Mira Grant - Deadline

“The volunteers were injected with a serum containing deactivated viral particles from the opposing strain. The theory was that maybe one strain would destroy the other. Best-case scenario, they’d both destroy the other, and we’d finally have a treatment. Worst-case scenario…” Her voice tapered off.

Dr. Abbey took up the thread when it became clear that Kelly wasn’t going to, saying, “Worst-case scenario is what they got. Not only did every single one of their ‘volunteers’ go into spontaneous amplification when the two strains met, but they bred a new strain—one that increased mob behavior in exposed infected. They fucked up gloriously. And then they swept it all under the rug, with the rest of their failures.”

“What did you want us to do?” Kelly’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing as she glared at Dr. Abbey. “Did you want us to just sit back and watch the virus do its thing, not even try to find the answer? Yes, people died. Yes, mistakes were made, and mistakes will be made, and someday, maybe, because of those mistakes, we’ll have a cure. Wouldn’t you like that? A cure? An end to all the fear? Because that seems like a really good thing to me, and if I have to work with the CDC to make it happen, that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I’d love that idea, if I thought it was anything but a pipe dream.” We all turned toward Maggie. She’d moved to sit on the floor next to Joe, one arm slung lazily across the dog’s back. She looked completely at peace, despite the fact that she was leaning against an animal that could take off her face with a single bite. “People laugh at me because I watch a lot of horror movies, but horror movies are educational, if you know how to pay attention to them. They tell you about societal trends—about the things that people are afraid of. In the ones before the Rising, they were afraid of actual things . The new ones… they’re just afraid of not being afraid.”

Kelly snorted. “No one makes horror movies anymore.”

“Yes, they do,” said Maggie. “These days, everything’s a horror movie.”

“To get back to the original point, before we went on this fascinating and informative tangent, you said the virus was adapting,” said Alaric. He leaned forward, eyes fixed on Kelly. The Newsie in him sensed blood in the water. I could see it in his face. “No mob behavior, then, mob behavior. What are the reservoir conditions supposed to do ?”

“No one really knows.” Kelly stole a glance in my direction, testing my reaction, before focusing on Alaric. She sounded less like she was lecturing and more like she was trying to make herself understood, like it suddenly mattered that we understand. “We think they stem from exposure to the live virus that somehow fails to cause full amplification. You see it mostly in people who risked exposure when they were under the threshold weight, although there have been exceptions. We’re still trying to figure out what causes the exceptions. Why it happens in some adults, and not in others. We don’t really know yet, and it’s not the sort of thing you can easily test.”

“So wait,” said Becks. “Are you saying that people who got exposed when they were really little, they get reservoir conditions instead of getting the whole zombie combo pack?”

Kelly nodded. “Exactly.”

My eyes were normal until I was almost at the amplification threshold, said George thoughtfully. The retinal distortion didn’t kick in until then.

“I know,” I mumbled, keeping my voice low, so as to hopefully avoid reminding my team that I was crazy. Louder, I asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means their bodies were exposed to live Kellis-Amberlee when they were still incapable of suffering the full effects of the virus,” said Dr. Abbey. There was a lunatic good cheer in her voice, like being allowed to make that statement was a great and glorious gift. “Ever hear of chickenpox?”

“Well, yeah,” said Becks. “It’s part of the standard set of field vaccines.”

“For a long time, they didn’t have a vaccine for chickenpox—it was a childhood disease, and almost everybody caught it. Only that was a good thing back then, because most kids get over the chickenpox pretty easy. They itch for a week and then they’re fine. Better than fine. Having the virus once makes them resistant to catching it again, and for adults, chickenpox is no laughing matter. It can cause permanent nerve damage, severe scarring, all sorts of nasty side effects. Dr. Abbey looked placidly at Kelly. “People used to have chickenpox parties, where they’d deliberately expose their young children to somebody who was already sick.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Becks.

“Now that we have a vaccine, sure. Back then, it was a way to save your children from suffering a lot more. It wasn’t safe—kids died of chickenpox—but it was a damn sight better than the alternative.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

I do, said George, very quietly.

“I do,” echoed Alaric. I turned to look at him, and he said, “When infants are exposed to live Kellis-Amberlee, they can’t amplify, but they still get sick. Only they can get better, can’t they? They can actually recover from the virus.”

“Bingo.” Dr. Abbey, touching her nose with her left index finger while she pointed at Alaric with her right. “Princess CDC, tell the nice man what he’s won!”

Kelly was silent.

I swallowed away the dryness in my throat, and said, quietly, “Please.”

My voice seemed very loud in the enclosed space of the lab. Kelly turned to face me and said, “Yes, sometimes early exposure can lead to individuals successfully fighting off a live Kellis-Amberlee infection. It’s impossible to run a standard blood test on an infant, because they can’t amplify, so we can’t find the usual amplification markers. But they’ll get sick. It’s been seen. And then, after a little while, they aren’t sick anymore.” Kelly stopped, choosing her next words with care: “Most of the individuals who undergo a potential infectious episode as infants develop one of the reservoir conditions when they get older, because their immune systems are preconditioned to respond.”

“Their bodies remember that the virus is bad, and they set up their own little kennels, filled with their own little packs of domesticated viral bodies,” clarified Dr. Abbey, leaning down to thump Joe on the side. He looked up at her adoringly, tongue lolling. “That’s what humanity does when faced with wolves. We take them in, tame them, and teach them how to keep us safe.”

“Yes,” agreed Kelly. “The reservoir conditions are a marker that the immune system has learned it needs to fight back when Kellis-Amberlee starts taking over.”

“That’s why you said she would’ve gotten better, isn’t it?” Kelly didn’t answer. I slammed my fist into the safety-glass window, hard enough to make everyone jump—everyone but Dr. Abbey, who looked like she’d plugged herself into some inner reservoir of contentment. “Answer the damn question, Doc.”

“Yes.” Kelly looked up at me, expression drawn. “Dr. Wynne and I reviewed her test results. Her immune system was already starting to respond to the new infection when the test was taken. The chances that she would have been able to fight off the infection were very good. Better than eighty percent.”

“Spontaneous remission,” said Alaric, sounding awed.

I didn’t take my eyes off Kelly as I said, “Explain.”

“It’s supposed to be an urban legend. Supposedly, there are people who’ve been infected—like, full-on ready-to-eat-the-neighbors infected—but they miraculously recovered before they could be put down. Nobody ever seems to know anyone who’s had a spontaneous remission. It’s always a guy who knows a guy who used to know a guy. But the stories keep cropping up, and then the CDC reminds everyone that there’s no cure and they get written off again.”