No Light Beyond

by L. Douglas Hogan

  Among the people surviving in the mountain complex, a team of scientists, designated to function as the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, were assigned to study, analyze, and develop a means to combat the alien infection that followed the eruption of Yellowstone. The team consisted of a geologist named Susan Schott, a biologist named Bradley Carter, and an ecologist named Temper Evans.

  The eruption of Yellowstone was an unexpected event that happened almost immediately after the attack. The supervolcano put eleven inches of ash on top of the Cheyenne mountain complex. It took the better part of a year for the Cheyenne survivors to clear enough ash away from the front of the primary entrance to make room for a proposed emergency evacuation and communal triage site for Americans that managed to survive the initial Yellowstone blast.

  Those plans were scrapped when NORAD became aware of the first side effects of what appeared to be a contagion. Reports came in of a strange fever followed by graying of the skin and nodule growths on the skin that resembled acrochorda (skin tags) in appearance. NORAD prevented the spread of the fever into the mountain complex by denying medical aid. However, they were forced into studying the strange event when several members of the Cheyenne mountain complex suddenly became infected.

  Dr. Temper Evans was made commander of the team that was assigned to study the phenomenon. She, like her colleagues, Dr. Susan Schott and Dr. Bradley Carter, were given the rank of captain.

  She had a twenty-one-year-old son stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska that she used to follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram religiously prior to the grid going down. Her thoughts were predominantly on her son, especially because she was unaware of her son’s condition.

  Nebraska was reported to be under eight inches of ash, and other reports were grimmer, alleging that asphyxiation had been the number one killer. Pneumoconiosis was the diagnosis for many of the deaths immediately outside Yellowstone’s kill zone. When people breathed in the tiny sharp microscopic stones, they lacerated the lungs and caused bleeding that eventually choked its victims. Dr. Evans chronically worried about her son, so much so that it oftentimes interfered with her job.

  It was Dr. Evans who ordered that the infected be quarantined until further notice. Being an ecologist, she was aware of the hazards posed by inhaling microscopic stones. Considering the absence of her son, she thought it best to quarantine the infected rather than banish them to the outside world.

  During their time in quarantine, a battery of complete blood count, or CBC, tests were conducted on the individuals. After weeks of study, the scientists had more questions than answers. One fruit of their study was that the infected appeared to be carriers only. They were carrying an unclassified microorganism with uncategorized biological gene sequences that qualified it as both viral and bacterial.

  It was Dr. Susan Schott that discovered the microorganism in a sample of Yellowstone’s ash. She believed the life-form was ancient, even older than humankind, and had been contained for several million years beneath the crust of the earth. She proposed that the lifeform most likely existed in the thriving underground ecosystem of Yellowstone’s vast and complex ecological network.

  Dr. Bradley Carter’s research revealed that the infection could be classified as a blood-borne pathogen and that it could not be transmitted by touch. One of Dr. Carter’s prominent tests included the adding of infected blood to uninfected blood. The results showed that the infection would not spread unless the blood was fresh and contained glucose, which it used as a form of fuel to impose itself upon the host. In the absence of glucose, the infection seemed harmless.

  The nodules contained a pus-filled substance that contained the microorganism in a form of suspended animation. Dr. Carter had been unable to qualify the purpose for them until the first fully changed specimen was captured and brought to the Cheyenne mountain complex’s version of the CDC for study. That was nearly a year and a half ago.

  Seventeen months prior

  “Bring it in here,” Dr. Evans said. The creature was strapped to a gurney and being rushed to the quarantine section of the CDC research department. The monster was screaming and tightly strapped down, but that didn’t stop it from its attempts to flail around like a feral animal trying to break free. The men pushing the creature were wearing white hazmat suits from head to toe. They all passed through a static room and bypassed the normal protocol to pass through the sterilization room since they didn’t want to contaminate the specimen, which was writhing like a wild animal and panting excessively.

  “Look at it,” Dr. Evans said as she leaned over to look into its eyes. She was prepped and ready for research when Drs. Carter and Schott arrived.

  “When did it arrive?”

  “It literally just got here,” Evans answered.

  “Okay, the rest of you need to leave,” she commanded the military men that rushed the specimen to the research lab.

  “Ma’am, I think we should stay close. You haven’t seen what this thing is capable of,” the sergeant said.

  Dr. Evans looked at the men’s hazmat suits and noticed they were covered in blood. She looked back at the specimen and couldn’t find any place where the creature might have been bleeding, but there was a lot of blood around its mouth. It was then that she realized the creature had killed somebody or something. “Okay, but we need you to remain still over there against the wall… and stay silent,” she commanded.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There were three men that stayed back against the wall. It was the blood of a fellow soldier that stained his suit.

  Dr. Evans started by looking into the creature’s eyes. Its head was strapped to the gurney and was barely able to move. Its eyes were darting back and forth and had a translucent appearance, like there was no life in them. Hazy white in color, with only a hint of green that used to be her natural color.

  Dr. Carter saw Dr. Evans studying the creature’s eyes and decided to start his analysis from where she was standing. He held his voice recorder to his face and said, “Study Subject One appears to be a living female, but there seems to be no life in her eyes. Corneal clouding typically noted in postmortem humans is evident, but all signs point to a living creature.”

  Dr. Evans moved her hand across the front of the creature’s face to determine if it could see. Its eyes continued to dart all over the place as if it was responding to some kind of internal stimuli, but otherwise didn’t appear to be able to see her.

  Dr. Carter saw the response and recorded, “Primary flaccidity does not appear to be present,” making reference to the lack of relaxed muscles that normally follows rigor mortis. “This gives me an initial hypothesis that the specimen appears to be alive.”

  Dr. Carter looked at Dr. Schott, who really couldn’t play a role in the primary analysis phase of the research, and asked, “Would you mind removing the shirt from the specimen?”

  Dr. Schott picked up a pair of scissors and maneuvered herself into a position where she could cut the shirt off the woman. Beneath the shirt, it was apparent that the woman had been shot multiple times. Dr. Carter turned to the soldiers that were standing in the back of the room and asked, “Sergeant, did you or your men fire on this woman?”

  “No, sir. We collected a live specimen as we were instructed to. It cost us the life of Private First Class Scott Walls, not that you would care.”

  There was a bit of rivalry between the civilian doctors that were given rank and the enlisted men and women of NORAD. They had been unsuccessful in securing a living specimen for a while, mostly due to resistance to the idea of putting soldiers in harm’s way for the purpose of science, and partially due to the rare sightings of the specimens. However, they were able to convince command that there would never be an end to the epidemic if they refused to supply them with a test subject.

  “We do care, Sergeant,” Dr. Evans said, confronting the soldier.

  Drs. Carter and Evans turned back to the specimen and began searching the skin of the woman. “N
ote the appearance of nodes, which correlate with reports from the outside that humans infected with the microorganisms are covered from head to toe with liquid-filled bumps that look like skin tags,” Dr. Carter said, taking a scalpel to cut a tiny node off. The node leaked a clear substance that ran down the skin of the host. He placed it on a glass slide and walked it over to the microscope.

  Looking into it, he said, “The node contains thousands of said microorganisms that are suspended in a fluid-based substance, which is holding them fast, much like a baby survives in a mother’s womb without breathable air.”

  Dr. Carter went from the microscope back to the host and picked up a thermometer. The creature had a restraint strap across its head, preventing the doctor from taking a measurement from its forehead. Dr. Carter had to go old-fashioned to get a temperature; using an older method, he put a thermometer under the creature’s armpit. “Dr. Schott, could you tell me what the room’s temperature is?” he asked.

  “Twenty-two degrees Celsius,” she answered, looking at the thermostat.

  Dr. Carter pulled the thermometer out of the creature’s armpit and looked.

  “What’s it say, Dr. Carter?” Dr. Evans asked.

  “She’s room temperature,” he answered.

  “That can’t be right. Check again,” she ordered.

  Dr. Carter used a rectal thermometer for his second attempt. Moments later, he pulled the thermometer out. “Twenty-two degrees Celsius,” he said. “It’s the same.”

  “She’s room temperature,” Dr. Schott said. “That’s impossible. The human body cannot survive at temperatures that low.”

  “Euthermia typically ranges between thirty-six point five and thirty-seven point five. Twenty-two degrees is well below hypothermic conditions. The host isn’t shivering, but it is very active,” Dr. Carter said. “Can you hand me that stethoscope right there?” he asked Dr. Evans.

  She reached around to her other side and grabbed the device, handing it to Dr. Carter, who placed it into his ears. He then placed the diaphragm onto the creature’s chest to listen for a heartbeat. Dr. Carter repositioned the diaphragm twice before taking the stethoscope off and handing it to Dr. Evans. She gave it a try and looked up at Dr. Carter, who was walking backwards.

  “It can’t be possible,” Dr. Evans said. “She doesn’t appear to have a heartbeat.”

  “Let me try,” Dr. Schott said. She snatched the stethoscope out of Dr. Evans’s hands and gave it a try. “Maybe we can’t hear her heart because she’s breathing so hard?” Dr. Schott suggested. “I mean, how can she be breathing if she’s not got a heartbeat, right?”

  The creature began to fight all the more against the restraints. It let out a scream that startled all six of them.

  Dr. Carter grabbed a syringe and gently poked the undead creature. It did not respond to the touch. He tried again, only this time he penetrated the arm and tried to draw blood, but was having difficulty doing so. The veins seemed to be sunken and difficult to find. With time, Dr. Carter was able to draw some blood from the woman’s body. He took it to the microscope and gave it a quick glance. Dr. Carter used his recording device to record his discovery.

  “Study Subject One appears to be lacking a white blood cell count. The microorganism seems to have taken over that role. I will now add normal blood to the sample I just collected from the host and record the results.”

  Dr. Carter had a vial of normal blood near his workstation that he used to add a tiny droplet to the host’s sample.

  “The microorganisms in the infected blood immediately attacked the white blood cells that were present in the normal sample. They are not bothering the neutrophils. However, they seem to be latching onto the white blood cells and absorbing them into… wait a second…” Dr. Carter said, noticing a change of behavior in the microorganism. “The attack has stopped. For some reason, the microorganism suddenly stopped moving against the white blood cells, and the remaining white blood cells have killed the microorganisms.”

  Dr. Carter walked back over to the host, who was calming down significantly. He looked at the sergeant and asked, “Can you go get another one of your colleagues and prep them for lab entry?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, leaving to grab a colleague.

  “What are you doing?” Dr. Evans asked Dr. Carter.

  “I’m hypothesizing, Dr. Evans. I have a theory as to why those microorganisms stopped attacking the white blood cells.”

  “Maybe you should share your ideas before they become a hypothesis so that we don’t expose more people than we absolutely need to?”

  “Fine, Dr. Evans. When we first saw the host, we were frightened by it. It responded by screaming and lashing about in the gurney. When we calmed, it calmed. When I discovered it didn’t have a heartbeat, we became frightened. Once again, the host screamed and began to thrash about on the gurney.”

  “Cut to the chase, Dr. Carter.”

  “What if the microorganism responds to something we, as people, emit when we become frightened?”

  “That’s an interesting observation, Dr. Carter. You plan on exposing a soldier that hasn’t been in the room with the host to test this hypothesis?”

  “I do.”

  Moments later, another soldier came in with the sergeant. He was geared up from head to toe in a hazmat suit to protect him from a potentially infectious disease.

  The moment the soldier walked in, Dr. Carter escorted him up to the woman on the gurney, and the undead woman startled him into taking several steps back. The creature screamed and began thrashing about in a direct response to the soldier’s fear. Dr. Carter recorded the moment. “The host has begun to respond to the human fight-or-flight response and communicated some kind of scream that was followed by violent convulsions.”

  “Soldier, can we draw blood from you?” Dr. Carter asked.

  The soldier was apprehensive.

  “It’s for posterity and in the name of science,” Dr. Carter pleaded.

  “Sure.”

  Dr. Schott escorted the soldier out of the room and put fresh gloves on her hands. She drew blood from the soldier and returned it to Dr. Carter. He immediately placed it under the microscope and added the infected blood to it. This time the infected blood did not cease its attack on the fresh sample until all the white blood cells had been absorbed.

  Dr. Carter recorded the entire event and shared the outcome with Dr. Evans and Dr. Schott.

  Later that night, Dr. Carter’s research on the nodules had led him to a conclusion. The genetic makeup of the microorganism found within the nodes was almost identical to the ones found in the bloodstream, with one exception: they had a characteristic similar to foodborne pathogens.

  Dr. Carter was alone in the lab when he made the discovery, surmising that the infection was not only spread through the blood, but also through ingestion. Realizing there was only one way to test his hypothesis, he decided to secretly contaminate a food source with the nodule discharge from several hosts. To do this, he collected several samples and infected the breakfast service while no one was monitoring the kitchen.

  Thirteen men and women became infected and, over the course of the next two weeks, developed high temperatures that eventually abated and were followed by a discoloration of the skin and development of the self-same nodules that were used by Dr. Carter in his ambitious and sacrificial science project.

  Seventeen months later, the infected remained quarantined and over time were experimented on and examined like lab rats.

  Dr. Carter became increasingly more obsessed with his studies. Over time, he was able to determine that there was a minute amount of brain activity that he couldn’t explain. The fear center, also known as the hypothalamus, was completely void of activity, as were all faculties that governed human emotion. He found that the sensory areas continued to function albeit the eyes were blind. The temporal lobe, which operated as the memory center, was also dead. More stunning was the fact that Dr. Carter read a brain scan that showed
the specimen’s medulla oblongata was fully functional. This puzzled him because it controls the heart and respiratory system. He reasoned that the specimen would have no need for it if the heart was not active.

  Dr. Carter slapped himself in the head. He was alone in the lab late at night, as was customary, when he said to himself, “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?” He grabbed his voice recorder and made a note. “Study Subject One came to Cheyenne breathing heavily, as if it were hyperventilating. I didn’t put two and two together at the time, but later testing resulted in the finding that the hypothalamus seems to be fully functional. Why it would be lighting up during brain scans when the heart is dead makes no sense. An operational hypothalamus and heavy panting should entail a functional heart, which we were unable to verify. I plan on doing more research on the specimen’s heart to discover the truth of the matter.”

  The female Ravager expired before Dr. Carter could test his new hypothesis. Studies also failed to produce any rhyme or reason as to how it was able to animate as long as it did. During Dr. Carter’s initial study, he believed the creature was alive. Later research revealed that the creature was neither living nor dead. For all intents and purposes, it was classified as “undead” by the CDC. The jury was still out on whether or not the infection was to be classified as a viral or bacterial infection.

  Later studies proved that the creature responded to endocrine cocktails caused by the human response to fear, anger, extreme sorrow, and other powerful and negative emotion that caused the hypothalamus portion of the brain to release corticotropin-releasing hormone, or CRH, a polypeptide hormone that is the body’s response to stress.

  ...

  “Commander, we just received word that the infestation has extended beyond the Mississippi River into Illinois and western parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana. Preliminary inquiries show that it’s possible that Mississippi State has been infected, but there’s no reports of it. The same could be said about all remaining states to the east,” the intelligence officer reported.