“I saw the car,” I explained as I entered. “I wasn’t sure who it was, and I didn’t want to—” I stepped around the corner to the living room and stopped at the sight of Sofia sitting on the couch. “—barge in,” I finished, briefly flustered. But it only took an instant to see that if they’d been up to something they’d have had to be ultra-fast dressers. Plus, Sofia looked stressed and upset, and I realized Marcus had lines of tension around his eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Marcus said with a quick kiss. “There’s some weird stuff going on.”
“No shit,” I said as I moved to the couch and dropped down onto it. “But, um, I need to talk to you about…” I fumbled for some euphemism I could use for zombie stuff and failed. “About pudding,” I finally blurted, then mentally cringed. Pudding? That was the best I could do?
A smile twitched across Marcus’s face. “It’s all right, Angel. Sofia knows we’re zombies.”
“Oh.” A weird ache of disappointment swam through me. This was the one thing that I shared with Marcus that I’d figured someone like Sofia couldn’t, since she wasn’t one of us. And yet…she did share it—and clearly accepted Marcus just fine as a zombie. What does that leave for me?
I did my best to swallow back the ache and put on a nonchalant smile. “Okay, well, that makes things easier,” I said. “I just found out that the guy who died at your lab really was a zombie.” I shot Marcus a quick I told you so! look.
Sofia let out a small gasp. “Are you certain?”
“Then how could he have appeared so dead?” Marcus asked, frowning. “Angel, how can you be so sure?”
I perched on the edge of the sofa. “Because the weirdness isn’t just that he was a zombie. It’s that this was one of the zombies that Ed killed.”
He blinked. “That doesn’t make sense. What do you mean?”
I quickly told them about the fingerprint on the watch and getting the ID, as well as the comparison of pictures and the matching scar and mole. Marcus still looked dubious, but Sofia clenched her hands together and hunched her shoulders.
“This explains so much,” she said, voice unsteady. “He must have been after my research.” She lifted her eyes to Marcus. “Pietro needs to know this. I know someone’s been looking through my files. Somehow one of the other zombie factions found out. I…I need protection.”
He moved to her side. “We’ll keep you safe, Sofia. Don’t worry.”
I frowned and held up a hand. “Hang on a sec. Could someone please explain to me what the hell is going on? What research? What ‘zombie factions’?”
Sofia took a deep breath and straightened. “I’ve known about the zombies for several years, since shortly after Marcus was turned. Pietro came to me with the offer to fund research in the hopes that I could either find a cure for it or find a way to manufacture a food substitute that would remove the need to consume human brains.”
“Is there a cure?” I asked, though I immediately wondered if I’d want it. As weird and gross as the whole zombie thing was, there were definitely some advantages.
She gave a sad shake of her head. “There’s no way to remove the parasite without killing the host.”
“Wait,” I said. “It’s not some sort of virus?”
“No, and I’ll explain why,” she said, her face abruptly growing more animated. Clearly this was a subject that excited her. “You see, viruses infect to reproduce, whereas parasites infect to get a home, freeload, and live out their lives. For the zombies that you see in the movies, yes, a virus makes sense, because they’re mindlessly going around trying to bite more people to propagate the infection. But with you—the real zombies—the goal seems to be the host’s survival, and it’s pretty much hijacked your entire body to make sure of it.”
“Okay,” I said weakly. Then I grimaced. “No, wait. I’m still confused. A parasite…like tapeworms? How is that different from a virus?”
She grinned but it wasn’t amusement at my ignorance. This was obviously her turf and a topic she relished. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “Parasites and viruses share some basic traits—they both need to infect a host and use its resources to survive and reproduce, but their global outlook is very different. A virus’s business model is based around hijacking your cellular machinery and completely depleting any and all resources it can get its grubby hands on, until the host is either dead or its immune system manages to kick the infecting virus out.” She paused, tilted her head. “Or into hibernation. A lot of viral infections are actually permanent; our immune system just gets used to them and forces them into retirement or hibernation, like chicken pox, herpes, warts, and hepatitis.”
I shuddered. “Seriously? I had chicken pox when I was a kid. You’re saying I still have it?”
She chuckled. “Actually probably not anymore, now that you’re a zombie. But I’ll explain why that is in a second.”
“Don’t feel bad, Angel,” Marcus said. “I’ve been through the same Zombie 101 class. Luckily, Sofia does a great job of making it understandable.”
“If you say so,” I said, trying not to sound too doubtful.
Sofia didn’t seem to notice. “First let me explain viruses,” she continued. “Success, to a virus, is making a gazillion infectious copies of itself and making its host as infectious as possible, whatever the cost. Absolutely nowhere in this business model is there any accountability or design to save the host resource. It banks on having an inexhaustible supply of hosts available to infect. Keeping the host alive and happy just isn’t in the sales pitch.” She paused. “I like to compare a virus to a bad company that sets up shop in a third world country to make, say, shoes. After the third world country is raped of every resource the company can get its grubby hands on to build the factories and shoes, the people are starving, and the land has been strip-mined, the company at no point goes, ‘Hmmm, maybe we should fix this.’ Instead it pats itself on the back for selling lots and lots of shoes, packs up, and sets up shop all over again in a brand new third world country. This exploitive business assumes there will always be an inexhaustible supply of new countries to inhabit and strip-mine.”
I mulled that for a few seconds, shocked to find that I actually understood what she was saying. “Right. And we’re not like that. We don’t try and infect everyone we come in contact with.”
“Exactly!” she said, bringing her hands together. “But there’s even more to it than that. Your form of zombieism actually benefits you in many ways.”
“Like the healing up and super-strength and stuff?” I asked.
She gave a nod. “It would be a lot of evolutionary leg work and a lot of extra genetic programming to turn a virus into something that would consistently benefit its host. Each change in behavior would mean a genetic change…but here’s the thing: Because viruses use the host’s resources—machinery and energy, they don’t actively select against mutation. This is because there is no loss to the virus in letting itself just mutate; it’s only wasting its hosts’ resources, not its own. So, although useful mutations are selected for, the bad mutations aren’t necessarily selected against.”
I could feel my eyes beginning to glaze over. “And this means…?”
Sofia smiled. “It means that there’s pretty much no way a virus could do what your zombieism does.”
“And a parasite could?”
“Right!” She gave me a probing look. “Are you ready for phase two of my lecture?”
“Sure, why not,” I said, settling into a more comfortable position on the couch. “Maybe some of this shit will be on the GED.”
“Somehow I doubt that!” she said with a wry grin. “All right then: a parasite needs the host to live long enough for it to successfully complete its life cycle; grow, reproduce, et cetera. Parasites use the host more like an environment, rather than a stopover factory. A parasite needs to inhabit and use its hosts’ resources, but,” she paused, “and here is the big ‘but’: It needs the host to survive. If the parasite manages to
kill the host before it—the parasite—completes its life cycle, it fails. After its life cycle is over, it can kill the host all it wants, but not before.”
“Like…tapeworms?” I asked again.
“Better. See, it’s pretty clear to me that this parasite has a long life cycle. Longer than a human’s, which is why it’s in its best interest to regenerate the host.” She held up a hand. “But, of course, not at the risk of its own well being. We’re talking about a parasite here, after all, not a charity.”
I sat up straight. “Oh! I get it! It heals us up when it has the brains, and it lets us rot when it doesn’t.”
She clapped her hands. “Yes! Regeneration when there is food available, and sacrificing the host—the rotting—when it’s hungry.”
“That’s so cool,” I breathed. “And disgusting.”
Marcus laughed. “All right, Sofia. Now tell her about the mold.”
I shot him a frown. “Mold?”
Sofia let out an exasperated sigh. “Not mold—fungus.” She looked back at me. “And here is where I will explain how it’s not like tapeworms, where a dose of the right kind of meds would clear it right up.”
“Go for it,” I said lacing my fingers behind my head.
She launched herself to her feet and began an excited pacing. “Well, the first thing I looked at was how a new zombie is made.” She glanced up at Marcus. “Marcus and Pietro were able to give me a fair amount of information about the process, and it’s clearly not spreadable through a casual bite.”
“It, um, takes a bit of mauling,” Marcus said. He didn’t look at me, which was a relief for me. I didn’t want to think about the fact that he’d obviously had to do that to me to make me a zombie.
“Right,” Sofia said. “It takes a bit of doing to get the parasite to spin off an infecting spore and get it into the bloodstream of the new host, which is why it can’t be transferred via a simple blood transfusion or organ donation.” She looked at me with a slight frown. “Are you sure you want to hear the rest? It might be a bit unsettling to hear what happens when the parasite sets up shop.”
At this point I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear the rest, but I sure as hell didn’t want to look weak in front of this woman. I felt inadequate enough, thank you very much. “I’m cool,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. “Lay it on me.”
She took a deep breath. “Here goes. Once the victim has been bit, the infecting spore has access to the bloodstream and through the bloodstream the lymphatic system. From there it hits the immune system and pretty much takes over. It can now tell the host what it’s allowed to fight off infection-wise, and programs the immune system to think that the parasite is a friend. So, once the immune system is under the control of the parasite, it’s free to roam without it getting harmed or having the host get sick.
“It next travels through the human body, using the bloodstream and lymph system, to every organ and tissue type. At each new stop, it sets up a satellite colony that adapts and mimics the organ, and it makes sure to take over shop and do any necessary repairs. This is the initial colonization—setting up satellite colonies in every organ and making sure the organ is running smoothly, and also setting up a repair shop, so to speak.” She gave Marcus a meaningful look. “Which is why you didn’t die of rabies.”
He gave a short nod.
Sofia’s attention came back to me. “And is why you most likely don’t still have the chicken pox virus in you, or even if you do, you don’t have to worry about it coming back to haunt you in the form of shingles.”
She was right. I wasn’t ready to hear this. “In other words, this zombie parasite is all through me?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“Yes. Even the brain. I’m still not sure of the exact mechanism by which it crosses the blood-brain barrier—it might simply force its way in, since it has control of everything else. But the good news is that it doesn’t kill anything.” She gave me what was probably meant to be a reassuring look. “What it does is head for the hunger center and gets itself hardwired in.” She shrugged. “And there are probably all sorts of specialized cell-cell junctions, so no way is it getting ripped out of there. Even under the worst circumstances, it’s wedged into the brain tight. And now that the satellite colony in the brain is set up, the infection is complete.”
She leaned up against the edge of the love seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s more, I’m sure. Communication among the colonies, and how it manages to mimic host tissue so extraordinarily well. I mean, you have to really really be looking to see something’s amiss.”
Okay, so it looked like I was stuck being a zombie. “What about the brains? Why does it make us crave brains?”
“Prions!” she said with a proud smile. “And this is the basis of what I’ve been working on for the past several years. Prions are indestructible—they’re basically immortal proteins. Your parasitic zombie colony uses the prion proteins as building blocks and for fuel. The best part is, every time the host eats brains, the parasite has a brand new fuel supply. And, since it has its own personal hardwire into the host’s brain, it can tell it to go and get more brains whenever it’s running low on prions. If the host can’t find any immediately, the parasite takes a couple of actions. The first is, it reinforces its presence in the brain and probably takes resources from elsewhere. Now, as the colony starves and has to start shutting down sections, the first systems to go are the host maintenance—hence the decay and dropping bits and pieces. After all, it’s not altruistic.”
“Of course not,” I said weakly.
“Since the prion building blocks it uses are indestructible, the colony is fine at first, but the host tissue degrades, except for the brain—which the parasite still needs to function so it can make the decaying body try to get more brains…until it eventually runs out of steam and the host and parasite die.”
I was silent for a couple of minutes after she finished. I didn’t understand all of what she’d said, but I got the basic gist: I couldn’t be cured, and there was something in human brains that this parasite needed. “And you make fake brains?” I finally asked.
A mild grimace passed over her face. “I’m trying to make a substitute, but it’s proving difficult to isolate exactly what the parasite utilizes.”
“But she’s close,” Marcus said. “And when she gets there, it’s going to change everything for those of us with the zombie parasite.”
I opened my mouth to say that I could see a lot of problems as well, but then closed it. Marcus obviously adored his uncle, and probably wouldn’t take too kindly to me pointing out that Pietro was unlikely to simply give these artificial brains away. Plus, if it suddenly became easy to feed zombies, why not make everyone a zombie? That was a weird and rather horrifying thought. The parasite seemed relatively harmless as long as it was fed, but how did we know it wasn’t controlling us in some other way that we couldn’t sense?
“Sounds cool,” I said instead. “But now that I’ve had the biology lesson of a lifetime, can you explain how the hell Zeke—whose head was chopped off, by the way—showed up at y’all’s lab and looking about twenty years older than he did before?”
Fear returned to Sofia’s face. “I don’t know,” she said as she sank to sit on the love seat.
“Then maybe you can tell me about these ‘zombie factions’ that you mentioned earlier,” I said, looking back and forth between the two of them.
Marcus scowled. “There are other zombies out there who don’t agree with the way Pietro wants us to stay organized. Sofia’s research isn’t complete, but it still represents years of work. If the others get their hands on it, they could conceivably find another neurobiologist to finish it, and then basically corner the market and control the distribution.”
“Well, are you going to try to tell me that your uncle won’t control the distribution?” I said in thinly veiled exasperation. Sofia looked abruptly stricken. Anger flashed across Marcus’s face, but I bulled on. “Tell me the
truth—do you think he intends to give these fake brains away—to everyone? Even the ones who aren’t in his ‘circle’?” I made air quotes with my fingers.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No, of course not, but he wouldn’t be exorbitant about it. He’s invested a lot of money in this, you know. And he’s not going to take advantage of the others of our kind.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “But you’re convinced that any other group of zombies would?”
His scowl deepened. “It’s certainly possible. I believe that Pietro is best positioned to organize an effective and fair distribution.”
Your uncle is a goddamn mobster, I wanted to shriek, but I kept it in. Marcus was clearly in no mood to see any other point of view. Just how deeply did his loyalties to his uncle run? How far would he go to make Pietro happy? And why? Was it simply gratitude for saving his life?
“Okay, that’s cool,” I said as lightly as I could, adding a smile to go along with it. His expression cleared somewhat, which told me that he was apparently buying my abrupt capitulation. He’s underestimating me, I realized with a strange sadness.
“Anyway,” I continued, “the guy was dressed as a security guard.” I shifted my attention to Sofia. “If he really was working for some other zombie faction,” and good grief but I felt stupid saying that, “how could he have known about your research?”
She swallowed nervously, flicked a glance to Marcus. “That’s a damn good question,” he said, his mouth curving downward into a dark scowl. “Hardly anyone knows that Sofia’s working on this, which means that there’s a leak or mole somewhere.”
“Erm, okay,” I said. Did he know how ridiculous this all sounded? Then again, the simple fact that we’re zombies is pretty damn ridiculous, I reminded myself. Why not have some sort of spy vs. spy intrigue between the various zombie mafias? “This stuff sounds so interesting,” I said, trying another tack. “I’d love to come see how this all works with you making fake brains.”
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