The Zombie Letters Read online

  The thought I had about the woman and her dog frightened me. I’d never had a vision so violent. So vile. Shit . . . I don’t even watch violent movies. They are unrealistic and I hate guns. Yours truly didn’t even read comic books as a kid. Most of my time was either spent in church, school or in my room studying. For a kid comic-book age to skip two grades and test out for a third, Spiderman kind of takes a back burner. I was a . . . remarkable . . . child.

  I worked at the Anderson Hall Medical Research Center on the Iowa State University campus. I have been in this field almost fifteen years and already had a spotless reputation when the university called to tell me about some state-of-the-art research center they were building. Apparently, I was at the top of a very short list of possible directors for the project. I accepted the position without a moment’s hesitation. My handpicked team and I took up residency at the university as senior advisors. It was pretty cool being a forty-four year old man getting college credit on top of the doctorate I already had. Two years ago, we pioneered the technology used rejuvenate human cells. Last year, we cured our first stage-one cancer patient. A mouse named Hunter. Not surgically removed it, but fucking cured it. Eight months ago, all of our work came to beautiful fruition.

  Humans age. Certain diseases come hand-in-hand with that, due to the aging process. Liver spots, varicose veins, dementia, bone density loss, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. I theorized that all of these effects were caused essentially by faulty mitochondria . . . the cell’s power plant, basically. That was the theory . . . a theory of mine mostly dismissed by anybody with a license to run a practice. They all ended up being wrong. I was right.

  Through our research, my team and I discovered the solution. It is a rare chemical only natural to one place on Earth, undiscovered until only about six years ago. This naturally-occurring chemical was found to activate genes that trigger what I call ‘mitochondrial biogenesis.’ Mitochondrial biogenesis is the specific reformulation of new mitochondria. The stuff we found, too long to name here, was brought here and studied extensively after it was discovered inside a plant believed to have been extinct since the cretaceous period. The team that initially studied the material from these plants found nothing. I took a stab at it myself and found out that traces of PQP (abbreviation of another horribly long word) inside the plant were the same types found in human breast milk. There are some other plant species that have a lesser version of PQP too. This was a very odd version of it. See, PQP is a reproductive enzyme . . . a rare one that only humans, apes and certain plant species have. That enzyme is incredibly weak and difficult to study, given its fragile makeup. However, I was able to successfully synthesize it. That meant that we could produce it in any quantity we wanted, at any concentration we wanted.

  The results literally changed the world overnight. I could renew cell power plants. I could rebuild mitochondria in living cells. My team and I not only found out how to repair damaged brain tissue related to Alzheimer’s, but degenerative marrow diseases, spinal injuries and early cancers, but I discovered the most fascinating gift it had for us. I found the cure for aging. Cell re-growth was achieved. I will never forget the day that animal trials were approved. My dog is fourteen years old. He had arthritis in his back legs, the onset of cataracts and his snout had gone completely grey. After administering the drug to him, all signs of aging had disappeared. The thin and grey patches in his fur were gone. Every time a cell in his body aged, a new ‘power plant’ could be stimulated. This process stops everything from wrinkles, loss of tissue elasticity, vision degradation and even grey hair. By my estimates, Brucie would outlive me by at least thirty years on top of the fourteen he already had. For a dog, fourteen is senior citizen discount age.

  Human beings, like Brucie the boxer, will enjoy lives extended by an extra fifty to eighty years on top of an already expected ninety. No clock can run forever and the human body will eventually die. At least I think it will. A few more tests. Unfortunately, now . . . I will never get the chance. Still so much more to do, but we are all out of time. As far as the research showed me, I didn’t cure death. I just prolonged life by an incredible amount.

  I won’t get into it all now. I am extremely tired and when I feel the onset of sleep, my mind starts to wander. I don’t like where it goes when that happens.

  I think I’m going insane.

  It’s happening too frequently now . . . escalating even within the last twenty-four hours. At this rate, a nap could possibly be a bad idea. This needs to be finished. As I see it, I have a little more than a week until everything stops for me . . . and the worst part of your stories begin.

  The worst of it so far happened yesterday. I was hungry, so I hate half of a six-inch Italian sub I had leftover in the fridge. I was so famished that my stomach hurt. You know that feeling you get when you go almost an entire day without eating? I was about ready to pass out and the feeling hit me within seconds. After mere minutes, I ate four slices of stuffed-crust pizza, half a bag of fries, two microwave burritos and I completely passed out cold as I attempted to grill some beef for a burger. From within the desperate and insatiable hunger I felt, I tore my kitchen apart in a daze. Pantry doors were flung open and their contents dumped all over the floor. A bag of flour burst as I tossed items fistfuls at a time out of the pantry, leaving a fine dusting of white powder all over everything. I hit the black after I plopped nearly a whole roll of ground beef into a skillet I had warming on the stove.

  I woke up on the kitchen floor and immediately yarked. I was only out of it for two or three minutes when I blacked out pre-yark, as evident by the butter in the skillet. It hadn’t even melted yet. The beef wasn’t in the skillet. I had eaten it. Raw. In the midst of my blackout, I consumed what was in the skillet and an additional four pounds of the stuff that was sitting on the kitchen counter. I knew I had done it the moment I woke up. I could feel it in the back of my throat . . . taste it stuck in between my teeth . . . caked on my tongue. The texture, the smell, the feeling of that uncooked shit made me sick. Joseph Mclintoch who works in the main office was eating meatloaf in the lunch area the other day. Just the sight of it kept me on the toilet for an hour.

  The employees and students will miss me. They will understand why I left and confined myself to the old lab.

  Just an empty office building now. One empty lab. All shelves have been cleaned out, all cubicle computers destroyed. Not a soul here. Not a living soul here. Just me, my laptop and my nightmares. Brucie won’t even stay awake long enough to keep me company. He hides under Walton’s desk and won’t come out. I feel like he’s scared of me. I have to get this done.

  I know full well that it’s too late, but they all need to know how this happened, why it happened, and my part in it. I need help. I know I do, but I am scared to send this. I’m slipping so quickly now.

  God, please help me.

  Help me.

  Samantha . . . Michael . . . Emily. Daddy loves you. So much.

  -----------------------------------------

  -Dr. Nathaniel Winters-

  “Without hope, there is no dream!!!!”

  Locke Research Center, Iowa City, Iowa.

  PART I

  THE LYNN FILE

  CHAPTER 1

  I

  LYNN FILE

  BEGINNING OF DOCUMENT

  PLEASE STORE IN LEVEL A SECTION

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  -DOCTOR DARIN MILES INTERVIEW-

  Okay, I guess I just start talking, right? Is that how this works? I suppose you’ll edit whatever I fuck up. I hope you can keep up. I will not be stopping. Put a gun to my head if you have to. I will not be stopping. This story is too painful to tell twice.

  Well, Samantha, Nathaniel’s wife, was sitting on the floor. She was wrapping the first set of their Christmas presents. It was the day after Thanksgiving. The years went by so fast, but they were a young couple in love. They were perfect for each other from what I saw. Nathaniel always told me that as years ca
reened by, moments like those lasted forever. Love’s greatest paradox. Time means nothing in moments, but life is over in moments too. Before they knew it, she will be an old woman kneeled down on the floor, using her failing hands to steady the thin wrapping paper. She was so beautiful. Nathaniel marveled at how well she aged. How long had it been? Years blend so exquisitely when one has found the love of their life. I wouldn’t know.

  That day, as he hunkered down on the floor next to her to help wrap presents for Samantha’s twelve year-old niece, Nathaniel wished he could be wrapping one for another baby. I could feel it just looking at him. I was at their house that day, helping Michael . . . their son . . . with his math homework. They considered me a part of the family. I loved all of them. Samantha and Nathaniel met years ago at an employee Christmas party at the Times newspaper office in Columbia, Missouri during Nathaniel’s short stint as an editor. She worked for a catering company then and her employer did all the food for it. Nathaniel laughed when he talked about it . . . how he kept singing that Henry the Eighth song as badly and loudly as he could until she agreed to go out with him. Don’t laugh, it really works. No lie. Nathaniel did it all the time. It worked for Swayze in that ghost movie.

  Nathaniel gave his wife a sweet kiss on her flushed cheek. She’d been wrapping things all day while I was on kitchen duty. Some of the gifts were for her parents, two for the Easter Seals fundraiser they do every year, one for the neighbor lady, most for Samantha’s niece and the rest were for the kids. Samantha was sweaty and wracked from her tedious work, but she managed a pleasant smile. Sami had a big, close family. Nathaniel was an orphan. Raised by the state. He was never adopted and left the home for orphans when he was nineteen. It was never a sore subject with him. The old nuns who ran the place in Kansas City were wonderful to him.

  “Where are my presents?” she asked, giving him the wink that made him fall in love with her.

  “Hidden somewhere . . . just like you hid mine,” he said with a chuckle. “Can I open one before Christmas? Please? Sister Catherine always did it when I was little . . .”

  Sami threw her head back and laughed, poking her husband in the side. “Bullshit, man! I talked to Catherine when we visited last weekend and she said you are just telling me that because you wanna open that big one I stashed behind the dresser!” I just sat at the kitchen table with Michael, listening. I liked listening to them.

  There was me in the midst of this. Nathaniel sought me out personally, because I was the best in the business. There was another reason, though. One year ago, the senior director at a disease research center in Seattle, Washington walked into work one day, sat down behind his desk and sent two emails. One went to his wife and another to an estranged daughter he hadn’t talked to in eight years. The emails that were released to the press disturbed Nathaniel. Director Stephen Hillburg was one of the most well-known in the field and a man who had made huge advancements in stem cell research. He had the facilities and the funding to turn the world on its head. He could have asked the federal government . . . well, your people . . . for sixteen billion dollars to build a fucking hadron collider and they would have said yes without a moment’s hesitation. After sending a copy of his will to his two recipients, he walked out into the parking lot and grabbed a military-issued M-16 assault rifle and two pipe bombs he had made the night before.

  Seventeen people were killed that day. If Hillburg had been killed by police instead of maimed in the standoff that ensued, authorities would have never found out that Director Stephen Hillburg had been stealing vials of HIV-tainted blood for weeks. God knows what he was going to use it for. A lengthy and revealing investigation was launched in the weeks that followed. It seemed that the doctor was a pretty disturbed individual. I’m telling you this story because it was that event that caused Nathaniel Winters to instigate a policy that lead to hiring me. I am a disease research specialist, but my background is in psychiatry. I used to be a therapist and Nate thought someone like me would be valuable. People like us and our crew worked on sensitive things. Dangerous things that if misused, could cause quite a problem. Nathaniel had things in storage back at the lab that could wipe out the entire university where we worked. Congress followed suit. They agreed with the policy. After that, it was mandatory everywhere. Every lab in the country like ours had to have a shrink on-call. I was the best of both worlds. The job was stressful as it was for even a normal person. Someone already just a little bit off their rocker could cause a hell of a lot of damage. It was amazing that the crazy son of a bitch in Washington didn’t unleash the fucking plague.

  Nathaniel was glad he snatched me up as quickly as he did. He heard through the grapevine that I had already been contacted by other facilities including the Pentagon. I insisted that I work at the military-funded Locke Research Center with Nathaniel and his team. Why, Nate never knew. I never told him why. I thought he was the most brilliant scientist in the field. He was seen by the establishment as kind of a mad scientist . . . a bit reckless. I knew what he really was. He was a game-changer. We quickly became friends. Real friends. We were around each other so much, that I became a member of his family. I took their kids to school on occasion . . . I went out with them from time to time. Their daughter called me Uncle Darin.

  Nathaniel wanted a therapist in the workplace. Someone with that background, but was still able to hang with the other researchers. He was the director of the place . . . me, assistant director. We ran it. Just us. I often held meetings with the crew, offering free psychiatric services anytime they needed it. Had a nice little area off of the lab where I could do it, too. Comfortable place in a small outbuilding right outside the university’s Anderson Hall. The school built it specifically for us . . . I was flattered.

  A therapist’s office is an important part of the treatment. It’s not just sitting on a sofa, talking about your mama. Reassuring platitudes. But not for the person you would think. The patients, no matter how crazy they were . . . are masters of their world. They just react to what happens to them. The real person on the chopping block is the doctor. That is the real person truly fighting for his sanity. He needs a bubble . . . a blanket. Because we all know that there is no cure for a cracked mind. Let us not kid ourselves. Therapists exist simply in a futile effort to catch the patient before they crack. It is a nearly impossible thing to pinpoint. The mind can break in an instant. Some people have iron sanities . . . impenetrable tanks of human beings that do not rattle no matter what’s tossed at them. There are some people that are already as thin as paper. Their grip on everything was hanging in a balance before they were probably even aware of it. Psychoanalysts and therapists still have a place in this world, however. Some people can be saved. Some can. We worked in the most expensive facilities the government can pay for. If one of us freaks out, they have an opportunity to do a hell of a lot of harm. That Stephen in Seattle wasn’t the only one. Since initiating this program, Nathaniel Winters and I managed to weed out some people we would have otherwise never known about. It had been a success . . . and Nathan would have loved to have been proven wrong. It seems that he was right. Our governments and medical boards placed a lot of people in my position that failed psychological screenings with flying colors. It was amazing. Also, quite frightening.

  II

  I remember that next day very well. Like it was yesterday. The sound of pots and pans clicking together in the kitchen woke me up. The missus was downstairs cooking something as she loudly whistled to herself.

  I could smell lilacs.

  I don’t know why that stands out, but I remember lilacs. Funny how some things stand out like that now. My memory wasn’t always the sharpest. Now it is.

  Now it is.

  Nathaniel Winters shambled downstairs on peg-legs as I came back to the waking world on the couch. All that leftover turkey knocked me comatose. Nathaniel’s knees popped and his legs ached all the time, especially after sleeping. Restless Leg Syndrome often has bouts on the person who manages to sleep th
rough it, too. Sometimes he had to stretch his legs before getting out of bed. One morning when he fell down the stairs, broke two fingers and bruised his ribs, he never got out of bed without stretching first. After that, his pinkie finger sat a little crooked because of it. Left hand. He wrote with his right anyway. Something about the bone didn’t knit quite right.

  Sami was in the kitchen, looking lovely. She had on a pair of those dark blue yoga pants and one of her t-shirts from that REO Speedwagon concert she went to when she was fifteen. Those guys were still touring at the time. I always said they will be rocking arenas and selling out tickets until I land myself in a nursing home. I don’t know about now. Nathaniel smiled at her when he entered the kitchen . . . her back turned to him as she whistled some Katy Perry song that had just hit the radio. She was making eggs. Just the way he liked them. Sunny side up and runny as a motherfucker. She brought me a cup of coffee to the sofa, where I had sat up to watch the weather report. Lots of cream, lots of sugar. I don’t eat breakfast.

  “Hi sweetheart,” she said to him, not even turning around. She did that often. Nathaniel always joked that she had a touch of the shining. Not a lot of it, but probably enough to help him escape a hedge maze if he ever got stuck in one.