Professor Smith was running for his life. Behind him he could hear the screams of the dying students and the grunts of the zombies. He couldn’t let them get to him.
It was unlikely that they’d be able to infect him, after all he had chosen the rabies virus for a specific reason aside from the symptoms it caused: There was a vaccine. People who had received either the pre- or the post exposure vaccine should be immune to his creation. At least theoretically.
But this immunity wouldn’t help him much if the zombies tore him to shreds, which is what they were obviously planning to do. Like wild animals, they raced him through the halls and totally ignored everyone else. It seemed that they knew and remembered who had done this to them.
On one hand, Professor Smith was proud of himself. These zombies actually seemed to have maintained a certain amount of cognitive abilities.
On the other hand, they were out of control.
BANG!
The sudden loud noise threw the Professor off his rhythm and he stumbled, fell down. An audible snap let him assume that he broke his wrist, the pain that followed confirmed this theory.
Through his screams of pain, he heard several more bangs. Shots. Someone was shooting. Who? Whom?
He turned around. The scene that presented itself shocked him.
The zombies were dead on the floor, all of them. A bit over a dozen corpses were spread over the floor which turned red from the blood flowing out of their shot wounds. The shooter, still holding the gun in his hand, approached the Professor. It was one of his colleagues. Smith couldn’t remember his name, only the subject he taught. History. Why couldn’t he remember the name? Why did he have a gun? How was he able to shoot all the zombies in such a short time?
”Roy? Are you alright?” The history professor asked. ”You look like you’re in shock.”
”I … you … You saved me. Thank you.”
”Yeah, don’t mention it. Just tell me what the hell happened?”
”I don’t know”, Smith lied. ”They just … turned. And tore the other half of the students to shreds.”
The other professor shook his head.
”Was only a matter of time. I’m telling you, we’re all being poisoned. It won’t be long till something like this will kill us all.”
The History Professor escorted Roy Smith to the hospital. Police appeared and collected statements of what happened. As all of Professor Smith’s students were dead, he was the only real witness they had. He didn’t tell them the truth.
In the meanwhile, the bodies were taken away and the hallway was opened up to the cleaning lady, who started mopping up the blood.
”I really don’t want to know what they did this time”, she mumbled to herself. ”Those academic people are all fucking weird.”
She took the bucket of bloodied water and poured it down the drain, like she always did. The blood continued its way into the sewer system, where it met a plethora of pathogens and mutagenic substances. Someone in the chemistry department had obviously poured something down the drain they weren’t supposed to.
Professor Smith’s pathogen felt right at home. After all, it was a single cell organism and loved living in the water. The fact that it harbored a virus and an enzyme from a plant didn’t change that. In the contrary, it thrived like the lab environment had never allowed it, even better than in the bodies of the human test subjects.
And it found another accomplice.
The high mutagenic rate of the pathogen enabled it to pick up the norovirus and integrate it into its structure. And then, the organism split into two identic cells. It was the final step from a parasitic lifeform to an independent one, the zombie pathogen could reproduce without a host.
And then, it continued multiplying.
Usually, all pathogens are killed by chloride or other disinfectants in the sewage plant. But even normal pathogens sometimes slipped through.
The system didn’t stand a chance against Professor Smith’s mutated creation.
Slowly, the pathogen spread in the whole city’s water supply. Until it was everywhere.
Sources:
Rabies Vaccine
Norovirus
Diseases and Contaminants in Public Water Systems
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