Domain of the Dead

by Iain McKinnon

  “The lack of aerobic activity is perplexing.” Doctor Robertson shook her head and pursed her lips, obviously still puzzled by the conundrum. “It was Professor Cutler who pushed us beyond that impasse.”

  “Go on, Doctor,” Sarah pushed.

  “Well, he had an interest in Psychology. He’s a bit of a polymath. You see, in psychology there is the situation where you can’t isolate the parts of the brain which determine behaviour. Instead theories are advanced on their external features, not the internal working.”

  “I’m lost again,” Nathan said, laughing. “You’ll need to slow down. I just attended school, I didn’t pay any attention.”

  “Psychologists often look at a list of symptoms and make a diagnosis on what is manifested because they can’t go around sawing open people’s heads,” Doctor Robertson explained. “Professor Cutler did the same thing. He said if we can’t find the cause lets look at the symptoms and see if we can address that.”

  “He skipped the identification and started looking for a cure?” Sarah asked.

  “A cure?” Doctor Robertson shook her head. “I don’t think that will ever be achievable.”

  “Huh, makes me wonder why the hell we’re still out here,” Captain Warden blustered.

  Doctor Robertson shot a look at Captain Warden. “We’re here looking for information that will prove useful. I thought the military axiom know your enemy would be enough justification for our work? Ascension Command certainly thinks so.”

  Captain Warden folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his chair.

  “To start with, we looked at what the contagion could and couldn’t do,” Doctor Robertson went on, addressing Sarah specifically. “We examined its effects. In every way it resembles toxic shock. It’s toxic to all vertebrates, killing them within a few hours. Plants, fungi, algae, even colony creatures like the Portuguese Man-of-war weren’t affected. And here’s another curiosity: all the animals we’ve tested instinctively know not to eat the resurrected flesh. Not even the carrion eaters.”

  “Does that explain why they don’t just rot?” Sarah asked.

  “Partially. The normal bacterial activity that happens when we die is retarded in the infected. The contagion overwhelm the bacteria and destroy them, preventing normal decomposition. But the contagion seems to have a preservative effect as well. Like mummification or pickling.” Doctor Robertson picked up her wine glass and swirled the dark liquid around the sides for emphasis. “We’ve detected trace amounts of esters and ethanol which would imply an amount of alcohol production within the host cell. This could be the energy source that keeps the W.D.’s going. We also suspect that this chemical change is detected somehow by animals which is what warns them off from eating the infected.”

  “Is that why they don’t attack each other?” Nathan asked. “Do they smell the difference?”

  “That’s a distinct possibility. They could also act on things like temperature, movement and noise.” Doctor Robertson relished the chance to demonstrate her knowledge. “The neurons in the nose that detect smell die off and don’t regenerate as they would do in a living person. That means that although they could use smell as an identifier they would gradually loose that ability over a matter of just a few months. Walking dead over five years old have been examined and they still react to the presence of a living human, so they must be using more than just their sense of smell. I believe they use their senses in concert and that the information is still being processed, although on a rudimentary level.”

  “So are you looking for ways to destroy it?” Sarah asked.

  “No,” Doctor Robertson replied. “Well, not at the moment. In the early days we did. We’ve frozen it with liquid nitrogen to as close to absolute zero as we can get and yes that destroys it. Boiling has the same effect. High concentrated acid or alkaline, but antibiotics have no effect. Oxygen kills it.”

  “But isn’t there oxygen in your blood?” Nathan asked. “Surely that would kill it.”

  “That’s true, but in the blood stream it’s bound up by the red blood cells. When it infects you through the blood stream it can’t infect the red blood cells because they have no nucleus to usurp. Also the oxygen in the red blood cells kills off the infection but they are poisoned in the process and eventually collapse. It’s that toxicity of oxygen that means it can’t live outside the body. But even then, if it’s outside the body your skin is an ample barrier against infection.”

  “Does that mean you can’t catch it from blood?” Nathan asked.

  “You can’t catch it from red blood cells, but there are a whole host of other constituents in blood that the infection can use to multiply.” Doctor Robertson took a swig of her wine and looked at the red liquid as if it were a sample. “We’ve found out lots of useful things about the contagion, but very little we can implement in the field. At that point we stopped trying to simply eradicate it and switched to mapping the parameters of its abilities.”

  “A wholly unproductive approach,” Warden criticized.

  Doctor Robertson set her glass down on the table. “The approach is a sound one. If we know how it works, we’ll have a better idea of how to stop it.”

  “How does it work?” Sarah asked.

  “The infected cells metabolise like a yeast. We know that it provides some protection to the cells that they inhabit, probably as a way of securing its survivability which is most obvious in freezing.”

  “The ethanol,” Sarah said.

  Doctor Robertson nodded. “Most probably.”

  “Yeah, each winter those things would freeze solid,” Nathan said. “We used to leave the warehouse and gather up supplies when that happened.” He nudged Jennifer. “Remember all those Christmases we would go out with the baseball bats and smash their heads in?”

  Nathan pretended his fork was a miniature bat which he swung at his beer bottle in lieu of a demonstration. The bottle reverberated with a low clunk as the metal fork struck. Jennifer giggled at both Nathan’s actions and the fun they’d had during their winter respite.

  “No matter how many we destroyed, when the thaw came more would come,” Sarah added.

  “Yes, we have frozen cells down to minus eighty and when they were thawed they were still viable carriers of the contagion,” Doctor Robertson said. “Whatever it is it stops the cell from bursting, so yes, come thaw the infected just start moving again.”

  “It does sound like a space plague to me!” Nathan pushed.

  “Some say it was a genetically engineered weapon,” Captain Warden added.

  “A plague from space, the wrath of God. Some mad scientist’s demented solution to overpopulation or CO2 emissions. Take your pick. In the early days, Doctors Moody and Greatshell even proposed it was a panacea gone wrong.” Doctor Robertson shook her head and snorted.

  “What’s a panacea?” Jennifer asked.

  Sarah could see that Nathan was as keen on an answer as Jennifer.

  “A cure all, like penicillin plus. The way that the contagion breathes life into the lifeless and maintains the cell integrity.”

  “Could it have been man made?” Sarah asked.

  “Definitely not,” Doctor Robertson replied, adamantly. “If it were, then it would be a manipulation of known agents. Since we can’t isolate the contagion to analyse it then it would be inconceivable that it could have been produced in a lab. After all, if we can’t isolate it, how would the people who created it have been able to work with it? The whole idea is ludicrous. My personal opinion? I believe that the virus is a recent mutation. Something which doesn’t have its regular reservoir in man.”

  “What do you mean, like the flu?” Sarah said.

  “One hell of a cold,” Captain Warden commented.

  The door to the dining room opened and in came three ratings. The Captain nodded to them and they began to clear away the empty dishes.

  “Yes, like the flu,” Doctor Robertson answered over the sound of crockery. “The natural population for the flu v
irus is in birds, but if it mutates it can cross species sometimes with truly catastrophic effects.”

  “The nineteen eighteen virus killed millions,” Sarah said, glancing across at Doctor Robertson for conformation. “It’s like Aids or E-bola. They started in primates and jumped to humans.”

  “But the flu doesn’t make corpses walk around biting folk!” Captain Warden protested.

  Doctor Robertson did well to keep Warden’s glibness from riling her. “No, that’s very true and again an interesting effect of the contagion. Only humans are resurrected, not even our cousins the great apes. Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orang-utans… all of them just die. For years I was an antivivisectionist—even supported PETA—but when the shit hit the fan we slaughtered thousands of animals trying to find answers. God knows we killed a lot of apes in the early days, trying to find out why it only propagated in humans.” She leaned into the table to draw closer to Sarah. “You see, most contagions and parasites have a life cycle which promotes or even controls their propagation. Some, like this one, even control their host.”

  Captain Warden looked at Nathan and then back at Doctor Robertson, “Now, Doctor, I think you’ve lost all of us.”

  The point hadn’t been lost on Sarah, though. “You mean like toxoplasmosis,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s a very good example,” Doctor Robertson replied, the high note in her tone giving away how impressed she was with the new arrival. Seeing that the rest of her audience did not share Sarah’s level of astuteness, she explained, “Toxoplasma gondii needs to jump species as part of its life cycle. It needs to get into a cat’s intestines to reproduce. The disease is picked up from cat faeces and can affect mammals or birds. It used to be thought that the disease was harmless to all but the most vulnerable; the elderly, pregnant women and people with a suppressed immune system. But what we found out was that it increases dopamine production and reduces reaction times. The end result is that animals like rats or mice take more risks, are slower to act and are easier for cats to catch.”

  “That means that the cat catches the toxic...” Jennifer struggled with the new word.

  “Toxoplasmosis,” Sarah said.

  “Exactly. Thereby continuing the Toxoplasma gondii,” Doctor Robertson added.

  Captain Warden objected, “That’s nonsense, Doctor, and even if it were true, it wouldn’t affect a higher life form like us!”

  A dry smile broke out on Doctor Robertson’s lips. She had cornered him. “Wouldn’t it? A study before the Rising showed that seventy percent of people killed in traffic accidents in North America had the Toxoplasma gondii in their bloodstream.”

  She sat back in her chair, savouring her intellectual victory over the pigheaded Captain.

  “So the virus makes the dead person wander about biting?” Nathan’s voice held both scepticism and curiosity.

  “In a nutshell, yes. The change in the host’s cells function coupled with the lack of aerobic action gives them the energy to move. Animals don’t eat the corpses and bacterial action is retarded, so really only weather wears them down, meaning they could remain active for decades.”

  “But if they’re dead how do they know to bite, and if they know that much why not other things, like who they are?” Captain Warden countered.

  “Even normally there is brain activity for up to a month after death,” Doctor Robertson elaborated. “Not cognition. Not thought you understand. The reanimates only show the crudest of intelligence.”

  Nathan added his thoughts: “Too right. I stood on the other side of a chain link fence once and at least a dozen W.D.’s walked up to it and just stood there clawing the air even though it was only twenty yards long. They could have walked round and got me if they’d had any sense. Dumb as chickens, the lot of them.”

  “And there’s the point, Nathan,” Doctor Robertson said. “These reanimates only possess the most rudimentary intelligence. Only the innate—not the learnt.”

  “Like chickens?” Nathan asked, surprised that he had grasped the concept.

  “When a baby is born, if you support it up by its armpits it will try to walk. When it sees its mother it will stretch its arms out to grasp on. When it is presented with the breast it latches on. None of these are learnt behaviours; all of them we are born with. Like the reanimates, all they retain is the primordial drives.”

  “To bite people,” Nathan said.

  “Exactly,” Doctor Robertson replied.

  “So where is the walking death’s natural reservoir?” Sarah asked.

  Dr. Robertson pushed a short puff of breath out of her nostrils and her eyelashes fluttered as if she were embarrassed. “That I don’t know. We just don’t have the resources to pursue that avenue at the moment. I doubt it’s in mammals, because in every one of our studies they died from the infection. It can’t be anything humans have regular contact with, because if it were we would have seen similar types of infection before.”

  “If we don’t know where it comes from, how are we to eradicate it?” Sarah asked.

  Dr. Robertson started to answer, but at that moment the door flew open, almost knocking the crockery from a seaman’s hands.

  The whole table looked round to see who had entered with such gusto. Standing in the doorway in an immaculate dark blue suit was Professor Cutler. The deep blue was contrasted by his crisp white shirt and complimented by a maroon satin tie.

  Sarah suddenly felt underdressed in the jeans and shirt that had been found for her in the ship’s stores.

  “Professor Cutler, so glad you could finally join us,” Captain Warden said with a bitter edge.

  Again Doctor Robertson tried to deflect the Captain’s antagonism. “Sarah here is one of the survivors I was telling you about,” she said. “She was just asking how we could eliminate the contagion’s reservoir.”

  Professor Cutler took a couple of long strides and pulled out his chair. “What we do is we find a vaccine,” he said. As he sat down he tossed the folder across the table. When they landed with a thump, he explained, “Captain, the report you asked for.

  “A vaccination?” the Captain said, without even touching the report so indignantly delivered to him.

  Professor Cutler lent back, tipping his chair onto two legs. “Garçon,” he demanded, snapping his fingers at one of the ensigns clearing the plates. “I’ll have what they had. It smelt divine.” He was oblivious to the cutting look from the Captain. “Oh, and see if you can’t find a medium white wine.” He looked across the table at the little girl opposite him. “Red wine with fish and a white sauce?” He clicked his tongue and shook his head.

  “This was the crucial work that Professor Cutler was working on this morning,” Doctor Robertson said. She wondered if the reminder of this afternoon’s altercation with the Captain would placate or infuriate him.

  Captain Warden waved his hand over the abandoned report. “What does this mean, in real terms?”

  Sarah’s eyes were wide as the curiosity and excitement grasped her. She blurted, “Does this mean that if you’ve had the vaccination you won’t turn into one of them?”

  “Exactly!” Professor Cutler answered.

  Dr. Robertson was quick to add, “That’s the theory. We’ve yet to run human trials, but the results from the cultures indicate that—”

  Professor Cutler placed a hand on Dr. Robertson’s shoulder. “Doctor Robertson is both cautious and modest. There is no reason to suppose this won’t work outside the lab. In real terms, Captain, if your men were to be inoculated, then wounds sustained from the infected would no longer be fatal. You would treat bite wounds as you would any other. Furthermore, the contagion would be prevented from spreading.”

  “It’s not the cure we were sent out to research, but it’s a start,” Captain Warden said.

  “Start?!” Professor Cutler slammed both his fists onto the table. “Start?! You imbecile, you have in your hands the most important medical breakthrough in the history of mankind and you treat it like a common
headache tablet!” He stood up, pushing his chair over. “My work could very well be the salvation of humanity!”

  Dr. Robertson took hold of Cutler’s hand and stood up more sedately than her colleague.

  “Pearls before swine, Captain!” Professor Cutler spat out.

  “Professor Cutler,” Doctor Robertson said in a soft, appeasing tone, “let’s just give the Captain time to absorb the significance of this. In the meantime, let’s go back to the lab and work on synthesizing the vaccine.”

  Again the door to the dining room burst open and in rushed Commander Patterson.

  “Captain!” Patterson announced. “Idris has just commandeered the helicopter!”

  “What?!”

  “Get in here, marine,” Patterson said.

  Into the room came a sheepish-looking Bates.

  “Bates says he was going back to the mainland for the rest of the team,” Patterson explained.

  “Did no one tell him there’s a storm coming?” the Captain asked.

  “I informed him myself, sir,” Patterson said. “Told him to stand down on the op until the storm had passed.”

  “And how do you know where he’s going, Private Bates?” Captain Warden asked.

  “He told me, sir,” Bates admitted.

  Captain Warden lent forward. “He told you?!”

  “Yes, sir,” Bates replied, trying to sound meek.

  “And what,” Warden bellowed, “did you do about it, Private Bates?!”

  “Nothing, sir?” Bates replied.

  Patterson interjected, “One of the deck dogs saw the two of them loading the chopper.”

  “Nothing?” Captain Warden asked again, this time more inquisitively. The question had changed from why didn’t you stop him to why did you help him.

  “Well, almost nothing,” Bates said in way of a defence. “I just helped him carry some ammo, sir.”

  “Did you try at all to stop him?”

  “Well, not really, sir.”

  “Not really? Not really?! You just gave him a hand and waved him goodbye?! What the hell were you thinking?!” Warden slapped his hand down on the table, making it jump.