by catt dahman
“I can tell you were upset by the experience,” the Colonel said. “It was a mistake that should never have been attempted. We are on the same side here. We think that was a mistake for Atlanta. Also, I assure you that your situation is better now with us stationed close to your camp.”
“I won’t say a military presence headed with Dr. Deadly makes us feel real safe since we now have you to worry about and the zombies and the Reconstruction Army as well,” George said.
Colonel Davis blinked. “Oh, we won’t harm any of your people, and as far as the RA, as soon as they make a move on you, I can assure you, we will join the fight with extreme prejudice. As soon as we get a working army rebuilt and trained properly, and I am working on that diligently, we will be actively going after them.”
Everyone let that sink in. The RA, a group of men who took women and anyone of a darker skin color than most of them as slaves, gave them all nightmares for a long time. The army, set to a Nazi theme, tortured people that they caught for entertainment, along a sexist and racist line, cannibalized people when they could, killed, and raped as part of their general practice.
“That simple?” Mark asked. He and three others were slaves of the RA and brutally tortured for weeks. He never imagined a group of more cruel people.
“You have our protection. Period,” Davis promised,“They are our…let’s say…main focus.”
“That’s surprising,” Len said, “did you dream about them?” He wanted it all out in the open.
“We did. But we know them well, sadly.”
“We wish to continue our life here, growing things, educating, and finding survivors. We have our own little military system and supplies here and don’t want to join yours. I don’t mean that as an insult to you or the US government, but we have a good thing going, and we don’t want to lose this,” George said, “of course, we could be allies and help one another.”
“We accept that and will provide any support you need but won’t interfere. We are perfectly happy reestablishing our base in New Boston. We have our own agenda, and we feel you have your own which is also vital to the rebuilding of this country.”
George shrugged at Len with some confusion. “Then you have us at a disadvantage since you are offering protection and not demanding we help or house you. I’m afraid I don’t understand.” He didn’t for one second believe the military group didn’t have an eye on their compound and resources farther down the line, but for now, they pretended to be on equal footing in the situation.
“He means we know you want something other than being trading buddies as in our corn and tomatoes for your bullets and bombs,” Len stated with his disarming smile that looked more like a grimace. Under the table, Beth kicked him and grinned.
Davis chuckled, “I like the way you people are to the point. And yes, we do want something. We want you to stay out of our way when we carry out our personal endeavors.” He spread his hands innocently, “That’s all, and, yes, some corn and tomatoes do sound good in exchange for bullets.”
“Curious because I suspect you could get rid of us as easily as you could the RA, so again, I wonder why you are here. Why ask us to be agreeable when you could strong arm us?” Len pushed.
“May I?” Diamond asked, “Let me give you the background and see if we can get to the crux. As I said, I didn’t design this infection; it came out of North Korea, and all the blithering about revenge and Germany was smoke screen. I was blamed, and it hardly matters now, does it? While the US did some bombing, it was entirely irrelevant because it was all over all European countries, plus Asia, Africa, Australia and was finished before we had our first case here. They were lost from the beginning. The US mainly bombed itself in a misguided attempt to take out the large zombie populations of the big cities.”
“Seems there were many bad ideas being carried out,” Conner muttered.
“I agree. The Colonel agrees as well. It seems that one hand didn’t know what the other was doing, so to speak. People made appalling calls all around, but in their defense, it was like staring at on oncoming train and not being able to get off the track. There was absolutely no chance for us.”
“There was nothing? In hindsight?” Julia asked.
“Nothing. It was over that fast.” Diamond paused. “I won’t bore you with all of the details of the infection, but it is basically a prion disease with distinct features.”
“Ummm…yeah, it makes people zombies,” Julia muttered.
“It was a virus that piggy-backed a prion disease, brilliant and deadly. Based on mathematical extrapolation with a few years, very few uninfected humans would be left on this planet. With fifty percent and then the infected infecting more, it’s the old idea that there isn’t enough rice available if you double the amount on each square of a chessboard.”
“We’re outnumbered,” Len stated.
“Right. The infection spread so fast via the hemorrhagic virus and then by those carriers that there was no way to stop it. While you will, right now, find survivors and people will rebuild at the present with no outside interference, there won’t be a human left in two years.We are endangered, but in two years, we will be gone forever.”
“I don’t accept that. If I kill ten today, and Beth kills ten, well in time, we would kill them all,” Julia argued.
“Do you each kill ten a day? And the key word there is time. In time. You don’t have the time. If thirty appear, and you kill thirty, then we have thirty less. If those thirty kill thirty of you, then line ends. You haven’t replaced yourselves, and yet, they have added thirty.You would each have to have the replacements for the ones you killed,” Diamond explained.
“Math makes my head ache,” Johnny complained and got several laughs and smiles.
“That’s depressing, and we have been fighting them,” Beth said.
“And that’s fine until a hundred thousand show up at your gate,” Davis interrupted. “That’s what we are looking at. They don’t just dry up like slugs and die. We are outnumbered.”
“So it’s all over?” George asked. It was impossible to be that fatalistic.
Diamond picked up again. “So, it would have been, but for a few variables. Follow me for a few seconds; the zombies, we can call them that, retain no sense of self-reality, but there are latent memories and latent personality traits that have shaped the brain. If you infected two people: one was a loving, kind mother and the other a convicted serial killer, they would both attack and kill to feed. The latter would show more aggression and while both would feed, the latter would bite and attack the next. He would be prone not to kill for food alone but would strive to infect more.”
“I would have to see data on that,” Doc said. He didn’t know if he believed it fully.
“We know the infection does some insane things to a person, right? They feel no pain; they are brutal killers and bite; they lose their personalities and assault people. They may or may not be what we would have, in old times, described as dead,” Diamond sighed. “Once bitten and infected, no cure is available at all; a bitten person will turn into a zombie and carry the infection as well, and I want you to keep that in the front of your minds at all times as I explain things.
“We know that,” Len said.
“But we did kind of hope you were going to tell us you were working on a cure, or there was a secret cure; we did hope that. I can admit it,” Juan said. People nodded reluctantly. “But the bottom line is there is nothing? No cure or hope for one?”
“No cure. No hope for one,” Diamond said. “I wish I could tell you differently. So we accept that the infection can’t be stopped. We have to also accept that humans can’t win because of the rate of infection. We are outnumbered by a new species that is stronger and more suitable to the new world than we are.”
“New species?”
“Indeed,” Diamond said. “They are the new species at the top of the food chain. We have evolved in one step, and it was a very, very horrific evolution.”
; “Well. What a waste the last few hundred years have been,” Julia sulked. “All that time wasted on the Internet and I-Phone…3 D movies…wasted time.”
“Meh. Evolving into tool-users wasn’t a total waste, Jules; we can swing hoes and bats at them, see?” Alex smiled at her.
Colonel Davis joined back in, “But some of us didn’t like that legacy. Why should drooling, shambling idiots inherit the world?”
Julia glared, “I asked that every day when I was a teacher.” Alex gave her a high-five for her quip. “Sorry, we use levity to handle the stress of living in zombie land.”
“We decided that the world should not be left to the zombies,” the Colonel ignored the humor.
“But, Colonel, you have all said that humans have no chance at all and that they have bested us…so….” Len was flummoxed.
“I said zombies have bested humans,” Diamond said, “humans. We need semantics now. Zombies and humans are two different species.”
“Again with the word. Species.” Beth groaned.
Alex leaned forward, “We have the crazy scientist, the military wannabees, and a bunch of zombies taking over the world. How many movies were written this way? The evil doctor and his military-hence men have a plan, and it’s got to be a doozy.” Several laughed this time, and the Colonel chuckled with them.
“Guilty as charged,” Davis said.
“It’s isn’t evil though. If I couldn’t stop the infection and couldn’t prevent it or reverse it, what was the logical choice?”
“To…ummm…step back and not play God?” Beth asked. “I saw the results of stopping the infection; it was sickening.”
“Beth? Is it Beth? Yes? God didn’t start this; some terrible man in a far-away place did, and my goal is to stop this. I don’t mean in that ridiculous way, either. I couldn’t leave this whole world to a bunch of walking dead cannibals,” Diamond said with passion. “We had a team of doctors and scientists; there was a man, Hendricks by name, military, and we tried something with him….”
“I knew it,” Alex said, “evil experiments.” He slapped his forehead dramatically.
Len held a hand up and asked the doctor to continue.
“We couldn’t kill the prions; we could barely do anything to them, but we could modify them, and we did. We did it before the infection, not after. We infected him but with a modified version. Imagine Hendricks now; he can’t get more infected, so a bite doesn’t infect him.”
“So he has been exposed…infected, but he’s normal?”
“He doesn’t turn into a shambling idiot.”
Julia went on, “So he is okay? The same?”
“He feels less pain if any. He is aggressive but retains his memory and faculties and thus is a perfect fighter against the zombies.”
“Can he die…or is he…ummm….”
“A shot to the head, same as the infected. He isn’t death proof, but he is stronger than normal. We didn’t infect people and then try to kill them in a variety of manners. We aren’t quite that cruel. Really, we don’t know for sure.” Diamond seemed offended.
“I didn’t say you were,” Julia said, “I just…what kills them is what I am asking.”
“So, Hendricks can’t feel pain, is a good fighter, retains personality, can’t be more infected; what’s the bad part?” Len asked. “I know there has to be a bad part because that sounds like a general…what...vaccination? And it seems way too simple and…oh, so desirable.”
“It can be spread by saliva to blood contact though the Angel strain is spread….”
“Angel?”
“A term I have used. But remember that they don’t bite humans; they attack zombies; they are us…just modified not to feel pain; however, they do require raw meat.”
“Ah.” George traded glances with the rest.
“It can be cow…any raw meat, really, but they do need it, or they will weaken and suffer.”
Beth frowned. “Okay, I’m not a doctor or scientist, so I may be dumb here, but I don’t get this. I’m missing something because I agree that this sounds like a vaccine. But if it were, this would be too simple. Why are you not calling it a vaccine if that’s what it sounds like and is? And for them to require raw meat as you said, it sounds horrible. That isn’t a good thing.”
“I agree, Beth,” Doc said. “It’s got to be more than a vaccine. The doctor said he altered the prion. What did you call them…Angels? Are they human or zombie?
Henry Diamond sat back. “Exactly. It isn’t a vaccine. It still causes the basics. They are a third species. Like angels in the Biblical terms, they weren’t humans but a separate species of warriors. They will fight zombies because, let’s face it, zombies are the enemy to them since they can be eaten and will be. The zombies will attack them and feed on them just like humans. So they have a common enemy with us, but no, they’re not humans as we have previously defined the word, or are they? I am asking you to redefine the word human now.”
“Redefine human? Oh, come on, Doctor, that’s really asking a hell of a lot,” Len grumbled, looking to the rest for support. “We have humans, and we have humans infected which we call zombies. It’s pretty simple.”
“How are they different?” Julia asked.
“Zombies are different,” Beth told her.
“But if they are just impervious to pain and can’t be infected, ” Julia persisted, “how else do they differ?”
“Humans uninfected. Humans infected are called zombies. Now, you want us to have humans infected on purpose, no less,partial zombies, and you call them angels? Do I have this right?” Len asked, anger growing. His face was burning bright red with fury.
Colonel Davis asked everyone to pause for a second and for each to get his emotions under control. “Dr. Diamond tried anything he could think of to stop the world from being inherited by drooling, walking dead people. You can’t want that. We can’t win. So, he went to the middle and gave us a small chance here. Take that in first. Take in that he was simply trying anything in a war that was already lost. The term Angel is whatever you make of it. Please just take a few seconds to take this in.”
“I’m trying,” Len said. George just shook his head.
“It’s somewhat correct. It wasn’t me who started this; someone else made a second species: the zombies. I just met it in the middle for a third one, like the Colonel said,” Diamond said defensively.
“Back to the question. How else do they differ, Doctor?” George could feel this turning into a brawl.
“They are more…instinctive and less of an emotional species. Cats and dogs are smart and could fight a zombie, but they are not the same as we are …with…our fallibilities.”
“So Hendricks, the Angels are changed. It isn’t just a vaccine?” Alex went white with disgust. His idea about the weird sci-fi movie was more on target than he thought.
“ Exactly, and as a side note, even with their off-spring, they are less like humans.”
“Wait. Did you say off-spring? Babies? They breed?” Juan came off the wall where he was listening and went to stand behind Beth, a hand on her shoulder in case she came flying out of her chair and tried to choke Diamond. He hoped someone was watching Julia to prevent her going after one of the visitors.
“They do breed. And they do it more than humans. The gestation is slightly shorter, and the off-spring have the same prion strands.”
“My, God,” Alex said, “What have you done?”
George held his hand up and asked everyone to hold his thoughts. He went to the door and had glasses and pitchers of cold water, lemonade, fruit punch, sodas, a small bottle of rum, and a bottle of whiskey brought in. He played bartender, and while only Diamond had an alcoholic on his side, several of the others on his side wanted one. The colonel finally took a beer when he saw everyone sipping at something.
“This has been a lot to take in, and I know we will have questions, but Dr. Diamond, above all, are you saying that humans have lost the battle with zombies and that we are the
remnants?
And this new species, you call Angels, is a mixture of the two species, so to speak, and an army to destroy the zombies?” George asked, trying to calm his people. They said he was the voice of reason; he hoped he could get through to everyone or there might be a blood bath right here.
“I guess so, George. I couldn’t allow this world to be inherited by those things; and humans have no chance, so I played around and found a way for a mixture to inherit it instead…one that can win against the zombies. You may view me as a mad scientist, I’m sorry, but it’s all that’s left.”
“I don’t want them to win either; they are part zombie; why do they get to win?” Beth said.
“They aren’t though, Beth,” Diamond said. “They have some of the prions, but they are mostly human, seventy percent. And if you met Hendricks, you wouldn’t even know he was an Angel. He is just like us, no drooling, no biting, nothing weird, but if a zombie lurched in, he would fight it with no pain and not get infected, and he would win. They are designed for you, forgive the term, for all of you. They are a means to an end, to give humans, us one last chance to win.” He had tears in his eyes.
“I don’t know if we feel better about that, Henry,” George said, “It means you or any of your men could be one, and we wouldn’t know.”
“And it wouldn’t matter. It simply is fine to be an Angel. Have we not had enough wars and hatred based on things like this? Why hate them because of a prion?”
“It isn’t like they are Mexican or gay; they are zombies, ” Len said. “I can’t see equal treatment and a parade for Zombie pride. Seriously.” Alex laughed hard.
“No, they are Angels. A new species.” Diamond looked tired and dejected. “It was the only thing left to do. I don’t want them to win, and we can’t win alone.”
