I walked over to the desk and shuffled over some papers. The documents were vast and detailed. One had the approximate count of the total refuges, twenty-seven thousand. It also had separate piles of clipped papers with the names and identification numbers of each individual refuge. The military wanted to be sure of who was in their camp, and who may have been considered a threat. They must have been attacked by the Contaminated Resistance Unit more than once and were taking every precaution against them.
A manila colored folder was sticking out of the side drawer of the desk. I pulled it out, revealing the title at the top: CONTAMINATED. I flicked open the folder to be met with a series of black and white pages filled with words and penciled in notes at the margins. As I flipped, a page with the anatomy of the front human body came up followed by one of a side angle and the backside. Different colors swirled around the picture of the transparent human as if someone was using a highlighter to show a path. Much of the spine in each picture was covered in a bright pink highlighter along with bits of yellow in the head and stomach.
“I think I found something on how the contaminated work,” I said to Zach and Chelsea. My eyes moved across the sheets of paper. Chelsea and Zach’s presence appeared at each of my shoulders, looking onto the papers before me. “Look,” I said as I pointed at the spinal column in each photo. “According to this, Zach’s theory is correct on the placement of the contamination in the human body. This thing, the parasite virus, it is controlling its host through the nervous system by implanting itself in the places with the greatest influence over other nerves.”
“Here,” Zach reached over my shoulder and pointed at the paper. “You see the note on the margin there? It says: the parasite virus lodges itself in the nervous system. It was initially hypothesized that the parasite virus would make its home in the host’s brain in order to have universal access to the host’s movements. This would have resulted in the parasite virus telling the brain what to do followed by the actions of the host. Instead, the parasite virus has found a way to skip the step of telling the brain what to do. It has focused the majority of itself into the spinal column to have direct access to the host’s movements. Due to the lack of response time needed by signals sent to the brain, the parasite virus is able to control all actions immediately, making the contaminated act as a super human with better reaction time.
For example, when a person is using a pen to write, the brain receives information based on the visual and physical cues that it receives from the responding nerves in conjunction with the writing. The brain analyzes what is happening and formulates a response on how to move the hand and pen. It then tells the body what to do followed by the body’s response. Due to the parasite virus located directly in the nerves, it can skip a large part of this process because it does not have to tell the body to move as it is the body. The parasite virus also appears not to fear any danger to the host, creating a very plausible realism that the parasite virus is completely unaffected by any pain.”
We were all silent for a moment, taking in what Zach just read. If what the paper said was wholly true, then the contaminated were a sort of super human. It now made sense how the contamination spread so quickly and violently. The host to the parasite virus was simply better than normal humans. If it was placed in an area where there was little resistance and little knowledge of the effects caused by the parasite virus, then it was completely understandable as to how the contamination spread.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I didn’t understand half of what that guy wrote,” Zach said.
Chelsea threw her hands up and began pacing around the room, “You read it! Please tell me that you at least understood the main concept.”
Zach frowned, “Of course I understood most of it. I’m just trying to say that he could have written it in English instead of science. The lack of remaining people in the world should inspire him to gauge his audience I think.”
I waived Zach off and closed the manila envelope. I returned it to the desk, the room still quiet from the knowledge that we just received.
“Check this out,” Chelsea said, holding up a printed map in black and white. “It shows the safe zones from two weeks ago.”
I walked over to Chelsea and looked at the map. It was a black and white representation of the continental United States. Certain areas were circled while others were a circle with a line in them. Detroit, parts of Nebraska, the Dakotas, Raleigh, some of South Carolina, and Jacksonville all had circles around them. Dallas, San Fransisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New York City, and Boston all had circles with slashes in them.
Looking at the key in the corner told me the story. All of the places with just a circle were suspected safe zones with light contamination. Any zone with a circle and a slash through it indicated a lost zone. The map was flooded with circles and slashes, far more that outweighed those cities with just a circle. The dead zones ranged from the north of the country all of the way to the south and greatly outweighed those areas with just a circle let alone any safe zones. The destruction of the country was complete. There was almost nowhere on the map safe from any full contamination, and the map was from two weeks ago which meant that it probably
