The Zombie Virus (Book 1) by Paul Hetzer

The virus then
voraciously attacked most of the brain and when it was done, all
that was left functioning was parts of what some call the limbic
system, which controls our base instincts.
    The Zombie virus destroyed our reasoning,
communication, and memory centers leaving us a literal eating,
sleeping, killing, virus production facility. This was the perfect
virus – it infected without killing its host, leaving them alive to
produce more virus and find new hosts.
    The infected, the Loonies, seemed to be
driven by some rabid animalistic urge that made them attack and
bite and sometimes feed on those that were not infected. My guess
was that the sugary smell that emanated from their bodies was one
of the means in which they differentiated each other from the
non-infected.
    I was taking additional samples from the
Loonies every few hours, hoping that they would show a drop off of
the virus population over time. So far the levels were sustaining.
That second night as I was working in my lab, I heard a crash and a
chorus of growls and snarls coming over the monitor displaying the
isolation ward. I looked up to see that Sung had broken free from
his wrist straps and was hanging half off the bed, only held by his
ankles. He broke free of first one then the other binding and
rampaged around the ward, ignoring the other Loonies.
    There would be no more sampling from my
patients.
    After a few minutes the Loony that had been
Sung was at the airlock door. The airlock had a keypad lock with a
large handle that must be lifted once the correct combo was keyed
in to open the inner airlock door. He looked through the thick
glass window above the lock into the room beyond, contemplating how
to get out. He reached down to the thick sealed door’s handle and
yanked it toward him, then up and down. I held my breath for a
moment, and then realized his spastic attempts were nothing more
than muscle memory, he had no reasoning skills left to figure out
how to open even a simple door.
    After a few seconds he gave up and moved on
around the room, occasionally tossing to the floor anything that
was in his way. I thought about emergency decontaminating the room.
The gaseous formaldehyde would kill the virus along with any other
living organisms in there. I decided against it. I could learn more
observing the three remaining living Loonies for as long as
possible.
    The third day I discovered that rats were
susceptible to the virus. They also rapidly developed symptoms with
a very short incubation period, except in their case the disease
was terminal. I was able to use them in an experiment on
transmittance.
    It looked like the virus didn’t survive for
long outside of the host and while present in the various human
body fluids, it quickly died off. It was not aerosol transmissible
after a short period. You couldn’t get it from breathing the same
air as a Loony unless that infected person sneezed or coughed. In
other words, a person had to be bitten or have a Loony’s fresh body
fluid enter a cut or mucus membrane area to become infected.
    I also administered immunoglobulins, or what
most know as antibodies, that were specific for the rabies
lyssavirus to the rats. I then infected them with the Zombie Virus
hoping that it was similar enough to rabies that the antibodies
would bind to it and prevent it from infecting the host’s
cells.
    For a virus to enter a cell, it requires
specific receptor proteins on the host cell that it can bind to
which allow it to be endocytosed into the cellular interior. Think
of it like a simple children’s picture puzzle: each puzzle piece is
cut to fit only with the piece it is to be mated to. The protein
sheath of a virus is basically the same way. It can only mate with
a specific host cell if the way that its protein is folded fits
perfectly with the folded protein of the receptor on the host
cell.
    Once the virus binds to the host cell in what
would look like a pit on an electron micrograph, the viral package
is