by Amber Wyatt
The cameraman had filmed the ensuing horror through the viewing window. The footage of Cordeiro lifting the tiny, wriggling bodies of baby after baby up to his dripping red mouth had had a salutary effect upon the congressmen gathered for the early morning session to discuss the possibility of quarantine. The footage had finished as the hideously disfigured zombie nurse had stood up next to Cordeiro and they had both started to smash their hands against the reinforced glass to try and get at the cameraman.
The outbreak at the Galleria Mall had claimed the lives of seventy-three people. The infected casualty brought by ambulance to the ER had bitten not just Cordeiro but another two nurses immediately afterwards. The ensuing outbreak at the hospital had claimed another twenty-eight lives and resulted in the destruction of the ER, the neo-natal unit and the Infectious Diseases clinic and laboratory.
Indika was the sole surviving member of Cordeiro’s team within the quarantine zone, and his laptop at the bottom of his backpack contained the only surviving research information regarding the Lyssavirus. A week after the Galleria Incident he had been invited to head up the new Infectious Diseases Research Center. Heartbroken and numb, Indika had accepted with one condition which was granted. All the bodies of the infected had been bagged and placed in frozen storage to be used later for scientific research. Except for Jenney and Brad. They were carefully placed in the morgue in a specially sealed, refrigerated container to which no one had access, other than Indika himself.
Indika looked at the photo on his office wall for a moment more. It had been a bright, sunny day when he had taken the photo. Jenney was laughing, wearing a Disney tourist cap with Mickey Mouse ears, and Brad’s face was almost split in half with a huge grin, as he wore his new green jacket and held the biggest ice cream cone he had ever seen.
He turned back to his laptop. There was a great deal to discuss with Major Shepard at the meeting that afternoon, and he wanted to have it all down in a slide show to make it as clear as possible. He had plenty of work to do.
Chapter Ten
The Briefing
The boardroom was warm, and the air smelled stale as the men filed in one by one. Taylor flicked on the lights and turned on the air-conditioning, while Indika settled himself at the end of the polished walnut table and opened his laptop. Shepard and Vockler sat down side by side, facing the main screen and took out pads of paper from their folders to jot down notes. Indika noticed that they each already had several questions for him, written down on the top page of each pad. Taylor quickly shuffled over and sat next to Indika, opening up his own laptop on the table in front of him.
“First of all, I want to stress that this briefing is not a comprehensive explanation of the infected phenomenon.” Indika paused momentarily looking at both men in turn. “It is a very brief summary of the characteristics of these creatures which I believe are most relevant to you and your men in direct combat. Obviously, you have far greater experience in this area than I, so please do ask questions throughout, since undoubtedly you will think of other relevant factors which I may have inadvertently missed.”
“We’re all ears, Doctor, please go ahead. Myself and Lieutenant Vockler will ask questions on each point if we need to clarify anything or if we need more detail.” Shepard answered. He waved his pen at the questions on his note pad. “These can wait until the end, if you haven’t already answered them during the course of your briefing.”
“In that case, I will begin.” Indika tapped his keyboard and the projector on the ceiling powered up, illuminating the large screen on the wall with his first slide. “These topics are in no particular order of importance. We will just go through them one by one, and then I will give you a copy of this presentation for you to use when you brief your troops.” His rich, deep voice was warm and familiar, filling the room as comfortably as if he were a professor lecturing his favorite students.
Shepard nodded to him to proceed, and Indika smiled before continuing his presentation.
“So, let us start with physical characteristics.” A picture of an unremarkable woman appeared on the screen. “The infected look like us. No extra limbs, fangs, claws,” Indika smiled to show he was joking, “no change in skin color, no rotting flesh. Do not expect them to resemble the typical media portrayal of so-called ‘zombies’. They look exactly as they did at the moment that they were infected. If you are observing suspected infected from a distance, there is no real way to positively identify them from physical appearance alone. You will have to rely on behavioral differences which, fortunately, are obvious once you know what to look for.”
Indika paused in case they wanted to ask questions, but there were none. Both the soldiers were listening attentively, totally focused on everything Indika was saying. The only sound in the room was the humming of the air-conditioner and the occasional scratch of a pencil as Shepard made notes.
“They do not react to normal stimuli, and therefore the most obvious way to identify an infected that has not seen you first, is that they will remain absolutely motionless. Like statues. They do not scan their surroundings, they do not shift their weight from foot to foot, they do not wander or roam around. They will stand absolutely still in one spot for days, weeks, months. They do not tire so they do not attempt to sit or lie down to rest. If they are prone, for whatever reason,” Indika shrugged his shoulders, “maybe blown over during a storm? They will simply lie there with weeds growing over them until someone disturbs them.”
Both soldiers started speaking at the same time, looked at each other and Vockler nodded to Shepard to continue.
“So they don’t need to eat or drink? Don’t they forage around for food and water?”
“No. I won’t bore you with the long, microbiological explanation, but no, they do not need to eat or drink. The exact mechanism of their energy pathway is still a subject of ongoing research.”
“You don’t know,” said Vockler, smiling to show he was not trying to be critical.
“We don’t know,” Indika smiled back at the young officer. “And your question was?”
“Well at first I was going to ask how the infected react if they have seen you, but I guess the answer is pretty obvious. They’re swarming all over you.”
A flash of emotion flickered across Indika’s face, gone almost as quickly as it came.
“Exactly.”
“But I suppose my real question is that you mentioned the term ‘normal’ stimuli. That means they do react to some stimuli, correct? So, what exactly?”
“Prey,” the edges of Indika’s mouth were still upturned, but somehow at the same time he was no longer smiling. “The sight or sound of anything that might be prey. And when I say ‘prey’ I refer specifically to uninfected humans. They do not react at all to anything else. Not any other animals, any other movement, nor any other noises such as you might find in nature.”
Indika brought up his next slide which showed a dissected human head.
“Which brings me neatly to the next topic, their sensory ability.”
Both the soldiers leaned forward to focus on what Indika was pointing out on the screen.
“The infected still rely upon the same sensory organs as we do, albeit slightly altered. If an infected has damage to its ear structures, it cannot hear. If its eyes are damaged, it cannot see.”
“How do you mean their sensory organs are slightly altered?”
“All infected become dehydrated. To an extent that an uninfected human would be seriously unwell. This means that their eyeballs shrink slightly, and light passing through the lens is focused behind the retina rather than on it. Thus, they become hypermetropic. Longsighted,” Indika clarified. “Of course, this is a significant, predatory advantage for them. They see better at longer distances than the humans whom they hunt, and some changes to their rods and cones mean that they can also see far better in the dark than we can. They probably would have extreme difficulty reading emails, but clearly they manage to get by somehow,” he added wryly.
“And hearing? Smell?” asked Shepard.
“Hearing is significantly inferior compared to normal humans. We believe that some stiffening of the membrane in the middle ear is the cause of this. Their sense of smell appears to be unchanged, and once again they react only to the scent of live, uninfected humans.”
“Okay,” Shepard said, “so basic summary of senses is… no change in smell, worse hearing, better vision, is that basically it?”
“Very concisely put, Major. Yes, that is correct. And before we move on from their sensory abilities, there is one last thing. At extremely close range, say within a couple of feet, some of the infected, even with all of their sensory organs removed, still seem to be able to detect live prey. We believe it is similar to sharks and other marine animals being able to sense the electromagnetic field around other living creatures. But obviously those animals have specialized organs to detect this field, and humans have no similar analog which performs this function, so it is still a mystery to us how they do this.”
The two officers dutifully scribbled down notes, and Indika waited patiently as they finished.
“What about their other physical characteristics? Endurance? Strength? We have just been practicing unarmed sparring against Specimen 47 and he seems very strong for his size.” Shepard and Vockler exchanged meaningful glances. Strong was an understatement. When Shepard had first started grappling with the infected, he had been appalled at its power and speed. The creature had spent an hour throwing him and his men all over the training hall without any apparent difficulty.
“Examination of muscle tissue and ligaments shows no statistically significant changes, even down to cellular level. Their muscles are, I suppose, slightly leaner and denser, and comprise a much higher than normal proportion of fast-twitch fibers, similar to chimpanzees,” Indika admitted reluctantly, “but the increase in strength you have noticed is also likely due to the fact that the infected have no inhibitions at all.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Vockler asked, mystified. “Inhibitions?”
Indika looked puzzled for a second. Then his face cleared. “Oh, I see why it sounds confusing. I mean physical inhibitions. No pain, no fatigue. None of us ever use the full potential of our muscular systems. We perform almost every action by applying the appropriate amount of force according to the task at hand, whether we are wielding a hammer or cradling a fragile egg, and we modify this force through instantaneous feedback from our sense of touch.” Indika lifted his laptop up and placed it down gently by way of demonstration. “The Infected do not do this. They execute every movement with one hundred per cent of the available strength in their limbs. All the time. Every time. A normal human would limit themselves because they would feel muscular pain, even bruising to their hands, damage to their skin. The infected do not feel anything, or if they do, they do not care. The ramifications of this for you are that the energy and force they apply to every task can appear to give them the strength of at least twice that of a normal human. And with the slight difference in muscle fiber composition, possibly even more.”
The two military officers nodded, writing notes on their pads. That made things a lot clearer. Most of the soldiers had been taken by surprise by the ferocity and strength of Specimen 47. If it had not been for the lack of teeth and the full-face motor cycle helmet they had placed on the infected’s head, it was clear that the overwhelming majority of its first attacks would have resulted in successful bites on the Lazarus troops.
“And to add to the already long list of things we have yet to understand about the infected,” Indika continued, “their muscles do not get damaged. Human muscle fibers become damaged through even normal daily use and then are remodeled and become stronger. Infected muscles simply never become damaged. It appears to be part of this overall ‘zombification’ process. I am sorry, I hate the word,” Indika’s mouth twisted sourly, “but one of the researchers coined the phrase and it seems to have stuck. It is as if some switch we do not understand has been flicked off, which stops all normal biological processes in their bodies. They do not bleed, in fact they have no circulation at all; they do not breathe, they do not decompose, none of the billions of symbiotic bacteria within their bodies is active…”
“They don’t have any circulation?” Shepard asked.
“Yes, that is what I said, and no, don’t ask me to explain it. Suffice it to say that for your purposes, if you engage an infected in combat, any of your traditional methods for taking down an enemy are likely to be useless if they rely on causing major damage to organs or causing your opponent to bleed out. The only thing that seems to affect them is damage to the brain.”
“So even if we shoot them multiple times to the heart, lungs, throat…” Vockler’s voice died off as Indika shook his head.
“No. They will just keep attacking until they receive trauma to the brain. However,” Indika held up a finger, “and this is important. It doesn’t need to be a great deal of damage. In fact, one does not even have to penetrate the skull. Simply delivering the same amount of kinetic energy to the head, which would knock out a normal human, will deactivate an infected specimen.”
The two officers looked at him questioningly again.
“I use the term ‘deactivate’ instead of ‘kill’. It is a more accurate term to describe what happens to the infected when they receive damage to the brain, since,” Indika smiled at the two men, “I think we are all well beyond pretending to believe this pleasant fiction that these creatures are still alive and suffering from an unknown disease. I still use the term ‘infected’ in my reports to DARPA since that is what General White insists on, but it is no more than a convention of language now. A convenient label if you will.”
“Well, yes,” Shepard replied, as he and Vockler exchanged a look. “That did seem obvious, after the first few days of dealing with them.”
“Their bodies are dead or something very close to it… a state of non-life if you will, yet somehow all biological processes are in stasis, including decomposition. The only thing active about the infected is when we measure brain activity via EEG, we do get a very strange reading. It is nothing like normal human brain patterns, which focus and flow through different parts of the brain, it is more like a uniform field of low-level electrical activity throughout all of the brain tissue. Very low,” Indika swept his hand smoothly across the table in a gesture to show just how low. “Quite similar to plant life, actually. But let us not digress any further into just how alien the infected biology is, or we will be here all night. To return to the topic of how this knowledge will help you in combat; significant blunt trauma to the outside of the skull will deactivate this field, ‘killing’ the infected. And if you do penetrate the skull, virtually any level of damage to the brain will deactivate them. Even very low levels of damage which would be perfectly survivable for a normal person. It would help you to imagine the field as a bubble which you can pop almost just by touching it.”
Vockler scribbled down the information dutifully down in his notes, but the calm expression on his face hid the sour thoughts that were swirling around just behind them. None of the information from this briefing would be useful for what General White wanted to achieve with Project Lazarus. Only he knew the secret reason behind the general’s obsession with the Lyssavirus and the potential it represented to create invulnerable soldiers.
Three years previously Captain Jason White, the general’s son, had been serving in Afghanistan when he had been blown up by an IED. Blinded and with both his legs blown off, he had bled to death in the arms of his best friend, Lieutenant Martin Vockler.
Jason’s death had devastated both White and Vockler, and since then, the old man had been on a personal crusade to improve soldier survivability on the battlefield. So, when the general had got in touch to ask him to take part in the project, Vockler had leapt at the chance. The fact that there were ethical queries about the whole undertaking did not bother him in the slightest.
“Um… yes, that is correct, Taylor,” Indika carried on after an awkward silence in which it was apparent that the rotund scientist had nothing further to add. “Their blood does not circulate but at the same time it has not coagulated. It is still liquid but it does not pool with gravity, as is the case with corpses for example, nor does it appear to serve any function as far as we have been able to determine so far.”
“So, if they are injured and bleed out this does not affect them at all?” Vockler asked.
“Not at all,” confirmed Indika. “Although the nervous system still seems to play some role. If an infected suffers a spinal injury, it is paralyzed below the level of that injury just as a human would be. And there is no magical mumbo jumbo at work here. Severed limbs are inanimate and will not crawl around after you, as if in some bad horror movie.”
They all dutifully laughed at his little joke, although from the slightly forced smiles of the two military men, it was obvious that if they had not considered the possibility before, they were certainly thinking about it now.
“Oh, and it occurs to me, Lieutenant Vockler, your question about shots to the heart and throat is valid, since presumably you and your men may still instinctively aim at those targets. Gunshot wounds to the central axis of the body that damage the spinal cord will still knock down infected. Damage to the neck especially will totally paralyze them, but your troops should be aware that if they get close enough, the head will still try and bite them.”