‘Several medical sources from Rojas claimed that the longer the infection was within a patient, the more likely they were to exhibit so-called “aberrant behaviour”. Other studies say aberrations occur immediately after the patient has succumbed. In any case, the subject we have here is one such aberration. I’d like you to run some tests on it, Nurse Cox. Nothing beyond your expertise, I assure you. Though I understand if the same cannot be said for your comfort.’
I swallowed hard. ‘I’ll be fine. Let’s see him.’
‘It.’ Dr Lines corrected me. ‘It will no longer do, to see the subject as a person. What was the patient is now gone, stripped away to the fundaments and replaced by viral agents.’
‘I…understand doctor. This is just my first time with an infected. I’ll try to view them objectively. Dispassionately.’ I added. Dr Lines gave me another approving nod before pulling the curtain open.
The subject had been male before infection, late thirties, or early forties. It had been stripped of clothing and was covered by a loose sheet. The skin had taken on a greyish tint and the subject’s wrists and ankles were bound to the hospital bed’s hard plastic rails with padded restraints. A gag made from the same leather and padding was firmly secured around the subject’s mouth.
‘Was the subject’s hair shaved prior to infection? Or did it fall out as a result of their…aberrant properties?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s a recent change. We will be removing the subject’s entire brain for study later today. A shame really. It would have been valuable to hold the subject to see if any other aberrant behaviours occurred, to try and test the theory that they develop over time, and see how many one subject can exhibit if that is the case. I shall have to find a new subject at Mercy.’
‘What are these aberrations anyway?’ I asked.
‘The common infected exhibits common symptoms. No response to pain, no communication, a cannibalistic desire, and an attraction to light and sound. Aberrant infected exhibit additional behaviours not common to the majority of the infected. This one, the soldiers have taken to calling a “screamer” – we suspect its role in the viral cycle is to attract any infected toward the uninfected.’
I looked back down at the struggling, thrashing form, screaming wordlessly into the gag. Its eyes were locked on me.
‘Seems an apt name. You said you wanted me to run some tests then?’
‘Yes, but before you begin, I need to run over some confirmed findings with you. Take you top to bottom through what we know of the infected so far.’
‘I’m well-read on the information I’ve been given, doctor.’ I assured him.
He tutted. ‘Then you grasp the most basic concepts of what we’re dealing with here. I need you to be more than well-read, Nurse Cox. I need you to be of use to me. I assumed you’d read the primer, and was going to take you beyond the crude basics.’
I smoothed down my ruffled feathers. ‘As you wish. Should I take notes?’ I asked, an edge of sarcasm leaking in. It either went undetected, ignored, or possibly even appreciated. It’s harder to read someone’s face behind a surgical mask, but I thought I detected a faint smiling crease around his eyes.
‘It won’t be necessary. I will need you to compare readings from our aberrant subject here, with our common subject in the next bed. I’m looking for pupil responses, reflex rate, grip strength, lung capacity and blood pressure. Now, what do we know about the infected heart?’
‘The entire circulatory system of the infected is shut down in the final stages of incubation. The heart is non-functional.’ I answered, feeling like I was back in a med school lecture.
‘In typical human of course, this would be quite swiftly fatal. In the infected, this is all part of the virus. Once the heart has done its job, circulating blood infused with necrotic toxins and viral agents amidst the body, it shuts down. It is no longer required. Now, despite the higher functions of the brain having been starved of oxygen, lower brain functions are still present.
‘Electrical impulses are still active in the fully infected, though not as efficient as they would be in an uninfected human. This results in jerky motions and loss of fine motor control. There have been reports of faster-moving infected, to which we have several theories, none of them concrete. Avoidance of rigour mortis, unusually efficient neurotransmitters, or even simply being more physically active prior to infection are all possibilities.’
‘So you want me to test if this aberration has any physical differences to the common infected, rather than this just being a behavioural change?’
‘Precisely. I understand that the difference in size, age and gender between the two patients, and our limited testing pool, make for a poor experiment. But at this point, with so little to go on, I’ll take any data we can get.’
I walked over to the rolling trolley in my pull-over booties and began setting out equipment on the tray. I’d need a penlight for the pupillary response tests, and there was an electronic spirometer in the top drawer – essentially a mouthpiece linked via cable to something about the size of an old answering machine.
As I prepared a similar looking device attached to an inflatable cuff, I considered how I’d go about testing the rest of Dr Lines’ suggested metrics.
‘It’ll be difficult to give them any kind of reflex testing if they’re not cooperative. I can’t get them to sit right for the patellar test, and I don’t imagine they’ll be interested in gripping a dynamometer for me.’
‘I had considered that, but failed to find any adequate solutions. Both patients are restrained, and make vague grasping motions when someone draws near. I doubt the data gathered from these will be in any way conclusive, yet I feel as if we must attempt it.’ Dr Lines said encouragingly, as he watched me setting out the equipment.
‘How would you like me to record the data, doctor?’ I asked, looking about for something to write with.
‘One moment,’ he said, striding over to the lab bench to retrieve one of the laptops. He brought it over, setting it atop another trolley. ‘Tell me your readings, and I shall record them on here. The spirometer should transmit wirelessly, but I always find it safer to have it read aloud as well – I don’t want this hospital’s poor signal to skew any already questionable data. Though I must admit, I do find a certain rustic charm in this kind of field research.’
‘Understood.’ I said, turning a blind ear to any implications my hospital was “rustic”.
I closed the curtains to block out interference from daylight, while Dr Lines opened the ones around the next bed, the one containing the common infected. It was slighter than the screamer, shorter, and had been female prior to infection. It still had its hair but had also been stripped, restrained, covered with a sheet – and muzzled. I picked up the penlight, turned off the overheads, and got to work.
Dr Lines and I chatted during the examination, sharing our experience in our relative medical trades between calling out results and comparisons. He wasn’t a bad sort really. He thought he was better than you because of his PhDs, but didn’t hold it against you. Despite being told of his diva-hood, I found him to be decent enough work company, and was assured I was doing a fine job.
Soon, the muffled screams of the subject were just background noise, and no longer had the unsettling effect they had before. The unfortunates beneath me were just something to be tested and examined, not something that’d once been a person.
The infected seemed to respond the same to light as a normal person would, and as each other. This stood to reason. The infected were known to be attracted to bright lights, most likely as human beings surround themselves with light, the infected using this to home in on potential meals.
There was no suitable way to test their physical reflexes, but the improvised method of grip testing yielded some results - simply getting near them and sticking the dynamometer grip in their flexing palms. It wasn’t perfect, but it seemed their grips were stronger than the average person.
I suggested to t
he Doc that without functional pain receptors, they could push their body beyond safe tolerances without the adrenaline usually required for humans to achieve the same.
The old story of a mother lifting a car off her child was an example of extreme adrenaline in action, pushing the body way beyond the usual limitations for a very limited period of time. The infected seemed to exceed these safe tolerances by a small but not inconsiderable margin, but presumably, lacked the ability to draw on the extreme adrenal response, otherwise they’d have tugged so hard on the restraints that the rails themselves would have torn from the bed.
Apparently that tallied with a theory he’d been working on, and we took a break to look at some cell slides. I didn’t understand all of what he said, but in my basic understanding, the cells of the infected seem more resistant to mundane damage than the uninfected.
We’re not talking bullets and explosions, but general wear and tear. So while their blood doesn’t pump and cells can’t regrow or repair, those cells are tougher to begin with, and require less of the maintenance ours do. Dr Lines said an infected subject might be able to walk non-stop for days on end without suffering any damage.
‘Do you know much about their rate of decay?’ I asked him.
‘Slowed, dramatically, due to the cell resistance factor,’ he answered with a hand wave, ‘the scent that they give off primarily comes from the necrotic tissue around the point of infection. As you’ll know from your primer, the necrosis spreads around the body to accelerate incubation, giving them a certain post-mortem odour quicker than you’d expect. The spread of necrosis is then halted by their own cell resistance – yet the odour may remain, perhaps indefinitely.’
He took a moment to ponder, adjusting his glasses. ‘It’s quite remarkable, really. I think the odour is part of what helps the infected identify potential targets, and not consume their own. There were even reports, unconfirmed as so much is with this virus, that subjects having reached the cold sweating stage are ignored by the fully infected.’
‘That does remind me of another question I have. I can understand scenarios where a person is bitten, but gets away to spread the virus. But as numbers of infected grow, surely the chances of surviving an encounter with several of them are slim? That can’t account for the rapid growth in infected numbers.’
‘Indeed, it cannot. I must admit I am at something of a loss to explain how their numbers grew so quickly. We do know that if the brain isn’t destroyed, a person who dies carrying the virus will be back on their feet again, given time. I believe that the infected’s preference for living tissue is so when a victim has expired, they seek out another instead of completely devouring the remains of the first. How the virus is then able to move through the body without a functioning circulatory system is beyond me, and yet the evidence remains. Perhaps by some kind of osmosis?’
‘That does sound a little far-fetched...’ I said with an uncertain half-shrug.
‘Thirty years ago, mobile phones were just props in science fiction movies. Twenty years ago, who knew we’d be able to cure most forms of cancer? Think of what science will reveal to us tomorrow.’ He said with a vague air of recitation, and a hint of pride.
‘How is progress on a cure?’ I asked, changing the subject perhaps not to familiar ground, but more a more productive one. ‘I’m assuming, given everything I’ve learned today, that it’s actually impossible – or at least unlikely.’
‘You’d be quite right,’ Dr Lines said, looking down at his laptop screen, ‘once the virus has altered the body, I don’t see any way it can be changed back. By the standards of human as we know it, the infected are dead, and until we can cure death, we cannot cure this virus. An early treatment, or some kind of vaccination. Those would seem to be the only options to me. Alas, I fear we may be a ways off that yet. This will be our era’s great plague, I think.’
‘I feel it’ll be worse than that.’ I said. ‘At least plague victims couldn’t move from their beds by the end stage. Once this virus has incubated, it wants to be spread, and uses the victim as an engine to do so. They’re like monsters from some horror film, or as you said, science fiction.’
‘I fear you are correct, if a little melodramatic. Still. All the more reason we find out how the infected differ from us, and each other. If we can identify the weaknesses of these un-dead aberrations, we stand a chance of weathering this epidemic.’
‘Do you…’ I began to ask, but hesitated. Dr Lines’ attention was focused on me however, so I felt I had to finish the thought. ‘Do you think we’ll have to kill them?’
He nodded, but it was an uncertain thing, a frowning, hesitant motion. ‘To avoid panic, a lot of the information we have about the infected was kept secret. Their cannibalistic desires, their lack of functioning circulatory system. The Rojas government similarly didn’t want to spread panic, or appear weak to their neighbours. This lack of information sharing has helped, I’m certain, to spread the plague.
‘But to answer your question…I believe we may have to. We cannot store the infected indefinitely, and they pose a significant risk. As for the practicality of the deed itself, how to kill the infected…enough bullets should do the trick. They’re human, after all.
‘While a shot in the heart might not stop them outright, enough trauma to the centre mass should put the poor sods down. Shooting in the head also seems to be effective, as you’d expect, though it’s a much harder target – everyone trained to use a gun is taught to fire for the centre mass. So our men haven’t been aiming for the head specifically, in circumstances where they’ve needed to fire their weapons. I do understand why you ask.’ Dr Lines added. ‘I was concerned myself, given the nature of our experiments here.’
He gestured for me to follow him over to the doors we’d come through, where a small black case lay closed but unlatched on another rolling trolley. He picked it up, and opened it out for me. I’m not one for guns, but the pistol within looked perfectly capable of ending lives.
The uneasiness redoubled in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was the gun reminding me how dangerous the infected were, or just the fact there was a gun here specifically for suicide.
‘Neither of us have signed consent forms to have our bodies used in this research. So if I should be bitten during the course of our work here, first you will attempt amputation.’ He said, so calmly, ‘If that fails, I will expect you to shoot me in the back of the head, most assuredly destroying my cerebellum and spinal cord. I will of course, do the same for you.’
‘I didn’t ask you to…’
‘Nurse Cox, you don’t have to.’
Six
Dr Lines and I broke for “lunch” at around four. We’d recorded all of our data on his laptop, documenting our findings as best we could, given the circumstances and improvised nature of some of the tests. There didn’t seem to be much appreciable difference between the aberrant undead and the typical specimen, at least, nothing that couldn’t be attributed to their differing pre-infection physiology.
While we’d worked quite well together, I felt I’d been away from my corner of the hospital for too long. When Dr Lines asked if I’d join him in the canteen for our late lunch, help him plan the next phase of experiments, I politely declined. I needed to catch up with news in the A&E.
‘I’ll call down there in an hour, when I’m ready to begin the next phase,’ he said, ‘I’d like to get some MRI scans while we still have the subjects intact, after which, you can assist me in autopsy. I hope to test how much trauma the infected can take prior to expiry, and after, see if the aberration has any physical mutations that might explain how it can maintain the near-constant screaming.’
I wasn’t looking forward to it – the stink of the infected, their constant state of agitation, I’m sure they were factors in why I hadn’t gotten hungry until now. If I was present to crack one of those things open, I don’t think I’d ever eat again.
On the other hand, the CDC bigwig was in need of an assistant, and i
f I could get a reference from him… that would look very promising on my résumé – help me open a few doors. Ward sister, maybe? Or something in the CDC? I bet that’d pay better, and if I was looking to get a house with Kelly soon, more money would be nice.
I returned to the first floor and the airlock, throwing my overalls, mask, gloves and booties into the disposal bin, before washing my hands and forearms again. When I left the airlock, two different guards were on duty, or I’d have told them their Diva Doctor wasn’t quite as bad as all that.
Through the glass walls of the foyer, I could see most of the police and Sydow Sec vehicles had left the parking lot. That gave me pause. I turned back to the guards on the door, still one officer, one mercenary, and hooked a thumb towards the parking lot.
‘What happened? Where’d everybody go?’
‘You haven’t heard?’ the cop raised an eyebrow, ‘Last couple hours have been crazy. Senate have dissolved Parliament until further notice, and all the senators have started pulling in different directions. Nobody knows what’s going on.’
‘But what about the soldiers here?’ I asked the mercenary.
The man gave a somewhat uneasy shrug. ‘We’re staying for now. Captain Hale says we can’t just up sticks, not with Dr Lines running his research here. We’re going to hold the hospital. At least, until the captain runs out of excuses, or Dr Lines moves on to Mercy.’
‘He’s disobeying orders by being here?’
‘Technically he’s packing up equipment,’ the soldier said, ‘but that’s command bullshit. It’s just stalling tactics.’
‘We’re in a bind too,’ the cop said, nodding along, ‘our precinct’s captain has gone missing, and nobody’s giving orders now, too worried about who has the authority. So we’re sticking around too. Just a shame the deserters took most of the cars with them.’
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 5