by Hetzer, Paul
“Don’t tell me you people did this to us,” Dontela cut in.
Steven frowned at her and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t us, it wasn’t anybody. Maybe it was God. Maybe this is the biblical Armageddon. From a scientific point it was a lot simpler than that, and also a lot more complicated.” He took another swig of water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The two new girls were quiet and watching him intently.
“We were the virus’ reservoir. This sickness came from our own DNA. From a piece of it that long ago was an active virus and had lain dormant for who knows how many millennia. Ever since DNA sequencing was made possible, we have known about these fragments that we called fossil viruses. As far as I know they have never caused a problem before. Usually the longer they are encoded in our DNA the more likely a mutation has changed them. I’m talking about over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. The chances of a fossil virus reactivating during transcription would be about the same chance of someone winning the lottery every time they played it. It simply wasn’t realistic. At least, so we thought.”
He looked sharply at Katherine. “The people who said that the meteor shower from the comet caused this are probably correct to an extent. The organic molecules that rained down on us that night from the comet coated the planet,” he paused briefly and looked them both in the eyes, “and us. I believe that the organic molecules were absorbed into all of our bodies, probably through respiration. They ended up causing a specific change in our DNA that repaired the damaged section of this specific fossil virus code, allowing it to be reactivated. A virus is more or less genetic material, in this case a single-negative-stranded RNA surrounded by a protein coat. They are intracellular parasites that can only replicate within a cell. I called this virus The Zombie Virus from the way it came back to life. We would have developed a more official designation for it as we identified its characteristics, yet no one was left to complain and really, the name was fitting for this virus.
“The reason all of us here didn’t get sick was because somewhere in our past we had incorporated enough mutations down our genetic lineage that the virus couldn’t reactivate. However, the majority of the population, across the globe, became instantly infected. At the facility that I worked in we had protocols and procedures for outbreaks, even major ones, dealing with how to try and contain them. Immunizations— if they are available for certain viral outbreaks— are a major line of defense, especially for horizontal spread. Quarantine of infected areas and individuals is the other major line of defense. However, as I said, this was unprecedented. We had no protocol to follow when ninety percent or more of our staff was already infected. No procedure to guide us when the majority of the world’s population was sick with a viral infection. This was an unforeseen and unwinnable war against a very insidious disease. Those of us left could only be reactive and not proactive.”
Steven took a deep breath and shook his head as the images of those days flashed through his mind. “Everything was collapsing around us, still, we stayed on to try and tackle this the only way we knew how; by getting to work and solving the mystery of this crisis. It cost me so much, but I was able to stay and study the virus, to unravel it. In the end I was the last one left alive.
“I was able to isolate and take pictures of the virus. When I viewed the electron micrographs I recognized the bullet-shaped virion immediately as a derivative of the rabies virus, a type of lyssavirus. Only, I think this virus is much more ancient. Its protein markers were different enough that it didn’t react to any of the known rabies vaccines that I tried.
“Since I abandoned the lab, I’ve been playing with the parts of the puzzle in my mind, piecing them together and trying to develop a clearer picture of what happened, and what is happening. I don’t know how familiar you are with how our body’s immune response works, but it’s something you need to understand and is an important piece to this puzzle. When a foreign body, like a virus, invades our bodies, they initiate a series of defensive responses. Basically it is kind of like sic’ing the bloodhounds on the virus, where the bloodhounds are our immune system’s response. The viral antigen is the scent left on an object, in this case our cell, after a crime, which would be the viral infection, has taken place. The hounds track down any object with this scent and tree it and begin braying— that is, to produce and bind an antibody to it to alert the hunters, the T-cells, to where the prey is treed. The hunters then come in and kill the trapped prey, by inducing cell death. The hounds now remember this scent and can initiate a proactive response the next time that specific scent is detected.
“Viral titers showed the incredible number of virions that were being produced, again unprecedented. The Zombie Virus produced a virion load in numbers an order of magnitude above the identified lyssaviruses. You figure we have roughly a hundred trillion cells making up our body, maybe a billion of those cells are targeted by this virus, producing thousands of progeny per cell. It simply overwhelmed the innate response of our immune system with sheer numbers, resulting in a chronic infection of the host. Our bodies couldn’t produce enough RNA interface to degrade the viral material or antibodies to bind and deactivate them, or even T-cells to destroy them. There were no antibodies being produced since there was no adaptive immune response; the virus was free to continue its production unhindered within our cells. This was probably because no surface antigens were being expressed on the membrane of infected cells to flag their presence. The Zombie Virus was hiding from some of our immune defenses in plain sight, while it simply out produced our innate response. On top of all that, no memory cells are produced to give us or our progeny any inherent immunity. It literally cut the nose off of the bloodhounds!
“It really is the perfect virus. It had the shortest incubation period we’ve ever seen or even imagined and becomes highly communicable through blood and saliva. It infected in such numbers that our immune response was always a step behind. It didn’t kill us as hosts; however, it caused a behavioral change by degrading certain areas of our brain. The aggressive biting behavior we see in the Loonies causes them to infect more hosts, turning the human race into a perpetual factory for the Zombie Virus.”
Everyone was quiet after he finished speaking; the only noise was the crackling and popping of the fire.
“What do we do? How do we cure it?” Katherine asked.
Steven shrugged. “There is no cure for those infected. Their damage is already done. The only way to treat the symptoms of this disease is with a bullet.” He sighed deeply and hugged Kera closer to him. “I think there are two ways we will be able to defeat this if we can survive as a species. One is to develop an immunization or anti-viral medication that targets the Zombie Virus and inoculate every living uninfected human being on the planet, or else we have to kill every damn one of the infected!”
“Why wouldn’t we be able to survive as a species?” Dontela asked in a subdued voice.
Steven shrugged again. “Because I’m not sure it’s possible.” He stared at them both hard from across the fire. “I don’t know how many uninfected are left. I don’t know what the lowest threshold for our species is. That’s the point where our numbers drop too far for us to ever viably recover to a growing, or even stable, breeding population. For all I know we may well have already fallen below that threshold.”
“Can you guess how many of us are left?” Dontela asked.
“From the primary infection, sure, I could guess. The problem is the secondary infection and those outright killed by the Loonies. I just don’t know.”
“Try?” from Katherine.
Steven paused thoughtfully, staring at the fire as if the bright plasma of flame was some mystical looking glass that could supply the answers they all sought. “Let’s be conservative and say that we had a 90% primary infection rate. So for every 100 people, 90 can be presumed infected. We had roughly 314 million people in the good ‘ol U.S. of A., and slightly over 7 billion worldwide. Mortality rates from actual infectio
n were probably very low if there were any at all. This was not a lethal virus in those terms. So after the primary spontaneous infection we were perhaps left with roughly 700 million people uninfected worldwide and about 31 million here in the States. The last time the world population was at the number was around the mid-1700’s. For the States, we saw a population of 31 million about the time the Civil War ended, 1865 or so. So it’s a big hit, although nothing that we couldn’t have recovered from, if those populations were mostly centrally located.”
“The world would probably be better off with that amount of people on it.” Katherine interjected, nodding her head as she said it.
Steven gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re probably correct, unless it’s your loved one that is crazy with the infection. Then it becomes much harder to justify that rationale.”
Both Katherine and Dontela nodded knowingly.
“I didn’t realize there were that many people left at first,” Kera said, speaking for the first time since she had sat down at the fire.
“Many didn’t last long. However, it’s why we’re all here together, and why we’ll hopefully find more as we travel.” Steven took another long drink from the water bottle, finishing it off. “This brings us to what will be total conjecture on my part. Out of the eight people I knew who didn’t show signs of primary infection, including myself, only three of us are still healthy. That’s a 63% mortality rate. Most people were not as prepared as we were, so I imagine we can add another 15% to that for most of the population. It probably is a lot more for some areas, especially cities and dense urban areas. So let’s say we be conservative again and say 80% for the secondary infection and mortalities.” He paused, doing the math in his head. “Worldwide, that brings the population down to near 140 million souls who are still uninfected with the Zombie Virus. I think the last time we had a world population that low was somewhere between 200 and 500 B.C. Here in the U.S. of A., that leaves 6 million Americans still thinking and breathing. I think that census wouldn’t have been seen here since around 1800. Now it may be a lot better than that, or a lot worse. One thing for certain is that with the collapse of our society, and those across the globe, those numbers are going to get a lot worse before they start climbing again, if ever. We are going to be looking at starvation, murders, real plagues, and other diseases long thought vanquished making horrible comebacks. Plus there will always be the unrelenting threat from the huge numbers of Loonies that are out there.”
“How many of them M-80s you think are out there?
Steven looked at Dontela. “It’s simple math. Six million Americans left from 314 million? That means that there are roughly 300 million of those monsters still breathing our air. Worldwide, there are close to 7 billion of them.”
“Six million doesn’t sound too bad for us here in the States.” Kera said hopefully.
“If they were spread out evenly that would average out to about three people for every two square miles. Unfortunately, most of those people are, or were, in the large cities and their surrounding suburbs. Out here in the rural areas you would probably be lucky to find one person in ten square miles.”
“Well shouldn’t we be headin’ to the cities to find more survivors if that’s where most of them are going to be?” Dontela asked.
Steven smiled, amused at the suggestion. “Don’t forget that that is where you’ll find the Loonies in numbers of about one thousand for every one survivor. Whoever stayed in the cities and suburbs has a very low probability of survival by now, I imagine.”
“So what do we do?” asked Katherine shrilly. “Do we merely live out here in the woods like animals? What do we eat? How do we stay warm?” She covered her face with her hands as tears started to flow.
“No. We buck up and survive. Keep moving and kill as many of those damn creatures as we can!” Kera hissed at the weeping girl. She removed Steven’s arm from around her shoulder and stood up, staring down at the two girls who stared back at her wide-eyed. “We’ve all lost a fucking lot to this disease. You can sit here and wring your hands and cry about everything you lost while you wait for those things to find you and tear you apart or turn you into one of them. I ain’t going to do that. My man and I are going to be hitting that road as soon as we can. We’re going to find someplace where we can be safe until we figure out what the next step needs to be. You either step up and tell yourself that you will do whatever it takes to survive, or we’ll kick you to the curb because you’ll be nothing except a liability to us all!” Kera spun away and stomped off out of the firelight.
Steven excused himself and went after her.
Katherine watched them go with her mouth hanging open, her white face even paler than normal.
Dontela laughed. “I really like that girl.”
Katherine stared at her aghast. “She threatened to leave us out here to die.”
“She already saved your sorry ass once. This isn’t no sorority-party, girl. She saying you need to grow a pair if you want to live to see your next birthday.” Dontela smiled lopsidedly. “I agree with her. I plan on surviving.”
Steven caught up with Kera at the edge of the camp.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded without looking up, trying to hide tears that welled up in her eyes and threatened to overflow down her cheek.
“She reminds me of Amanda,” she said, swiping her eyes with the palms of her hands. “I miss her a lot.”
She looked up at Steven with her large blue eyes shining wetly. “I don’t want to see the same thing happen to them that happened to Amanda… or Holly.”
Steven winced, then nodded his head. “I know. I don’t either. We can’t afford to lose anyone anymore, yet they’ve managed to stay alive all this time somehow. That at least shows they are survivors”
They kissed quietly, their lips lingering on each other before drawing away. He took her hand and led her back to the fire, and they resumed their seats on the log. Katherine was no longer crying, just staring blankly into the crackling fire while Dontela fed more logs onto it. The darkness in the woods surrounding them was thick and impenetrable, the light from the fire barely holding it back.
“Do you want to tell us your stories?” Steven asked after a bit.
“How about you finish your story first? You know, how you got from an Army lab in Maryland to saving our asses,” Dontela replied, crossing her arms across her chest. Katherine stirred the fire with a stick and nodded at the suggestion.
So Steven related the horrors of his flight from the facility and he and his family from the rural, yet densely populated area of Southern Maryland. He told them of the important contents of his pack that he had carried from the facility and how hopefully one day it could be used to help develop a vaccine. He told them about finding Frank, Amanda, and Kera, about them being separated from his son and Frank, and the subsequent loss of his wife Holly, the pain apparently still raw. How they had found Frank infected and had to put him down and the news from an old couple that his son was still alive and well and headed to the family farm in Southwestern Virginia. He told of the narrow escapes and slow progress that he and Kera had endured while trying to find his boy. He explained how they had come across this camp and how he was adamant that they bypass it and how Kera had charged ahead to rescue the girls without him.
“One thing I learned through this whole nightmare since it began in July,” Steven sighed, “is that you can be the best prepared people in the world and circumstances still can overcome all your preps and take from you everything if you let down your guard for one moment.”
They sat around in silence absorbing everything Steven had related to them, feeling very alone in the world even as they looked to each other for companionship.
Katherine spoke first, her voice barely above a whisper. “I was a sorority girl at UVA like Dontela said, the Zeta Xi chapter of Alpha Delta Pi. It was summer, so there weren’t a lot of students on campus. Our house is out with the Rugby Row Fraternities, one of t
wo sororities packed in with the fraternity houses. It was a great location. I was there setting up for the first year students’ orientation along with two of my sorority sisters. A bunch of the students who were there for the summer wanted to throw a big party that night. We decided to do it at our sorority house.” She laughed. “We called it ‘Party with the Stars’ due to all the shooting stars that we were supposed to be able to see later that night. Everybody came. It was packed with undergrads, grad students, some of the locals, and a couple of professors. It was a huge blowout.”
“I was there,” chimed in Dontela, her inner-city dialogue disappearing as she got serious. “I hadn’t met Katy yet. Don’t even know if I saw her that night since there were so many people there. I was a biology major taking some summer courses in math that I needed. Plus my boyfriend Shawn was there. He was a grad student working as a summer intern for his professor. Good excuse for me to be at UVA for the summer taking classes.” She paused, her face sad with the memories. “We were supposed to get married in a year when he was handed his degree. ‘Course, he’s gone now.” She pressed the thought down somewhere deep inside her and took a deep breath. “He talked me into going to the party since he was a Frat guy in his undergraduate days. I wasn’t much of a partier but he was all about going so I agreed. The party had about the level of immaturity that I expected and Shawn did his thing with his old frat buddies and was barely able to walk by the time the light show started.” Her eyes grew distant. “When the shooting stars started falling and dominated that sky, I had a foreboding feeling that something bad was going to happen. It just seemed like the whole night was bad mojo to me.