Solanum, An Observation by Croatoan1583

What happens when you try to use science on a zombie virus to understand it what happens when things inside works of ficton are tried to be depicted realistically from a scientific stand point?

Well this fic gives us some look into such ideas

Words: 10k+

Link:

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14180212/1/Solanum-An-Observation

(What follows are the confidential written logs of one Dr Patience Woods concerning the pathophysiology and anatomy of the Solanum Virus and those afflicted.)

Chapter 1

A/N: Though by no means a collaborative effort, this was once again inspired by the works of Roanoke gaming. I greatly enjoy the biological breakdowns of sci-fi sources, as I learned from Sir Terry Pratchett, the best way to have fun with or study even the most outlandish things is to take them seriously.

My intentions herein are not to create lore or alter cannon, only to speculate via the apparatus of my character. My great hope is only that those who read this enjoy the eventual analysis and leave this story with one thought: huh, neat. My character is an interplanar traveler, a scientist who took the wrong turn at Albuquerque. There is a bit of fluff in here for her but the real focus is- intended to be the zombie virus.

Also, f***k that movie.

Confidential logs of P.T. Woods, entry 1425

Magic was a common and accepted reality on my world, so much so that I was able to appropriately examine, manipulate, and study it as a unique particle of physics. Mana, the probability particle to which most of my life was dedicated to studying, saturated my person and my lab. So it is a shock to find myself in a world with so comparatively little mana, yet within are such seemingly impossible events that I would have normally attributed to extremely high mana levels. In fact, there is so little mana that I may work free of the confines of my larger armored apparatus. Make no mistake, even for the benefit of blending in, deactivation of personal shielding has never and will never occur. Using my NFGD, outfitted to its earlier roots as a wrist mounted mechanism, I may maintain sterility to a large degree while maintaining a more personal approach to the area. My armor has subsequently been stored and though I am more vulnerable to attack, I am able to interact with local human populations to a far more intimate degree.

I cannot remember the last time I touched another human bare handed, the last time I brushed up against another, folded my way through crowds, or even spoke with another.

I have broken a core tenement of my self-imposed laws; I am ashamed to admit it. I have established repeated contact with local populations, even going so far as to create relationships to a small degree. As I required energy supplement for on-board power cells in my suit, I worked with the locals as a pharmacist in a limited capacity while slowly siphoning off electricity from the inhabitant's supply. I did not need to leave my suite for this, as I said, I am ashamed to admit that I so craved human contact…

I helped deliver a baby…

This world is drab and choked with smog and debris, the clouds are gray, and winter comes early in flurries of dirty snowflakes. My location is what the people here call postwar Cuba, one of the larger motus conglomerates that cling to the islands, I never memorized the name of it. The people here are self-sufficient, sane, of a somewhat decent composure, and surrounded by the walking dead. That this does not shock me speaks volumes of my declining mental health but it seems that those who live here have been long accustomed to such an environment as well. What puzzled me the most was that there was so little mana present, almost to the degree of a zero-level zone were it not for the fact that this place is so alive still. Mana, the physical force of probability, is required for any form of universe to exist, some universes just have less than others. This of course piqued my interest.

So I stayed for some time, too much time.

I am becoming far too comfortable here, too much to deny the ferocity of my fatigue. Humans are social creatures, even for one such as myself, to live so exiled from my own species has been… draining.

This irks me.

I have set up shop as a local healer, a technician specializing in the typical herbs and substances of the area and the medicines derived therein. I am well used to aged or underfunded infrastructure and less than ideal equipment. Still, I can synthesize adrenaline from cattle, vitamin and mineral supplements from fruits and vegetables and soil, antibiotics from fungal spore, clotting factors from seaweeds. People often forget that while the herbalists of old were bitter idiot crones clutching to dogma, there is truth in all lies. I was actually able to help stem the flow of a cholera outbreak. I could almost feel at home again.

The lands I hail from, my world and universe, were still bogged in the simpler times of primitive expansion across the American Midwest and the late 1800's. Since then I have crossed barriers across so many worlds that my technological grasp was forced to expand with it. Were it not for the scent and sound of the sea I could almost imagine myself back in the expansive Wyoming countryside. The calling of seagulls has replaced the sounds of the dusty drawling high winds, and the sound of hooves has been replaced by the sounds of leathered boots on planks. I have established a small practice, vials and jars and glass contraptions now replace what was once only the bare minimum of what I could carry in my compressed-mass inventory compartments. My arms and legs are free to show the countless tally mark scars and equations from my earlier journeys, from back when I was desperate to count the steps I'd taken, to make some sense of where I was going. I stopped that quite some time ago, I'd run out of room. The etchings have mostly healed away. I keep logs now; they keep me grounded in my much more practiced steps.

I keep my armor hidden in the apartment above my shop with a number of devised alarms and camouflages, I keep telling myself that I must drain power slowly from the grid or risk being uncovered. I tell myself that the grid is too fragile, just a few more days and I will move on again.

A stroke of luck, or bad luck maybe, some kind of luck for sure. I was out tending a house call for a family with an elderly male, approximately 50 years of age perhaps, who was suffering from the beginnings of dropsy of the lungs, a cardio-respiratory outgrowth of disease processes associated with congestive heart failure. On my way back I came across a small, guarded fishing fleet drawing in what was left of the oceans. They had to be guarded for they dredged in the dead as well. Between lumps of glass, plastics, rocks, steel and bivalves the small fish writhed and the dead just like they. The oceans on this world are dark with pollution and bereft of much of life. The clams and mussels were a resilient breed being tested by the state fisheries to supplement diets and repopulate the heavily depleted oceans. Sea urchins, diatoms and isopods were still a good catch but the ecological and economic enhancements of the new breeding colonies promised immense wealth in the postwar economy.

As can probably be surmised, I did not hold my tongue. The dead were wriggling in the nets, one by one the corpses were being decapitated and removed for sanitization of the beaches. I must admit I am impressed by their methodical work, their calmness almost kin to a sort of dutiful condemnation for their circumstance. One of the organizers, possibly a burgeoning CEO, cursed the creatures. Staring them in their dead eyes "Why don't they die?" he asked "why don't they rot?" he asked, spitting onto the small mound of sodden corpses. I said it was probably a preservative effect of the black gel-like exudate that oozed from them.

When will I ever learn to shut my mouth.

It was three days, twelve hours, ten minutes, and thirty-five seconds when the knock on my door came, approximately five AM. This was not special to me as I kept my store running twenty-four hours at all days of the week in case I was needed for an emergency. My shop also doubled as a small, underequipped doctor's office and surgical theater; as I was one of the first of my world to truly invest in germ-theory I was well aware of a number of the more barbarous antiseptic and sterile techniques. I woke when they pulled the emergency rope and bell set up I had assembled, not unlike that of the servants' bells of my time. Dressing and walking downstairs with my kit I was met at the door by a man in a suit, well at least what passed for a suit in a world so focused on survival basics. This of course set off alarm bells in my mind. My network of wards and alarms were undisturbed, my grounds and person were unmolested. There had been neither evidence nor activity enough to suggest I had been discovered, no one even lived with me; a rarity for this world. It was morning and the man asked to have me for tea. I would have normally declined vehemently, I was not that kind of woman, but I was nervous.

I followed him unescorted to a more inland area where we sat unchaperoned, were it not for my NFGD I would have felt somewhat vulnerable. Thankfully, this world is just one of many more liberally minded and my sensibilities were proven prudish. He asked me about what had occurred on the docks. I learned from there that one of the supervisors on site had greater connections than I had previously assumed. I had initially though the mussels being planted and bred there were simply for consumption but I had overlooked the scope of their endeavor, I must admit I was impressed. Given the economic opportunity presented by restoring oceanic environments with bivalves bred and populated with radiotrophic bacteria that had the ability to filter out, fix, and excrete pollutants even as volatile as radiation into harmless sand… a lot of eyes were on that project… ears too.

He explained that the overseer had heard me talking to the stevedore, for some time after that he had been interviewing the townsfolk who lived alongside me as to my reputation. For better or worse that repour had earned me a personal interview. He was working closely with the mesh diver community as well as the mussel farmers, contaminants and clean up was his game. He said that damn near everyone was looking for a way to explain the impossible situation of the walking dead, that new ideas were always welcome- hell, even old ideas were better than nothing. I was given the offer to present my thoughts and ideas to the local scientific community, damnation it felt like I was back home teaching students at the university the finer points of autopsy. It felt so much like home it hurt.

I told him no

I do not know what I was expecting, I knew my dismissal of him would not likely be the end of that conversation. Two days later I was again asked to accompany him for tea. This time I was not without chaperone, I was escorted, and not entirely willingly. It had been so long, too long, I was becoming soft. What happened next only drove that point home.

I was led through one of the in-shore hospitals, a great white building grey with ash and dirt no matter how many coats of paint they covered it with to lock out the sea-spray. At first I was walked through the outer wards, for those with less serious ailments or injuries. I practically reveled in the sight of a man having his fingers reattached, I still love the medical sciences even now. I think he could tell by the look in my eyes as we met in front of a heavy steel door bolted into the cement. He brought me further inside, past the more serious containment areas, tuberculosis had made on hell of a comeback and the infrastructure for wide-spread vaccine production was still being repaired; not to mention the damage to consumer confidence. Even I had heard of the Phalanx debacle. My work with rudimentary vaccinations via deadened noninfectious materials is oft met with displeasure and relies on outdated techniques designed to avoid commercially depicted methods.

Venturing further still, we entered a large out of the way holding area. It was most likely originally used for shipping storage, now it holds the damned in rows. There must have been at least a dozen of them, men and women, some old and some far too young. I did not need to ask why they were there, a mother sat sobbing and cradling her unconscious daughter; the child had a purpling wound on her chubby foot; a bite mark. Four boys and two young women between the ages ten and thirty-five lay motionless on cots, stiff with fever and wracked by tremor and pain. An older gentleman with graying hair shook on a bed in the corner, his eyes wide with fear. The remaining cots housed only body bags as frantic nursing staff did their best to ease the pains of the still living, a grim-faced chaplain set about the task of saving their souls in several different heavily accented languages.

The disposition of the bitten, the dying, as I have come to know them on this world, has always been one of sorrow. More so, the affairs of these events has always been a mad sprint through the five stages of death, always ending in the serenity of complete and total hopelessness. Eyes become grey with dying and pupils constricted with horror and pain. Limbs shake, joints swell with heat and become stiff as though that of a corpse in rigor, patients cannot move or eat or even drink. Eventually, demented babble subsides into the silence of unconsciousness and paralysis and into coma.

My escort departed and the man sat at a small table beside the door, still in that same suit, with two cups of tea and a postwar high-capacity model pistol.

I would like to say that what happened next was not a matter of duty to my humanity, no sign of attachment or love or kindness. I took the pistol and I put a hole in the head of every dying man, woman, and child. The girl's mother was understandably distraught and subsequently sedated. She asked me to end her.

That man was a truly devious bastard, though I don't know if he entirely expected the breadth of my reaction, I was used to putting down my own. He asked me again if I wanted to present my ideas to their committee.

I accepted, under several conditions. I would have my own operating theater, animate specimens with which to work, any tools I may request, and no unnecessary interruptions. I would let this world be its own judge, their current technology level would be the jury.

He said his name was Carlos and that he looked forward to working with me.

Now I have found myself in a high security operating theater with semi-decent lab equipment. The area was specially crafted to deal with the dead, I was not the first to have studied these creatures and I doubt I will be the last. I had a still animated subject, bound and gagged and silenced, bolted and strapped to a metal plinth. As no environment was in short supply of the walking dead, I needed only to ask and would receive specimens as needed. I recognized this one as one of the few more undamaged specimens hauled up in the fishing nets the day before.

I had an array of lamps and tools and materials set out before me in a spread that I had not enjoyed in… a while. I had a microscope, access to several trays of stains, a selection of sterile forceps, needles, scalpels, bone saws arranged by size, chemical preservatives and so forth. It almost felt like home.

The subject is a male, perhaps in his late thirties before expiration, maybe a year active postmortem, five feet eight inches tall, weight indeterminate. The beast snaps as it watches me.

I donned my PPE and immediately set about my work, as I am oft want to do. First I removed the specimen's teeth, no sense risking a bite; NFGD field immunity was not something I wanted to explain and an outbreak would be just as bad. Those teeth not fused to the maxilla had rotted out, some of the bone had demineralized after death and reanimation as would be expected, but during my work I found evidence that the mineral loss may have been perimortem as well, I noted the observation for later. I wore actual lab gloves! The neoprene smelled beautiful in the lamplight. I barely noticed my 'benefactor' coming and going from among the theaters crowded empty seats. He watches me with curiosity as I display no fear of the dead nor am I disturbed by the violent nature of my vivisections. I leave the head untouched for later examination once the rest of the body has been seen to.

After the removal of the specimen's primary means of spreading infection, I began with an external examination. The gray skin was sloughing off in numerous places, the integumentary system had been ravaged by land, sea, and wind. Where the skin broke one could see thin wiry muscle and tendons pale with death and the prolonged dying of this diseases design. Therein was also my first true observation of the black pus-like secretion. It was thick and cold, a viscous gelled mass of dead tissue; I collected samples for further examination. I must admit, my interest had been piqued, there was no stopping me now. After collecting the black exudate from numerous sources, the external examination showed nothing greatly differing from my usual examinations of reanimated organisms. I do not know just why it is so but worlds infested by such malady are maybe naught but one in fifty and, if they exist, I of all people am bound to encounter them.

Skinning of the corpse was made delicate by advanced exterior decomposition of the body, and as I wanted the creature functional I had to deal only with what I could access outright. It peeled off in strips making a difficult job of properly removing the integument. Interestingly though, I was not able to find any one source of the black ooze. There was no manufactured organ, it did not exude from vasculature only, it did not come from the skin alone. There was no singular source by which this black matter was secreted. I would have to address it later when I had finished collecting specimens and the time to examine them more thoroughly. I believe this black matter is integral to the function of the virus. I finished the external examination and dumped the useless skin into a bucket for incineration.

With the tattered integumentary system removed I am able to visualize the underlying vasculature, muscle tissue, cartilaginous tissues, and exposed bone and joints. The muscle is not as degraded as the integument but has become emaciated over time, long fraying and wholly organic fibers stretched thin. From this I am able to surmise that these walking dead are not sustained by mana, such forces would keep them motile no matter the decomposition state and be easily detected. Simply put, these creatures have an expiration date. The tendons were still tough, not unexpected as cartilaginous tissues are not exactly known for dense accumulations of cells or a capacity for growth. The vasculature is full of that black ooze, even now it seeps out from the body's tissues, no amount of blood is clean of it, no amount of blood is left to be recognized as such! I believe that at least one of the main compositions of the black ooze will be corrupted interstitial fluids, cellular matrix, and coagulated blood. Setting aside samples from various areas, the tissues further fall apart under my forceps. The creature tries to bite me as I excise arterial accumulations. It writhes on the table, I can see its muscles undulating with every contraction, its one intact eye watches me.

Curiously, as I observe the creatures motions, deposits of crystalline matter can be seen in the joints. Wedging steel implements into the knee joint I am able to scrape away samples of these crystals and the remaining tainted synovial fluid not lost to time. Should I remember correctly, grievous joint pain is a symptom of the disease premortem, perhaps these accumulations may explain this. Setting the samples aside I began the monumental task of resecting all possible musculature. I had yet to see any active neurological tissues, what I encountered was blackened with death and exudate but had somehow retained its structure. Perhaps there was a restructuring of host nervous tissue more central to the corpse.

I had been working for over seven hours when Carlos walked down the stairs of the operating theater flanked by three armed men. At first I feared some kind of violent action, a deterrent for the abnormality of my disposition. One of the men presented me with a wash basin as Carlos advised me to rest for the day. "He's not going anywhere." He pointed to the still struggling subject and all the bits of him that I had accumulated. There was black blood everywhere.

I set aside my tools, beginning the meticulous work of cleaning them before washing myself of the gore that covered the theater and myself. I was allowed a small apartment at the facility for those persons working with the dead. The decontamination shower was frigid but my personal shower was hot and the tea was warm. There is a space with a desk and candles and a small bookshelf with a number of texts concerning anatomical elements. Of particular interest is a large bundle of artists tools for sketching. Computer data storage undoubtedly became unreliable so the switch to paper imaging makes sense. To calm my mood I set myself to drawing and detailing the many hypothetical processes that clutter my mind, I whittled away the remains of the candles at my desk over time and by noon the next day I am truly exhausted.

I checked my alarms, seating myself on a real bed with clean woven sheets; no disturbances, and I laid for several hours with my churning thoughts before the clouds darkened and sleep came.

I woke in the late morning, perhaps ten AM local time, and began the day by eating a small breakfast. After so long spent in my suit, my armor suite, I had forgotten the taste of real food; not nutriment paste or TPN supplement but actual food. I savored toasted bread and butter. Sleep was something done in joint-locked armor or staved off by drug stimulants, and a true day-night cycle has eluded me to the point of my forgetting the feeling of a welcome dawn. My house was my suit, my sky was my helm, my readouts were my world. Every night here I have marveled on a soft mattress, swooned at the smell of candle-smoke, the taste of fresh bread on my tongue. The day I had my first beer here at a bar, my first in so long, I damn near orgasmed on the spot and choked on the foam. The sounds of the masses of people around me are an orchestra. I actually spoke with people, helped people, lived with people.

I am not proud of myself, that these comforts of home so led me astray from my strict standards of non-interference. My presence has hopelessly contaminated the timeline and continuity of this world. I have committed an awful sin against this world, my every action alters this place, I am an outsider to the very fabric of this reality yet I clutch it to me like some kind of safety blanket.

It isn't long before I am dressed, have donned my work gear, and am back under the lamplights with my study partner. He didn't go anywhere. Carlos is waiting for me, seated in the audience. It looks like several persons have come to watch with him, it is not often that a live subject is handled in so cavalier a manner.

Continuing from where I left off, no relevant changes have occurred to the system beyond the accumulation of a thin layer of black ooze. Examination of the specimens long-bones confirms the hypothesis of skeletal demineralization. The bones are brittle, strong enough to support the weight and move accordingly but easy to fracture and fragment. The marrow is black, again with ooze. The vascular and nervous tissues peel off with the muscle tissue in pieces. Again, I dump the spare parts into another bucket for incineration and they squelch like piles of slime.

Pulling back the emaciated musculature I get my first real look at the creature's abdominal organs, they are in shambles. The bowel is greatly perforated and twisted in knots, the major and accessory organs are atrophied and shriveled, the vasculature all but unrecognizable, no neural tissue has survived, the spine is a creaking column of fusing disks, all fatty deposits and tissues have been burned off by the body, and the diaphragm is in tatters. The stomach and intestines bulge with fetid accumulation, there is no peristaltic action upon the contents. Opening of the digestive tract reveals a soup of decomposing rotted flesh, no stomach acid is present, no parasites are to be found either. I can hear the sound of someone gagging but I pay it no mind, the smells of this kind of work stopped bothering me ages ago. There is no life in this body or in this system. This creature seems a creation of the most frugal efforts of the virus, utilitarian, it preserves only what it needs to infect. Teeth, muscle, and bone.

Moving up the body I turn my attentions toward the lungs, even as the creature thrashes the lungs lay inoperable. The corpse tries to lift itself from examination table so, with the use of a mallet and pins, I nail it more steadily to the table by the extremities. The left upper lobes of the lungs are broken by what may have been gunshot wounds, the right lobes however remain intact. Using rudimentary cobbled together hedge-clippers I shear the decrepit ribcage from the torso one rib at a time and fully visualize the roiling tissues seated within the jagged crater of the chest. With a scalpel I scrape samples from the surface of the lungs and then pierce the tissue itself. I am met with an issuance of black pus, the lungs deflate like an abscess, the alveoli inside are dead and full with the same ooze, there is no chance for oxygen exchange to take place in these sodden lifeless remains. Beside the lungs I find the hypertrophied remains of a quivering heart still displaying signs of premortem sickness and great fever. The pericardial sac is also enlarged and filled with ooze, the organ is cold and lifeless in my hands as I remove it for a more focused examination. Setting it on the table I slice it in half on the sagittal plane to visualize its internal structures. Aside from more black ooze, the cardiac tissue and musculature is unremarkable save for the small tremors generated before I plucked it from the chest cavity. Considering the dissection of the internal organs complete I begin to remove them entirely for disposal and begin creating yet more sections and slides for further study. I yank the lungs from the chest and pull the loose ropes of dead bowel into a large bin with the shriveled omentum. Next go the bloated spleen, the burst open remains of the liver and kidneys and hepatic portal system, I scoop them out with my gloved hands while taking tissue samples with punch biopsy tools and by needle aspiration. Soon, all that remains of the creature is bone, sinew, and the upper half of a skeletal torso. I dislocate the shoulders for good measure, the constant spasmodic gesticulations of the ever-weakening specimen have been beyond annoying. Notably, secretion of the black exudate from the soft tissues has not stopped.

Having removed the organs I am afforded a better look at the subject's spine. No matter the angle to which I manhandle the creature I am unable to find any evidence of neuronal growth or mutation, this nervous system is truly human and wholly dead. By now the theater has developed an audience other than Carlos, their eyes go wide as I manipulate the still snapping and hollowed out corpse.

Now I turn my attention to the main mode of infection.

With judicial application of a bone saw I am able to sever the head and dispose of the altogether unremarkable remains for incineration. The disembodied head still tries to bite but it is notably weaker than before, a fact that I document eagerly. Starting at the scalp I once again remove the skin, it has no hair left beyond small tufts so little gets in my way. From there I can see the salivary glands and from here, things got interesting. These glands were not dead with infection, they were alive with it. The engorged tissues seem to have become an entirely new organ all their own, they practically bleed black ooze and a thick awful mucus. This is obviously the main area of infection; not the brain, not the blood, not the heart, the virus lives here in the salivary glands. It is as if everything beyond these throbbing swollen masses of corrupted cells were simply an accessory organ, an afterthought. I remove samples of ooze, mucus, genuine greyed pus, and the whole of this new organ itself for study.

I must admit, I had expected the brain of the creature to be at least a little more interesting. Removing the skullcap from the ever weakening remains I am able to see the extent of the damage. As expected, the frontal lobe is gone, a soup that I collect samples of, much of the cerebrum has gone with it. Intact brain tissue is shriveled, the gyri and sulci as wide as canyons, the brain rotted almost all the way through. The ventricles of the brain are swollen and so thick with black ooze that it spurts out of the brain like an aneurysm. I eagerly sample and culture this concentrated fluid and bloated tissues of the ventricles. As predicted very few structures remain even relatively intact; the midbrain, cerebellum, and occipital lobes. These somewhat preserved structures are the most important for vital functions, they are how we breath, how we see, how we react, and how we move. They too are almost entirely traditionally dead.

As much of my research that can be conducted on an animate subject has been done and so I pluck the brain from the bowl of the opened skull and the head finally ceases its movements. I tell Carlos to remove the remains and I organize the specimens accordingly.

I am quite taken with my work, I have a habit of losing track of time under such circumstances. For myself, much of time has lost all meaning; it is a human construct developed to understand our world accordingly. I work for hours without rest to examine as many of my samples as possible and root out every trend in data there is to be found.

Having assembled my slides I turn my attention to their microscopic examinations. It was very time consuming to find the best stain, but a modified Alcian Blue seems utilitarian enough. Examination of much of acquired specimens only shows the ravages of time, death, and decay; they are unremarkable and uniform across the body. Several slides however have pushed me to once again reconsider my accepted definition of death. Those tissues which remain intact, or perhaps better to say active, no longer exhibit normative life signs. There is no evidence of cellular division, no directly discernable means of cellular respiration. Many of the cell membranes are either burst and destroyed or eerily unbroken. Those whole cells lack much of any expected intracellular activity, movement, or organelle function; they are dead cells by most definitions. Their nuclei and ribosomes however show evidence of a constant secretion of proteins that continually seep through the surrounding bilayer. These cells have been made into breeding factories with a rate of reproduction not often seen in any environment, only instead of viral particles they build unidentifiable misfolded proteins. This cell is also slowly starving, eating itself and its neighbors on a cell-by-cell basis to feed the fire of its activities.

The only other notable examinations and interactions may be found in the brain's neuronal tissues. Outlying cerebral tissues not liquified by time show signs of a kind of spongiform encephalopathy, not at all unlike those effects resultant from prion infection. The black pus is at its most concentrated here, it is highly acidic as well, yet another environment favored by prions. The tissues and cells of the upper brain structures have utterly decomposed, serving as a kind of protective barrier against further acidification and destruction of lower brain structures by the ever-accumulating slop. These cells are no longer recognizable in any way shape or form, they represent the final death of the man that this creature once was. A total loss of humanity.

Finally, the tissues of the midbrain show a hive of electrically conductive activity, neurons here are structurally sound and reinforced by an expansion of concentrated fatty tissues. Small areas of activity may be seen in the ventricles where the salts are so thick the nerves don't even need to be alive to conduct electricity. The virus seems to have created a brute force charge via ion concentration gradients that treats the neurons more like a copper wire than a living cell. I make a great many notes and sketches of samples, chemical and mathematical equations, and organize my meticulously prepared slides by relevance. Before I know it my vision begins to blur, I have apparently been working nonstop for over thirteen hours. I retreat to my quarters for rest and will compile my data appropriately when I wake. Sleep comes quickly despite my excitement.

Seated at my desk, sifting through pages of my gathered data, I begin to piece together the pathology at play. It was after great consideration that I came to several conclusions. Study of the composition of the black exudate resulted in a number of cumulative findings as well. It is high noon and I am confident in my hypotheses.

Firstly, the gel-like substance is heavily comprised of salts, hypersaline to the point that even immersed in the ocean their bodies were resistant to osmotic pressures toward equilibrium. There was also a vast accumulation of water and chloride ions, the gel created the perfect substrate for absorbing and containing these elements in extraordinary amounts. I believe that this indicates that some kind of forced conversion to anaerobic respiration was imposed upon host cells. Perhaps a kind of perchlorate respiration or iron reduction; both create highly toxic byproducts and explain the poisonous nature of converted flesh, a possible relationship may therefore be linked to a reaction not unlike that of a perchlorate candle used to create oxygen, explaining the high amounts of oxygen production by remaining intact cells as marked in previous reports. The process also creates iron which can be further decomposed via anaerobic processes. The only question that remains is the means by which the converted cells are able to so efficiently breakdown these elements for energy. Other substances observed include coagulated blood, calcium in large quantities, dead cells, and a kind of glue formed of spilled cellular matrices, misfolded proteins, and a bevy of glucose. Samples of crystalline joint accumulations, solidified sodium deposits suspended in black ooze intermixed in calcium chloride possibly derived from the breakdown of skeletal components by internal acids, supports these theories. Pure sodium is reactive with water, the black pus must thereby function as a mucosal shield and concentrator. The cells may also retain some ability to utilize oxygen to supplement energy production with its own waste products. The black gel is highly conductive of electricity and suffused with virus particles, this virus appears to have created its own kind of biofilm through these methods and much prefers that environment. The accumulations are highly toxic and highly acidic, it is no wonder why bacterial degradation of the corpse is impossible, no organic creature could withstand such an abominable secretion.

A further note; the large quantities of glucose in the gel, probably harvested from cells and complexes unnecessary for viral propagation, may explain the creature's ability to remain unharmed by freezing. Even now there are species of small amphibious origin that use conglomerations of glucose molecules as a kind of antifreeze. I first studied the phenomenon in small tree frogs in France at one time. High concentrations of modified glucose preserved the animals cells as they froze solid in winter and thawed in the spring. This may be an extension of such a mechanism.

I further believe that this indicates that all body cells present have been forcibly highjacked for use as an overlarge assembly, a puppet on a much larger scale than a single microscopic element. Perhaps this is done by means of forced entry more akin to the actions of a parasite yet its reproductive instructions interface only with select species. No cell was spared this invasion and it may also function reproductively as a common flu virus would, sparing the infected cells from rupture as they pump out virons for assembly, yet these infected cells inevitably spill misshapen proteins of a different sort. The virus then populates into the salivary glands where it is packaged to ensure viability outside of the body however briefly. This virus did not spread by fomite or by air, not even by water, therefore it must be extremely vulnerable to outside elements. It may breakdown in specific light waves, it may become desiccated in dry environments, it may be destroyed outside of the equilibrium of its protective mucus. This virus may in fact be quite vulnerable.

Findings also explain why no other creatures are known to succumb to this virus, even when bitten. The virus itself appears to be structured for mammals only, hominids in particular, that much can be deduced from its structure. However there is one additional element that spares our cousins from this plague; the size and structure of the brain, most specifically the ventricles of the brain and the shape of the skull. The acidic black ooze is at its most concentrated in the brain, specifically the ventricles of the brain; it fills the skull. This virus makes a liquid battery of the remains of a human brain, a sodium saturated gel that acts as a superconductor for electrical charges to be carried wherever that black ooze may touch following established neuropathways formed by muscle memory and reinforced by the most base of instincts of midbrain origin. It creates its very own gelatinous nervous system, just one more reason the dead are so uncoordinated yet so strong.

The origins of that black pus? Damn near every infected cell in the body, highjacked to secrete the perfect medium, the best preservative, and perverted to function in a prolonged state of dying until final structural collapse. It's downright beautiful, I could almost believe in a higher power at work here.

I presented my findings to Carlos in the form of a thick sheaf of papers, diagrams, and drawings as he meets me in his office after my decontamination and assemblage of the data. It is by no means the 'magic bullet' they may have hoped for but he smiles nonetheless. My audience had grown huge over the last few hours of my dissections as I rambled, I can hear them as they crowd the halls outside. He asks me who I was before the war. He looks me straight in the eyes and tells me that I am far too comfortable with the undead and the stark reality of an almost supernatural abomination in concert with concrete science. He surmises that I have done this kind of work before. He is correct.

With a sigh, he turns to a cabinet on the wall and pulls out two small glasses. There is no ice for the whiskey, power was still too scarce here for such things. Still, I licked my lips at the sight of it and welcomed it like a midwife having lost the delivery. My works were no bundle of joy but they were no small an effort either. He tells me that in one week they have learned more about the undead physiology than they had in years. It was a start for them, a point where it had become safe to think rather than fall unto desperate action. He also tells me that the marine mussel project hadn't panned out too well either but the isolated farms that the experimental holdings were being converted into showed great promise for surf and turf.

I sat down and took a long draught of beautiful amber rye whiskey and surrendered the reports to him, leaning back in my chair. My eyes wandered to the shadows, those weak spots of 'could be' hidden from eyes not trained to see them. I stand and apologize for an abrupt departure; I tell him only that I am a wanderer with the heart of a student. He gives me a queer look, he obviously intends pursuit, maybe two days from now he would have more questions for me.

He turns his back to get the door for me, by the time he turns around I have already taken it.

Reluctantly, I go walking into the dark.

For once though, I do so with a sense of satisfaction. Best whiskey I've had in a long time.