Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 4
"Right after my promotion your name was the first past my lips. You're on a very short list."
I held the syringe up to the light.
"What is it?"
"Something the company came up with before the Conversion." That's what they called it in corporate—the Great Conversion. "That's PF-429. They boys in marketing are calling it 'Termicil'."
He began explaining further after turning from the window to see my blank face.
"It's pretty much a better version of the stuff they use to euthanize dogs cocktailed with some kind of preservative. A drop of that is enough to kill you. Get this—it keeps the heart pumping for up to ten hours after brain activity ceases. The original plan was to use it on death row inmates who wanted to donate their organs. Cuts down on transport time or something. The lab guys are looking into extending the duration of the drug. Make the other side more appealing to the arists once we take over. Completely painless—you'll be dead in seconds."
"But I don't… I don't wanna die."
"Listen!" Jack slammed his palms down on the desk, leaning over and staring at me. Anger. The other thing that makes the undead look at humans like food. Jack gritted his teeth, looking like he was about to fly over the desk at me. But he looked away, turned and went back to that window.
"It's not about you and what you want." He was calm again. "You're not getting out of here, every day there are more prols roaming the streets looking for a freshie, and hell, they don't want you out there. Either the prols out there overwhelm the arists and eventually get in here and kill you or the arists win, come in and wipe this place off the map. The only reason they don't bomb us all to hell right now is because they don't know what effect it will have on the space dust that's reanimated us." He rolled his eyes at the last part.
"Wanna know a secret?" He looked at me and leaned against the window. "The space dust, the signal, the virus, the rads—it's all BS. But it's all true too. I know it's a little 1984-ish, but it's a good place to hide the truth. Right in the middle of the lie.
"The reason the scientists can't all agree is because they're looking for the reason for the dead walking around when it's really a combo of several things, including a genetic mutation that began in human beings in about the fourteenth century."
"How would you know that?"
He shrugged. "That's the thing they'll never figure out about the virus. It's semi-sentient. You see a lowly prol stumbling around, trying to eat you, but there's memory from a thousand generations in him. He has the memories of the one who bit him too. And the one before that. On and on like that. That's why they like to eat the brain if they can get to it. To make that mind a greater part of themselves."
Jack stared into the silvery sky for a long time. For a moment I almost thought he had really died.
"We are a growing community. A subgroup. We want to become part of the larger community. Do you understand that, John? Wanting to belong? We're all human, just some of us lack a pulse. When you don't belong anywhere, that's when you're really dead."
