by Glynn James
He spoke with emphasis, and then paused significantly. He put his glass down on the lab bench, rose, and began pacing up and down before the enclosures.
“Of course,” he said, gesturing with one hand, the other stroking his goatee, “the bugs massively outnumber us on this ancient blue planet. And that’s putting it mildly. The ratio is perhaps a million trillion to one. They’ve got us beat on longevity, too: single- and multi-celled bacteria have been going strong for 3.5 billion years – versus, at most, 200,000 for our own species. And, while they may seem primitive to us, in fact they have been subject to evolutionary pressures for exactly as long as we have. It is simply that they are perfectly evolved for what they do.”
He stopped pacing, looked up from his chin-stroking, and pointed at one of the zombies. “Yes, you in the back. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to learn all your names. Give me until the midterm of the Apokalipsis…” He nodded and looked thoughtful. “Yes, that’s correct – much like the great white shark. Ah, very funny, yes – ‘All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks.’ Jaws, 1975. A classic.”
He resumed pacing.
“But the film is classic because its concerns are so primal! We are hard-wired by evolution to be afraid of large predators – because we spent most of our evolutionary history running from them. Yes, you up front…? Ah, that’s a good observation – perhaps we are after all fairly well evolved for the current environment. But, to my mind… it is not the zombies, the predators, who are dangerous. It is the pathogens that are the real serial killers. And when we say pathogens what we really mean is – the bugs!”
He turned and paced back in the other direction. “But we will come back to that. For now, we know that the bugs outnumber us massively on the planet. But, in fact, they even outnumber us in our own bodies. Can you imagine that? Can anyone here answer the following question: of the hundred trillion cells inside your clothing right now, how many of them share your DNA? That is, how many of them are actually you? Yes, okay, bad example, all of you are pretty much naked, and almost none of your cells have your DNA, because they’ve all been killed or hijacked by the zombie virus…”
Reaching the bench again, he picked up his heavy-bottomed glass, swirled the ice around, and knocked back some of the melt. “But a living person, me for instance. Anyone? No? Okay. Of the hundred trillion cells inside my clothing right now, only ten trillion are me. No, it’s true! One in ten. What are the other ninety percent? They are bacteria… viruses… fungi. Mites in my eyelashes. Microscopic worms. Macroscopic worms. Symbionts, in a word: single- and multi-celled microbes, none of which share my DNA.”
He looked up. “Yes, yes, it’s totally horrifying, I know. Reality so often is.” He paused to run his fingers through his spiky hair. “Now, we are mostly us by weight and volume, so that is something. But there still may be as much as ten pounds of foreign cells in and on our bodies. So, then, back to the bugs, and to the evil they do…”
He stepped forward again and peered through the plexiglas. Yes, the second zombie, the one closest to the initial host, was now definitely quaking and moving in unpredictable patterns. As Aliyev watched, the first one buckled and fell, as the MZ overtook him.
Now it lay on the floor, showing what in meningitis circles is called “Kernig’s sign” – its thigh bent at both hip and knee, and at violent ninety-degree angles. As Aliyev leaned forward and watched, it now began “opisthotonus” – a spasm of the whole body that quickly led to its legs and head being bent back and its body bowed backward.
Soon it would be dead. Really dead.
But Aliyev had known that was coming. It was the other two, still on their feet, that were of interest now – and whether they would be infected and killed by the first one. He paused and drew a steadying breath, and squinted at those two.
“Excuse me for just one moment,” he said. And he walked himself out of the lab and back into the living area to refresh his drink.
However this played out, he was going to need it.
Last Dead Man Standing
The Kazakh’s Dacha, Altai Mountains
Returning to the lab, Aliyev immediately resumed pacing.
Gesturing grandly now, he said, “In the years since humans developed the germ theory of disease, we have learned something critical. We have learned that almost all human illnesses are the result of microbial infection.”
He turned and paced back in the other direction.
“And this understanding changed everything! Once we knew it was the bugs that were killing us, human lifespan more than doubled, in just the last 150 years. And this was due to very basic shit like decent sanitation and public hygiene – covered sewers, indoor plumbing, clean water. Doctors washing their hands between the morgue and the delivery ward. And the invention of penicillin and other antibiotics, which have saved more lives than any other invention in human history. But…”
He turned to face his class and soliloquized, his Slavic-accented voice deep and resonant. “All that success made us forget what was still out there, lurking. We call them diseases – but of course what they are is bugs! Great legions of disease-causing microscopic creatures, thundering across the face of the Earth, in numbers, and variety, that we can scarcely imagine.”
He paused to swill his Scotch.
“Bugs! And when they successfully invade our flesh and begin to eat us, damaging or destroying our systems, we call them diseases. They go by the names of AIDS, anthrax, pneumonia – but all are actually bugs. Typhus, influenza, hepatitis – bugs. Botulism, simply a bug.”
He pointed at one of the dead guys.
“Yes, yes, sexually transmitted diseases as well – herpes, chlamydia, syphilis, HPV – all bugs! I could go on and on: cholera, malaria, yellow fever. The common cold. Diphtheria, leprosy, meningitis. Rabies, SARS, TB. Yes, yes, those, too. All simply bugs.”
He paced away again, shaking his head.
“And, before the end, infections were also suspected as the cause of a quarter of all cancers, as well as cardiovascular disease, developmental problems in children, neurological diseases, autoimmune disorders. Even heart disease and Alzheimer’s were suspected of having bacterial infections as their primary cause. Everything we didn’t yet understand – I all but guarantee you they were infections by bugs we hadn’t been able to find under the microscope yet.”
Now he stopped, turned, and arched his eyebrow. “And if this is true, do you know what it would mean? Heart disease ultimately killed half of all people in developed countries. Bubonic plague never accomplished anything nearly as impressive.”
Aliyev’s face was now flushed – from the Scotch, or from overexcitement. He paused for breath, and to drain his drink, and then concluded.
“And if heart disease, plus most cancers, were really caused by bacterial or viral infections… it would mean that massive plagues were still on. That they had never really stopped. It would mean that we had never been out of the time of plagues. Not even for one minute.”
He exhaled heavily. “Excuse me again,” he said, and headed back to the bar for another refill. As he walked, and then poured, he couldn’t prevent himself from thinking:
It would also mean that what happened WASN’T MY FAULT.
If it was all already happening, if the bugs were always going to get us in the end – if they were already getting us – then what Aliyev had done didn’t matter.
And it would mean that if it hadn’t been my creation, he thought, slugging down the entire refilled glass, slamming it down, and then refilling it again, it fucking well would been somebody else’s – or, much more likely, one of Mother Nature’s. For about five minutes there, I was smart enough to beat Mother Nature – that glorious, horrible, psychopathic bitch… I beat her to just one punch, pulled a fast one, slipped a single trick on her.
He hung his head, staring down at the bar top.
But fuck her. If it hadn’t been me who took down humanity, it would have been somebody else
. And if it wasn’t somebody else, it was already her.
It was always her.
Turning to leave, he reached back – and took the bottle with him.
* * *
Stepping back into the lab, Aliyev saw that the first test subject, the one on the floor, had ceased moving entirely. He looked to his two remaining students, both of whom were moving erratically now.
He nodded seriously at them. “Yes – yes, of course, there were a few genetically caused diseases, as well as some caused by non-infectious environmental factors, like toxins and radiation. But not very many, really – and I believe fewer than generally believed. Why? Well, because genetic causation of disease is implausible on the face of it. Any gene that caused serious disease would disappear from the gene pool in just a few generations. The people who didn’t have the defect would survive and reproduce at a higher rate than the ones who did. That’s the whole point of evolution.”
Aliyev slightly hazily watched as the second test subject hit the deck now, bending at impossible angles, and going into full-body spasms.
He nodded to the last dead man standing.
“But bugs – bugs make sense, particularly to explain long-running chronic diseases. Why? Because it’s always an evolutionary arms race. Between us, or rather our immune systems, and them. We up our defenses, they find a way around. And these sons of bitches evolve fast. What made us so vain as to think we could stay ahead of them forever?”
He didn’t add: Never mind with us dabbling in bioweapons and genetic engineering of superbugs.
“And not to mention with the profusion of livestock all over the world, as hundreds of millions joined the middle class, and wanted meat with every meal.”
He paused again and pointed.
“Hell, yes, I was a vegetarian. Not a popular choice in the Kazakh community. But I knew too much. Those filthy barns and pig pens were basically big breeding labs for fabulously deadly new microbes.”
He paused to sip from his glass.
“Here’s a pet theory of mine, one I bet you’ve never heard. I personally believe that the microbes on Earth have bred a race of creatures, namely us, that really like to drink.” He paused to regard his freshened Scotch, admiring its lovely amber color in the glass.
“How so? Well, since alcohol is anti-microbial, that is to say, deadly to germs, humans who drank that instead of water would die at a much lower rate from waterborne pathogens – which, prior to industrial water treatment and purification, were ubiquitous. And so the booze hounds would proliferate, out-surviving and out-reproducing the water-drinkers. Alcoholism may actually be an adaptation. Yes, that would mean the bugs on this planet have bred an entire race of booze hounds. Ain’t evolution a bitch?”
Aliyev swirled his drink.
“And it’s the same for coffee and tea. Because boiled water is much safer than the unboiled kind. Have you noticed how virtually every human society, and probably everyone you know – or, okay, used to know – drank coffee or tea, or both?”
He turned and regarded the half-empty bottle of Scotch on the lab counter. He tried to decide whether he was hungry.
“Bugs also explain the universality of cooked food. Cooking with fire or high heat is really fucking good at killing germs. And when food goes bad, and starts giving us food poisoning? Yes! It’s simply because the bugs have started eating it before we did. That’s all. Why do you think meat goes bad so much quicker than anything else? No damned immune system! The bugs have been trying to eat it all along. The immune system was just holding them off.”
He put his hand against the plexiglas to steady himself. The last standing corpse inside, no longer seeming as if it had much hunger itself, nor much energy left, pressed its hand up against Aliyev’s on the other side of the glass. Aliyev looked it in the eye, from only a few inches away.
“And when dead bodies decompose in nature… it’s just the bacteria getting a free meal. Trust me, they wouldn’t wait – they’d be doing it to you already, while you’re alive, if your immune systems went down for five minutes. Okay, once again, bad example with you, who have no immune systems. But your cells are already so diseased and foul that even the bacteria evidently want nothing to do with you…”
Aliyev paused to consider another refill. But he needed his wits at least marginally about him. Because, right now, the final results of his eighteen months of research and pathogen design were playing out before his eyes. The two on the floor had ceased moving entirely. And the last one was moving erratically now, winding down. Aliyev turned his back to the enclosures, and spoke to the empty lab.
“I’ll take it further,” he said, his words slurring slightly, his vision going in and out of focus. “Religion itself may have come about because of the bugs… or at the very least thrived because of them. You know, all that crap about cleanliness being next to godliness… and food taboos, no mixing meat with dairy, no pork, careful ritual killing of livestock… cleanliness and purity taboos. Always with the purity. All that sounds carefully designed to keep religion’s adherents from succumbing to microbial infection.”
Aliyev wobbled, and struggled to right himself.
“But, hell, you can be as devout as you like. The bugs will just keep coming back, keep invading, keep trying to infect us. It never ends… Okay, yes, well, it obviously did end. When the fucking bugs finally won.”
He didn’t add that they had needed a little extra boost from genetic engineering, not to mention violent religious extremism, in the form of Islamist terrorists planning a bio-terror attack. But with that, Aliyev turned again to the enclosures, and worked to focus his vision.
All three of the dead were on the ground now. All twelve limbs were bent at outrageous angles. And none were moving any longer.
And now Oleg Aliyev, PhD, took on a whole new mantle. He had already become Death, destroyer of worlds.
But now… now he could even kill Death itself.
He wandered back to the living area, stumbled down into the sunken area, and collapsed on the big leather couch.
And Aliyev did not sleep the sleep of the just.
But his dreams were no longer stalked by the billions of people he had killed.
Now it was he who stalked them.
Putting the Damage In
JFK - Angle Deck
LCDR Cole, Commander of the carrier’s Air Group (CAG), sat swaddled in the familiar womb of his cockpit, using biofeedback techniques to get his breathing and heart rate under control. No matter how many times he did this, a carrier launch never became routine. He was about to be catapulted across the deck and into space, accelerating to 160mph in less than two seconds – with a rocket engine strapped to his groin, high-explosive missiles on his arms, and a fire-breathing Gatling gun between his teeth.
This shit just never got old.
And it never stopped spiking his adrenaline up into a range not available in any other human activity.
He peered over his digital instrument suite and out through the cockpit glass, off to the starboard side – where he could see their Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) helo rising up to the deck on an aircraft elevator. This was one of only two Seahawk helicopters the JFK had left flying.
CSAR was the province of some exquisitely skilled pilots and crew, plus their rescue swimmers, who were even now geared up and loaded aboard that big, sleek, gunmetal-gray Sikorsky SH-60. The CSAR bird was made ready and put on the flight line any time they launched fixed-wing aircraft – ready to swoop in and recover downed fliers who ejected over the ocean, or over enemy territory. These crews spent half their lives training, and the other half tooled up, engines idling, waiting for something to go wrong.
It rarely did.
This was because F-35 pilots were the biggest badasses over the ocean, or anywhere in the sky. They were all but unkillable.
Cole, the all-conquering CAG, shifted his gaze back over to the absurdly short runway before him, and then onto the Aircraft Director standing nearby – who n
ow saluted, touched the deck at his feet, and pointed off down the angle deck. The control lights at the deck edge went green, and all his aircraft systems showed nominal.
Cole fired the engine up to its full thrust, a noise like being run over by ten long freight trains, crescendoing to an unbelievable level, and not falling off. The Iron Man suit vibrated around him, he and the aircraft acting as symbionts, each impotent without the other. But taken together, they comprised a high-tech chimera that was the fastest and most agile aircraft (if not most lethal – the Apache probably had that distinction) ever to prowl the skies.
The catapult officer’s flag went down, and Cole and his rocket suit took off through the wormhole.
His body’s physiological reactions were nearly instantaneous. Everything blurred to darkness outside the center pinhole of his vision, as his retinas were starved of oxygen. His heart went into overdrive, pumping like mad to keep blood flowing to his extremities, and his brain in particular. His organs pressed against the back of his ribcage as he and the aircraft passed through nine Gs – an outrageous force equal to nine times the normal pull of gravity. The only thing that kept him from shouting out loud in terror and ecstasy was inability to open his mouth or exhale.
The plane didn’t even drop off the end of the deck, as it was already climbing and accelerating into the sky. It had that much power.
Cole watched the blue sky and bluer ocean twist around him as he rolled it over to see the Kennedy shrink to model-ship size below him – and he could already see his wingman launching, seconds behind him. He wouldn’t have long to wait to form up.
The brown edge of land came even with his right wing as he turned north, every twitch of Cole’s extremities causing the plane to respond instantly, and with perfect fidelity. It also had more power than he could ever use – enough to put it on its ass and take him straight out of the atmosphere, if he ever decided he was done with Earth.