Title: Tech: Zombie Effect Chapter 3
Characters: Logan/Carter
Series: Tech: Zombie Effect
POV: Carter
Carter dropped the last bag of rice by the door. Everywhere he looked in the kitchen was boxes and bags of the supplies that Logan had asked him to buy. It had taken him most the morning to buy the supplies and haul them inside. It was close to three in the afternoon, and Carter was hungry. Deciding that finding a place to store everything could wait, he weaved through the stuff to the refrigerator. He’d make himself a sandwich and think of the sarcastic remarks he would fling at Logan.
Typically, Carter’s sarcasm came without thought, but this was beyond ridiculous! They couldn’t consume everything here in their lifetime! And their wonderful honeymoon plans were now down the toilet. He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out some bologna. He put the lunch meat between two slices of bread and took a large bite. Just as he was reaching in to get out a can of soda, Carter heard a strange car pull into their driveway.
Correction, he thought as he looked out the kitchen window. Strange truck and it had pulled all the way to back of the house. It stopped at the old barn they used for storage. He almost choked when he saw Logan get out of the truck. Tossing his half-eaten sandwich down, Carter ran out the back door. He stood leaning on the back porch rail as Logan walked around the truck and lowered the tailgate. From his vantage point, Carter could see that the bed of the truck was full of stuff.
“What did you do? Buy a new truck?” Carter joked as he walked down the steps.
Logan turned around and said, “Yeah. I needed to haul all this stuff.”
Carter stopped mid-stride. He’d been joking with Logan! “What the fuck is going on, Logan! We can’t afford a new fucking car!”
“Carter, I promise. I’ll explain everything.”
Ignoring the plea in Logan’s eyes, Carter stood firm. “No! Tell me what the hell is going on! Now, Logan!”
Carter could see the conflict in Logan’s eyes. But finally, Logan reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a blue package.
“Just let me cover this stuff up and then we’ll talk.”
Carter walked around the truck and helped Logan cover the supplies with the new large tarp. When Logan tossed over some rope, Carter missed catching it and had to bend down to pick it up.
Finally, when the tarp was in place and tied down, the two men went into the house. They walked through the piles in the kitchen, through the living room, and into the room they used as a study.
“I want you to watch a few videos first. Don’t say anything, just watch them, ok?” Logan said as he sat down at his desk.
Carter sighed. “I’m getting really tired of this shit, Logan. Just tell me what the fuck is going on!”
“Just watch!” Logan snapped and turned the sound up.
Carter turned his attention to the monitor. At first, he couldn’t understand what Logan wanted him to watch. It looked like a small medical clinic in a South American country. The camera was filming a waiting room with several ill people. Just when Carter was about to lose his temper, one of the patients, a small elderly woman, vomited blood and then slumped over.
“Ebola?” Carter asked.
“Keep watching,” Logan said.
Carter turned back to the screen. Several more of the patients vomited and passed out just like the elderly woman. The others in the waiting room yelled for help and several nurses came running in. The video showed the nurses laying the patients on the floor while family members cried. Then the nightmare began.
The first to fall ill, slowly sat up. Her family gathered around in relief. Then the woman attacked. She reached out and grabbed a man who was kneeling beside her. She bit into his neck and his blood mixed with the blood on the floor.
Before anyone really knew what was happening, the other’s who’d become ill attacked. In moments everyone in the waiting room was either eating another person or lying still on the ground.
Carter couldn’t understand. “What? Is this a prank?”
“Keep watching.”
Carter wanted to bitch Logan out at his unhelpful words, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen. The people who had been bitten started to stand up and wander aimlessly about. A noise could be heard coming from the hall of the clinic. The bloodied people from the waiting room started toward the hall and then the video went to static.
“I’ve more videos of the same thing,” Logan said. “Do you want to see them?”
Carter shook his head. He had never liked violent and gory movies. Logan knew that. Why would he show him something like that?
“No! You know I don’t like stuff like that. Logan, what is going on?”
“I know you don’t, but you had to see it. So you know how serious this is. It’s not a prank or a joke. God, I wish it was.” Logan ran a hand over his face and then looked at Carter. “The lab got this big grant to work on some new technologies. A few new people came in, remember I told you about them?”
“Yeah. You said they were techies and not biologist.”
Logan nodded. “Right. So they had a few of us work with them. They were making a hybrid cure for the common cold. What they planned was that microscopic electronic devices would be mixed with some chemicals that would travel throughout the body. They were supposed to attack the virus.”
Carter looked blankly at Logan. He thought he was following his explanation, but he wasn’t a biologist. The plan Logan was talking about sounded like science fiction to him.
“When we trialed it on rats, the serum worked. It ate all the viruses it could find. But then something happened. The rats got really sick. They threw up blood just like on the video and then died.”
“But those people....the ones who got sick....they didn’t die,” Carter said confused. “I mean they got up and attacked the other people.”
“Yes. Yes! That’s what happened to the rats. They died but came back. And they attacked anything that came into the cage! One of the techs finally got one of the little bastards and ran some tests on it. The electronics had only one function-to eat the virus. The best we can figure out is that the electronic thing traveled up to the brain, killing all the cells. Once in the brain, it embedded into the Hypothalamus.”
Logan said the last word like it explained everything. Carter had no idea what Logan was trying to say. “So? What is the Hypo thing?”
“It’s the part of the brain that controls hunger. The cure actually kills the person and takes over by controlling the Hypothalamus. It’s just following what it was programmed to do: eat.”
“Jesus, Logan,” Carter blurted out. “This sounds like some sick joke. Why would they give it out? If the lab tests showed this, why would they give it to anyone? Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“I wasn’t part of the team. I’m not supposed to know any of this,” Logan explained. “About a month ago, I was blind cc’d on an email. At first, I thought it was just a mistake, But then I was getting BCC’d on a bunch more. I started reading them, and that’s how I found everything out.”
“Why did they send the vaccine out if it was lethal? Or made people get violent?”
“They didn’t. One of the lab tech guys got the formula, the plans, and sent a mass release of it to all the pharmaceutical labs he could find. From what I could gather from the emails, the guy was pissed at what he called Big Pharm. You know, pissed at the prices. So he released the information to everyone.”
Carter’s brain started working overtime. The US had strict standards on drugs, but not every country did. Just by the one video, it looked like a lab had already produced the vaccine and sent it out.
“Shit, Logan! We need to tell people! The news stations, the paper-“
“No! We can’t tell anyone.”
“What? Logan, we have to! This is scary shit and if it’s not stopped...God, I can’t imagine what will happen if it’s not stopped!”
Logan leaned forward and gripped Carter by the arms. “Carter, listen to me. We can’t tell anyone. Everyone who was on the email. Everyone on that lab team has died.”
“What?”
“They’ve died. Car accidents. Muggings gone “wrong”. Suicides. All of them. I can’t believe that they’ve all just coincidentally died, Carter. I think they’ve been murdered. The only person who knows that I was getting the emails was the person who bcc’d me. And those stopped about a week ago, so I’m pretty sure whoever was sending them to me is dead too.”
“This is...I can’t believe....this is crazy!” Carter stuttered.
“It’s going to get bad. Really bad. Like the end of the world as we know it bad,” Logan said releasing his grip on Carter. “There’s a bunch more of those videos. From all over the world. It’s only a matter of time before it’s out of control. The people who made it are all dead. Who is going to even know to make a cure for it? That’s why I had you get all that stuff. Why I got that truck and more things we might need.”
Carter stood staring at Logan in disbelief. He couldn’t believe this was happening. “Show me some more videos.”
“I want to get the truck unloaded first. I don’t want to raise any suspicions.”
Not knowing what else to do, but needing to do something, Carter agreed. “Yeah. Ok. Let’s do that first.”
End ch. 3
On to chapter 4