by GJ Zukow
My experiments continued, even after I told the rest of the refugees my preliminary findings. Many thought I was lying or full of shit. It was only with Mary's testimony, backed up by actually showing them the hard to believe test subjects and their behaviors for themselves, that they started to believe my findings.
It was around this time that excursions into the ruins of our city became much more difficult. Any expedition past the main gates had to be preceded by an hour long extermination effort to thin out the numbers of the undead. Even once past the horde at the gates the danger didn't end. The search teams went out in armored personnel carriers to protect themselves from the unliving marionettes but also from the constant, often deadly, harassment by a small organized group that had laid claim to the city and everyone in it. There was the ever present threat of sniper fire and it wasn't unusual for Molotov cocktails to be hurled at them. From what I understood at the time, the attackers were mainly those who were suffering from the Scarlet. At first I was afraid the parasite had mutated again and had started infecting people who had been previously immune. It wasn't until I had a chance to interview an ex-soldier that I found out how they could even still be alive (or at least not have become a Red yet).
Burns, bullet wounds and other injuries provided a break in my research into the parasite and their dead hosts. For some unfortunate few, there was little I could do for except pray. The medical ward was a far cry from a hospital ward. I lacked even some of the most rudimentary equipment to perform any serious operating. Most of the time I felt like a doctor in one of those old western movies. Having to dig out a slug or suture an open wound while others hold the patient down is something I never thought I would have to actually do.
When a patient succumbed to his wounds, despite my best efforts, if anyone complained I was sure to mention to them that I needed the medicines and equipment that only a hospital could supply. The expeditions tried to get to the hospital to gather some of the equipment we desperately needed but every time they tried they were forced to retreat. The hospitals were the first places that fell to the undead. That is where all the sick and dying went. That is where the morgues overflowed and the dead were laid out in stacks waiting for autopsy, then in piles of body bags waiting to be claimed by relatives for burial. That is where thousands upon thousands of the hideous, ravenous, parasite manipulated dead rose from their brief slumber and turned the hospitals into feeding grounds. The dead are thick in those areas of the city, so numerous that they flow around abandoned cars and other obstacles like water.
My crude dissections on the unliving ghouls continued. I had become fascinated as to how the parasite was using the senses of their dead hosts to find their victims. It is common knowledge that when a person is rendered blind his (or her) other senses become magnified in an attempt to compensate. I decided to next remove the undead's olfactory sense in order to study them further.
I had to rig up a makeshift gag to keep my test subjects from biting me with their incessant snapping. At least I didn't have to worry about causing my patients any undue pain. I found it easiest to remove the nose and its underlying cartilage for access to the sinus cavity. Once inside it was relatively straightforward to remove the olfactory bud since there was no chance of harming my patient.
I did this to ghouls that still had their eyes and on those I had previously removed the obsolete organs from. There was no change in behavior. In every case the olfactory bud had started to decompose. There is no swelling or sign of direct colonization in the olfactory buds as there is with the optic nerves. The sense of smell does not appear to be functional or utilized by the parasite to any degree at all. The rate of decay shown was barely a fraction of what it should have been. It was intriguing how the parasite accomplished this but I think I at least figured that part out.
The skin and indeed the whole corpse, inside and out, is covered by a thin veneer of a slick, waxy like substance. The substance is an almost clear, colorless and odorless material secreted by the parasitic colony lodged within the host. After a small bit of research I found that while it is ineffective on preserving vegetable matter from rot it works very efficiently in preserving meat. I have not the means to determine what the substance is composed of but the possible uses for it is worth further research. I have noted that while the host is active (therefore still producing this waxy substance) no insects will feed off them or lay their eggs in the necrotic flesh. Once the colony within the host has been destroyed, the substance quickly deteriorates. Only then will insects (especially cockroaches) feed and lay eggs in the rotting flesh as they normally would.
I then removed the tongues from my subjects. The sense of smell and taste are closely tied together in the brain and at a certain point they are intertwined. Still no change in their behavior. I must add that in most cases, removal of the tongue (or a glossectomy) is almost unnecessary, as in almost all cases the tongues of the undead have been already bitten and shredded from their frenzied jaw snapping. There is no sign that the parasite uses any sense of taste (as with the sense of smell) and may not know or care if that particular organ of its dead host is viable or not. More often than not all that is left by the time I operate on them is a ragged and shredded nub barely attached to the throat.
I then removed eardrums and mutilated my subjects in every combination possible in my research only to be stymied. It's as if they have a base awareness that is very unlike ours. Physical senses that shouldn't work at all are being utilized by the parasite in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
The only one of the five senses that I didn't remove was their sense of touch. It would have been difficult to do but it was unnecessary. The animated cadavers show no reaction to pain at all. Not once in my brutal butchering of them did they show any notice of what I was doing to them. The only response from them came in the form of an openly hostile attempt to bite, claw or otherwise rip me apart and eat me alive. They have no sense of touch whatever.
I have come to the conclusion that much of the cannibalistic behavior exhibited by the undead is driven by the parasite’s need. What exactly the single celled menace is craving I haven’t been able to ascertain. The digestive tracts of the subjects are decaying, putrid masses of slowly decomposing flesh. There is no way that I can see that the rotting remains of the stomach can digest any amount of food. I think the parasite finds nourishment from living human flesh by another means other than through the use of the host's digestive system. There are rumors going around that suggest that the parasite controlled cadavers do get some nourishment from the eating of uninfected human flesh. Some survivors swear that they have personally witnessed specific members of the undead who had previously feasted seem to have degraded less to the ravages of time and are much more mobile than those undead who haven't. I cannot attest to this and although I want to attribute this belief to fear and psychological paranoia, it is quite possible they are correct.
I did, at one time, approach the group in an effort to gather further material to look into this. The undead show absolutely no interest in eating or drinking anything except human flesh and blood. As such, I meekly asked the group for permission to take possession of an uninfected corpse to feed to my subjects. The resounding knee jerk reaction was more harsh than I had expected. I was accused of being insane and calloused. There was no way they would allow me to chop up and feed the body of any dead person to those unnatural things. To even ask that question, in their minds, proved that I had spent too much time studying and autopsying the ghouls. I still maintain that it is a logical next step in any serious study and besides, the dead (whether animated or not) feel no pain. I find that most people have no idea how medical science has advanced through the ages and just how brutal and distasteful it actually was. Within a week the group practically shut down my dissections of the undead, leaving me with very little left to report in that area.
The final amount of examining the physiology of the undead centered around the brain, the nervous system and mus
cle control. Before my studies ended I had found that the muscle texture in the ghouls had changed from its normal state to that of an almost rubbery texture. It is as if the waxy substance secreted by the parasitic colony (maybe as a waste product) not only slowed the rate of decomposition of dead flesh but also chemically changed the dead cells of the muscles themselves.
The parasites seemed to actually enter the nerve cells, much like a virus does, instead of attaching themselves to the outside of the cells. I believe that the parasite resides inside the affected cells and manipulates the deceased body from there. I believe that it uses the remains of the cells they have infiltrated as a mechanism to control its host instead trying to directly control the host by itself. The only nerve cells it seems to have infected are the major muscle controls. Nerves to the parts of the body that lead to the sensation of touch, or any other nerve or part of the body, appear to be completely unaffected by the parasite.
The parasite (I cannot say with any real certainty that this is correct but it appears to be, as I have no access to any microscope, I have only my bifocal glasses and a single lighted magnifying glass) only seems to have invaded that part of the brain, specifically the brain stem, that is absolutely needed to control the movement and coordination of its host. The rest of the brain, in every case, has turned into a morass of spongy liquid, which has the consistency of runny oatmeal. There is no possibility of any higher brain activity. The walking dead have no memory of what they once were and are nothing more than decaying automations in my opinion.
March 3, 2013
Approximately three months had passed by then. I had forgotten completely about the holidays. I had been so absorbed in my research that when I saw the Christmas tree set up in the mess hall I was surprised. Even though there were lights and decorations gaily hanging everywhere, the atmosphere was the exact opposite. A depressing cloud seemed to hang over everybody, leaving the overwhelming feeling that the brightly colored lights and posted well wishes were merely a facade meant to hide the gloom of reality. There are no children at the compound, we never found any who survived through the madness. No presents under the tree, no friends or family to share anything with. It was merely a group of strangers forced into close quarters. The relationships in the past three months that formed under the duress of the apocalypse seemed hollow compared to the loss of lifelong friends. The mood was sullen and a lot of heavy drinking was going on. There was no arguing or fighting as I thought there might be with all the alcohol, instead people were reserved and quiet.
The only time there was any dissent at all was when a small group had been caught smoking marijuana. Now I personally don't care if someone chooses to imbibe responsibly, the influencing effects are not nearly as severe as the effects of liquor can be. From a medical standpoint I know there are some benefits and the real adversity is caused from the fact that it is smoked. Still, those of the group that had served as police or other authorities in the old reality had nothing but harsh words and wanted to punish those that had broken the old laws. Arguing turned into a fist fight and threatened to degrade into an all out brawl. In the end, the smoking of "pot" was forbidden within the compound (as if anyone could leave even if they had wanted to). I think most agreed to this just to shut the objectors up.
It was shortly after the holidays that the search team made their final run. Not only was ammunition starting to run low but they were being subjected to devastating ambushes. Just getting past the horde at the gates was trouble enough. When a huge IED (Improvised Explosive Device) took out the APC the team was using, leaving only one wounded survivor, no more serious attempts were made. The detonation was so loud that we all clearly heard it inside the jail. A huge cloud rose up and pieces of debris rained down for miles around. We all knew it was a bad sign and it was even worse when a firefight ensued at the gates. The attackers were determined to kill every member of the team that had ventured outside the gates and ruthlessly followed the wounded man back here, shooting at him the whole way. The assailants kept firing at the compound even well after their quarry had found safety. I think they only gave up that day because they ran out of bullets.
They returned a week later with much heavier firepower. There was no way we could match their weapons so we did the only thing we could. We hid in the buildings, firing back when we could. Before that happened I found out a few things that I should have been told of a long time ago.
The wounded man, the lone survivor of the IED attack, had practically collapsed once he reached the relative safety of the compound. He was completely spent and was obviously in great pain. He was suffering from first and second degree burns to ten percent of his body, multiple shrapnel wounds and had been shot in the upper thigh. My first priority was to examine the gunshot wound. Thankfully for him the bullet went clean through, missing bone and artery. Once I staunched the bleeding I focused on the shrapnel wounds. There were only a couple of pieces that penetrated with any depth, and most of it was subdermal (just below the skin) with the majority of it being gravel. While it was relatively simple to remove the debris it was the risk of infection that concerned me. From what the patient had told me he had gotten the shrapnel wounds from an M67 fragmentation grenade. It was the fact that he knew the military designation of the weapon and the ease with which he spoke military jargon that I had surmised he had been in the army before everything went to hell. The burns on the young man turned out to be his most serious wounds. There was one spot on his shoulder I would have liked to apply a skin graft to but that was an impossibility. Eventually he would have a fair amount of scarring in that area but the biggest threat to him would come from the risk of infection. All in all, the patient recovered just fine with his biggest problem being coping with the pain. Burns can be the most painful of wounds and all I had to give him was Tylenol.
He swore up and down that the group who had ambushed the patrol were suffering from the Scarlet but were only partially affected. I found this hard to believe. There were over two thousand prisoners here and none of them showed any sign of only being partially resistant to the plague. All who contracted the disease were either dead and re-animated or existed like the single carrier. A base of two thousand is a good number to start from statistically and I will maintain my skepticism until I find actual proof that what he said was even possible. If this is true then either the infected ones have discovered a method to slow or stop the Scarlet’s spread or the parasite has mutated again. Even after I spoke to him at length about the subject, I am unsure if the government efforts to slow the disease proved to have anything but a limited impact on the spread of the Omni within its host.
Through his repeated checkups I came to know him. He was twenty two years old and had been in the army for three years before the Omni ruined our world.
Jake Schneider had reached the rank of Corporal and although his MOS was Financial Management Technician, when martial law was declared he was sent out on duty as everyone else was. Combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan imposed discipline on the streets alongside those of the military that had never seen combat before. At first the madness was manageable, most of the citizens steered clear of the army units, preferring to expend their rage on people that weren't carrying fully automatic rifles with them. As the days went by this changed, more and more of the general populace had started the descent into madness, plagued with the overwhelming urge to violent behavior. Then even the combat veterans were saying that it was getting as bad they had seen in the beginning of the wars. In those final days before the Scarlet killed its host, only to later raise them from the dead, they were constantly under fire.
I asked him how it was that the military dealt with their own soldiers when they started exhibiting the signs of the Scarlet when he told me something I had not known before. The government had started giving, actually mandating, the soldiers take some form of amphetamine to counter the effect of the parasite. Dexedrine, the same drug given to pilots to combat fatigue during the Gulf war and handed
out to soldiers during WWII, seemed to slow down the growth of the parasitic colony. It only gave the soldiers a week, at most, of extended life and in the end they went just as mad as everybody else had. Needless to say, my interest was piqued at this bit of information. Still, a life extension of a few days to a week is nothing compared to the reports of our infested aggressors still being covered in less than fifty percent in the telltale blood red taint after a full three months.
When his fellow soldiers started to brutally turn on each other and actively engaged in homicidal and cannibalistic behavior, he fled his unit, finally ending up here.
I decided then it was time to bring the sole surviving carrier of the parasite down so I could study him.
It took six grown men, fully dressed out in riot gear, to drag the "Red" to the isolation cell and secure him. He was so violent and aggressive that the only way we could do anything with him meant we had to face mask him (to keep him from spitting and biting), leg shackle him and put him in a straight jacket. I had him placed in an open, barred, observation cell that was normally reserved for those former prisoners on suicide watch.
From the first, as soon as the squad came for him, I knew there was something very different about him. It wasn't that he was simply mad, that was expected and known. It was the fact that every one of the undead he passed, even if they could not see or hear either the Red or his guards, as they were transporting him here went just as wild as he was. It was proof of some kind of unseen communication all over again. I had no idea that this was even possible. Actual communication between the parasitic colonies in both the living and the dead made me want to study him even more.
