HORROR | FICTION | PANDEMIC
The Final Pandemic
A horror tale about a classic horror trope with a new spin
“Viruses mutate. That’s what they do. Humans try to fight them with vaccines and meds and in response they mutate to fight back. The best strategy for a virus is to spread to as many people as possible with the least fatalities, since when the host dies so does the virus.
However ‘life’ and ‘death’ are relative terms to a virus. A host simply needs to keep taking nutrients and maintain at least some basic metabolism for the virus to be kept alive. The host does not even need to remain conscious, and nutrients can include anything.
Even human cerebral tissue. It is highly nutritious and very energy dense. A mouthful of it provides as much energy as four or five salads. It is far more energy efficient, and thus of great benefit to the virus to have the host develop a taste for, er, human brains. So I have been worrying that…”
“Let me interrupt you right there Dr Lee. Are you really going to suggest that nature might evolve a zombie virus? Are you sure you have not watched a few too many horror movies?” Professor Henderson asked mockingly, while loud laughter broke out among the attendees.
Dr Sue Lee, a young prolific virologist from the Fudan University in Shanghai, was giving a lecture at the Global Virology Conference in Vienna, in July of 2024. Professor Henderson was an esteemed senior virologist from Harvard. It was the second day of the conference, and the main topic was “What is going to be the next Covid and how can we prepare?”
Dr Sue Lee made the boldest suggestion of everyone in the conference, and she was practically laughed out of it. After Professor Henderson uttered the ‘z’ word she didn’t even have the chance to present her extensive data and research. If she had preparations might have been made.
Two years later, summer of 2026
This time it broke out in Zaire, Africa. The country the Ebola virus also came from. Unconfirmed sightings of rabid individuals attacking people were reported, but at first everyone thought they were fake news.
Then the first videos emerged. A video that went viral over the web, with social media companies trying in vain to stamp it out, showed feral people attacking others, then breaking and opening up their sculls with various objects. They then ate their brains as if they were Turkish Delights and they suffered from severe hypoglycemia.
An 8-strong CDC team was sent to investigate but only one of them survived. Barely. He was in such a state of shock that he could not utter a single word. The WHO instructed all countries to stop accepting flights from Zaire immediately, but only 3/4 of them listened. So the local break-out of the unknown pathogen soon turned into a global pandemic.
Multiple incidents were reported in the countries that did not close their borders with Zaire and from there it spread everywhere. Like Dr Lee had predicted the pathogen did not technically kill its victims so it did not need to be ‘conservative’ in its infectiousness. Unlike Ebola, which required contact with fluids, the new pathogen was airborne and as infectious as Covid.
That was the worst of worst worlds: both highly effective and highly infectious. When the first sample was secured it was discovered that the pathogen was a hybrid virus. A highly mutated Ebola-like virus packaged inside a respiratory virus, a global first. Inside the hosts the respiratory shell was shed and the ‘zombie payload’, as was colloquially termed, was released.
In other words two very different viruses combined into a single super-virus. The only virologist globally who had predicted that could happen was Dr Sue Lee. With the zombie pandemic spreading by the day everyone rushed to get advice from Dr Lee, including Professor Henderson and other senior virologists.
But it was too late. Shanghai fell, including Fudan University. It was literally overrun by hundreds of thousands of zombies devouring every non infected brain they could get their claws on.
A small team of virologists reached Fudan University by helicopter, hoping to find and rescue Dr Lee. That’s when they saw her. At first they thought she was healthy, since she looked normal. But after she ran to attack them they realized she was freshly infected.
Unlike slow moving zombies in horror movies she ran like a sprinter with foam escaping her mouth and eyes liked blurry glass devoid of any intellect. The only expression left on her face was that of primal hunger. Hunger for brains to feed her viral puppet-master.
The team barely escaped, and when the chopper was up in the air the team’s sniper gave her a mercy kill right between her eyes. A bright mind was lost that day. And, along with her, probably the world too.
January 2027
The world has fallen. The US and every other country fell. Within 6 months ~99% of the global population either died or turned into mindless zombies. Roughly 80 million healthy people were left globally.
It was discovered by the survivors that if the zombies were starved for a few days, a week tops, they attacked each other to eat their brains. They knew their mates were infected, but each individual’s survival came first. Survival of the fittest and all that.
This turned into the main strategy of the survivors: starve the zombies to get them to eat each other. The survivors were naturally immune to the virus, otherwise they would have fallen too. They did not risk getting infected, only to have their brains eaten. So they could fight the zombies without protective gear and masks that hindered their moves and visibility.
But that was their last resort. They employed it only when they were cornered. When the survivors found out starved zombies attacked each other they started getting very good at hiding. They devised various ways to mask their scent. But above all they learned to be very quiet.
By the summer of 2027 there were roughly 65 million people left globally but the losses of the zombies were far greater. They were now under control. By the end of the year almost all zombies were eradicated. Their sightings were rare. The healthy survivors that remained to restart civilization -or build a new one- were 63 million.
The world seemed far larger and sparser to them. The survivors remained in a state of quasi-anarchy for years until they reformed governments and other structures of order. Some went back to the way it was. Others tried something entirely different. So, at the end, humanity survived. But barely.
If immunity had not evolved in the survivors the human species would have been thoroughly eradicated. Was that nature’s silver lining, or gift, after almost eliminating us? Did she give us one last chance? That is the trillion dollar question. In a world with no more dollars.
A story by Nikolaos Skordilis. This zombie poem of mine describes what would have happened if the zombies had prevailed:
A story I enjoyed by Star Love Grey: