Bacteria Zombies (4 page)

They walked down the hospital hallway, which now seemed as if it were bereft of all hospital personnel. In fact, it was something of a ghost hospital. Silence permeated the air and something strange hung there as well. The doctor and Renaldo walked, step by cautious step, looking in the windows of the shut room doors. Renaldo stopped in his tracks and his vocal chords seemed stuck under water. He couldn't move and Dr. Samuels noticed his frozen position. He walked over and looked through the window Renaldo was stuck in a frozen glare over. What he saw made his stomach sick and he immediately felt as if he would throw up. It appeared to be three patients in hospital gowns hunching over a fourth person, an orderly, eating him. Chunks of skin and hair could be seen flying in the air as the three tore into the hospital worker with no sense of control. The frenzied feasting rendered the two men observing the scene immobile. The doctor did not know what to think. This was outside of his expertise. He wasn't sure whose expertise this was inside of.

***

Bernard had meet Lawson during drug trials of a major profit making venture. Now he considered Lawson a partner in a different kind of venture. He knew Lawson didn't see it the same way, as Lawson was a lone wolf type of guy, but Bernard saw the opportunity to work with a very smart man and when working with very smart men there is always room for more profit. Bernard, if one had to choose an animal from the animal kingdom to describe him, would be a leech. He leeched the blood and life out of everything he touched and for him, blood was money. Bernard helped to facilitate Lawson's ambitions. Now Lawson was enacting his plan and he was counting on Bernard. Bernard looked through his files. He was in his office, which was dark, and he called out to his assistant. A young boy scurried in, "Mr. Bernard, how can I help you?" "I need everything you have on the bacteria files. I have some work I need to do." "Right away, Sir."

***

Wesley covered his head with his blanket. He had no idea what was happening to him. He didn't know how he was going to explain the horrible sight that was in the kitchen. He told himself that he didn't do it. He could not take another breath knowing what he had done so he chose to believe that he did not do it. He was sure that a monster took possession of him and did those bad things to his mother. He would never hurt her. But now she was gone and his father would know that it was him. He had to explain it to him, he had to tell him about the monster, the monster that came inside him and did this to his mother. He was so sick he could barely think. He knew he was just a boy, but he had to pull it together. He felt his mind clear slightly. He thought about cleaning up the kitchen but he could not bare to go down and see what was there. He would have to stay under the covers until his father arrived. He knew his dad would come but he hoped with every molecule in his body that he would hurry.

***

Dr. Samuels pulled Renaldo away. "Come on. We have to keep moving. This is worse than I thought. You're right. They're transformed into something, I'm not sure what. I've never seen human being act this way. They're monsters. We need to get out of this hospital." Renaldo was too stunned to talk. He literally could not move his tongue or lips. He simply nodded.

They found the exit as quickly as they could. Dr. Samuels knew he had to get home to his son. He and Renaldo made their way to the parking lot. It was empty and had an eerie feeling. Renaldo and Dr. Samuels were completely silent as they drove in the car to Samuels' house. Renaldo sensed the tension and worry emanating from Samuels. Samuels was worried. The creases in the corners of his eyes seemed to grow deeper with each minute. He sensed something was very wrong and blamed himself for not going straight to the house from the airport. This was something his wife would fault him for. She would be angry at him as she always was, for putting his work above his family. The trees they passed were all green. He thought it was a funny comparison, the green trees, alive and well and oblivious to the human world, which was in chaos. They approached the house and all looked fine from the outside. "You can wait here, Renaldo, I'll just be a minute." Renaldo nodded again. He felt it was all he could do these days sometimes.

Dr. Samuels stood at the entrance to his house which he no longer slept at, hadn't for months since he was thrown out and made to live in an apartment house down the street. He fumbled for his keys in his pocket, felt their jagged edges on his finger tips, pulled them out and proceeded unlock the door. Wesley must've heard the commotion at the door lock because Samuels could hear his son's feet pitter patter on the stairs leading down and to the front door. As the door opened Samuels caught a glimpse of Wesley and it seemed all of his hesitations and fears from before gave way to relief at seeing his young sick son. Wesley yelled out, more out of habit, "Dad, you're home." He rushed towards him and threw his arms around his legs, only to recoil seconds later and look up at his father with a ghastly look of fear and dread on his face. "What's wrong Wesley? I'm home now. You look so much better, you can get out of bed. Where's your mother?" The dreaded question came like a load of bricks too heavy for a young child and his eyes welled up with tears which turned into full blown sobbing after half a second. "Wesley, Wesley, what's wrong?" Samuels now knew his instincts had been spot on, as they usually were. Something was terribly wrong and his boy was about to tell him. Just then Samuels turned around and saw Renaldo walking up the drive way. "Oh good, come over here, something is wrong with Wesley." But when Dr. Samuels looked at Renaldo he noticed something was wrong with his eyes and that is when he noticed that there were some sores on Renaldo's face. "What's wrong Renaldo?" It seemed Renaldo once again lost his ability to talk and he was coming on Samuels quickly. The dark tuft of hair on Renaldo's head blew in the wind and seemed to grow larger as he came down with a blow onto Samuels' head. The doctor's instincts for survival kicked in and he lunged his foot into Renaldo's mid-section, thrusting him backwards from the door several feet, which allowed Samuels to slam and lock the door. Renaldo must have been infected and now he too had turned into one of these monstrous beings from the hospital. "Wesley, take me to your mother now." Doing what young children do, he did not warn his father, but grabbed his hand and lead him to the kitchen. Dr. Samuels felt his legs get weak and gave out on him completely when he saw his dead wife covered in blood on the kitchen floor. Who could have done this? He thought. It could not have been his little, sweet son. No, that could not be. He looked at Wesley to glean some kind of information. Wesley looked at him blankly, as children do who have just been caught doing something horrible but cannot quite understand the gravity of their action, when he exclaimed, "The monster came in and did this Daddy," to which Samuels let out a sigh of relief. His son was not responsible for this, how could he be, that was foolish for that even to have crossed his mind. Obviously someone broke in and did this, some other infected person. "The monster did this, I couldn't stop him. The monster came into my body and told me to pick up the knife and hurt Mommy." Dr. Samuels face contorted into a position it had never take, a look that epitomized utter horror. He could not live in this reality and he let out a deathly howl. Wesley ran into the living room and buried his head amongst the couch pillows. Samuels looked down at the mangled, lifeless body of his wife and fell to his knees sobbing. That was when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Renaldo trying to open up the back door of the house. Samuels had other issues to attend to and would have to compartmentalize his grief for another time. Right now he needed to save he and his son from the more immediate impending danger.

***

Lawson was waiting on Bernard to answer him. He had other things he needed to attend to. The rate of bacterial infections was increasing at a tick he was satisfied with. He had programmed the DNA of the bacteria to take control of the humans infected, as well as making sure that the bacteria he was using was of a strain that was absolutely impenetrable by antibiotics. This part really wasn't hard, as the medical community was doling out antibiotics as if they were tic tacs, thereby rendering them practically useless again most DNA at this point. This was another reason Lawson wanted to do humanity in, their sheer and utter stupidity. They were simply too stupid to be allowed to take up anymore oxygen, not to mention cruel, to themselves and anything else living around them. Lawson was done with people. And he would soon be done with them in the more literal sense as well. All he had to do was to flip the switch. He had already tested the bacteria by region, as he had implanted a kind of GPS into the bacteria he could control whichever bacteria he chose to at any given time. It was quite ingenius if he were to say so himself. The programming of these bugs was truly illimatable and he took full advantage. He was a science guy and he used it for his exploits. Lawson was devious and destroying people was all he cared about and for no other real purpose other than that. His motives were superficial, but there was beauty in his simplicity, pure annhilation. He had not heard from Bernard so he zapped off another letter to him. Bernard was the money behind his ventures and he needed money for more contamination. Bernard handled the logistics of the modes of contamination, the sending out of the infected conveyors at airports and such. Now he needed Bernard to enact the second phase, which was to send out conveyors of the bugs to not only US airports and bus stations, but to expand the reach to every continent on the globe, to ensure quick and permanent spread, before some smart alec scientist found some way around his plotting.

***

Samuels realized what he must do, he had to get out of that house and return to the hospital. At this point, he and Wesley were barricaded in an upstairs room. He devised a rope out of some clothing and hung it out of the window. Luckily, the infection also caused the target's mind to become cloudy and Renaldo was not thinking too clearly, as was evidenced by his continual banging at the door but not much else. Dr. Samuels hoisted himself out the window first and had Wesley jump out after him so he could help to guide him down. The descent seemed like it was forever but they finally reached the lower level of bushes that went around the perimeter of the house and he managed to work themselves over the obstacle. Renaldo was still banging on the door as Samuels could hear him. He ushered Wesley over to the car and they blazed away from the house.

He was in his office at the hospital in no time. They had dodged the couple of infected patients roaming the halls in search of people to eat. Most of them were still in their rooms mostly catatonic. He wrote down what needed to be done and with paper in hand marched he and Wesley over to the lab. He started to withdraw blood from Wesley and then had him sit on one of the lab stools. He knew that Wesley could become dangerous but he didn't have time to do much else with him, he needed to work on this. He went ahead with smearing the blood sample onto petri dishes and placing them in the chambers that harbored the samples for quickest generation of bacterial colonies. He waited. Once enough time had passed he went over to the dishes and just as he had thought, the bacterial colonies were growing like mad. He needed to isolate some of the bacteria, so he went ahead and grabbed some off of the petri dish and looked at it under the microscope. He could see the little buggers there, looking like innocent little bacteria. He grabbed the petri dishes and ran over to his office. He opened up his computer email and shot off a dozen email. He sent messages to the top bacteriologists in the world. He needed to enlist their help. He needed to find an antibiotic to stop these devils, or their would be no more human race left for them to feed on, left for them to turn human upon human. It hit Samuels that bacteria were now so powerful as to dominate the world of humans, lead of course by humans, deformed to the inhumanity of their human manipulators, during this year 2076, the 400 year anniversay of when humans first found bacteria under the microscope in 1676.

Dr. Samuels had the idea that if these bacteria were somehow being turned on by Lawson, if they were somehow programmed through their DNA to act as mini computer that could control the human brain and turn them into some sort of flesh eating zombie, then maybe this same DNA could be reprogrammed. What can go up must also be able to come down. Dr. Samuels wrote out his hypothesis to these other doctors, leaders in their field of bacteriology, to see if they had experience in DNA programming and if they had not only programmed DNA, but also reprogrammed it. The trick was not to kill the bacteria with the antibiotic, but rather to create a conveyor of new DNA to inject itself into the existing monster bacteria and reprogram these attackers into benign agents. If he thought it, he knew it could be done, he just had to find the master minds behind bacterial DNA programming.

Doctors and scientists from all over the world immediately responded to him. Apparently this scourge had reached beyond American border and hospitals in other countries were reporting patients of similar design being admitted and then metamorphizing into these crazed zombie creatures. Samuels' plea did not fall on deaf ears, rather the ears were open to any sign of hope that could shed light upon this most horrorful of situation. Scientists agreed that something must be done and agreed to consider the approach Samuels proffered. They had not thought of DNA programming as a viable option for dealing this kind of evil, but agreed the technology was being used for different studies and outlandish uses, such as teaching bacteria to play chess and memorize poetry, all through the programming of the DNA and the transformation of the bacteria into miniature computers of sorts. They agreed to begin work on the reprogramming aspect right away, as soon as they could figure out the pathway being used by the bacteria to actually tap into the basal cortex of the human brain in order to gain control of it. Since the frontal lobes, housing the prefrontal cortex, are considered the executive control centers of the brain, that is where the bacteria must find blood flow to in order to travel there, implant itself and take control of the human mind and subsequently, the human body.