The abdominal cavity was infested with parasitic worms, many more than three meters in length. Gutierrez was working on identifying them.
And the bowels are definitely malabsorptive. Fecal material is scattered throughout the peritoneal cavity. Multiple colonic punctures throughout the GI tract; undigested crab shells clearly identifiable.
Again, a human would have died from this kind of infection, from the effects of fecal bacteria and parasitic worms literally swimming in the abdominal cavity. The belly is rock hard—a first-year medical student would recognize this as fatal peritonitis.
Other powerful viruses—Ebola, for example—quickly kill their hosts. Usually isolation of infected populations allows the disease to eradicate its own spread. The host dies and there’s no one alive to carry the virus forward.
This bug is different.
Blanca reminded me that temperature is regulated in the hypothalamus, and that humanoids can still mount a fever. I think she’s noting that they ought to be too sick to do this, to even get a fever in the first place, unless, once again, something were protecting the hypothalamic response. She also reminded me that the hypothalamus is where hunger sits, that the subject is hungry and feeble but still febrile, still wanting.
I watched the subject, its eyes wide and seemingly unaware that we were removing its colon. There is something grotesquely admirable here. A life force that feels old, almost ancient. Something primitive.
Forgot to ask her about the goddamn goats. She had drawings of goats in her office, and I don’t have the slightest idea why…
Keep forgetting things.
Sun is hot, and air-conditioning is out. We’re going back to the bunkers. Need sleep. Need to think about this. Gutierrez to stay behind; need time to culture the sections. I didn’t want to leave her there alone, but she insisted. Too tired to argue.
Opened abdominal cavity with parasitic worms and bowel perforations.
Small bowel removed showing ongoing presence of tapeworms throughout open cavity.
At this point, we are confident that Gutierrez feels she has at least isolated clues to an additional pathogen. We do not have a good understanding of how this pathogen would lead to the enhanced ability to stay animate. As Blum notes, a vaccine will need to recapture the immune system of the host. Because neurological damage and the resultant behavioral changes appear irreversible at Stage IV, we’ll need to study subjects at earlier stages of disease progression. This means dissecting humans at Stage III or even II of the disease. In other words, we must consider dissecting living humans, a clear violation of the Atlanta Protocol. Please arrive tomorrow prepared to discuss the ramifications of this possibility.
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
10:11 AM
We slept for more than fourteen hours. Ate nothing last night.
Gutierrez was asleep in the lab, lying in the fetal position on the ground next to a lab stool. She must have fallen. When Pittman and I opened the door, she woke, looked confused, even bewildered, and then she immediately asked for sections of the large and small bowel. We helped her, pushed the stool back to the table. She seemed excited, moved quicker, but kept dropping things. She perspired onto her notes, onto her workbench. Asked us to bring her a towel.
She passed out twice.
The first time she fainted, her head hit the corner of the table. Blood ran down the side of her face. The force woke her and she motioned to her pocket. We found smelling salts there; she’d been hoarding them. Use them, she said, and we broke them and waved them under her face. Did this the second time also, and both times she pulled herself onto the stool without saying anything. She was breathing rapidly. Pittman brought an IV pole for her and I somehow found a vein for the needle. We kept her hydrated.
She asked again for sections of the subject’s bowel. I had forgotten the subject was there. Its heart was still beating, leaking all over the table. It was awake. The bowel was tangled and perforated. No clear demarcations from large and small bowel. Lots of fecal material. Parasitic worms hung from the tissue samples. Whatever food is absorbed goes beyond what these parasites can divert. Perhaps this adds to the hunger. Subjects need to eat nearly constantly in order to absorb any real nutritional content.
She explained to me that she needed the sections no more than five microns thick. Not enough power left for the electron microscope. She was out of breath after telling me this, how to do this. I stood at the other lab station, trying to hold my hands steady.
I’m not sure how to explain what happened next but it is important that I keep a record. Future studies might take place. There may be others who continue our work. We need to be aware of the ways psychological distress can explode. Later I’ll try to analyze these events, try to see if I could have predicted them. Right now, I need to note them, need to let others know about what happens in these circumstances.
I noticed Pittman first. Heard him, I guess. I was so focused on preparing the tissue that I didn’t see him get up from his stool. He was whimpering, kept trying to draw. He had a pen, a large pad. Kept tearing out paper, throwing it at the humanoid. Can’t get it right, he said. Can’t stop shaking.
Ignore him, Gutierrez whispered. Keep working.
I listened to her and went back to work, but I should have helped Pittman. Should have paid attention.
Pittman pushed the buttons, undid the restraints. He set the subject free.
He was crying. His crumpled drawings were stuck to the zombie, sinking into the half-empty abdominal chamber. It rolled off the table and crawled toward Pittman, its eyes glazed. It was growling, tracking our movements.
Pittman threw himself at it, stomped on its legs, inside its abdomen. He slipped, fell, his face landed on the subject’s mouth. It bit his tongue, wouldn’t let go. I reached for a tranquilizer and shot him. Meant to hit the zombie, but got Pittman instead. He slumped on top of it, the subject closing its arms around him, thrashing.
Gutierrez fell from her chair, reaching for a gun. I kicked Pittman off the subject and shot it twice, the second dart hitting its open mouth, disappearing inside.
It stopped thrashing and was still. It was deanimated. The dart must have hit the brain stem.
Gutierrez pulled herself up again and told me to forget about Pittman, that time was short. We only have one more subject. Finish the section, she said. I need it. Need it now. Then bring me the other subject.
I stared at her but she had already forgotten I was there. She had rigors, a fever. I could feel her fever from across the room. She was trying to get a slide under the microscope.
We can’t sacrifice our humanity. We can’t. I put Pittman over my shoulder and carried him to the infirmary. Blood poured from his mouth and soaked my shirt. How the fuck do you bandage a tongue?
Tea.
Can you believe it? All this technology, all this crap, and the first-aid kit tells me to use tea bags to stop the bleeding. I left Pittman on a stretcher and ran to the kitchen, returned a minute later and stuffed his mouth with gauze and Earl Grey. That was all we had left. Gupta preferred English Breakfast.
And then I started laughing, looking at Pittman, unconscious, caffeinated, gauze and tea bags hanging out of his mouth. Shoved a needle into his thigh, gave him some antibiotics. Couldn’t stop laughing. Strapped him to the table and don’t even know why. Didn’t trust him. Don’t know who’s crazier.
I was leaving and then turned, went back into the infirmary. Pittman’s face was red. His eyes were closed, but he was hot. Burning. He was mounting a fever. Something in the bite on his tongue was already attacking him, already mounting an immune response. There must have been thousands of bacteria in the mouth of that zombie.
It dawned on me slowly, like I was drunk and just realizing it. Infection, non-ANSD infection, triggers an immune response. The human immune response lowers pH. Pittman was going to change…
I undid the restraints and lifted his arms into the air—they stayed stiff, shaking. A seizure. He was biting the tea
bag over and over, his fever worsening, his respiration rate increasing. He’s going to die, I thought. He’s going to change. How many organisms were in that zombie’s mouth? How many pathogens? He can’t beat this.
I sat on the chair and watched him, his whole body twitching with the seizure. He had ANSD neurological involvement. Late Stage II, closer to Stage III. The bite had triggered accelerated progression of the disease. His immune response was engaged; couldn’t have a fever without that, but it was helping ANSD to spread even as it was fighting the newly introduced bacteria from the bite.
Acidity. Infection. Immunocompetency. All of that creates an acidic environment. His pH must be dropping, plummeting. I yanked up his shirt and checked his pH meter. The dial was moving from purple to red. I could picture the prions in his brain folding, changing. I could picture them moving.
I gave him more antibiotics to quell his own immune response. I want the antibiotics to kill the bugs infiltrating his tongue. If the antibiotics can kill the bacteria, then his own immune response will quiet down and his pH will stabilize.
No change—still seizing. Still changing.
I grabbed some bicarb, injected it into his thigh. I attached the quick leads for the EKG. Watched the needle on the meter move higher, better. His pH was rising. More bicarb, more Lasix.
The alarm for his EKG rang—he had U waves with ST depression. His heart was faltering as his pH increased. Alkalosis affects electrolytes. Lowering pH decreases intracellular potassium, and without potassium in the cells, the heart can’t function. That’s what the EKG was showing. His heart was failing.
I crossed my fingers, and watched. Had no idea where potassium replacement was. I felt like I was watching him die.
Then his EKG normalized and his pH leveled out. Somehow his heart overcame the rapid alkalotic process. But that meant the prions were moving again, twisting, changing.
Gutierrez on the intercom. Told me to come back to the lab. That she had something to show me. I stared for a second at Pittman, and then left. Didn’t restrain him… Just left.
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
1:00 AM
Woke up on the floor of the infirmary. My head was bruised, Pittman breathing normally, most of the gauze out of his mouth.
I had fainted. Moved too quickly. Dark outside.
Pittman still on the bed.
I remembered that Gutierrez had called me. Looked at my watch—she called more than two hours ago. What had she found? She had started to analyze the colonic neurons when I carried Pittman to the lab. Wouldn’t they be related to the neurons in the hypothalamus? Doesn’t the gut communicate with the brain through colonic and hypothalamic neurons?
I tried to picture her theory as I stumbled toward the lab. She must be thinking that the same organism that targets the hypothalamus also targets the gut. That must have been what she wanted to show me. She might have isolated her pathogen.
I arrived at the lab and found Gutierrez. Sort of.
Humanoids don’t understand wheelchairs.
She was on the ground, pulling herself up to a window. She growled when she saw me, lunged.
I put a chair between us. She seemed weak, couldn’t move it. She pushed it from side to side, the chair rocking on its back legs. On the stainless-steel gurney were scribbled notes next to small slices of hypothalamus. The notes were held in place by a pile of bones and shells. The pile was balanced, neatly stacked. It looked like one of those Zen sculptures. She had drawn a sheep using humanoid blood, a stick figure on the wall that I wouldn’t have seen if she hadn’t pushed the table just under it. It looked like a cave drawing. I was supposed to see these notes and the drawings; she meant for me to see them.
I looked around the room. The microscope monitors were protected behind a file cabinet. She had moved them so that they wouldn’t be harmed. Slides were in place and an image was projected onto the screen. Mononuclear cells and healthy tissue. The tissue was neuronal, but it looked different from the hypothalamic sections from earlier. I looked at the microscope. Using surgical tape speckled with blood, she had attached the note card from the microscopic specimen next to the sample. It was hard to make out, but I could read it. “Colonic neurons.” I looked back at the monitor.
It looked so much like the infected ventromedial hypothalamus. Same process. Same architecture. I was mesmerized. There was something here! She knew it, was on to something. Something invades the hypothalamus and the colon—provokes the same immune response in both regions. The same bug. But not ANSD. Something new. Something we hadn’t considered with the original vaccines.
I tried to study the stick figures, the sketches on the wall.
But Gutierrez kept lunging at me. All I needed to do was to kick her, move her out the way. She was a skeleton, barely even there. I didn’t even have to kill her.
But I couldn’t do it.
Instead I sat down on the other autopsy table and watched her. Watched it. She was No Longer Human. She was gone. I looked around again, noting the absurdity of my sudden gift of time. She couldn’t get me. I was a clown, safe behind a steel chair and table.
The lab was destroyed, instruments everywhere. Windows broken, crabs feeding.
The subject was half eaten, a carcass on the ground. The ribs were missing, now part of the Zen pile across the room.
I wanted a funeral. Was she Catholic? What do Catholics do when they die?
I started thinking about the notes, and walked over the tops of the tables to get closer to what she had left me. She watched me, dead eyes, growling. She pulled herself along the ground and was able to grab my leg. I kicked her face and she flipped over, onto her back, her tongue wildly thrusting in and out of her mouth. A reflex, I told myself. Her tongue—only a reflex.
Her notes were hard to make out. Lines of writing were all over the lab paper. There were no complete sentences. I wrote down all that I could read. “A new pathogen… No current vaccine” was scribbled off to the side. She had sketched more animals, more livestock, written something below the childish sketches. It looked like “Born”: Something new was born? What did she mean? What was born? Was she thinking about our species changing? A new species is born? She was still staring at the ceiling, licking her lips like an insect, like a fly cleans its face. My breathing caught her attention and she began moaning, dragging herself toward me again. I climbed on top of a table and watched.
And then Pittman arrived, staggering, carrying an IV pole. Look! I shouted, and pointed at the wall. What does she mean? I wanted to show him the notes, all that she had left us.
He swung the IV pole toward me and missed, knocking a transport pole onto the ground. He was using a tool… zombies don’t use tools. He wasn’t gone yet. Stop, I yelled. Help me!
He staggered closer, his swollen, bleeding tongue hanging out of his mouth. He looked drunk, ghoulish…
But he was aware, still alive. Still human. He tried to talk but couldn’t, instead making a muffled, thwarted sound. His tongue.
I ducked, thinking he was after me, but he wasn’t.
The pole crushed Blanca’s temple, broke her cheekbone. He hit her again and again, and she stopped moving, her skull fractured, her brain ruined. And then, in one fluid movement, he dropped the pole and shot himself. Put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger.
Where did he get that gun?
Blood everywhere—Blanca’s notes were soaked, the writing smeared with what used to be Pittman’s brain. I could still make out some words, though. And there was that drawing of a sheep on the wall. A child’s drawing.
I grabbed a pen and scribbled all that I could decipher of Blanca’s notes. “Livestock contaminant… animal to human jump.” A drawing of a cow, maybe a horse. No—that’s a cat. Horses don’t have whiskers like that. “Sweden, 1995, staggering disease.” What did that mean? “2005—Communicable Disease Unit. UK. Farmers, agriculture… assoc with obesity, eating… parrots. pets.”
2:15 AM
I’ve been sitting her
e, trying to focus, trying to think. At first I kept turning Blanca’s notes over and over in my hands, but the writing was disappearing, mixing with the blood and tissue. It was blurring.
Some new pathogen. Something new. Something we hadn’t accounted for. Something we hadn’t protected against in all of the vaccines.
Or was this the same organism as the ANSD pathogen? There’s no way we know everything about this bug… What if the ANSD virus has another organism combined, intermixed, symbiotic?
The odds of that happening in nature are pretty slim… But we always thought someone made this… that it didn’t happen on its own.
The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse Page 7
