Ex-Heroes, Peter Clines [reading like a writer txt] 📗

record. We still haven’t even figured out how it can multiply and spread so quickly. It blows Marburg and Ebola out of the water, to the point it should be a complete failure as a disease.” She paused.

One of the civilians, a bitchy former LA city council-woman named Christian Nguyen, clicked her fingernails on the table. The chattering sound made several people flinch. “Except …?”

“Except it isn’t lethal,” said Josh without looking up.

Beneath her mask, Stealth’s expression shifted. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not lethal,” repeated Connolly. “We’ve run hundreds of tests, infected our lab rats as fast as we can breed them. The ex-virus is not a fatal contagion.”

A frumpy man with a gray beard, Richard-something, coughed. “I think there’re about five million ex-people outside who’d disagree with you,” he said, looking proud of himself.

The doctor nodded. “That’s what’s why it’s taken so long to isolate this. During the outbreaks, everyone was operating under the misconception the virus was lethal and somehow reanimated people. But it isn’t. It’s two separate things.”

“Wait,” said Gorgon. “How isn’t it fatal? Everyone who gets bitten dies within two or three days.”

“Yes, they do,” she nodded. “Here’s where it gets interesting. You’ve all heard of the Komodo dragon, yes?”

Most of the heads in the room nodded.

“Okay, for years people thought Komodos were poisonous because their bite was so lethal. Turns out their saliva is like the agar in a petri dish. It’s a perfect growth medium, so it’s just brimming with every bacteria and virus present in the tropics. They bite you, break the skin, and all that stuff gets shot straight into your bloodstream. Suddenly your body’s dealing with thirty or forty major infections at once.”

Stealth steepled her fingers. “And this is what exes do?”

Connolly nodded. “When a person dies, lividity sets in, and all the fluids in their body start heading down. Since they’re still standing, exes have a lot of material build up in their jaws and cheeks. The brain gets heavy blood flow, so anything in the bloodstream ends up there. The salivary glands, sinuses, and tear ducts drain out, so anything in the lymph system is there, too. Plus you’ve got all the necrotic bacteria that manifest in a dead body. And, of course, the ex-virus itself. And then the ex bites you, and dumps all of that into your bloodstream.”

“But people are dying so fast,” said Christian. She spoke with the tone of a person determined to trip someone up. Her dislike of all superhumans was no secret. “How is it possible one person could have that many diseases in them?”

“One person, no. But this is a cumulative effect. A bites B. Between blood loss, the shock of the bite, and whatever germs or viruses A just pumped in, B weakens and dies. Now B becomes an ex and bites C, but C gets both A’s and B’s diseases. When C becomes an ex, the next victim gets A, B, and C’s infections. It’s like a reverse-pyramid scheme, where every iteration gets everything the previous ones had.”

Stealth gave a faint nod. “Which is why the outbreak spread faster as it grew.”

“Right. After five or six generations of exes they each had dozens, maybe even hundreds of diseases in them. Think of Los Angeles two years ago. Imagine how many different bacteria and viruses there were in that hundred or so square mile area. The common cold. Chicken pox. Measles. Mumps. A couple strains of influenza. A few dozen different STDs. Even some folks with typhoid, Lyme disease, or malaria. You couldn’t come up with a disease that wasn’t represented in LA somewhere. Two months in getting bitten by an ex was like getting injected with the CDC’s wish list. Once you add an immunodeficiency disease like HIV into that mix, well …” She shrugged.

Richard-something and one of the women murmured. Gorgon swore out loud.

“If everyone in the Mount submitted to blood tests,” Connolly continued, “we’d find out the majority of us are infected with the ex-virus. It just doesn’t do anything until you die.”

Stealth tapped her fingers together. “So the early cases of people being cured?”

The doctor shook her head. “They were cured or stabilized as far as whatever other diseases they’d contracted from their bites, but … no. If and when they did die, I’d guess they still became exes. There’s no way to be sure until a bunch of people die under conventional circumstances. Our preliminary tests seem to confirm it, though.” She took a moment, weighing a thought in her mind. “I need to say … this is the final nail as far any hopes for a cure go.”

Christian tilted her head. “How so?”

“As I said, the ex-virus itself isn’t fatal. It didn’t kill anyone. Every ex out there died of influenza, measles, blood loss … something else. They were killed by the secondary effects of the bite. They’re just as dead as anyone else you ever heard of who died from a disease.”

Richard-something raised his hand. “Do you know yet why it brings them back to life?”

Josh cracked the knuckles of his good hand against his thumb. “While a person might be dead, many elements of their body remain alive for hours, even days. You’ve all heard of hair and fingernails growing on a corpse as the skin cells continue to function. Transplants involve taking the still-living organs from a dead individual. Even at the grocery store, the beef or chicken you bought from the meat case was fresh because, on a cellular level, it was still alive.”

Doctor Connolly nodded. “The ex-virus toughens up cells, makes them hardier. So while the person dies, their individual cells don’t break down as fast, and the dead body continues on as a gigantic aggregate of living cells joined by the virus.”

“But how?”

“Still working on that one. There’s a good chance we’ll never know for sure. The ex-virus doesn’t behave like anything else on record and we don’t have the resources to study it more in depth than we are. It seems to involve the central