Pandemic Read Free Page A

and into the cold, silent black.
    His body seemed to hang for a moment, motionless, as if he were thatsame insect trapped in dark amber. Then, the life vest began to rise, bringing Charlie along with it.
    His body floated toward the surface.
    Charlie’s flame of life finally flickered out. His systems shut down, a cascading effect that should have ended all activity in his body.
    Should
have.
    His stem cells had been hijacked to produce crawlers. These microorganisms had instinctively followed his nervous system, using it as a pathway to reach his brain. There they had collected, altered their shape and
changed
him.
    A very specific type of his stem cells, however, had been reprogrammed to make something never seen before the infection that overwhelmed the
Los Angeles
.
    That special type:
hematopoietic stem cells
, also known as
HSCs
.
    HSCs have the ability to produce any type of blood cell. Charlie’s HSCs had been hacked to produce one specific creation, a modification of something common throughout the human body:
neutrophils
, more commonly called
white blood cells
.
    White blood cells are a critical part of the immune system. They hunt down bacteria and other foreign matter, engulf and destroy the things that could hurt us. Neutrophils are
amorphous
, meaning they are without form. They move like amoebae: reaching out pseudopods, finding their path, then the rest of their shapeless bodies follow along.
    When Charlie’s mutated neutrophils detected a severe lack of oxygen in his blood, the microorganisms reacted as they were programmed to react. They weren’t sentient, at least not by themselves, but the lack of oxygen told them that their host was dead — time to prepare to abandon ship.
    The Orbital had watched humans respond to its infection iterations. It had measured humanity’s reactions, its processes and equipment, and it had prepared a new strategy to deal with both.
    Charlie’s neutrophils secreted chemicals that would harden into cysts, cysts to help protect them from the decomposition chain reaction that would soon turn Charlie’s body to mush. Protect them for a little while, at least — hopefully long enough for a new host to come along.
    That done, the neutrophils “turned off,” entering a static state beyondeven hibernation. From that moment on, only specific physical cues would cause the microscopic organisms to reactivate, to shed their cysts and seek out a new host.
    Those cues? Vibrations. Movement.
Regular
movement, the kind only exhibited by living beings. Until they detected such signals, the neutrophils would remain motionless, almost as dead as the tissue that surrounded them.

DAY TWO
THE END
    REPUBOTHUGGY: Like anyone would ever believe Gutierrez’s “little green men” bullshit and the work of his “scientist whore” Montoya. they should find those spics and shoot them liek the traitor that he is.
    JAMES U: (in reply to REPUBOTHUGGY) A republican would say something like that, which shows your lack of education. Thanks for trying, though. Maybe you should read a book.
    J-C-DOOMTROOPER: (in reply to JAMES U) I bet I read twice as many books as you, lib-tard, and the ones you read are full of pictures. I read philosophy, stratgy, history and the most importan book of all THE BIBLE!!!!!!!! Detroit got nukes because it was a soddham and gamhora and it was God’s will.
    CAROL B: (in reply to J-C-DOOMTROOPER) Stupidtrooper, you can’t even spell, which is so typical of people who think the Bible (a.k.a., the “storybook”) is real. Your words show how stupid you actually are, so good job on that.
    “Margo?”
    Margaret Montoya reflexively closed the laptop. It shut with a sharp
click
. She felt instantly foolish; caught in the act, she’d reacted without thinking when simply closing the web browser window would have done the job.
    Clarence Otto stood in the doorway of their home office. He glanced down at the laptop in front of her.
    He frowned. “Torturing yourself