This Kharon Virus is transmitted by
fluids. I think we have pretty much covered that to death in these article
entries. Bites are the most common transferring agent but any sort of infected
fluid risks contamination. This is why hand to hand combat with any zom is
dangerous. If you cut your hand on a jagged shard of bone while caving in a
skull… well, you need to start making some serious life decisions.
Here is something that I cannot figure
out though. These things are animated corpses. They do not feel or think. They
seem to be running on the most basic of instincts, as if the brain is working
with just enough electrical current to keep them up and moving around and
wanting to eat – again the most basic of instinct.
Near as we can tell, they do not
breathe because they don’t need oxygen. I am willing to be that these things
could travel underwater with no problem and then emerge from Grand Lake still
hungry and ready to eat.
And while I have not been close enough
to a living one of these things to hold a stethoscope to a chest for a good
listen, I am betting that they don’t have a heartbeat. I have seen this because
I have seen these guys take some serious ammo to the chest and just keep on
coming. Following a good scientific theory, I have to assume that they don’t
have a heartbeat.
So, all of this blood is just sitting
in their system. We have seen the splatter of liquid when these zoms take a
shot to the head and errant shots have hit them in the chest, drawing out
sprays of liquid. I don’t even want to call it blood anymore because rather
than being a healthy red, it is a very dark, black color. The consistency also
seems more like molasses… No, that isn’t right. Syrup. Syrup after it has been
left in the refrigerator after you open it. It splatters thickly and it is dark
as night.
But if the heart isn’t working
anymore, you would think that simple gravity would cause all that fluid to pool
in their feet. Yet, head shots and chest shots draw gouts of this stuff. And,
unfortunately, we have all seen our fair share of this zom blood splash across
our parking lot.
Does this fluid, whatever you want to
call it, move around in their systems? Or has it thickened so much that it just
kind of holds in place in the veins and arteries? If so then, when something
like a bullet comes along, it would cause it splash all over everywhere. I
guess that sounds about as plausible as any other theory I can come up with.
But I write all this out because of a
certain fear. If their blood has changed, thickened and become more… resilient
in death, then the same could be said of the rest of their organs. When we
first started the Year One Plan, we were under the assumption that microbes had
to be eating away at these things like crazy. We were assuming that natural
decay would render the majority of their population desiccated husks within a
year and then we would be able to move around safely.
What if that isn’t the case?
