Shaun feels different, but he?s an Irwin, and they thrive on wandering blindly into danger. All I?ve ever wanted to be is what I am?a Newsie. I?m happy this way. Danger is a side effect of what I do, not the reason behind it. That doesn?t mean danger throws up its hands and says ?oh, sorry, Georgia, I won?t mess with you.? Contamination is always a risk when dealing with zombies, especially when you have the recently infected involved. The older infected are usually too concerned with keeping themselves from dissolving to worry about smearing you with their precious bodily fluids, but new ones are fresh enough to have fluid to spare. They?ll splatter you if they can manage it, and then count on the viral bricks filling their bloodstream to do the hard part for them. It?s not great as a hunting strategy, but as a way of spreading the infection it works better than any uninfected person wants it to.
Not that anyone left in the world is actually uninfected?that?s part of the problem. We call people who have succumbed to viral amplification ?the infected,? like it changes the fact that the virus is inside every one of us, patiently waiting for the day it gets invited to take over. The Kellis-Amberlee virus can remain in its dormant state for decades, if not forever; unlike the people it infects, it can wait. One day you?re fine. The next day, your personal stockpile of virus wakes up, and you?re on the road to amplification, the death of the part of you that?s a thinking, feeling human being, and the birth of your zombie future. Calling zombies ?the infected? creates an artificial feeling of security, like we can somehow avoid joining them. Well, guess what? We can?t.
Viral amplification primarily occurs under one of two conditions: the initial death of the host causing a disruption of the body?s nervous system and activating the virus already there, or contact with virus that has already switched over from ?dormant? to ?live.? Hence the real risk of engaging the zombies, because any hand-to-hand conflict is going to result in a minimum casualty rate of sixty percent. Maybe thirty percent of those casualties are going to occur in the actual combat, if you?re talking about people who know what they?re doing. I?ve seen videos of martial arts clubs and idiots with swords going up against the zombies in the Rising, and I?ll be among the first to admit that they?re damned impressive to watch. There?s this amazing contrast between the grace and speed of a healthy person and the shambling slowness of the zombie that just? It?s like seeing poetry come alive. It?s heartbreaking, and it?s sad, and it?s beautiful as hell.
And then the survivors go home, laughing and elated and mourning for their dead. They take off their armor, and they clean their weapons, and maybe one of them nicks his thumb on the edge of an arm guard or wipes his eyes with a hand that got a little too close to a leaking zombie. Live viral particles hit the bloodstream, the cascade kicks off, and amplification begins. In an average-sized human adult, full conversion happens inside of an hour and the whole thing starts again, without warning, without reprieve. The question ?Johnny, is that you?? went from horror movie cliché to real-world crisis damn fast when people started facing the infected hand-to-hand.
The closest call I?ve ever had came when a zombie managed to spit a mouthful of blood in my face. If I hadn?t been wearing safety goggles over my sunglasses, I?d be dead. Shaun?s come closer than I have; I try not to ask anymore. I don?t really want to know.
My armor and pants were clean. I removed them and tossed them onto the plastic sheeting, performing the same check on my sweatshirt and thermal pants before stripping them off and adding them to the pile. A quick examination of my arms and legs revealed no unexpected smears or streaks of blood. I already knew I wasn?t wounded; I?d cleared two blood tests since the field. If I?d been so much as scratched, I?d have started amplification before we had hit Watsonville. My socks, bra, and underwear joined the rest. They hadn?t been exposed to the outside air. That didn?t matter; they went into a hazard zone. They were getting sterilized. There are a lot of folks who advocate for sterilization outside the home. They get shouted down by the people who want to keep it internal, since field sterilization?or even ?front-yard chemical shower? sterilization?leaves the risk of recontamination before you reach a secure zone. So far, the groups have been able to keep things deadlocked and we?ve been able to keep doing our self-examinations in relative peace.
I stepped off the plastic sheet, folded it around my clothes, scooped it up, and carried it to the bedroom door, which I opened long enough to toss the whole bundle into the hamper. It would go through an industrial-grade bleaching guaranteed to neutralize any viral bodies clinging to the fabric, and the clothes would be ready to wear again by morning.