The Reawakening (The Living Dead Trilogy, Book 1) (29 page)

“She’s at rest now, Thom. I placed her body in one of the garbage bags in the other room so that the others wouldn’t see her. My experiments had reached their natural conclusion.”

“We’re all dying, Rick. This plan of yours isn’t working.”

“The authorities will come for us, I can feel it. The government has a vested interest in getting rid of these diseased creatures so that they can prevent this contagion from spreading.”

“So now you’re depending on the government to bail us out? I thought you despised the government.”

“Look, if I could have continued farming my crops and raising livestock like I’d planned, then none of this would have mattered. I could have survived indefinitely. But I can’t, Thom. This thing is way bigger than anyone could have expected.”

“Is that why you called me down here? To tell me about your new plan, which is to wait for the goddamn government to show up? Ha! And I suppose the postman will deliver the mail tomorrow.”

“Don’t condescend to me, Thom, especially after seeing how far we’ve come,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “What I’ve discovered is far more sobering than expected, and fascinating in many ways too.”

I laughed at this assessment. How much worse could it get?

“The computer finally delivered the results that I’ve been waiting for. It took a while, but eventually it matched up the disparate strands of DNA.” He inhaled the cigarette as if on life support.

“And?” I said, leaning forward.

“I made a terrible miscalculation. In my quest to save the world, I ended up being my own worst enemy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I identified the strand of DNA that is responsible for the reawakening of these brains. It’s a virus known as viral deriiontitus,
and it carries with it a toxin so debilitating that it affects the brain chemistry of animals similar to the way it does in mad cow disease. This particular virus transmits chemical senses to the brain via the vagus nerve, which connects directly to the brain stem.”

“But how did it enter the food chain?”

He paused for a moment to suck on the cigarette and then blew the smoke out the side of his mouth. “I put it there. Unintentionally, of course.”

“
You
put it there? How?”

“As a result of the genetic engineering I’d been performing on my crops. I introduced different DNA strands into them, and by doing so, created a whole new slew of seed strains. The result would have been a technological breakthrough had it worked. It would have completely revolutionized agricultural practices throughout the world. These crops were designed to be resistant to disease and pestilence. Do you understand the ramifications, Thom? No pesticides or toxic chemicals. They would have been hardier in the winter and could have been planted much sooner in the spring. They would also replenish the soil almost immediately, meaning that the farmer would never have to rotate his crops year after year. Climate adaptability. It’s the regeneration of the soil that I believe is causing this phenomenon.”

“Nice job, Rick. You don’t
believe
in God, but yet you wanted to
play
at being God. But you’re not Him. You screwed with nature, and now we’re all paying the price.” I stood and paced the small room angrily, my legs rigid and weak. “So tell me, Rick, how did this disease make its way up the food chain?”

“I thought about it all night until it finally hit me. At first, I thought that these animals simply consumed the seeds or vegetable matter that wormed its way into their DNA. But then I remembered that all the animals in this ecosystem have been affected, and it struck me that the virus must have been carried away and spread through pollen spores. The pollen spores lodged inside their intestinal tract, where it enters the bloodstream. This has been a major source of concern in the genetic engineering of certain food types.”

“So all the millions of spores you created got carried up and then inhaled by the local wildlife. And yet we humans weren’t affected until now?”

“I studied it all winter and realized that it doesn’t affect humans in the same manner as it does animals. Other than coming down with an upset stomach, the virus has very little effect on us. It has to be spread through blood transmission. Once the virus enters the bloodstream, it performs two primary functions. It acts swiftly to consume the new host it invades, completely overtaking it and shutting it down. Then it regenerates the brain, which holds the host in a state of suspension until it can throw off its offspring onto another awaiting host. This particular DNA strand has a completely different code programmed into it. It’s almost as if some new law of physics has superimposed these rules into the gene’s software.”

“It’s called God, Thom. You still don’t get it.”

“No, I believe it’s an extraordinary, aberrant development that occasionally occurs in the evolutionary process.”

“You’re so damn stubborn,” I said, punching my frail hand down onto his workbench. “But what about Gunner? He hung himself and still reawakened.”

“And that’s the brilliance of this virus. It possesses a revolutionary aspect to its dissemination. It’s discovered a new way to spread that operates on a completely different dimension, combining virology and string physics, and unifying them in a theory that has yet to be discovered, but which I now believe to be related to the Higgs boson theory. This theory deals with particle mass and the electroweak field it must pass through. It ends up converting massless particles into particles with a known mass. This attainment of mass is the cause for the reawakening.”

“So first you play God, and now you’re under the illusion that you’re Albert fucking Einstein?”

Rick laughed.

“You and your delusions of grandeur.”

“It’s a brilliant and mind-boggling discovery. The charged particle picks up mass in the electroweak symmetry and travels through this weak field to the brain, instantly reawakening it. It’s almost as if there is a built-in receptor somewhere in the brain, waiting for something to bring it back to life. It’s why the reawakened speak in such enlightened terms. It’s the evolutionary equivalence of religious ecstasy. Our brains have evolved to have some sort of—for lack of a better term—spiritual receptor. Or possibly it is a defense mechanism against death-consciousness.”

“Or maybe our creator put it there to tell us that He exists and to not screw around with his domain.”

“This is all part of the grand dénouement of evolution. And besides, the virus has added this component as a method to insure that its genetic package spreads far and wide. Once embedded, it then rapes and pillages its host, making sure to keep it in suspension long enough so that it can pass on its junk to someone else, like all viruses are prone to do.”

“Why can’t you drop all this scientific bullshit for once and consider the possibility that we are human beings with souls?” I said, eyeing the pistol on the bench. “You’re a damn fool, Rick. You tinkered with nature for your own selfish reasons and in the process put the entire world at risk.”

“When one door closes, Thom, another one inevitably opens.” He held out his palms in resignation.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“For the last two months I’d been analyzing the alpha waves of that creature. The patterns indicated extreme intelligence and cognitive function beyond any expectations taking place inside their reawakened brains. The possibility this holds for altering human evolution is immense. Think immortality, never growing old.” He sucked hard on his cigarette. “I attached the electrodes to the three-way computerized system, utilizing the most sophisticated brain imaging software out there. I did some rewriting of the software to suit my specific needs. Then I put on a set, put electrodes over the subject, and hooked up another set of electrodes to the brain imaging software.”

“And what did you learn?”

He paused again to take another drag on his cigarette, and then stared at me with a pleading look. “Gunner’s wife was trying to communicate with me.”

“You’re mad.”

“As unbelievable as this sounds, she was trapped inside that reawakened brain. A small area near the frontal lobe was being held captive by dead particles of flesh. Isn’t that astounding? Being trapped inside your own brain and unable to escape? It’s very similar to people enslaved by a life-altering coma. Such a horrible state in which to exist, which is why I immediately put the subject down.”

“You’re saying that Delia was trapped inside that brain?”

“Precisely. But she was unable to control any of her body functions.”

“What did she communicate to you?”

“The interpretive science is inexact, so I’m not sure
what
she said as much as how she responded to the questions I asked, which were phrased in a yes or no format. Every time I asked the subject a question, the alpha waves on the computer went through the roof. I simplified these questions so that ‘no’ answers equaled beta waves and ‘yes’ answers equaled alpha waves. The results were stunning.”

“And what were the results?”

“She was watching helplessly as her body yearned for human flesh.”

“You must have been hallucinating, Rick.”

“People in comas are said to experience the same state of consciousness, with the one exception being that they’re not stuck in a decaying body requiring human flesh for sustenance.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Let me put it this way. The body changes because of the disease. It’s not the body you were born with, which helps explain why personality is a function of the brain.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “Do me a favor, Thom. If something happens to me, please make sure you finish me off after I reawaken.” He held his hand out for me to shake.

“Only if you do the same for me.”

“I promise you I will,” he said, gripping my hand. “I put Delia out of her misery as soon as I realized what was happening. I apologized to her and thanked her for her contributions to science. All of her biological functions and nerve endings were mixed in with the creature’s, which meant that she was also suffering the physiological effects of their hunger.”

“What do you think the others will say when they realize that your genetic experiments were responsible for all this?”

“Dar will probably thank me, seeing how it has now defined her existence. And what Dar likes, Thorn likes even better.” He leaned forward. “But just to be safe, Thom, I was hoping that you and I could keep this our little secret.”

“Little secret?” I laughed. “Wow, that’s a pretty difficult secret to keep, Rick. If the government ever finds out about what you’ve done, they’ll peg you as a domestic terrorist. Other nations will prosecute you as a war criminal. You’ll go down in the annals of history with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.”

“Which is why I ask you to keep this between us. I have so many more scientific contributions to make that it would be insane not to publish this journal once we return to a semblance of normality,” he said, holding the thick sheaf of notebook papers in hand.

“What you’ve done makes the Holocaust look like a Boy Scout jamboree.”

“So you’ll respect my wishes?”

I eyed the pistol to my right. My mind was racing conspiratorially because of what he’d done. I wanted to kill him, make him pay for his crimes against humanity. I could not predict how my body would react when I reached for that gun, but I would make an attempt anyway. One thing I knew for certain was that I couldn’t let him continue performing these genetic experiments in the same vein, especially after they’d gone so terribly wrong. I felt angry and betrayed, recalling the sexual assault of my daughter in those woods. I wanted to get the hell off this farm and back to civilized society where there would be authorities waiting to help us.

“I love you, Rick.”

“I love you too, brother.”

“You may not believe this, but I always looked up to you, even as a little kid. I respected the brilliance of your mind, your confidence and charisma. But I’m afraid that it would be impossible to keep this secret of yours. Your attempt to play God has wreaked havoc on the environment and destroyed everything I loved and held dear, including you.”

“After all I’ve done for you and your daughter, I’d think you’d be more grateful.”

“You’ve compromised the laws of nature, and now it’s coming back to haunt us.”

“The only God that exists is within ourselves, Thom. Only
we
have the power to fight disease and affect technological change. Please, don’t be an asshole.”

He reached behind his back and pulled out the hunter’s knife. His movements seemed slow and tentative, and the blade quivered in the overhead light. I concentrated on having one sustained burst of energy so that I could grab hold of that gun. He must have assumed I was weak and would never resist him.

I shot up and went straight for it. My quick actions caught him off guard, and before he realized what happened, I had the gun pointed at his head. The only question was whether I had the will to pull the trigger.

“Do you really want to kill me? Your own flesh-and-blood?”

“No, I don’t want to kill you, Rick. I despise the idea of taking the life of another human being. But I’m afraid that this time I have no other choice.”