“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 splashed 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.”