I stared at the frontal lobe, the region of the brain perhaps most responsible for our humanity. This is where we reason through problems, make sense out of base emotions, decide whether we want to behave in a way that we’ll later be proud of or perhaps come to regret.
But not here, not what I was staring at. The tissue almost immediately lost form, seemed partially liquefied as it seeped over the sides of the open cranial cavity. Forgive me—it looked like old meat left out too long. Something that might attract flies or a homeless cat. Something that in simpler times we would find on our driveways and sidewalks, that we would pick up with a plastic bag, careful to breathe through our mouths or perhaps holding our breath altogether, and toss without a thought into the sealed darkness of the garbage container… Something foul and insignificant.
These are the spongiform changes brought about by the prion component of the disease. I’ve seen photographs, drawings. In a sense, I knew what to expect, but photographs don’t tell the whole story. This stuff moves. The brain material literally changes shape as we expose it. It pulses with each beat of the subject’s heart, and each pulse forces more tissue up and over the walls of the opened skull.
As I described before, the sulci are widened, and the vessels that bring blood to the brain, the neuronal vasculature, are engorged from the increased pressure. Inflammation is one of the most fundamental responses to tissue damage. It conjures up fever and blood cells, defenses against something that doesn’t belong. The fever burns, the heart beats faster, and the vessels engorge with the increased pressure.
That’s why the brain of a zombie isn’t all gray. The vessels can’t hold this kind of pressure, and even as we watched, vessels were actively bursting. Bright red blood mixed with the brain as it dripped onto the gurney and into the gutters at the sides of the table. Blanca again had to focus me, remind me to obtain samples of material before they were contaminated by touching the table or the floor. We tried, but the best we could get was a soggy mass of something no one would ever recognize as anything close to brain tissue. And covering the tissue was a gelatinous substance, oddly translucent and seeming to glow from the glare of the operating lamps. This is the end result of brain degradation—decomposed tissue, broken down by bacteria that have attacked the brain as it becomes increasingly vulnerable.
Throughout all of this, Blanca looked just beyond the surgical field. It was as if she was thinking of something. I realized again that she has seen all this before, that she was still looking for something new.
It’s hard not to think of this thing as alive. The brain itself continues to pulse. As we removed brain tissue, we could visualize the optic nerve. In healthy humans, the eyes are literally holes, giving us a glimpse into the darkness of our skulls. That’s what I used to say in classroom lectures before I left academics and went to the CDC. I can see your brain right now, I’d mention, and then I’d project a slide of beautiful eyes on the screen at the front of the classroom. Our pupils are dark because they are connected directly to neuronal material. The optic nerves look like elongated tissue with eyeballs attached at one end and the rest of the brain at the other.
And here’s what was strange. The optic nerves seemed fine, perhaps even bigger than expected. Whatever damage the prions did to the frontal lobes was sparing the optic nerves, which makes sense, I guess, because the damn things can still see. I made a mental note to examine the occipital lobes as well. This is the region of the brain where visual input is stored. I had read that the prions involved in ANSD also seem to spare occipital activity, again explaining the ongoing function of the visual apparatus.
The muscles that control the mouth were also more or less intact. There was some damage, some signs of infection and degradation, but zombies need to feed, and even as we separated the brain from the body, the subject kept snapping its mouth open and shut, trying to bite something, anything, the muscles responsible for these movements contracting and retracting with machine-like precision.
Finally, there’s the stench. It’s rotten, like something already dead, but mixed with the smell of iron and copper. This is the blood and the tissue, intermixing and decomposing, actively disintegrating as the disease progresses. It’s why some have reported smelling Stage IV humanoids even before seeing them. The smell is rancid and, over the last couple of years, horribly familiar.
So far this is all consistent with what we’ve seen in past studies. Although we know that scientists working at the Crypt may have genetically manipulated the virus in order to better examine its different properties, there is no sign that Mahoney’s infection is any different from what has been previously recorded in earlier examinations. This is good. We need to know that what we’re studying is consistent with the disease as it exists off this island. From what I’ve read, and Gutierrez agrees: This is the brain of a zombie. This is “normal.”
Note the activity of muscles of mastication that seem unaffected by ongoing dissection.
As expected, the quality of brain tissue is sufficiently poor that we’ll need to use the spatula to get deep enough to examine the hypothalamus.
8:50 AM
Gutierrez just passed out. Pittman helped me to get her back to the bunker. We suspect dehydration. Subject is still in restraints with the crown removed and the brain exposed. It should continue to be animate—most of the initial neuronal seepage seems over, and the loose tissue has either been removed for samples or remains in the gutters of the table. As long as we can feed it, it should be OK. But right now, we need to nurse Gutierrez. She’s still unconscious. I’ll return to the lab later tonight or tomorrow once I’m comfortable Gutierrez is stable.
So far, our findings reveal nothing new. We expected gross spongiform changes, the prion-induced degradation of brain tissue, and we expected these changes to be most profound in the frontal lobe, in the higher brain structures. This is in fact the pathologic basis for the spiritual conclusions of the Treaty of Atlanta. The frontal lobe makes us human, and its destruction robs us of our humanity.
Still, it’s hard not to mention that the degree of brain tissue disintegration is alarming, even horrifying, to directly observe. We need to be careful as we proceed. Stay focused and detached. Brain tissue is so fragile that we run the risk of contaminating any hypothalamic specimens during removal of gray matter.
It is also not surprising that the subject retained consciousness, though again it is unsettling to observe this phenomenon. All it needs is the brain stem, the part of the brain responsible for automatic functions. As long as the brain stem remains functional, tells the heart to beat and the lungs to breathe, zombies stay animate. They don’t need much more.
After Gutierrez is recovered, we will resume excavation of the brain with the primary goal of isolating hypothalamic material. I need to think about this. When I mentioned the hypothalamus to Gutierrez last night, she became excited, even agitated. This is where the answer is, she said. It’s what we missed. They eat and are never sated. Why? The hypothalamus should tell them when to stop, should remind them that they are ill, should rob them of their appetite, and yet for some reason their appetites are endless, reptilian. There are infections that can do this, she explained. Some viruses invade the satiety sensors of the hypothalamus, confuse those sensors, and interfere with the way they talk to the rest of the brain. Some infections can make people think that their stomachs are empty no matter how much they eat. These people are always hungry… always wanting. People with these viruses are relentless.
What if one of these viruses is part of all this? We’ve never looked for this kind of hypothalamic infection before. We haven’t even looked. We don’t have time to miss anything. How can we afford not to look?
From this point forward, we’ll proceed according to strict protocol. We’ll finish this dissection of the brain and then start to move downward, studying both microscopically and grossly the cardiac, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal systems. If a subject becomes inanimate during the autopsy, we’ll move
to the next one in the holding facility and pick up where we left off.
We’ll have three main goals:
1. We need to find evidence for Blanca’s theory of an additional organism. This is our primary goal, our main hope.
2. We need to better understand the barriers against infection that may exist among humanoids and make those who are NLH particularly resistant to biological attack. This might give us some additional clues about how best to attack the virus itself.
3. We need to stay alert, vigilant, for anything that may have been missed in previous studies.
Only by sticking to protocol, by systematic and careful examination, can we do this right. The clock is ticking.
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
3:34 PM
We desperately need to continue, to finish the brain dissection and study the entire organism. But Gutierrez is still sleeping, getting sicker. I can’t do this without her. And the subject—it can’t remain animate forever. It’s tied to a steel stretcher, restrained on a gurney in the lab.
It’s like us now. Trapped and hungry. It needs to feed.
Time is so short—I’ve tried to imagine continuing without Blanca and her guidance. What if I miss something that she’d notice? She’s a good scientist. She at least has some idea of what she’s looking for, but I’ve read every document on her computer. I’ve studied her sketches, looked through everything she’s written. I’ve even pored over the letters she used to write to the long-dead pastor in the village where she was born. She’s seems to be trying to organize her thinking, but her thinking is what worries me.
She keeps coming back to a “novel virus,” and the idea that the ANSD pathogen is something new, something we haven’t seen. It’s more than a combination of influenza and prions. After all, we understand influenza, and we pretty much understand prions as well. We might not be able to stop prions, but if the prions are delivered via the influenza virus—if the vector for the prions is itself an influenza bug—then it stands to reason that conventional anti-flu treatments should have at least some effectiveness. And yet, other than slowing the rapidity of prion damage by altering our internal pH, we’ve been powerless.
Maybe a new toxin, some kind of poison secreted by the ANSD bug that we haven’t yet discovered? She has all these drawings of molecular structures that I don’t recognize, can’t even begin to place. Maybe she’s wondering what kind of toxin, what kinds of proteins a novel virus would produce, what it could secrete that we’d be so unable to stop.
But then she’ll shift gears, right in the middle of the page, and suddenly she’s back to old stuff, back to manipulating the pH, back to trying tired anti-influenza medications with slight modifications. She’s all over the place, and none of it makes any real sense. At least not to me.
She’s confused. Or she’s on to something very new.
Probably both. Either way, I need her.
I need to wait until she’s recovered enough to assist with further exploration. We don’t have unlimited subjects, and I can’t do genetic inquiries and molecular studies without a better guiding theory. Dammit, I can’t even remember how to properly conduct a protein analysis. I’d be more comfortable if we had a thousand needles for this haystack, but we don’t. We have four. Four subjects and a bunch of garbled theories that no one except maybe Blanca understands, which means that for now she’s our best hope.
But to maintain the integrity of our investigation, the humanoid in the laboratory still needs to feed. Its metabolic rate is so high, it’s starving. To preserve nutritional status, at approximately 11:35 PM I fed it the recently removed left ear of another subject from the holding area.
The wind was blowing, and the smell was awful. The floodlights that illuminate the holding facility were swaying at the tops of their steel poles like fruit on old trees, so the light kept shifting, casting shadows through the mist. It was so dark, so strange. I was entering a cage, felt trapped.
One of the subjects, a female I think, was on the ground, resting maybe, her face staring upward toward the sky. As soon as I took my first step into the facility she moved, was on her feet and lunging. The chains held, though. Thank God.
I used one of the transport poles to immobilize her and used the emergency restraints in the holding area to secure her head. Her skin was worse than the one in the lab, the tissue on her face seeming to dissolve with the forces of gravity.
But it knew I was here. It was decaying, actively decomposing even as I watched it, and yet it struggled with ferocious effort. It seemed not to care at all that I was removing its ear. It only wanted to be free.
How much energy can one creature glean from the limited nutritional value of badly damaged cartilage and a few disjointed proteins? How many more times will it need to feed? And what on Earth are we going to feed it?
I am trying to be as objective as possible, to dispassionately include every detail. Still, I’m offering “food” to something I’ve been told is no longer alive, or at least NLH.
And removing the ear from the subject in the holding area was even worse; it showed no emotion other than rage, and twice it bit my Kevlar gloves. How do we do this? How do we maintain our sanity? I just fed an ear to a zombie.
Gutierrez woke slowly, asked for water. She vomited after a few sips and went back to sleep. Soon she was awake again, this time even able to hold down some food. She woke hungry.
I’m OK, she told us. We have work to do, and she instructed me to check on the subject. She was shuffling toward the closet, getting the wheelchair, unfolding it, and lowering herself into the seat.
All three of us went back to the lab and found that the autopsy subject was resting until we entered the room. In fact, even before we arrived, it appeared to sense our presence and started vocalizing. The other subjects in the holding area heard the vocalizations and were responding. The sound of their calls filled the air, but were muffled by the wind, the white noise of the dead ocean.
Removal of left ear from subject in holding area.
Once we were in the laboratory, the subject became quiet for a moment—it strained to see us, its pupils tracking our movements even as its brain remained exposed. Its head was strapped to the table but it could move its eyes. It was watching us.
Then it started growling.
Much of the frontal lobe had entirely liquefied, suggesting little use for this region of the brain once humanoids are totally infected. Blood vessels had burst throughout the night, and there was blood on the wall near the subject and pooling on the plastic floor.
For God’s sake, this is the frontal lobe. This is the higher brain, the human brain, the marvel of the known universe. This is the part of our brain that makes us wonder, makes us dream, makes us pray.
Couldn’t the plague have spared this? It could have taken our movements, wrecked our senses, blinded us and made us mute, but, please, let us keep what makes us human. All that stuff about divine retribution. All those people preaching that this virus was the end, something sent from above, a second deluge, a punishment for what we’ve become.
We were all thinking that, and what’s left of humanity still does, for the most part. But now… now, looking at this, I know this has to be wrong. This plague was created by something more primitive, more base. Only a person, a terrible, misguided fellow person, could stoop low enough to create a virus this darkly perfect. This virus is rank, made by something evil, something human.
Gutierrez just asked me why I was writing so much—she reminded me to focus, to be dispassionate. I’m sweating, though the climate control is functional right now. I’m overwhelmed.
No. That’s not it.
I’m angry.
I am looking at the frontal lobe and it is indistinguishable from decomposed matter; it actually smells dead. I can’t even grasp and maneuver it. The tissue that remains intact is anchored by the brain stem as it attaches to the spinal column, but whatever I grab with my hands, even with the forceps, almost immediately disintegrates. It
’s like melting snow. It drips through the cracks in between my fingers.
Pittman is sketching, Gutierrez is taking notes, and I need to focus. This is what a neuroanatomist would see. This is what I can observe:
The sulci are so wide that there is an absence of gyrations altogether. The fundamental architecture of the frontal lobe is gone, missing. It’s like soup.
The occipital lobe is also affected, but, interestingly, it is substantially more defined than the rest of the visible brain structures. I always thought it strange in normal human anatomy that the occipital lobe should be so far from the eyes themselves. This is the region of the brain that processes visual input. A person with a badly damaged occipital lobe might as well not have eyes at all. That’s why the back of the skull is so solid. How many times do we fall down on the ice, slip on the sand, slam the back of our head onto cold concrete? Damage the occipital lobe and we risk sight itself, so our skulls are extra-thick, extra-careful to preserve this fundamental sensory experience.
The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse Page 3
