies. The good doctor has been working along side me and seems fascinated. We keep working to find a way to kill the virus and not the infected. It seems impossible though. The more we study, the more I realize that Wrath actually makes our “lives” possible. It makes us “live”. It takes control of everything inside and our original cells are long gone and never coming back. I learn there is no cure and we will be like this forever. The only thing Eraser will ever be good for is....

  Oh my God...

  “Your work is done, Mr. Madden.” Maslow says as he smiles and walks into the lab. I look at the doctor and know he has told Maslow.

  “No it isn’t, this will only kill us all. I need time to figure out how to remove the virus and give us back our lives!” I scream.

  “Mr. Madden, look at the computer screen.” What looks to be the second part of the video file I had watched on the boat appears.

  “No time at all. My name is Dimitri Maslow and something needs to be done to save American lives. These are citizens and we can’t let them die”. The General fires his pistol in the air and screams “No nonsense we have to organize now and head north to reestablish Government!” But the file goes on.

  Mr. Maslow says “General please, I think I may have an answer to your problem. Infiltration. Someone has to get inside the ranks of the infected to find out how they try to think, how they, pardon the language, live. And how they die. They are lifeless, stupid corpses and they can be defeated. We... I, just have to live like them to find out.�
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  “Ridiculous!” One scientist shouts. “How will you do this? It’s not possible”.

  Another man says “It is possible. It can be done and I can prove it!” It was Dr. Stout. Then pandemonium broke out in the room. In the background in the video I could see Maslow talking to Dr. Stout.

  “You, You!” I can’t continue.

  “Yes, Mr. Madden. I lied. You have given me exactly what I wanted. A cure. A way to eliminate the disgusting menace that has taken over this country, this planet. A way to bring them down from the inside. A way to bring death back to life.”

  “But you’re infected. You’re one of us!” I gasp.

  “Not even close, Mr. Madden. Not even close.” We have to leave now. I thank you for the final solution to the question of the infected. Eraser, is it? How prophetic. Your kind needs to be erased from this earth and this will make that happen. I appreciate your help. You have made me a hero. You have made me God!”

  And with that they are gone.

  And so am I...