Cutting open a human being is always a big deal, especially when the subject’s not dead, but undead. The patient, codenamed Zach Crowley, is one of thousands of human beings that were contained during the Baltimore quarantine last month. Like all the other infected subjects, Zach’s vital signs are nonexistent, his brain activity nearly zero, except for his primal functions—his reptile brain—and with an irreversible loss of all cognitive functions. His body seems trapped in the algor mortis stage of decomposition, a patient in agonizing pain, a corpse in decay, a biological contradiction of life and death, side by side, within a single human host. If left to his own autonomy, Zach would use nightmarish brute force to bludgeon and then cannibalize anyone he encountered.
I’ve been working with Zach for two weeks now, prepping, but only from behind two feet of fortified aluminum oxynitride, the kind of armored glass capable of stopping fifty caliber bullets. Now that we have an actual vaccine and a certified procedure, I must come into contact with Zach. But I’m not a surgeon or even a doctor. I’m an embalmer. Without a beating heart, the vaccine can’t circulate through his system from a simple injection. Zach’s blood just sits there like water in a Ziploc bag. But me? I know how to drain such standing blood and how to pump chemicals through a dead body.
“Well, David?” I hear the familiar voice of Dr. Kendra Hersch inside my hazmat suit. “How do you feel?”
I turn to face her. “Like a human burrito,” I say.
“Well, you look like one.”
Her bedside manner soothes me. Calm. Humored. Just what I need right now, given the task ahead.
Most people see hazmat suits in the movies, you know, big lemon-yellow sumo suits with spaceman-like masks and respirators. Now that I’ve had a crash course, I’ve learned that not all suits are equal. I’m wearing a Level 4 suit, the highest protective suit they make. The damn thing smells like the freshest out-of-the-toy-store vinyl and takes over thirty minutes to put on. It’s capable of blocking anything from chemical splashes to microscopic particles that may or may not be a lethal virus.
You see, I’m standing in a fortress of artificial sterility known as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Otherwise known as USAMRIID. I definitely don’t want to be here. It’s not my usual workspace. I’m used to sterile environments, but the kind with white cinder block walls, acoustic ceiling tiles with brown water stains, and Gustav Mahler playing from my iPhone. Such is the charm of a funeral home basement, my natural workspace.
“Okay,” says Dr. Hersch, “Let’s pressurize.”
I reach up and grab a long yellow tube that hangs down from the ceiling, just like we practiced. I press the end of the tube into a silver disc on my suit, twist it, and then hear a loud rush of air. My suit puffs up like a blowfish. I suck in lungfuls of sanitized air. My breathing stutters in and out. How strange that for the first few seconds, I feel like I’m drowning in oxygen.
“Take it easy,” says Dr. Hersch. “Your heart rate is starting to climb.”
I force down a swallow and I hear myself grunt in the process. “I watched more of the news last night. They showed clips of all sorts of things. Downtown. Suburbs. Even in the countryside. I saw what the infecs are doing to people.”
“You need to slow your breathing, David. Come on. Focus on our procedural.”
She’s not listening.
“Live feed after live feed,” I say. “They’re calling it an extinction pandemic. Some scientists give us six months. They said even if a few of us have natural immunity, none could survive against the physical threat. There’d be billions.”
Dr. Hersch draws back. “I know, David. But you and I are the counterattack. We need to find out if we can kill the virus. Right now. Today.”
Her comments slow my rising panic. She and I stare at each other for a moment and the realization comes back. The military will battle the infecs in the streets, barricade them off, gun them down, surveil them, but if we’re to beat them, we have to beat the virus, host by host, cell by cell, until it’s eradicated. I really don’t have a choice because there’s nowhere else to go. So, I have to do this.
I watch the doctor’s coffee-colored eyes flit over different parts of my suit. She tugs on this and brushes over that until she looks satisfied. I check her suit in return. Then she detaches the yellow tubes from our suits and sends them retracting into the ceiling. But the momentary calm is capsized by a flood of fresh anxiety when she shifts her gaze over to the door on the far side of the room. “Open the vault,” she says in a commanding voice.
Refrigerated air mists out along the metal seams of a massive, four-foot silver door on the far wall, the kind you see in Swiss banks. Right away, I know that the final barrier between me and the worst Level 4 hot agent in human history just went away. Zach is in the room beyond. I force down a swallow.
“David,” she says, “Look at me.”
I look at her.
“Focus on the procedure. There’s nothing else in the world right now.”
I close my eyes. Only the procedure. Only the procedure.
Dr. Hersch and I walk side by side through an airlock and enter a room with pristine stainless-steel walls, a grill-like ceiling, blocks of halogen lights, and industrial wall fans. Those fans comfort me the way air support comforts ground troops. If my suit tears, the wall fans will flush the hot morg of all infected oxygen in two seconds flat. But contaminated air isn’t what frightens me.
I fix my gaze on the decomposed cadaver strapped to the gurney in the center of the room. Zach is perfectly still. Beside him is the embalming equipment. I’m to perform a simple RCI, a restricted cervical injection so that I can get the precious vaccine into his body tissues.
“Approaching the subject,” says Dr. Hersch into her commlink.
At the sound of her voice, Zach jerks. He suddenly flails his head and body violently, as if in the throes of sustained electrocution. Dr. Hersch and I both take one step back. Zach’s raw and animalistic strength is absolutely unsettling, triggering an awareness that the gurney straps have only been used on regular people, but they’ve never been seriously tested on an undead subject. Zach belches out a long, hoarse wail.
I feel the words bubbling up…we need to get the hell out of here. Right now. Even if this stupid procedure is successful, there’s no way to produce enough serum in time to save everyone. This is a joke. The vaccine is a blow dart against a battleship…
As if reading my thoughts, Dr. Hersch grabs my arm. “They’ll figure out a way to weaponize the vaccine. Come on.”
But Zach settles. And when his glistening, decomposing torso finally flattens on the gurney, I watch his head slowly pan in our direction. His eyes, yellow-white—boiled eggs with opalescent corneas—fix on Dr. Hersch and me. Zach gives us his full attention, entranced, the vacant stare of the psychotically obsessed. I noticed that his nose had come off since last I saw him. Now I see only two elongated holes in the center of his face. His skeletal fingers open and close in an almost rhythmic cycle. And his chin moves side to side as his teeth snap down repeatedly with an awful clack. He sees us, and we see him.
I look back as the vault door shuts and hermetically seals with a high-pitched hiss. No going back now.
“The subject is secure,” says Dr. Hersch to break the horror-film lull. “Proceeding to the embalming station.”
“Just watch those straps,” I say and step toward Zach. “Any sign that he’s about to break free and we call it off.”
“Obviously.”
I accept her assurance, though we both know perfectly well that if Zach breaks free, that vault door’s not budging.
Zach continues to stare and even goes still, a serpent’s steady patience as a field mouse strays near its venomous mouth.
No need for an antiseptic on the operating field, I remind myself, because it’s not an operation. For this procedure, I skip all the cosmetic steps of embalming. No disinfecting. No shaving body hair. No setting the jaw with wire.
Now I hear a lot of my own breathing, in and out, in and out, like a nervous astronaut. I need my music, my Mahler. Embalming was a ritual after all and rituals must mask the unpleasant with art and repetition. “Can I get my music please?”
Through the speaker in my suit, I hear the opening of Mahler’s Symphony number one. Strings in unison. An alien wail from far away, coming closer in a combined seven octaves. Yes. I draw in a deep breath. This is familiar. The symphony progresses and rich music soon transforms the hot morg into a palace of mesmerizing and complex sound, a symphony hall in a death chamber.
“Prepare the patient,” I say, taking my position behind Zach’s head. His eyes roll up to follow my every movement. I reach for the metal trocar, a syringe-like device attached to a thick tube. Then, holding the trocar between my fingers, like a conductor with a wand, I lower my hand, slowly, lightly, at the same pulse of the descending woodwinds of the symphony, settling into position above the navel. Then I press the device into Zach’s soft flesh.
Zach twitches like a sleeping dog poked in the hindquarters. He spasms wildly and screams out like a wounded animal. His loose skin frays where the straps hold him firmly in place and I hold my breath. He tries to lift his head up to face me. Cold, predatory hatred shows on his face, but the head restraint prevents the full range of motion. The gurney straps hold. When he realizes the futility of his struggle, Zach settles on panting rapidly and snapping his yellow and fractured teeth.
I ignore him this time and focus on the music, just as I would at the funeral home. Only the music. I have to drain all the infected fluids from his chest, abdominal, and pelvic cavity to make way for our vaccine. Dr. Hersch and I exchange an uneasy glance. So far, so good. “Prepare for drainage,” I say.
Dr. Hersch prepares the equipment, her eyes nervously glancing at Zach every few seconds. We both watch as black blood fills the tube, chunky with partial clots and bits of organic matter.
Afterward, I repeat the process in the stomach region. I press another trocar between two ribs. Infected gas hisses out, and brown liquid speckles my mask before spilling out as sludge to pool at my feet. After a while, I move on and drain the pelvic area. Even without any body fluids, Zach stays in a restless rhythm of movement, random twitching or deliberate struggling. But as time passes, Zach seems more and more accepting of the activity upon his body.
When it comes time to pump the vaccine into his decayed veins, Zach watches with an unsettling serenity, like the calm zebra as lions feed upon its flesh. This was the moment we’d been awaiting. Dr. Hersch and I watch intently as the dark blue vaccine travels up the tubes and vanishes into Zach’s body.
Only Mahler passes the time with us. Fourth Movement. Brass horns, light fanfare. Descending pattern in D major. The music fading now. Fading. Fading…
Like Zach.
I watch Zach blink slowly, like an infant about to dream. He opens his eyes wide in a final bout of alertness, the last pulse of a deadly killer. Then his attention quickly wanes and he sinks further and further toward a wary stillness.
“He’s dying,” says Dr. Hersch.
And I see that he is. Zach’s hands droop as if frozen. His mouth ceases its phantom chewing. His chest takes in no breath. Then, with certainty, I see that Zach is motionless.
I wait.
“Note the time,” says Dr. Hersch, her surgeon’s instincts taking over.
I glance over at the clock and then back at Zach. “7:17 a.m.”
I look at him, at Zach. His opalescent eyes fade back to a pale blue. I try to remember that this monster’s face had been someone else once, a father or friend, a human with memories like mine. Zach’s one of us, even if he’s in some ways the opposite of us, the side of us beneath our shared humanity; life for the sake of life, sight for the sake of sight, hunger for the sake of hunger, equipped only with an electric impulse to live on, but nothing else. He’s our animal existence, a rudimentary form of life in rebellion against death, but here, at last, we’ve restored a precious order.
When I look up at Dr. Hersch, I feel unsettled. For perhaps we are the doctors of a new dark age. Our gift will be freedom from blind consciousness. Freedom from existence. Freedom of a kind.
And our cure will be not life, but death.
“Okay, flush the room,” said Dr. Hersch. “We’re coming out.”
“Amen,” I say.
There’s a long pause over the commlink. “Hang tight in there. We have a problem at the east barricade, Kendra.”
“Problem?” she says.
I feel my blood rising. “What kind of problem?”
“The worse kind there is,” comes the answer. “Stay put. Right now, you two are in the safest place in the building.”
“But we have the cure,” says Dr. Hersch. “It worked, and we have it. Open the vault door.”
Her voice is strong and assertive.
“We’re being ordered to evacuate,” says the commlink. “Stay put. Someone will come back for you.”
“No! Get us out of here!” I shout, running to the sealed doorway, and pounding with an open palm. I hear muffled sounds over the commlink, and an awkward thump, like the headset had been pulled off and tossed aside. Distant gunfire. Shouting. A loud, high-pitched ringing.
Sudden silence.
When I look at Dr. Hersch, I can see she’s scared. Her eyes are wide. “They’re not coming back,” she says.
“But you said it yourself. We have the cure,” I say. “They have to come back.”
“You and I both know. No one’s ever taken back an area once it’s overrun.”
“We have to get out of here.”
Without water, Dr. Hersch and I will be dead in a week, entombed inside the vault with Zach. Dying of thirst is a terrible, agonizing way to go.
Dr. Hersch glances over at the dead monster on the gurney. At that moment, I sense her thoughts. A primal, nightmare logic fills the room as my own reptile brain awakens. Don’t die of thirst. Better to take off the mask and suck in the infected air. Better to die as the predator rather than prey.
I look at her…stunned, not believing. Horrified. “They’ll be back,” I say. “We just need to hold out.”
Dr. Hersch swallows and in a calm but eerie voice, she says, “That sounds very good, David. Please step away from the patient.”
Her sudden distrust in me triggers a dangerous tension. Now it feels like survivalism, and my reptile brain screams at me. She’s going to beat me to it.
Dr. Hersch raises a hand.
I rip off my mask in a panic and cold air rushes my face. My lungs fill with foul, acid air as Dr. Hersch screams.
Violas in F minor. Then brass in D major. Conclude with fanfare.
Happy Halloween!