Sickness In Town P. 2

 By: Asa Montreaux

*

It was possible Bernie had contracted a zombie virus. Neil had only heard of a few, from long ago in the past, where individuals become unresponsive and zombie-like. They seem to lose their sense of humanity, and go crazy. There was no evidence that they had a craving for brains when infected, but it seemed funny to Neil that maybe they had. Maybe they were gone so crazy they liked weird, gross stuff. Maybe there was a pattern to their getting sick, which hadn’t been identified yet.

Whether they ate brains, or not, these Zombies had to be stopped. The first step for Neil was to visit the library, and find out more about Zombie Viruses. Then he needed to go off and find Bernie, no matter how far she’d gone, and ask her herself what it was she was going through. Hopefully she was in remission, or else he’d be risking his life, but he had to find out anyways. 

At the library he found no case that seemed so severe as Bernie’s. He didn’t find any instance of super strength, but he found one virus that caused noted “increased” strength. It also seem to come and go in waves. It seemed to be a match for the virus that Bernie had contracted. It hadn’t been present in humanity since 1806, but it had reoccured in sheep three times over the past two hundred years. 

This was the virus. Bingo. It seemed to have still existed through animal hosts, and had morphed in to a disease transmissible through humans again. It must have happened even only a few weeks ago. There had been nothing in the news at all about it. There would have been something, I mean these would have been the most vicious attacks. People would need to hear about them, so they can be prepared. But there was nothing. It was very unlikely the police were covering anything up. He might have the first evidence of a zombie attack. And he was off to see Bernie to find out more about it.

*

Neil called Bernie’s parents and told him he was looking for her. Without giving too much information, he said he was worried about her, and he needed to located her. They said, like usual, she hadn’t been home in a few days. But they said if you find anything is wrong, to let them know about it. 

So this didn’t help him in terms of finding Bernie. But he would have to let them know if she was still really sick. The truth about the Zombie virus that Neil found in the library books, and that matched Bernie’s symptoms, is that had been described as lethal most of the time in 1806. But humans have a lot more resistance to disease nowadays, so it was possibly nothing to worry about. The virus was called Zombie Freeze. It was last detected in Salem, New York, in March, 1806.

In order to find her, he needed to try to get some leads. He went around school, where there was several sports teams practicing, a few clubs meeting, and asked if anyone had seen her. Quite a few people told him they had seen nothing.

But after a while someone told him they had seen her across town behind a local gas station, sitting on the curb, leering at people at the past. He said, “To be honest, she looked really not well.”

“Okay, thanks,” Neil told him. He knew this was a good lead, and he set off to find out if she was there.

He drove to the gas station, and when he arrived, he checked in from to see if she had moved around at all. It was possibly she had gone somewhere else, walked quote far even, but maybe she was still here. When he pulled around back, he could see her sitting on the edge of the sidewalk. She was still leering, and he was troubled to see she looked almost as sick as when she had ripped the roof of his house. But maybe the rest of her symptoms were dormant. 

He approached her carefully. “Bernie, hi?”

She didn’t respond or seemed to notice someone speaking. He felt she was likely not able to communicate while she was sick with the virus. He stopped and tried to see if she moved at all, if she wanted to pounce or anything. No movement. He walked over to beside her and sat down on the curb next to her, next to a zombie.

“Well,” he said to her. “You’re pretty sick aren’t you?” 

She couldn’t respond, and the two of them just sat there, watching the cars come and go. And Neil thought about what to do about all this, and how to help Bernie.