She showed me another picture, enlarged to show the inside of those cells that were full, tiny dots. Some of the dots were projected through the same fissures in the cell wall and had impregnated other cells in the culture. In the last picture, enlarged the most, was a small, elongated, innocent-looking tube that was curved on the end. It reminded me of a shepherd’s crook.
“Meet TSJ-Dagestan.” With a flick of her wrist, Alicia spun the photo around till it came to rest in front of me. My gaze was riveted to that harmless-looking stick. How could that little bastard be responsible for taking the human race to the brink of extinction?
“Things started to get really interesting the second week. But before I go on, how about another cup of coffee? There’s so much more to tell.” The captain slowly filled her cup. I noticed she drank her coffee black.
“After two weeks, the situation was totally out of control.” She took a sip, winced, and added some sugar. “Information was erratic, fragmented at best, or it just vanished. Many countries closed their borders. But by then that was useless. It was like closing the castle doors after the enemy has gotten in. No estimates are a hundred percent reliable, but we believe that seventy-two hours after the medical aid teams returned from Dagestan, the virus was already out of control.”
“How’s that possible? How could it’ve spread so fast?”
“Simple,” Pons patiently replied. “The TSJ virus is a very clever son of a bitch. Whoever designed it had a vast knowledge of virology and knew how to enhance those features that would ensure its ability to spread. Experts say that the TSJ-Dagestan virus started out as a modified strain of the Ebola virus to which part of the genetic load from other viruses was added. According to experts at the CDC in Atlanta, it was the work of a true genius. What do you know about Ebola?”
“Ebola?” I felt like a school kid taking a test. “It’s a hemorrhagic virus from Africa. There’s no cure for it and there are several strains. The press mentioned it a lot in the weeks before the Apocalypse.”
“The Ebola virus is a ruthless killer that’s transmitted through contact with bodily fluids—blood, saliva, semen, or sweat—making it a highly contagious pathogen. Within a few days, the infected person develops a high fever and a terrible headache. Three or four days later, its victim starts bleeding from every orifice as Ebola transforms their internal organs into a puree of dead cells. The blood flowing out their eyes, mouth, ears and anus is actually their organs reduced to a river of putrefaction. Ninety percent of patients die in a matter of days. It’s effective, fast, and lethal.”
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“But that effectiveness is its greatest weakness. Ebola is so lethal and so fast, it doesn’t allow its host to travel any great distance before becoming seriously ill. It originated in the heart of the African jungle, where travel is extremely slow and difficult, so outbreaks of Ebola affected people in a radius of a few kilometers. Ebola is such a perfect assassin, it kills its victims before they have time to spread the infection to new hosts.”
“Let me guess. TSJ doesn’t have that weakness.”
Alicia Pons smiled weakly. “Ebola is a common cold compared to TSJ. It’s transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, like Ebola. Saliva and blood are perfect breeding grounds. Once in a host, it multiplies rapidly and settles in the internal organs, which it starts to devour, like Ebola. At that point, the host is doomed. Within five days, he or she will be dead, turned into something much worse. That’s the moment little TSJ demonstrates the evil it’s capable of. Unlike all other viruses, TSJ isn’t content to disappear when its host dies. Through a process we’re still trying to understand, TSJ is able to maintain the host’s dead body in a state of suspended animation in which…” She burst into bitter laughter, but stopped when she saw the surprised look on my face. “Why am I telling you this? You know as well as I do what happens next!”
“I think so. But I watched an infected person become Undead in a matter of hours, not five days.” The image of Shafiq, the Pakistani sailor from the Zaren Kibbish, flooded my thoughts. He’d been attacked by one of those monsters during our escape through Vigo. Later that night, Prit and I watched him turn into an Undead as we huddled in the back of a small grocery store. So I knew firsthand how grisly the process was. That seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had been less than a few years.
“He must’ve died from other causes. Most Undead reached that state in very little time. We estimate it takes between three and twenty minutes after an infected person dies for him to rise as an Undead.”
“So…”
“So, around fifty percent of people attacked by an Undead die on the spot or within the next hour from the injuries inflicted by their attackers. Twenty minutes later, they rise as Undead, and the diabolical cycle continues when people are scratched by an infected person or come in contact with an infected person’s body fluids. Splashed by someone’s blood or saliva… a thousand different ways. All those aid workers and soldiers returned home, unaware they were already carrying the death sentence for all mankind. Back home, they kissed their husbands, wives, children; shared a drink with friends in a bar… and spread the disease. When cases started to emerge, there wasn’t just one ‘patient zero’—there were thousands all over the world. The pandemic was already up and running before anyone realized it.” She ended in an ominous tone.
My head was spinning. I thought I knew how the virus was transmitted, but hearing an official confirmation of how virulent and easily spread that virus was way too much to process. I’d been extremely careful every time I touched one of those things, but I could’ve unwittingly become an Undead during those chaotic weeks, just like tens of thousands of people. The pieces of that awful puzzle were starting to fit together.
“How long can the damn things last? Is there a vaccine?” My thoughts were racing.
Alicia Pons studied me for a few seconds, debating what to say next. Finally, she clasped her hands on the table and swallowed hard. “From what we know so far, those beings can last indefinitely. The natural process of putrefaction is arrested or slowed way down. They don’t breathe, so their bodies aren’t subjected to oxidation. Their metabolism is so low they don’t seem to need nourishment. Those things could be—”
“Could be what?” An icy fist squeezed my heart. Deep down I knew the answer.
“Eternal,” Pons said in a hollow voice. “Humanity may have to live with them forever, unless we exterminate them… or they exterminate us.”
Her words echoed in my head like a gunshot. If I hadn’t spent a year living on the razor’s edge, constantly fighting those monsters, I’d have thought she was making it all up. I knew she wasn’t exaggerating, yet it all sounded so unbelievable.
“This is so… crazy,” is all I managed to say.
“Of course it is.” Pons stood up and walked over to a refrigerator. “Talking about people rising from the dead and attacking the living is crazy. The fact that they don’t need to eat, breathe, or sleep is also crazy. It’s crazy that they don’t decay or suffer any wear and tear—that they’re still moving around even though they’re dead as a damned doornail. No matter how unbelievable it all sounds, you know as well as I do, everything I’ve said is true.”
Alicia’s voice was muffled as she rummaged around in the refrigerator, clinking bottles together in her search. She scooped up a can of soda from the back of the refrigerator with a triumphant cheer. She stood up, turned around, and walked back to the table holding the can and a glass.
“Drink this,” she said, as she opened the can with a snap and poured half of its contents into the glass. “It’s always a shock to face events that reason and science say can’t be possible—and yet there they are. The reaction worldwide is very similar. And right now, you don’t look so good.”
I gratefully accepted the soda Alicia held out to me. My mouth was horribly dry. After I’d gulped down half the can, I felt a little better. But my head was still spinning.
“I was splas
hed with the blood and guts of those beings more times than I like to think about, Alicia,” I said hoarsely, trying to calm my nerves. “If TSJ is transmitted the way you say, why haven’t I gotten infected?”
Alicia stared into the empty glass on the table, her mind far away.
“You know, you shouldn’t have drunk that soda so fast. That stuff is getting scarce, even on the black market. I hear it’s trading at astronomical rates. It may be a long time before you can afford to drink another.”
Her sorrowful eyes came to rest on the half-empty can, then rose to my face again. “If you or your friends had been splashed with blood, saliva, lacrimal fluid, or nasal mucus from an infected being, you’d’ve turned into one of those things. By now you’d have had a fair amount of lead in your brain, my friend,” she said, as she poured a little more soda. “That’s what the quarantine is for, so we can be one hundred percent sure that new people aren’t going to be a…problem.”
Alicia settled back into her chair. “Clearly that didn’t happen to you all.”
That explanation didn’t reassure me. If I’d had an open cut when I’d been splashed or gotten some fluid in my eyes, my story would’ve ended right then and there. I’d have become part of the legion of the Undead.
“Once vectors of infection surfaced worldwide, the entire planet became a living hell in a matter of days. Health services collapsed first, when it became clear that the hundreds of infected patients in hospitals were beyond a cure. Those Undead transformed hospitals into slaughterhouses, death traps. By the time the army got involved, it was too late. We have no data from other countries, but we believe that seventy percent of the medical staff in Spain died in the first forty-eight hours after the initial outbreak.”
“Seventy percent?”
“That’s a conservative estimate. Judging by the number of doctors and nurses who survived and are currently on the islands, the number is probably much higher.” Alicia’s face darkened. “The same thing happened with the police, firefighters, and EMTs. Everyone who tried to help in the early hours of the chaos was exposed to TSJ.”
The air conditioning droned as Alicia’s words hung in the air. All the pieces of that dramatic tapestry began to fit into place.
“Once governments accepted that the world was falling down around them, the phones of various state departments rang off the hook. There was even a meeting of the European Union to address the issue.”
“I remember. Their faces said it all.”
“They finally got scared.” Alicia’s voice hardened. “However, even then they couldn’t agree on a plan that might’ve saved the continent, maybe even the world. All they did was appoint a Joint Crisis Committee and declare a news blackout, then tuck their tails and run back to their own countries, shitting bricks. Most countries armed their borders, hoping to head off the Undead.” She sipped her coffee and clicked her tongue. “But by then the Undead were in every country. Borders meant nothing to those deadly hunters.”
“You mean it was like that all over the world?”
Alicia laughed mirthlessly. She looked at me in disbelief, wondering how I could be so clueless. “Of course not,” she replied with a scowl. “It was worse.”
“Worse? How could it’ve been worse?”
“Faster, stronger, with worse consequences. For example, in the United States there were more vectors of infection at one time than anywhere else in the world because the Americans sent more medical personnel and more military to Dagestan than any other country. In addition to that, U.S. troops in Iraqi Kurdistan who oversaw the enormous camps of Dagestan refugees got infected too. By the time the U.S. government woke up, the virus was out of control in over thirty cities across the country.”
I whistled softly, picturing the virus spreading across a country the size of the United States.
“When reporters from CBS discovered what was going on, the network bypassed censorship and issued a special report. Immediately after the broadcast, panic spread throughout the country. Millions of people swamped airports and highways, struggling to get out of the cities. Families threw all their belongings in their cars and headed for rural towns where they thought they’d be safe. They didn’t know that many of them already carried the virus, so it spread rapidly across the country. The U.S. government rushed to copy the European model of Safe Havens, but it was too late. Mass hysteria had taken over. The nation’s institutions began to collapse as more and more officials didn’t show up for work, either because they’d fled or they were dead.”
With a chill, I pictured the horrific scene. The United States has an intricate network of highways and airports, so when thousands of infected people fled, they were like Trojan horses, spreading the TSJ virus to every corner of that huge country.
“We believe there are still a few Undead-free zones, especially in the middle of the country. Those areas held out thanks to vast distances, the deserts, the low population, and because gun ownership was widespread before the Apocalypse. We don’t know what the living conditions are like in those regions, if anyone is in charge or if anarchy is widespread. From what little intel we have, the situation varies greatly from one area to the next. Some places are trying to rebuild some semblance of an organized society out of the ashes. In others it’s the survival of the fittest. It can’t be easy living out there.”
“What about South America?”
“Well, it varies. Mexico was affected, almost to the level of Europe and the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans thought they’d be safe if they crossed the border. But all they did was spread the virus. Imagine the surreal situation facing astonished Mexican border guards when they discovered that their rich, proud neighbors to the north were now ‘wetbacks.’ They closed the borders, but it was too late. Thousands of panicked Americanos managed to sneak across the border. In large parts of Mexico, the locals went on a ‘gringo hunt,’ egged on by the Mexican press. Anyone who looked like a Yankee ‘swallowed a pint of a lead,’ as the saying goes. Shoot first, ask questions later. But within ten days, the Mexicans had their own problems to worry about. Something like that happened in Venezuela, only there—”
“I remember hearing something about a war between Chile and Bolivia,” I chimed in.
“That’s right. In the midst of all that chaos, the Chilean army crushed the poor Bolivian army and pressed deep into the southern part of that country. But the chaos in their own nation forced them to turn back. That, and the hordes of Argentine refugees crossing its borders.”
“The Argentines?”
“In all that madness, the Argentines were dealt the most fucked-up blows,” Alicia said in a mocking tone.
I smiled. As the conversation progressed, Alicia’s language got more colorful. She seemed more comfortable talking to me and I felt the same.
“Buenos Aires was one of the largest urban centers in the Southern Hemisphere. Millions of people were packed into a relatively small area. As the rest of the world was falling apart, Buenos Aires didn’t have a single case of infection. Not one. It was one of the few civilized places on the planet that were ‘clean,’ but no one took any preventive measures. A week later, when thousands of refugees flocked to the city, no one oversaw their arrival, checked their health, or set up a quarantine. Nothing, as surprising as that may seem. When cases of the epidemic turned up in an overcrowded urban area, nobody—absolutely nobody—bothered to take control. The Argentine military tried to imitate its neighbor, Chile, and overthrow the government, but the civilian government didn’t go down easy. There were demonstrations, shootings, an aborted coup in extremis… As the world was disintegrating, the Argentines were stunned by the power struggle among their leaders. Finally someone got really scared, but it was too late. Members of the government absconded with all the money they could get their hands on and hopped on a plane headed for God-knows-where.”
Alicia took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I took it in silence and let her light it. Interestingly, she d
idn’t light one for herself but put the pack back in her pocket. I was mesmerized by the way she flicked her lighter on and off as she talked.
“I don’t know where those assholes went, but I hope those monsters got every one of them,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Two weeks after that, the Embalse Nuclear Power Station, near the city of Cordoba, blew up, casting a radioactive cloud over the entire north. No one ordered the shutdown of the plant. Operators disappeared. No one stopped the system from failing. In a brutal example of negligence, every government official dropped the ball. We assume that the plant kept operating unattended until the uranium destabilized and set off a chain reaction that ended in nuclear explosion. All of northern Argentina and southern Brazil are now a radioactive wasteland, where life is impossible, except for the Undead. Of course, they’re already dead!” she said, frowning.
“How can people do shit like that?”
“In Asia things were even worse. The Chinese lost their heads and tried to eradicate the disease from their main population centers with controlled nuclear explosions.”
“NUCLEAR BOMBS?” I couldn’t believe that was true, even though I’d heard about it when there were still TV newscasts.
“The value of human life is more relative in other cultures. What’s inconceivable in the West makes perfect sense to a person from the East where the community matters most, not the individual. If you can save the community by eliminating tens of millions of individuals in one fell swoop, no matter if they’re healthy or sick, you don’t hesitate.”
“And that was their strategy.”
“That was their strategy,” Alicia replied, nodding.
“Did it work?”
“Not one bit. Radiation can’t kill someone who’s already dead. Sure, they incinerated millions of Undead, along with millions of innocent people. Given that country’s dense population, even if only a small percentage of Undead survived the explosion, that equates to millions surviving who then scattered in every direction from the razed cities.” Her eyes bored into me. “Think about it.”
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