The Dead Won't Die Read Free Page B

“Is that what that is?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “I was measuring your CDHLs.”
    â€œAh,” he said, and tried to smile. “I’m going to be a zombie, aren’t I?”
    â€œAfraid so, yeah.” She touched her hand to his forehead and smiled. “Your fever’s better. That’s good.”
    Back in school he’d learned about the origins of the First Days, the near Great Extinction of the Human Race. The zombies weren’t the product of terrorism or a rogue virus or junk DNA. They came, instead, from the entrepreneurial desire to make vegetables last longer on the shelves.
    In the late 2080s, China began experimenting with advanced pesticides and preservatives, looking for a way to make their domestically grown foodstuffs stay fresher longer. Their efforts culminated in a family of chemical compounds known as carbon dioxide–blocking hydrolyzed lignin, or CDHLs. The Chinese tested it, claimed it was safe, and spread it over everything that grew.
    The compounds were tested around the world, and eventually vetted, first in Europe, and then in the United States by the FDA. Once the Food and Drug Administration declared CDHLs safe for human consumption in August 2098, they spread across the globe. Suddenly plums could stay purple and juicy for months at a time. Roses never wilted. Celery, carrots, even lettuce could sit on a grocery store shelf for weeks and still look as fresh as the day they were harvested. Even bananas could stay traffic light yellow for three months.
    The blood banks were the first to report signs of trouble. CDHLs didn’t appear to break down in the human bloodstream the way they did in plants. There was no cause for immediate worry, except that blood supersaturated with CDHLs seemed to stay unnaturally healthy and vital well beyond any sort of conventional measure.
    In hindsight, Jacob’s teachers had said, it should have been obvious.
    There were clues something was wrong. Lots of clues.
    CDHLs were linked through study after study to hyperactive behavior in children.
    Unfocused aggression was a common symptom of adults of middle age. Housewives killing their children and waiting at the kitchen table with a butcher’s knife for their husbands’ return from work shouldn’t have seemed like business as usual.
    And yet it was.
    Clues were missed.
    The First Days had crept up on them like a thief in the night, even though it should have been obvious what the CDHLs were doing to them.
    The trouble started in China. The central cities of Weishan and Qinghai were the first to erupt in anarchy. The Chinese, much to their credit, made no attempt to cover up what was going on. Video streamed out to every news service and website, and those first glimpses of the dead crowding the streets were terrifying beyond all reckoning.
    From central China the zombie hordes spread to the more densely populated coastal cities, and by that point there was no saving mainland Asia. Everyone who could evacuate did. They fled to Japan and Australia, some even to the United States, but many millions were left behind to be devoured. There were simply too many to save.
    The rest of the world watched it happen, believing that their quarantine efforts had worked. But of course the quarantine effort was merely shutting the barn door after the cow was already out. The culprit, the CDHLs, were already in the ground, already in the food, already in the bodies of everyone who had ever eaten something bought from the grocery store. All that was needed was for the body to reach a point of supersaturation. Once that happened, zombification spread.
    Eight months after the first incidents in China, more were reported in Japan, and Mexico, and the United States. Living through the First Days was like being caught up in a wildfire, Jacob’s teachers had told him. No sooner had you smelled smoke than the flames erupted all around you. Every night the televisions had shown