HVZA (Book 1): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse

by Zimmermann, Linda

  It took several hours to clear the streets of all the mobile zombies, and then came the even more dangerous work of clearing the buildings. Many zombies had difficulty mastering the concept of the doorknob, and had become trapped in the room where they had switched—most often their bedroom or bathroom. One cannot even begin to describe the terror the men and women in uniform experienced with every building they entered.

  Imagine stealthily moving down a dark, narrow hallway to the closed door at the end, tension growing with every step, only to kick open that door and have one, two, or maybe even more ravenous zombies rush toward you, seemingly impervious to the initial gunshots that ripped through their undead bodies.

  It was quickly discovered that it was a fallacy that the only way to kill a zombie was with a head shot, but it was certainly the fastest way. If you shot them in the chest, stomach, or limbs, they may eventually die from blood loss or organ failure, but as zombies literally felt no pain, they would keep coming at you, and at you, until you either put a bullet in their brains, or severed their spinal columns.

  As evening fell and more than half the buildings in The Grid had yet to be searched, some squads started to go slightly off plan. For example, one crack house was suspected of having at least half a dozen occupants. Thermal imagers revealed closer to twenty, and by the heat patterns several had not yet switched completely (zombies appeared much cooler than living people). Perhaps those people were just about to switch, or were not even infected and had barricaded themselves into a safe room of the house. Either way, it was deemed to be too dangerous to enter, so the entire building was torched.

  Zombies rarely made sounds above a grunt or moderate growl, but eyewitnesses that night swore they would never forget the high-pitched combination of squealing and hissing that emanated from the flaming zombies. Several broke through windows and staggered out into the street, the sickening stench of their charring flesh filling the air. No one there had any love for the zombies and didn’t care if they suffered (which they actually couldn’t, due to their inability to feel pain), but they couldn’t stand the horrible noise and quickly silenced the burning zombies with a flurry of headshots.

  Kill teams were rotated every four hours until the city was declared safe and secure. While the bodies were all quickly and efficiently disposed of and brought to incineration sites, infected blood and other zombie fluids coated the streets and filled the houses. Modified street sweeping trucks sprayed disinfectants on the pavement and sidewalks, and then a bottle of bleach was placed on every doorstep. Cleaning up the messes inside would be the building owner’s problem. As those persistent ZAP ads kept telling us, “Infection is everyone’s responsibility.”

  On Thursday morning, the 30th of August, the residents of The Grid were told they could return to their homes. They had spent the last two days in army tents, eating recently expired MREs, and praying they wouldn’t be taken away on one of the trucks. Fully one in three of their friends, families, and neighbors was now gone—either taken away due to infection discovered in the camp, shot in the streets as zombies, or killed in one of the many zombie attacks.

  The initial clamor and confusion of the evacuation was nowhere in evidence as the weary and terrified residents began their journeys home. The slow and hesitant procession was as quiet as the grave. Some people had tears streaming down their dirty cheeks, others had that vacant, thousand-yard stare, and others glared angrily at anyone in uniform. It had been a bloody, barbarous, 48 hours that rocked the nation and sent up a hue and cry in every town and city that had not been heard even in times of revolution—until video of the pack of zombies attacking the families was released in a new ZAP ad campaign.

  The sight of a six foot-three inch, burly male zombie yanking a baby out of a stroller by its ankles and then—well, you get the picture—was all the public needed to see. Protestors were soon calling for “extraordinary measures” to be taken in their communities.

  Chapter 6

  Phase 6: The Marquis Ought to Know: “All is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us.” Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, 1740–1814

  There are probably not a lot of doctors who quote the Marquis de Sade in regards to their research projects—or anything else for that matter—but this was something I had read long ago and never forgot.

  There was something else I read that I didn’t forget—an article a few years ago entitled “Intraspecific competition between co-infecting parasite strains enhances host survival in African trypanosomes” by Balmer, Stearns, Schötzau, and Brun. Balmer and his colleagues engineered two transgenic strains of the protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma brucei (which causes African sleeping sickness), to fluoresce in different colors so they could assess the levels of infection of each strain, with one strain being more virulent than the other. They then infected mice and found something remarkable. (Sorry if I’m getting kind of technical here, please bear with me, it will make sense soon.)

  One would think that if being infected by one strain of parasite was bad, two strains would be twice as bad. But guess what? It may sound counterintuitive, but those mice infected with both strains had a 15% lower mortality rate than those mice infected with only the virulent strain! How was this possible?

  Competition. The “unceasing and rigorous competition in nature” that the Marquis de Sade so eloquently described to explain why men felt compelled to take other men’s food, land, money, and women, worked just as powerfully in the microbial world, as well. This force was “competitive suppression”—in other words, fighting fire with fire. While the parasites were busy competing with one another, the host (the mice, in this case), were actually getting a better chance of surviving.

  Was I crazy to think we could do the same type of thing with humans and the zombie parasites? Crazy like a genetic engineering fox! (Or so I hoped.)

  Here was my plan in a nutshell: Since there were already 14 other strains of ZIPs that were less virulent than the Hudson Valley ZIPs, we could tweak the genes of one of one of the weaker ZIPs to become vulnerable to a specific drug therapy. Then we would take a patient with advanced stage infection (which was currently untreatable) and infect him with the Wimpy ZIP (as I called it) and see if the two strains started competing. If the Wimpy strain could reduce the level of infection of the nasty strain to a treatable level, maybe we could knock it out. Then we would mop up the Wimpy strain with our pre-formulated drug.

  Am I being too technical again? The bottom line was to try to get the ZIPs to fight amongst themselves so that we could swoop in for the kill and maybe start curing some people and avert a zombie apocalypse. Okay, so I know it sounds like an off the wall idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

  “You want to do what!?” Phil asked, actually pulling his glasses so far down his nose they fell off onto his desk.

  “Competitive suppression, Phil. It’s been demonstrated in mice-”

  “Are you insane?” Phil cut me off, looking at me as if I had genuinely gone off the deep end. “The entire world is trying to eradicate the infection, and you want to infect people with more parasites? People aren’t mice, and the ZIPs are no ordinary parasites.”

  “Which means we can’t use ordinary treatments. Look, I know how this sounds, but just give me 15 minutes with these project team members. Just 15 minutes,” I pleaded with Phil as I handed him a list of names of both ParGenTech employees and other researchers in the U.S., Scotland, Germany, The Netherlands, Brazil, and Australia.

  “Becks, everyone is working around the clock. We don’t have time for wild goose chases,” Phil said shaking his head, but then carefully studied my face. “You’re pretty damn sure about this, aren’t you?”

  “Sure enough to risk internationally embarrassing myself and committing professional suicide,” I replied in all seriousness.

  It took all my powers of pe
rsuasion, but I finally convinced Phil to let me have 15 minutes of precious teleconference time at 5am, EST, on Friday, August 31. My index finger was shaking as I hit “send” for the meeting invitations, which read like something of a Who’s Who in the fields of parasitology and genetics. I then spent every spare minute on my presentation, praying I wouldn’t make a fool of myself. But there was just something in my gut that said this could work.

  I slept for a total of about two hours Thursday night, and was thankful I managed to get that much. When I arrived at ParGenTech about 3am, I was crushed to find that only three of the 36 people invited to the teleconference had responded that they would attend. By 4:30am that number had only risen to five. Shortly after, a bleary-eyed Phil staggered into the conference room with a ginormous cup of coffee.

  “This better be damn good,” he muttered.

  A few more ParGenTech employees and army doctors drifted in with just minutes to spare, and at 4:59am I saw that the international attendees now numbered 23! It was at that moment I realized how much was on the line and became so nervous I wanted to vomit. But when the lights in the conference room dimmed and my first slide went up, it was like a switch went on in my brain and I entered the “presentation zone.”

  I outlined my “Co-infecting ZIPs Competitive Suppression Project” in detail, highlighting what I thought we could accomplish at ParGenTech, and where we would need help from other research facilities. I had timed my presentation for exactly 12 minutes to allow for 3 minutes of discussion. At least I hoped there would be some discussion. When I concluded my slides and there was silence in the conference room—and in five other countries—all the energy instantly drained from my body. But I was just as quickly reenergized when I heard one word from a renowned parasitologist in Amsterdam.

  “Intriguing.”

  There was another ten or fifteen seconds of silence and then it seemed like everyone started talking at once! Okay, so maybe it was more of a combination of shouting, arguing, and swearing in many different languages, but they were giving my idea some serious thought. Phil finally stepped in as a moderator, and when over an hour of discussion had passed, we actually had a plan to undertake the Co-infecting ZIPs Competitive Suppression Project!

  I was euphoric—not only for the obvious boost to my ego (I admit it), but because I felt that this gave us a fighting chance to save people from a fate truly worse than death. And while the technological challenges of the project were daunting, they paled in comparison to our real enemy—time, which was running out faster than we knew.

  The New Normal: By the time I left ParGenTech around noon on Saturday I was practically incoherent with fatigue. I could have cared less about the family that was being dragged screaming and kicking out of their minivan and thrown into a Zombie Express (the popular name for the trucks and vans that carted away the infected) at the checkpoint to the Tappan Zee Bridge. I was only annoyed by the traffic delay.

  The shooting by cops of an adolescent girl zombie in the middle of the road three blocks from my house barely warranted a second look as I turned down my street.

  As I drifted in and out of sleep for the next ten hours, the constant wail and screech of ambulance and police sirens was no longer any more of a distraction than the hum of the crickets.

  Welcome to the new normal.

  It would have been frightening to think how quickly I was adapting to life in a zombie war zone, had I bothered to stop and think about it at all. But I had already gone through so many life-altering traumas in such a short span of time that I simply didn’t have the emotional energy to spend on anything other than my work. And my survival.

  The shooting in the restaurant already seemed like a distant memory or a half-remembered dream. I had a clearer recollection of the long wait I had at the Motor Vehicle office six months earlier, or getting a paper cut from a greeting card envelope a couple of months ago.

  I had changed. The world had changed. And as much as I prayed that the old Rebecca Truesdale, compassionate caregiver, would never completely disappear, I realized that the new Dr. Rebecca Truesdale, zombie killer, would most likely have to harden her exterior even more in the coming weeks, months, or god forbid, years, of fighting the infection.

  It was late Saturday night and I was still in bed, too tired to actually do anything, but not tired enough to sleep. A friend had sent me a link to a podcast of some mysterious guy who called himself the “Voice of the Hudson,” so I was listening to him rant about shadow governments and how they knew about the spread of zombie parasites for over a year (how did he know?), when my doorbell rang. Before I could even stand up it rang again, followed by some desperate knocking.

  While I reached for my bathrobe with my left hand, I grabbed my gun with my right. I never heard of a zombie using a doorbell, but I knew it couldn’t be anything good at this late hour. My motion-activated porch light had gone on, and when I looked through the peephole Cam had installed, I saw the tear-stained face of old Mrs. Saltalamacchia from down the street.

  When I was a kid, we used to say that Benedetto and Amadora Saltalamacchia had come to America with Columbus, as they looked that old even back then. But they were the nicest, most welcoming and generous people in the neighborhood, and you couldn’t pass within sight of their house without Mrs. Saltalamacchia waving you toward her front door, shouting. “You come in and have something to eat now, eh?” And there was never the slightest bit of a chance of talking your way out of it or telling her you had to go home and do your homework, or your parents were expecting you for dinner. And don’t expect to get away just eating a cookie or a sandwich—it was pasta, fresh bread, and homemade pastries at the very least. Sadly, their children had all died in infancy, so the Saltalamacchias always said that they considered the neighborhood children their family.

  So now here stood frail, frightened Mrs. Saltalamacchia, obviously in need of help. Against my better judgment, I opened the inner wooden door, which still left the locked, solid glass storm door between us.

  “Mrs. Saltalamacchia, what’s the matter?”

  “My Benny, he’s gone crazy! He needs a doctor!” she said, bring her fists to her cheeks, then thrusting her tear-soaked palms onto the glass in front of my face, causing me to instinctively jump backward. My heart went out to her, and I wanted to open the doors and put my arms around her, but I just couldn’t.

  She begged me to come and help her husband—the man I fondly recalled who used to rent a pony to give all the kids a ride at their 4th of July parties. My heart was breaking, but I insisted she call the authorities as there was nothing I could do, that he was beyond my help. She sobbed uncontrollably and swayed as if she was about to faint. My hand moved to unlock the door, but I caught myself at the last second.

  I am a cold, heartless bitch, I said to myself as I switched off the porch light, and turned on the black light I had installed over the front door.

  There was sweet, impossibly old, Mrs. Saltalamacchia glowing a soft green, with bright rivers of emerald running down her cheeks. Even her hand prints on my front door glowed brightly like some Halloween peel-and-stick decals.

  “I’m sorry. I am so, so, sorry, but you are badly infected. I can’t let you in, I just can’t. Please forgive me, Mrs. Saltalamacchia.”

  Tears were streaming down my face as well, but fortunately they were not glowing, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  The hysterical old woman suddenly stopped sobbing and looked at her own hands and arms in wonder. After a few moments she straightened her hairpins and tied the satin strings at the collar of her nightgown.

  “I understand Rebecca, dear. How could I be so thoughtless as to put you in danger. Don’t you worry, honey, I’ve been taking care of my Benny for over 60 years, I guess I can take care of him still.”

  With that she turned and headed for the street.

  “No! Mrs. Saltalamacchia, come back! Wait here, don’t go back to the house!” I screamed, pounding on the glass door, but she kept walking
.

  Running my nails across my scalp, I cursed at the top of my lungs. What should I do? What could I do? My hand reached for the front door latch again, but call it selfishness or self-preservation, I could not bring myself to open that door.

  I raced for the phone and dialed 911 and an automated message told me that due to the “high volume of calls” there would be “significant delays.” I sank to my knees and hit redial over and over and over again. I imagined what would happen to Mrs. Saltalamacchia the moment she stepped back into her house, and when a full twenty minutes passed before the 911 operator answered, I almost hung up. What was the point any longer? But after the operator asked me three times what was my emergency, I gave them the Saltalamacchia’s address and told them what to expect.

  An hour later I heard a police car and a Zombie Express truck coming down the street. I couldn’t look and I couldn’t listen. I grabbed my iPod and a bottle of my dad’s Jack Daniel’s. But the loud music couldn’t drown out the screams I imagined in my head, and the booze couldn’t drown the guilt that now consumed me.

  The New Becks: I woke up face down on the basement floor and had no recollection of how I got there. My iPod battery was drained and the Jack was still jackhammering my brain. I probably hadn’t had enough to even make the average person tipsy, but I was not a drinker, never had been, for reasons which were painfully obvious at that moment.