Although the molecular weights of identical influenza virions can vary enormously, there are continual reports that the measured weight of ANSD virions is greater than we can account for given the suspected mass of this particular virus and the associated prions. Is there another protein or set of proteins present? Has another virus combined with this agent?
NOVEMBER 16, 2012
2:47 PM
The situation is so much worse than I expected. I tried to prepare myself, to imagine what I’d find when I landed.
But I didn’t expect this.
I stepped off the plane an hour ago. No other planes have arrived. No communications. No contact.
This is a nightmare, a bad dream.
It smells like death here.
Pittman is feverish, coughing, staggering. Gutierrez not much better. Gupta and three guards are already turned, Stage IV disease, zombies… they’re gone. I counted four subjects in the holding facility. That’s what’s left of them.
Communication with the UN is shaky, and I can’t be sure that my transmissions are getting through. I mostly get error messages and will continue writing by hand.
Still no sign of Johnson or Martinez. This was the rest of my team. I can’t do this without them. I’m here to facilitate. We need their expertise.
We all left on separate transport units. We were all supposed to be here by now. Is it possible they didn’t make it?
There are lots of things out there that can bring a plane down. We knew this was a risk.
Pittman tells me that there hasn’t been a food delivery for the last five days. A few droids in the sky but they didn’t stop, didn’t drop anything. The supplies we were bringing were loaded in Martinez’s transport… We were so rushed, so desperate.
The humanoids in the holding area are hungry; we need them functional for as long as possible. They’ll need to feed.
Water is scarce; desalination is continuing to function, but only intermittently. Food is mostly canned. We’ve tried feeding our food to the humanoids, but they don’t seem interested. The stench of dead fish is pervasive. The humanoids will eat the occasional live fish that wash ashore. I guess that’s how hungry they are. Usually they prefer human tissue.
Pittman and Gutierrez are infected, probably dying. They’re able to work at most three to four hours a day. Pittman had two seizures yesterday. Most of their scientific notes are not intelligible, at least not to me. I’ve used the satellite Internet to transmit what I could back to base for assistance, but no response so far. I’m not even sure the transmissions are getting through.
It is clear that they haven’t started any autopsies yet.
Gutierrez wants me to perform the autopsies. She and Pittman are too sick, too unreliable. There really aren’t any other options, but the task seems almost impossible. I haven’t done research in over two decades. This isn’t why I’m here.
Gutierrez still suspects an additional pathogen. She suspects that our vaccines have failed because an additional bug, probably a virus, has combined with the ANSD bug. We’ve always been good at making vaccines for influenza, but if this bug has something more, something even more than the prions, then we’re missing it and we’re not vaccinating against it. If there is something more and we find it, we could figure out how to stop it. It’s a good hypothesis, but the search will take time. Gutierrez and Pittman don’t have that kind of time. Pretty soon I won’t, either.
Until my arrival, they worried that without Gupta they lacked the manpower to manage the living dissections. Now that I’m here, they want me to lead the effort.
And then there’s the message. I know Gutierrez sent it. It sounded like she was already on to something, like she knew something new.
I asked her about it, even played it for her on the computer speakers.
Status… gent. Hype........ new. Diff… virus. Vaccine… ble
I played it three times, but she had no recollection, said she never sent it.
Is she that far gone? Is she delirious? Will she remember later?
Can I trust her judgment?
I asked her if she had new ideas, and she smiled but told me she was too tired to talk. I’m not certain that I can trust what she says. She falls asleep at her desk, often spontaneously. I have to tease out her brilliance from what looks like delirium, and Pittman isn’t much help with all this.
But his drawings are invaluable. His sketches of the laboratory and of all the facilities on the island have been more helpful than any of the photographs they showed me back at the UN. I’ve included his sketch of the laboratory here to orient whoever reads this. So much has changed since the original construction. I also asked him to draw the stages of the disease when I arrived so we could have a working record of ANSD progression. He nodded, like he was expecting the request, and it only took him a few minutes. He’s seen these changes way too often. Probably dreams about them in detail. He also drew the virus I’ve included, copied it from some of the electron micrographs in the island library. I want anyone reading this journal to see the enemy as it exists. It’s a virus, not a person. It’s a disease we’re fighting. We’re not fighting one another.
Pittman’s drawings are the most accurate visual depictions we have.
I told him that digital records aren’t trustworthy, that computer infrastructure is too shaky. I’ve asked him to sketch as much as he can and I’ll tape his sketches into this notebook. He’s a talented medical illustrator, and I need him healthy. Or at least healthier, healthy enough.
All Gutierrez could tell me is that I need to perform autopsies on the remaining subjects, and she insisted that I start with the brain. I reminded her that I am here as an administrator, but she told me that no one else on the island could reliably do this work.
She’s right.
She was adamant that we start soon. She needs to see brain sections and she asked especially for hypothalamic specimens. Because she was unsure as to her ability throughout the next few days, she outlined the following necessary steps:
We have four humanoids (or “zombies”) in the holding facility. We should start with a dissection of the brain tissue of the most recently turned specimen. We need a body that still “remembers” what it was like to be human. We’re all infected, but we can’t dissect one another. I remain firm in my belief that it is unethical to dissect anything other than Stage IV subjects. At the same time, we want subjects who have turned most recently so we can apply whatever we find to ourselves, to everyone who hasn’t changed yet. To everyone who is still human.
We need to study the hypothalamus, especially as it relates to the rest of the brain structures. This is a primitive region of the brain that, among other things, tells us whether we’ve eaten enough. Zombies never seem to have eaten enough. That’s why Blanca finds this brain structure so intriguing.
We also need to secure sections of brain material for genetic mapping and molecular characteristics. If we’re going to find a vaccine, some kind of treatment, then we need to understand the exact shape of every protein, every molecule, every aspect of its genetic structure. It has to have a weak spot, a hole in its armor. Every organism has an Achilles’ heel. We just need to keep looking.
We need to understand why the heart and the lungs still function despite such severe brain disease. Most humans with brains this damaged require intensive life support. Before this plague, no one this ill ever survived. There’s clearly something going on here that we don’t understand.
We need to pay special attention to the humanoids’ extraordinary barriers against infection. Why don’t zombies succumb to everything else infecting them? They certainly look sick. Earlier studies show an average of twenty-five or more opportunistic infectious agents throughout the body of Stage IV humanoids—each of these organisms alone would quickly debilitate even the healthiest humans, but zombies keep going. Does their skin offer protection? Are there symbiotic organisms on the skin, or maybe even the mucous membranes, that could prevent other orga
nisms from destroying the host?
We need to understand the gastrointestinal tract. Why don’t they gain weight? Why do they keep eating? Do the nerves in the gut, the ones that talk to the hypothalamus, fail to convey the signal that they’ve eaten enough? Is food even absorbed? All of this will offer potential clues to different pathogens, different infectious agents yet to be considered. And a different pathogen might have different vulnerabilities, different ways to kill it. More important, if there is an additional virus, we’d need to define our vaccines with this virus in mind. Maybe the vaccines don’t work because we’re not vaccinating against everything that makes up the disease. Does malabsorption, the decreased capacity for nutrients to be absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract into the bloodstream, account for the intense hunger? Careful dissection and examination of the large and small bowels will potentially answer these questions. Maybe we can make them less hungry, less aggressive.
For all organs removed, we need microscopic, genetic, and immunologic analysis. Even the tiniest observations could offer clues. Each new observation offers hope that we missed something important that we understand better now. Each new discovery brings us closer to a viable cure.
Because here’s the thing: All these goals point in the same direction. They suggest that there are fundamental aspects of zombie physiology that we don’t understand. Something makes them live when they ought to die. Something makes them eat when they ought to stop. Something makes them able to tolerate some of the worst infections on Earth and keep going. If this something is one thing, one pathogen, one protein, one change in the way we understand the zombie sickness, then maybe we could take that one thing away. Maybe we could treat it, vaccinate against it, get rid of it. Maybe we could cure it. Cure us.
Maybe we could save ourselves.
I plan to start reviewing autopsy procedures tonight and will examine one of the most recently turned humanoids tomorrow morning. Gutierrez and Pittman will help where they can.
NOVEMBER 17, 2012
6:46 AM
First autopsy today. Gutierrez to assist and Pittman will keep hand-sketched records. I do not trust the digital equipment for accurate video recording. Gutierrez showed me how to maneuver subjects using the transport poles.3 We moved what was once Ben Mahoney, a former military attaché who entered Stage IV of the disease about five days ago, from the holding facility to the examination room. To date, the only means by which ANSD patients can be killed is through destruction of the brain. However, we need the subject’s brain grossly intact for examination, especially given Blanca’s insistence that we go back and examine the hypothalamus. She keeps wondering why they’re always hungry, why they keep eating, what keeps that drive alive. I agree, it doesn’t make sense… Anything this sick won’t eat, can’t eat, usually turns its back on food. Humanoids, though, drag their own decomposing bodies toward anything that moves. They never stop.
A new virus… that’s all she says. It’s what she said last night. A new virus. Pittman just stares when I ask him what he thinks. They’re zombies, he says. They’re hungry.
But on this issue Blanca is clear: We need to see the hypothalamus at work, we need the subjects animate during the dissections. In fact, I’m afraid that we all agree that the subjects must be entirely animate and conscious during our investigations. Their hearts have to be beating, their lungs breathing, their bodies functioning. This virus moves so fast that we need to observe as it works. This is really the only way we can learn enough to destroy it.
Gutierrez insisted that once Mahoney was secure, we could start to remove the crown without any added sedatives or analgesics for pain. The Treaty of Atlanta specifically dictates that experimentation on animate zombies, without pain medications, is the best and most effective way to study the disease. Anti-pain medications might mask neurological findings. In fact, the treaty states clearly that Stage IV humanoids are no longer human, that whatever was human is gone, dead, entitled to funeral observances and mourning. We don’t even afford the same rights to zombies that we do to lab rats—not because we want to hurt them, but because time is short and enacting those rights and safeguards takes time. We don’t have that kind of time. We don’t have time for anesthesia or pain. We don’t have time for anything, really, except the task at hand. I’ve often wondered whether the dry language of that treaty reflects the disgust and repulsion we feel when we see what we can become so quickly, so completely.4
I am of course familiar with the Treaty of Atlanta and the subsequent protocol for the study of ANSD, but I still find it very difficult to bring the saw to the top of the humanoid’s head. We will use a Stryker saw to remove the skull crown without damaging brain material.5
7:35 AM
Gutierrez seems sharp today, appears to make sense. She has propped herself up on crutches that we found in the infirmary, and she is staring over my shoulder as I try to hold my hands steady. She’s still febrile—I can hear her breathing, feel how warm she is. But she looks better. Starting the work may have helped. But I need to watch her carefully. Need her to stay like this. I’m lost without her.
Gutierrez showed me how to use the spatula, prying its blade between the crumbling bone along the incision lines from the saw. Just like opening a can with an old-fashioned can opener, she said. It didn’t feel that way, though. It felt barbaric, surreal.
The crown of the skull is now removed. Unclear if humanoid showed signs of pain. It continued to struggle against the restraints even after the brain was exposed, but struggling may be more related to restraints and hunger rather than discomfort.
The crown crumbled after it was half removed. The sutures were widened and the spaces between the sulci and gyri were large; Gutierrez explained that increased intracranial pressure was responsible for the poor skull composition.
I remember some of this from medical school. The skull comes together like a jigsaw puzzle. With a newborn infant, you can feel the soft spots, the places where the bones still need to meet. Pretty quickly, though, the bones seal. The brain has a hundred million cells and a hundred trillion connections. It is complex, intricate, and intensely vulnerable. Our skulls are fortresses, and the sutures, the lines where the bones that make up this fortress come together, are sealed and locked at an early age. It takes immense pressure to pry them apart once they’ve decided to close.
A healthy human brain is packed almost impossibly tightly inside this fortress. The relatively tiny space available inside the cranial cavity is in fact maximized by the endless twists and turns of brain tissue itself. All those worm-like shapes, the bending and rebending of gray and white matter—that’s how something as complex as the central nervous system can fit into something as small as a human head.
The twists are called gyri; the spaces in between are the sulci. You can barely appreciate the sulci in healthy neural tissue—they’re dark and compact, each overlapping gyrus tightly pressing against the ones above and below. The human cerebral cortex is an evolutionary triumph: efficient, calculating, abstract, and awesome.
But the zombie brain is a perversion. Everything that makes us human is shriveled or lost. The dark spaces between the gyri, the once barely visible sulci, are now gaping, widened, each dark crack looking more like a grimace than a biological miracle. It’s like the brain of this thing is mocking me, mocking all of us.
When we removed the crown of the skull, the top parts of the brain, in this case what was left of the frontal lobe, surged upward, as if trying to escape incarceration. I understand that this is due to the same increased intracranial pressure that widened the sutures of the skull itself, but somehow I still wasn’t ready for this. It was barely recognizable as neural tissue; it looked more like rotten fruit. Gutierrez just nodded. This always happens, she said. It’s what we expect.
Note the widened sulci suggesting profound cortical deterioration.
When the brain was exposed, I could literally feel its heat. Inflamed tissue is hot; that’s one of the cardinal signs of i
nflammation, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. It was like opening an oven, when the heat rushes out and fills the room. We checked the monitor, and noted that the subject had increased its fever to 106°. The inflammatory response from the dissection must be exacerbated. I looked at Gutierrez and she nodded again, stone-faced, determined. This is what happens, she said. And I realized she was trying to reassure me, to let me know that so far things were going as planned. She was present at some of the first dissections, before the Crypt was in operation. She was looking for something else, it seemed, because she didn’t seem surprised by anything so far.
She did, however, have her eyes on me. Describe everything, she said. We don’t know what we might be missing. Don’t leave anything out. She kept me on task, even as she knew, as we both knew, that her brain must look at least something like the mess on the table.
The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse Page 2