John nodded “Normal humans have something called a blood brain barrier.”
Emma of course knew this all too well.
“It is a bunch of tight junctions around capillaries that stop the diffusion of bacteria and large molecules from entering the CSF. The mutated virus absolutely destroys that, which is why by the way you had that awesome seizure before passing out after I bit you.”
A wandering passerby gave John a weird look before heading in to the bathroom.
“Anyway, Mary’s spinal fluid was polluted which at first he took to mean she was dying. It took him a while to realize the same sort of stasis had been created in the spinal fluid that he would expect in normal blood. White blood cells polluting the fluid were killing bacteria and in fact everything seemed rosy apart from a complete lack of Serotonin and ummm several other chemicals. I really am no biologist,” John confessed.
I would never have guessed Emma thought, uncharitably.
“That lack was what was causing his wife problems – Derek knew it in an instant - so he slammed shut his laptop, left the office and rushed home without saying a word to anyone.”
“When he got there he found Mary crying hysterically on the floor of their son’s room, a bloody V of arterial blood sprayed up the wall over little John’s bed.”
“John?” asked Emma.
“It is a common name,” he answered. “Rest assured, I am not the dead child, some ghost here to haunt you.”
“It wasn’t Mary’s fault. When you run out of Serotonin, nothing will matter to you except bashing people open for their brains. No matter how strong or smart you are the need is complete, it will happen. It would be like holding your breath underwater until you die of asphyxiation. Eventually everyone will take that deep inhale of burning water.”
“Our brains no longer make serotonin or any of the chemicals critical to survival. On the other hand, feed your addiction properly and you could live forever – healing to perfect condition every time your body needs to.”
“Mary of course was never quite the same, she remembered every detail of biting madly into her own son’s head. Felt his blood pump over her face and yet still she cracked open his skull and ate. Slowly all those chemicals she needed worked their insidious way into her bloodstream and brain and she began to regain control.”
“Derek forgave her - he had done this to her, crippled her with an addiction much more debilitating and dangerous than any drug on the black market. Yeah he forgave her but he never forgave himself. He buried himself even deeper in his work, looking for a virus to fix the changes his Mutated Derek Virus had done to her.”
“That’s how their next two years went - every morning, an injection of his CSF. He was making some progress, slowly working out what had to be altered. Until the car crash that is.”
“It was a cold February Saturday morning” he started.
“Rain from the previous day had frozen overnight and provided slick conditions. Derek and Mary were taking a drive to a local coffee shop while talking about work. They had recently started doing more stuff together again. It was too early to say they had forgiven themselves for their son’s death but they were at least coming to terms with it.”
Looking over from Mary, Derek moved cautiously out and across a four-way stop. Then his world exploded as he was knocked unconscious by slamming his head against his door frame.
“A delivery van had t-boned him on the driver side.”
The car skidded sideways on the ice until his tires took grip and the car vaulted and rolled one and a half revolutions before coming to rest on the roof.
“Good solid van it was too, older model, steel frame. An unaltered human would not have survived; Derek’s head was still cracked open, his brain exposed when the emergency services arrived. Mary – who had not borne the brunt of the collision – was already completely healed and awake. And hysterical for her stricken husband. The police and emergency services had to peel her away from the vehicle, and it took three of them. They were big, or it would have taken more.”
* * * * *
Slowly, Derek opened his eyes. In his stupor it took him a moment to realize he had even done so.
Eyes focusing, he saw a big window opposite. A bunch of flowers fought for his left hand peripheral vision and slowly he turned his head to look at them.
“Get well soon” they proclaimed. I was sick? Derek blearily thought. Like a tidal wave, the car crash came back to him. Mary! He quickly raised his hand to his head and was rewarded with a swell of dizziness and little else. His skin was smooth beneath his hand, completely unblemished. The only telltale sign of anything untoward was a long patch of shaved scalp.
What about Mary though? She didn’t have the pure form of his virus – there had already been differences, side effects. Was she okay? Did she heal? How Derek wished they had experimented to check.
His brain tried to grasp how long he had been out but in his haze he failed to find any clues. The missing stripe of hair – had he needed stitches? It might have been a nasty gash and a concussion but wouldn’t they have kept him awake in that case? How long would that take to heal? He thought, again rubbing his perfectly smooth temple. With no frame of reference, he did not know. He had not sustained a serious wound since he had performed the experiment.
At that moment a nurse walked by and Derek called frantically for her. Middle aged and frumpy, she showed her disapproval for his lack of decorum by looking down her nostrils at him.
“What is it Mr. Jones?”
They knew his name so they must also know he was a doctor. Derek ignored the slight. People like this ignored titles only when it suited them.
“How long have I been here, where is my wife, is she okay?” There was a subtle but audible sigh.
“Your wife is fine; she escaped the accident completely unhurt.” Her tone suggested that miracles like this should not happen to the undeserving, such as Derek. “You have been here for five days. As to where your wife is,” she looked even further down her nose “I could not say, I am not her keeper. She was here for the first few days but I have not seen her recently.”
The disapproval of Mary’s disappearance must be the cause of her attitude Derek decided as the news settled like a lead weight into his stomach. Nodding he settled back into the bed and his thoughts. Peripherally, he watched as the nurse left.
Mary is squeamish thought Derek. There is no way she could have brought herself to draw off some of my CSF while I slept. She has gone the better part of a week without Serotonin.
Instantaneously making his mind up, Derek stood up. The expected wave or nausea, dizziness or pain never came. Resolve set, he quickly found his clothes and put them on.
* * * * *
The cab pulled up to his house and instantly, Derek knew something was wrong. It was the middle of the morning and all the curtains were shut – something Mary would never tolerate. Getting out he quickly paid the cabbie too much money and started walking up the driveway.
Get a shower and change of clothes then go out and hunt for Mary he thought to himself. Where could she have gone? Looking up at the house he was struck with his love for the place, this house was his sanctum from the world. A bit further out of town than most people would have liked, the peace and lack of immediate neighbors were absolute musts for him. Mary had originally been a “live in the city” kind of girl but she had quickly converted. It took longer to get home each day but when you were there you didn’t worry about noisy neighbors or walking around the house naked.
She would never voluntarily abandon the place he thought, even more scared for his wife than before.
Hand shaking, he could barely marry his key with the lock. After a few seconds of fumbling he used his left hand to steady his right and finally pushed it home. The door opened with a creak he never remembered it having.
Immediately in front of him the hallway went for 1
0 feet, ending in a wall with a door in the middle, with the hallway making a 90 degree turn to the right. In the slightly waning mid afternoon light Derek could see plainly a large smear of blood on the wall.
“Mary!” Derek choked out the word and ran forward the only concern being his wife. Reaching the doorway, he burst through the door and was rewarded with nothing out of the ordinary. Going back into the hall he looked now to the left and saw the smear of blood continue after a few feet then move to the floor. There were spots everywhere, like a dog had shook furiously after taking a bath, but all of them were red.
All the doors to the hall were closed and it was quite dark – the dark hallway had always been a pet peeve about the house and now it became a very real fear. He darted back into the previously explored living room and came back out with a hammer, discarded untidily after a recent project to fix the bookcase. Hefting it, he pressed his back to the wall – the one without blood – and sidled down the hallway. The spots of blood lessened as he crab walked - back still sliding along the wall - down the hallway. He could still follow the trail to the last door on the right. His son’s old room.
Derek slowly opened the door to see Mary sitting on their son’s old bed. Two barely recognizable bodies were piled in a corner, while Mary cradled lovingly the bloody carcass of a child. She looked up at Derek as he entered a hopeful expression in her eyes.
“Derek I found him!” she said “I found our John!”
* * * * *
“There is a point at the base of the skull where you can pull with these wonderful new muscles.” John gripped Emma’s forearm and felt the corded wiry muscles beneath the surface.
“You jab your fingers in,” he made the jabbing motion, palm upwards “Severs the spinal cord, you hook your fingers under the base and pull. It sounds grim,” he admitted, seeing the look on Emma’s face. “Mary had performed nothing that genteel on the two smashed bodies. Driven mad by her hunger, she had clawed at them, bitten them, smashed them. You know what it reminds me of? Someone trying to open a can of beans with no can opener.”
* * * * *
Dried blood and more was all over her face, the false light of hope made her face momentarily beatific.
Derek dropped to his knees and held his wife. He was suddenly aware that although she was still the same shape as she had been when he first met her, she was now solid as granite - a corded mass of muscle and dense bone. He gently took the child’s hand and looked up into his Mary’s eyes.
“Mary,” he said “Is that… are those people his family?” he was making a devil’s bargain inside his head - knowing that if they were, he might be able to bury them all and hide his wife’s guilt. If they weren’t the child’s family, the best Mary could probably hope for was some form of insanity defense. Looking around the room, he suspected a judge would see it his way.
“What are you talking about silly?” she answered “We are his family.” Derek felt his heart break in two.
“No sweetheart,” he heard himself say “This isn’t our John. Where are his real parents? I have to take him home before they worry about him.”
Mary was not budging. “Stop playing around Derek, you will hurt John’s feelings.”
“That isn’t John,” he repeated.
“Yes he i-“
“NO HE ISN’T,” Derek yelled. He hated himself for it. Momentary recognition fled across Mary’s face from wherever she had buried it. “Where are his parent’s Mary?” he asked again.
“I don’t-“
“Where are they!” he spoke, roughly.
“They’re,” her gaze flicked to the two corpses in the corner “Gone.”
At least that was one worry gone. If no-one could trace them here maybe he would have a chance. He could bury them in the woods not far from here, maybe Mary wouldn’t have to go to jail. She hadn’t meant to do it after all, it was her body defying her, making her mad.
“Can I take him please Mary? I have to hide these bodies.”
Her madness instantly returned. Derek suspected it would take a while for the chemicals to work their way fully through her bloodstream and into her brain.
“No!” she screamed “You can’t take my John!”
“He’s dead, Mary,” Derek replied, compassion making his voice crack. God he wished it could be their son, and that he wasn’t dead.
“No! No!”
It was then that the boy started to convulse, just as Mary had done two years previously.
* * * * *
Despite her earlier protestations, Emma was really getting in to the story - which made the ringing of her phone all the more abrupt.
Local Area Code, with a prefix belonging to the university – it must be from Dan and the CDC. She made the universal ‘Just One Second’ motion to John and picked up.
“Hello?” she asked, still tentative.
“Emma?” asked Dan on the other end “Lunch time is over, we have an outbreak and need all hands on deck.”
“Be right there,” Emma answered, shrugging to John and making a little finger walking sign to indicate she had to go. He seemed to get it and put a little imaginary phone to his ear, over exaggerating talking motions to fully get the point across.
Emma got up and started the short walk back to her University and the temporary offices of the CDC.
Chapter 13
Channel 4 WBZ CBS Morning News
No-one has claimed responsibility for this morning’s brutal mass murder in and outside of City Place - a downtown mall. A spray painted sign – or tag – at the scene has police concerned this might be the start of a gang related turf war unlike any seen in the last two decades.
Local leaders are calling for increased police presence on the streets but police insiders say they are ill-equipped to deal with violence of the magnitude we have seen in the last week.
Gang experts have declared the attacks ‘Atypical’ citing a lack of clearly defined territory, priority targets or obvious goals. It is thought however that the recent outcropping of this tag is likely related to their activities but what – if any – intents this group has are yet to be clear.
More updates as they become available.
“Revolution,” said Emma flatly, looking at the tagged wall. It was next to one of the shadiest mall bathrooms Emma had ever seen – she wondered if the mall owners had circumstances like this in mind when they made the bathrooms accessible by token only.
Emma hoped she would not need to take a pee while she was here as she doubted anyone was handing them out right now.
“You are not doing it justice,” replied Dan, walking up behind her. “[R]evolution. The square parentheses are silent,” he added sardonically. “The parens and the R are red and everything, shame if they went to all this trouble just to have you mangle the pronunciation.”
“Does it mean Revolution needs Evolution?” asked Emma.
“That would be good! I heard on the news the official translation is ‘Revolution through Evolution’. They should obviously have hired you for PR” he added.
“My rates are reasonable,” Emma replied, deadpan.
“Today, the voice of the Zombie revolution, tomorrow you could be the mouthpiece for the uh… who is revolting nowadays?” he asked earnestly, turning to her.
“Rednecks?” Emma felt she was getting the hang of this humor thing. She had never been what people would call funny, though she enjoyed listening to funny people. Her brain felt sharper recently – maybe a result of Derek’s virus.
“Hah!” barked Dan in surprised laughter. He turned around to the scene inside the tiny mall and the humor instantly left his face.
Emma didn’t turn around, she already knew there were seventeen bodies back there, unlucky shoppers who had not managed to escape. They were beaten and in some cases partially digested.
Emma couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was off about the whole scene.
??
?Something isn’t right here,” said Dan, still standing to her left, lips pursed.
I swear he is a mind reader Emma thought to herself, followed by a stream of nonsense Pandas, Unicorns, Rumpelstiltskin, Roughage, Pompei, Gobbledygook she listed, looking for a reaction from Dan – just in case he actually was a mind reader. The half expected reaction never came, however, as he continued to take in the scene, a perplexed expression across his face.
It isn’t paranoia if they actually are out to get you she reminded herself, comfortingly.
“I think it’s the property damage,” Emma answered slowly “I mean the people must have been desperate to escape - I can get windows being broken, tables thrown and broken but what is with the scattered registers?”
Risking a look off to the side, still skirting the main scene of carnage Emma looked at the partially torn off shutters on a Dunkin’ Donuts.
“I mean look at that,” she said, inclining her head in that direction “Was there even anyone in there? Why would it have been broken into?”
Turning back to Dan, she was in time to see him politely stop a passing police officer and ask him to pull the video footage, to be sent to the CDC field office.
“I agree with you,” Dan commented, turning back to her “the looting is amazingly callous but that’s not what I meant. Where are the surviving virus carriers?”
“Huh?” asked Emma, intelligently.
“No carnage out on the streets. Remember the other frenzied attacks? The thing we didn’t consider was what happened afterwards. The people infected with this virus are driven so crazy they attack anyone in their path, right? And yet there was no path of destruction leading away from either scene and now we seem to have the same thing here. Massive violence, infected people driven so insane for whatever reason –“
Serotonin deficiency answered Emma in her mind.
“- but then – nothing? Here we see exactly the same thing. Seventeen dead, did they all kill each other? I am having the police get the surveillance camera footage but you know what I am expecting to see? People who minutes ago were smashing the heads of these poor fools, running away with absolutely no visible symptoms,” Dan finished, chewing his lip and looking into the middle distance.