by James Evans
“I wish it was warm enough to go skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan,” she said with a sigh as she placed her hand atop his.
While Kevin and Michelle discussed the scientists and their ideas as they walked back to the guesthouse under impossibly brilliant stars. Michelle was enthusiastic about it, but Kevin played Devil’s Advocate and expressed some doubts. “If it was that easy, the government would have figured it out right away,” he opined.
“Not necessarily. I didn’t see any bite victims during the outbreak, since it occurred right after my move to Ann Arbor, but everything indicated a viral or bacterial infection. Besides, the outbreak spread most rapidly in metropolitan areas. Most of the research labs are in big cities, like the CDC in Atlanta. I’ll bet very little research was done before the grid went down. And don’t forget: these guys were government scientists.”
“Even so, you’d think other scientists would have reached the same conclusion as John and Eric.”
“Maybe they did. How would we find out? For all we know, someone has already developed a cure, but without electricity or radios, there’s no way to spread the word. Maybe one day we’ll know.”
They entered their room and got ready for bed. “What are your plans tomorrow?” Kevin asked.
“Doctor Nunn wants me at the hospital at seven o’clock,” Michelle groaned. “I’m not used to having to wake up early.”
“And no coffee to help you!”
Michelle groaned again. “I wish we’d brought some with us! How much do we have back home?”
“I have fifty pounds of beans. Maybe at some point we can go back for the things we left behind, like coffee.” And my Petoskey collection.
“And chocolate,” Michelle said, slipping into bed naked. Kevin briefly mourned the loss of his supply of cocoa, and even a few pounds of milk chocolate, but Michelle distracted Kevin from further thoughts of coffee. They made love quietly, which their upstairs neighbor would have appreciated. But she was not in her room.
I’ll stop in, see how Steve’s doing, Carolyn thought as she canoed across the bay. The nurses gave each other a sidelong glance when she walked in; she didn’t usually drop by this late at night.
Doc was dozing when she walked into his room, but woke up and smiled. “Hey, Carolyn! I was hoping I’d see you,” he grinned. “How was the party?”
“Hi, Steve! It was good. Two newcomers showed up, scientists who think they might know how to stop the zombies. They’re going to set up a lab here in the hospital.”
They talked about the zombie infection and where they were when they first heard about it. Doc told her about being in his hunting cabin, and how skeptical he was until the power went out.
Carolyn told him about the pandemonium in Frankfort and how frightening it was when zombies attacked the town. After a while, Doc had a hard time keeping his eyes open, so Carolyn gave him a quick kiss goodnight and headed home. The night air was chilling, but the lingering sensation of her lips on his, warmed her through and through.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Over the course of the next week, Michelle settled into her routine as a member of the medical staff while Kevin worked two jobs: at Stormcloud and in Jake’s greenhouses. Eric and John assembled a makeshift lab. Their first task was to collect water samples from Lake Michigan, upstream in the Betsie River, and from a deep well to determine the fungal concentrations.
Kevin felt as he were living in paradise. He usually started the day canoeing across Betsie Bay to Elberta where he helped Jake and the other greenhouse workers raise plants from clone to harvest. In the marijuana greenhouse he looked for signs of sexing. The male plants were removed from the grow room, and either discarded or isolated. Compared to the females, they had very little THC or CBD and had very little value other than for breeding.
He was rarely the first one to arrive at the greenhouse. His brain was slow to start in the mornings without coffee. He noticed most of the workers drinking a light green beverage from glass or plastic bottles. He assumed it was tea until he saw one of the older workers pluck some new growth from a type of holly growing near the greenhouse and save it in a small bag.
Curious, he introduced himself and asked if this was the yaupon holly he’d heard about. The man introduced himself as Michael and said “Yes, this is the yaupon plant. Jake discovered it growing wild and recognized it from his herb books.” He proceeded to give Kevin a quick history of the plant.
Yaupon was cultivated by native Americans, dried and shipped up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Native American Indians used it to brew sacred drinks for their purification rituals. It was forgotten for several generations, but when herbologists learned it was the only native North American plant to contain caffeine, interest picked up. “Now it’s the only source of caffeine we have,” the older man lamented. “Jake is hoping to cultivate it as a coffee substitute in a few years.”
“You just pick the leaves and put it in your water?”
“That’s one way, but the most effective—and tastiest—is to lightly toast it and grind it to a fine powder, then filter it like coffee. But I like the raw taste of fresh leaves, too! Here, try it!” he said, offering Kevin a taste.
Kevin sipped the bottle. The liquid tasted slightly earthy, sweet with bitter undertones. It was reminiscent of mild black or green tea. “This is pretty good! I’d love to take some home to my wife,” he said.
“Talk to Lee,” the man said, “she brews it every morning. I’m sure she’d let you have some.”
When Kevin finished his tasks for the day he found Lee on the patio, packing her tote bag. “Headed to the beach?” he asked.
“You betcha,” she replied, “today’s a perfect day for sunning the girls!” Kevin had already noted the lack of a bra under her button-down shirt. “Plus, the surf’s been a bit rough for the past few days, so maybe it’s churned up some new Petoskey Stones!” she said with a gleam in her eye. “Want to join me? You can look too!” she said, turning to give him a better view of her breasts. “For Petoskey Stones, I mean!”
“I’d love to if I didn’t have to get to Stormcloud. But I was wondering, would you let Michelle try your yaupon tea? I heard it contains caffeine, and she could use a pick-me-up in the mornings.”
“Sure! I usually carry an extra bottle to the beach. You can have this one!” she reached into the bag and handed Kevin a water bottle filled with the tea. “Let me know what she thinks! I like it a lot! Oh, and tell her I’d love to have you two join me on the beach the next time you get a day off!”
Kevin found the image of lying on the beach between Michelle and Lee, both topless, completely distracting, but he pushed the image out of his mind and took the bottle from her. “Thanks! I’ll let her know!” As he paddled back to Frankfort, he wondered whether he’d pass the beach invitation along to Michelle and how she’d respond.
While Kevin felt he was living in paradise, Michelle was thrust back into a busy nursing routine. Things were usually quiet, but sometimes they’d have their hands full with multiple patients who needed constant attention. She treated patients with viruses, poison ivy rashes, and minor cuts needing a few stitches. They also had pregnant women with cramps and bleeding, an elderly patient suffering from dementia, and two diabetics struggling to control their blood sugar level. Nearly everyone commented on Michelle’s pregnancy and told her how wonderful it was.
She saw the two scientists, Eric and John, as they continued to assemble the equipment they needed for their lab. Frankfort’s only electrician wired the lab and Kevin helped get the computers back online. Carolyn provided some antifungals and several people in town donated some fungicides from their gardens. They announced they could begin live research in a few days, if you call working on reanimated dead bodies live research.
Michelle was relieved not to have seen any bite victims. It would be unnerving to see a patient who was going to turn, and even more unnerving to terminate one. She was also glad not to have seen a zombie in over
a week, and was glad Frankfort was zombie-free. She mentioned this to Teresa, the charge nurse, who looked at her evenly for a second then remarked, “Nobody’s showed you the basement, have they?”
“The basement?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Teresa led the way downstairs with a flashlight. It was spooky the way the light bounced around and their voices echoed up the stairwell. “The basement used to be the morgue. But without refrigeration there wasn’t any point in having a morgue. It stayed empty for a while, but then Carolyn and Doctor Nunn said we should do some experiments on the zombies, see if anything would kill them besides damaging their brains. They needed a place to experiment. We don’t have a jail in town, so they decided to use the morgue. It’s secure, out of sight, and has no outside exits. They removed the door handles so they can’t be opened from the inside. Even if zombies somehow escaped, they don’t climb stairs and that’s the only way out. So they did their experiments down here with different gasses, different kinds of poisons and such. None of it worked. Eventually they gave up, but the zombies are still down here.”
“How many?”
“Last I heard, there were six,” Teresa said. She pushed open the fire door at the bottom of the stairs and together they walked into the basement. “But it’s been a while since I came down here. There may be more, may be less.”
She shined the light around the room. It looked like a doctor’s office; a receiving area, a computer, filing cabinets, desk chairs, plus a coffee maker, microwave, a small fridge. A faded handwritten sign on the fridge said FOOD ONLY!
She played the light across the desk and beyond. A short corridor extended past the desk, doors on either side.
“I’m not going to do you like they did me,” she said in the darkness. “The first time they brought me down here they told me the rooms were all empty. Tim—you never met him, God rest his soul—walked me down the hall. Neither of us said a word. It was scary enough being in the morgue in the dark! But you see the big windows?” she asked as she shined the light down the corridor. “They had them installed so they could observe the rooms. We got right in front of it when Tim turned the flashlight off and let out a holler that made me jump a mile. Then he turned the flashlight back on and shined it on the window. A zombie was on the other side, clawing at the glass, pounding, making that noise. Then I started hearing the same sounds from the other rooms, too. I ran like hell down the hall and up the dark stairs, scared out of my wits. Tim was laughing his head off and everybody thought it was hilarious. I wasn’t amused.”
“What happened to Tim?”
“Oh, Lord, what a mess! His wife took up with another man. She took their teenage daughter, too. She claimed Tim had been sexually abusing their daughter and asked the council members to keep him away from both of them. Tim denied it, of course, but you know how it is. The accusation was enough. He got fired from his job. Friends turned their backs on him. I could see in his eyes how devastated he was. One day he stole a canoe from the marina and paddled into Lake Michigan. He was never seen again. Some people thought he’d skipped town to avoid justice but the canoe drifted ashore a few days later, empty. I think he was so upset at the accusation and the idea of never seeing his daughter again he took his own life. I never did think he was guilty. He was a good dad. The daughter went to the council and asked them to let her move out of her mom’s new house. She said her dad never touched her. She lives on her own now and works at the smokehouse. But enough about that; it’s all water under the bridge.”
“HEY!” she called out. “You stupid zombies! Are you still down here?” Her voice echoed down the corridor, and moments later Michelle heard the zombies. Just like Teresa said, they were pounding and clawing at the doors. It sent shivers up Michelle’s back.
“How long are they active?” Michelle asked.
“About fifteen minutes. Longer if the lights are left on. Then they get quiet again. But any time they hear somebody, they start making a racket again. It’s completely safe; just don’t open any doors.”
Pretending to be brave, Michelle took the flashlight and walked the length of the corridor and back, listening. She stopped in front of the plate glass and shined the light on it. Sure enough, a zombie was trying to get through the glass. All of its hair was burned off and the right side of its face was missing most of the skin. Michelle could see the jaw muscles contract as its mouth opened and closed. She looked at it for a second, then headed back to Teresa. “Noise was only coming out of four rooms. I guess two are empty.”
“Could be. I expect Doctor Nunn or Carolyn would know. They kept track of the experiments. You ready to get out of here?”
“Definitely,” Michelle said. Teresa followed Michelle through the office, shining the flashlight ahead.
Tony drove the two scientists east to the fence connecting Crystal Lake with the Betsie River. They took several water samples, then repeated the process by taking samples from Lake Michigan. Back in the lab, they verified the existence of the same fungus they’d found near Rowan.
Once they confirmed the presence of fungus in the water, John and Eric wanted to confirm whether the same fungus was in the zombies. Their lab was in a different part of the hospital so no patients could see what they were doing. With the security team’s help, they captured a zombie in the basement and put a hood over its head so it couldn’t bite, then strapped it onto a stretcher and wheeled it upstairs.
After Eric took a number of skin samples from the zombie, it was wheeled back to the basement. John examined the samples under a microscope. Using far-infrared light, he confirmed the presence of the fungus. Thousands of intertwined mycelia appeared, each hair-like structure branching and rebranching. Eric called John over when the mycelia seemed to react to the visible light from the microscope. The mycelia in the dimmer areas of the slides were slowly branching toward the light.
Once they’d established the presence of the fungus in the zombie tissue, they wanted to determine whether it was merely saprophytic, taking advantage of the dead host, or if it was parasitic, keeping the host alive in some way. That was the million-dollar question.
Over the next few days they took more samples and observed the fungus. Once the sample was removed from the zombie body, it began to weaken, and by the third day the fungus was dead. This lent credence to the conceptual model that it was a parasitic fungus, somehow keeping the host’s body alive despite the absence of a beating heart or breathing lungs.
They terminated a zombie and dissected it. Mycelia were everywhere, but were particularly dense in the spinal cord and brain. They discovered a polypeptide, part of the secretome analyzed in the lab, which acted as bone and tissue preservative. When the tissue was separated from the rest of the body, it quickly decomposed.
They began treating fresh skin samples with different fungicides. Some were broad-spectrum; some were for very specific types of fungus. Some of the fungicides were commonly used by local farmers to prevent crop fungus, other types were used by home-restoration companies to treat mold. The medicinals Carolyn gave them were for specific types of fungi known to invade the human body.
Through a series of trial-and-error experiments, they began to see results. The broad spectrum fungicides weakened the fungi but didn’t destroy them. The chemicals and fungicides used to treat homes had no discernable effect. The medicinal fungicides resulted in weakened fungi, much like the broad-spectrum fungicides.
Based on the chemicals documented in the material safety data sheets, they isolated various fungicides in the broad spectrum treatments, then combined them into different groups with the medicinal fungicides. Finally, they discovered a combination that appeared to stop the fungus in its tracks and destroy it. But they knew success in the lab didn’t necessarily correspond to success in the field.
They carefully examined the zombies in the basement. How did they spread the disease? They examined the body for signs of stroma stalks or spores, but had no luck until they examined the mouth.
The fungus could only reproduce through zombie bites. When a person was bitten, millions of spores entered their bloodstream and began spreading.
The scientists talked to the medical staff and learned that no matter how quickly a bite was cauterized or removed, the spores had already infiltrated the body. Matt, the guy Kevin had seen in the hospital, was a perfect example. Less than a minute after he’d been bitten in the ankle, his lower leg was amputated. He turned anyway.
They began treating the zombies in the basement with various delivery methods using the antifungal serum. They knew injections would do no good—since a zombie has no heart pumping blood through the body, the treatment would stay localized. They tried atomizing the treatment and releasing it into the air, but it had no effect. They tried bathing the zombies in the serum, covering them from head to foot, and found limited success. They experimented with different temperatures for the liquid but no temperature was more effective than another.
They usually used the morgue room with the viewing window when they attempted treatment so they could observe the effect without being exposed to the chemicals. The electrician made sure the room was well lit, and video cameras recorded the action. As John and Eric were working in shifts around the clock, they kept the lights on at all times. If there was a change in behavior, in skin coloration, or in response to stimuli, they wanted to know immediately.
They noticed minor changes in the zombies’ activity level and responsiveness, but the fungus wasn’t destroyed and the zombies didn’t die. John and Eric were getting discouraged. Suddenly, out of the darkness came an accidental ray of light. Or perhaps out of the light came darkness.