Machines of the Dead

Chapter 5

A day after finding out the truth about his wife, Jack had her body put to rest. The doc had wanted to keep Jess’ corpse active to study her, but Jack insisted otherwise. The guards were bringing in countless undead, the city having an endless supply of subjects, so there were and would be, plenty of other subjects.

Jack watched through the window as his wife stood, blood-covered and bullet-ridden, in the center of the room, head hanging low like some kind of ragged, old doll that no one wanted. Dr. Reynolds had explained this, saying that the nanobots were conserving their power, hence conserving the rotting of the flesh. As of now, the nanobots were not able to repair the dead flesh, but he feared that could change. The bots were programmed to adapt, to figure out new ways to heal. However, that was all theory, since it had only been tested in a living body.

Jack wanted to be the one to take revenge on the bots. It was silly, but hitting the button that filled the room with electromagnetic energy felt like a small victory, justice for his wife.

Now she could rest in peace.

Over the next week, he came to grips with his new world, a world that made little sense, and a world without Jess in it.

Dr. Reynolds had been working on a top-secret military project, code-named: ENHANCE. Microscopic robots, or nanobots, would be injected into a soldier, enhancing the soldier’s ability to heal and remain alert. Using some of the healthy tissue already in the body, along with consumed proteins and amino acids, the bots would repair any damage a soldier received as long as the soldier was alive. Any damage sustained from a small cut, healing within minutes, to a missing limb, taking a few days, would be re-grown or repaired. The only drawback was the amount of energy required to sustain the human body while the bots were active within it. So far, the bots required too much energy, causing the individual that was injected with them to have severe hunger pains, needing to eat immediately or the bots would start to take away flesh from the host body, breaking down healthy cells, ultimately leading to organ shutdown and death.

Dr. Reynolds hadn’t been able to get pas t the issue of energy requirement and was still working on the problem, when Derek Mayfield escaped. Somehow, when the man went around biting people, he had spread the bots to them. The bots quickly began to multiply, using healthy tissue in order to do so. Without the immediate ingestion of food, there simply wasn’t enough energy to sustain the bots’ activity in a human body for more than a day without the body dying. However, even after an individual was deceased, the bots were somehow able to remain active, animating the body and sending it in search of food, that food being human flesh.

As with Jack’s case, he was infected with the ENHANCE nanobots when his wife bit him. After being brought back to the bunker, Dr. Reynolds allowed the bots to repair Jack’s wounds, growing his fingers back while at the same time, intravenously feeding him copious amounts of protein. When he was fully repaired, Jack’s body was hit with an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, frying all the bots into harmless, crispy little critters that the body would discard as waste.

Dr. Reynolds was working on a way to fix the problem. With the bots acting so quickly, killing people once they were inside, there really was no way to save the living-infected, unless said infected was immediately cared for within a day or less. A shock from 50,000 volts or more, or an electromagnetic pulse, would destroy the bots in the human body, allowing the person to survive.

In order to stop a member of the undead, the corpse should be treated the same as a living person, with electricity, or by destroying the brain, which was the bots command center.

Cut off from the outside world, Dr. Reynolds was now working on a way to get the bots to work in the human body as originally planned, without the negative side effects, and in turn, find a solution to the problem. As it looked, millions of Manhattan’s citizens were dead, or “undead” as the reanimated corpses were termed, and highly contagious. Dr. Reynolds’ only hope was to find some kind of mass solution to the bots; a way to help the uninfected, the survivors. If not, he feared the military in order to contain the epidemic, would detonate a nuclear bomb, incinerating the city and everything in it.

In the meantime, Blackhawk helicopters patrolled the airways while military gunboats patrolled the waters. Bridges and tunnels were closed, blocked off by military personnel and their equipment. Anyone attempting to leave the city was shot on sight. Shortly after the massacre on the Brooklyn Bridge-hundreds of citizens mowed down by machine gun fire for attempting to leave the city-a citywide media blackout had occurred. Somehow, the government had cut off all communication to the outside world, including cell phone, internet, and radio transmissions. Electricity was still running, at least for the time being, and Manhattan was on its own.

The bunker where Jack was being held was built five stories below the streets of the city, and exactly below the apartment building that he and Jess had been living in. A team of scientists and armed, military-trained guards were at the doctor’s disposal. Since Derek Mayfield’s escape, the good doctor had tightened security, arming the guards with weapons from the bunker’s arsenal and deactivating the card readers at both exits. Only he and one other person, Guard Commander Roger Chambers, had the code to activate the doors leading to the outside world.

The bunker was designed to be self-sustaining for a time of one year with the current staff, plus a few unforeseen extras like Jack. Non-perishable food and drink were kept in storage, along with a small armory of weapons, and antibiotics.

Before the media blackout had occurred, Jack sat in his room watching the news, day and night, unable to do much of anything else, except to think about Jess, crying hysterically at times. He was the only non-employee in the bunker; everyone else was there to work, helping in one way or another to find a solution. He couldn’t believe the un dead were walking the streets, attacking people. Yet, the massacre on the Brooklyn Bridge was what made him literally puke. He had witnessed the event on live television, the scene replaying itself in his mind for days afterward, even in his dreams.

Before the blackout, people were told to stay in their homes and wait until the situation could be resolved, yet food drops were scheduled throughout the city. Riots broke out as people fought over food and water. The number of undead grew, patrolling the streets like untiring guards. People no longer wanted to leave their homes, and the food that was dropped went to waste. The few that did try for the rations, usually wound up as a meal for the undead.

To Jack, the world looked as if it had ended.