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The only thing I could do was pull at what held me, fighting against the shackles, the chain itself, the anchor in the wall, everything I could in hopes that something would give.
I groaned and cried and fought and thrashed. The flesh around my wrists went from red and swollen to scraped and bloodied in very short order, but nothing gave. They were too strong to be broken by a man’s bare hands, at least not by mine.
In a final desperate attempt, I crawled to the edge of the chain, and I strained out for the nearby boxes. I needed a weapon or a tool, or anything other than my bloodied hands. The box closest to me was labelled “Old School Stuff” in big block letters on the side, and I wasn’t sure if that would be helpful, but I had to use what I could.
I laid on my back with my hands above my head, reaching out beyond the range of the chain. With my uninjured leg, I stretched out and clipped the edge of the box, and I very, very slowly tilted it toward me.
Straining with all I could, I managed to get my foot around the corner, and pulled it toward me. When it was finally close enough, I sat up and grabbed the box with my hands and tore it open.
It was stacks of heavy textbooks and maybe a dozen spiral notebooks. I tipped it over, so I could dig through it more hurriedly, but that was it. Just notebooks and old biology textbooks.
One of the sharp ends of the spiral notebook scraped the palm of my hand as I went through the box, leaving a small scratch. That little metal wire could actually be useful.
I hurriedly unwound it out of the notebook, and I jammed it in the lock on the shackles, twisting it this way and that. The only thing I knew about lockpicking I had seen in movies and I literally had no idea if they worked that way, but that didn’t stop me from trying.
Eventually, it fell silent upstairs, and my fingertips were raw from my failed attempts at setting myself free.
“Dammit,” I muttered and ran my hands over my face.
I glanced over at the mess beside me, the books and notebooks spilled out on the floor. There was one notebook unlike the others, a composition book with fabric binding. The cover was tattered and on the front it read, “My Journal.” The date listed beneath was only a few months after the zombie outbreak.
I picked it up and started flipping through the pages. If I was going to be locked up here, I might as well find out more about my captors.
12
Sage
13 October
My name is Dr. Sage Boone, MD. It is the thirteenth of October, and the viral outbreak attributed to the lyssavirus genotype-8 (henceforth known as “zabies” for clarity’s sake) began almost three months ago. Right now, the first case was believed to happen on the eighteenth of July, but that is not definitive.
If someone is reading this in the future, you will presumably know far more than I do about the virus and how it all went down. In the increasingly likely event that the world falls apart, I trust that my information here will be of some help to you. I hope that the world we’ve left isn’t completely uninhabitable.
The past three months haven’t made me optimistic about humanity’s chances at large, but I have always believed that as individuals, humans are resourceful, resilient, and capable of great things. Perhaps even surviving this.
Initially, after the outbreak began, I stayed in Vancouver, working in the clinic, but it was only a matter of weeks until the violent and erratic behavior of both the infected and the uninfected made it untenable.
I learned very little during those first weeks. Too much was happening all at once, and as frontline workers, my colleagues were many of the first to fall victim to the zabies virus. My recollection of those days is sparse, with only hazy memories of working long hours, and the death and gore on a magnitude unlike anything I had ever seen before.
The day I walked off my job was when my supervisor attempted to bite me.
By then, people had started referring to the infected as “zombies,” and their behavior certainly made that difficult to argue against: seemingly uncontrollable rage and hunger, aggressive and erratic violence fueled by an apparent craving for flesh and blood. As far as anyone could tell, the zombies were completely impervious to any forms of communication, reason, or emotional sentiment. Parents would tear apart their own children without any hesitation or acknowledgment.
On the minor end of the symptoms, the earliest signs of infection in humans were fevers, nausea, lethargy, and hydrophobia. In these ways, the zabies virus did appear very similar to the other genotypes of the lyssavirus, commonly known as rabies. There was one catastrophic difference between the two: those infected with rabies all die within two weeks of showing symptoms, while those infected with zabies seem virtually unable to die.
Severe injuries that would normally be incapacitating or even life-threatening cause very little impediment to the infected. Legs could be cut off, and they would sprint surprisingly fast on the bloody stumps. As long as the brain is connected to a body part, it is able to move and “live” onward.
From there, those with zabies experience similar dysfunction as those who are afflicted with leprosy. As the host lives on, the damaged body parts begin to decay and rot while still attached. This leads to horrific complications among the infected, further leading to comparisons to zombies.
I have been hesitant to refer to the infected as zombies, even if I can see the resemblance is unmistakable. Especially as a medical professional who has taken the Hippocratic oath, I feel it is my duty to remember that these are people suffering from a horrific illness, and they deserve the most compassionate treatment possible.
However, I must confess openly and unequivocally that I have killed infected humans in self-defense, and I will likely have to kill more if I mean to survive. I will always advocate for any measures necessary in self-preservation, and that is the unfortunate case with many interactions with the infected.
It is in fact because of this – and not despite it – that I must insist on referring to humans infected with zabies as just that, and not zombies. I cannot forget the people they once were, the people that perhaps they still are underneath the infection.
I do not know if the virus can be reversed or if the infected humans can be reached again, but I do believe it is still worth it to find out. That is why I came to the countryside, to live with my sister Nova away from the worst of the outbreak.
After I left my job at the hospital, I tried to get work for the government. They were setting up quarantine centers across the nation, but I didn’t like the way they were treating the infected. They bombed our own cities to prevent the virus from spreading, but still it spread, and thousands of innocent lives were lost.
