BRAINS

In the winter of 2010, the unthinkable happened: a virus, sudden and severe, began to spread through the population and took a devastating toll on society. The symptoms were horrific and nightmarishly familiar: Lethargy, insomnia, violent outbursts...all accompanied by a tell-tale necrotic rash across the body. The only thing that sustained those in the throes of infection and kept them from a violent, painful death? The healthy brain tissue of the uninfected.

As scores became infected, containment became a priority. With clockwork efficiency, local government issued quarantines for towns showing symptoms and helped stem the tide of the virus...but not before it spread. Reports of infection began coming from locations as far flung as the midwest, the American south, even the Mexican border.

Advisories were issued to the uninfected: Do not approach the infected. Report any signs of infection of yourself or those around you immediately. Wear personal protective equipment at all times. Above all, do not engage in any activity with the infected.

Any research on a cause or treatment was prohibitively difficult. Laboratory research was impossible, as the virus would not replicate under controlled conditions. Many scientists became infected themselves while using the bodies of the victims for study. Suicide among those who knew what awaited them was not uncommon.

Families were torn apart, emotionally and limb from limb. Close friendships became nothing more than a liability. Trained military and medical personnel were deployed to every corner of the continent, working to maintain quarantine protocol. As the months went by, many in the media speculated against the government’s warning that the zombie apocalypse had begun.

In some urban centers, riots began as vigilantes calling themselves the Biohazard Team stormed hospitals and medical centers wielding shotguns and chainsaws. Massacres of the infected, even those in the early stages, were not uncommon. Officially, the infected were still citizens with every civil liberty still intact. Unofficially, many in the country were grateful when a fatigue-painted pickup rolled into town with masked and armed volunteers promising freedom from fear, and a clean bill of health within the week.

Hundreds of thousands died in those early months. And as legislation made its way through our congress to officially declare those in the throes of infection a threat to our national health and security, something began to happen. As the weather warmed throughout the country, a change was noticed in those infected still under surveillance. Where the temperatures climbed, the virus began to die.

As the summer months approached and temperatures reached into the hundreds, there was celebration among the uninfected in the country. By July, Mexico and the southern US had reported 100% fatalities among the infected. It was the heat! The heat was deadly to the virus. For those in the later stages of infection, mindless and violent, the heat was death to them as well. For many of those recently infected, the progression of the virus was halted...but the symptoms remained. And as the thermometer climbed, those poor outcasts who were infected but alive found the heat excruciating.

A natural migration took place. Shunned by society for the crimes their bodies had committed while their brains rotted and unable to stand the pain of even mildly warm temperatures, the infected began to travel. Their feet shambled north, then west to a place of comparative tolerance and inclimate weather.

The Pacific Northwest.

Here, the infected find they are more likely to be accepted for who they are: victims of a terrible disease, aching for recovery and a place to belong. In the temperate summer months, there is a time when many of those whose minds are still in a haze of sickness can almost remember what it was like to be human. Speech and lucidity return to them. The hunger recedes. As memories return, many infected kill themselves for the guilt of their crimes but there are those who are willing to help them, to assist in their therapy and recovery, and fight for their rights and integration back into the society they loved.

But on nights where the cold returns, where ice and rain saturate the land like a disease, so too can the virus. Even those infected whose symptoms are in remission can find themselves reaching for the head of a friend or loved one. Such is the price of working with the infected: Constant caution, and an even eye on the temperature gauge.

It is a life of delicate balance now in the northwest. The infected: caught between the heat that will kill their bodies or the cold that will kill their mind. The healthy population: uncertain whether to care for or shun the thousands of infected who now call their region home. And always ready for the virus to return in force, those who claim the Biohazard symbol as their own are gathering ammunition and keeping their sights aimed keenly on the ticking time bomb that still walks among them.