They only wanted a
Nobel Prize. Instead, they will have to save the world.
It was going to be the experiment of the year. Preparing to blast x-rays
through a piece of palladium at the most dazzling European synchrotron, Anna
and five of her fellow scientists expected a few hiccups.
Not a horde of hungry spleen-eating zombies.
The world has succumbed to the virus, leaving only scattered
survivors.
When Anna and her friends realise that the infected can be cured back into
humans, they pledge to find a cure no matter the cost. Equipped with a lab
wrench and questionable lab ethics, Team ID26 are humanity’s last hope.
But what is the price of saving the world?
Running out of time, Anna and her friends will face the
impossible choices between life and death, morality and cure. When the future
of the world is at stake, what will they have to sacrifice?
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Day 17, 21st of February, Wed
Steve didn’t call back. After I’d checked my phone for the millionth time, Kay patted me on the shoulder and took my phone away for safekeeping. I guess she meant my poor heart, not the phone.
“I heard that’s called ghosting,” Edsie told me.
“I heard that’s called tone-deaf, Edsie,” Kay bit back on my behalf.
Some say there are no heart wounds that a bucket of ice-cream cannot heal. How about treating those with instant noodles?
No?
Our noodle supplies are running dry, and even the chocolate bars we’ve hauled through the Ring back to ID26 won’t last us more than a day or two.
On a positive note, we’ve progressed on the spleen front.
After consulting Google Images, we agreed that the blob we initially identified as the pancreas was the spleen, the key to transforming people into blood-thirsty monsters.
We wrote and attached new labels.
“What do we do with the rest of it?” Tanya asked after we put the spleen aside and packed the other Ali’s organs into plastic sample boxes.
“Bin it. We’ve got the spleen,” said Dan.
“I’ll throw it into the biological waste,” Tanya said, loading the boxes onto a small trolley.
She was going to wheel Ali’s remains back to the wet lab. We could officially rename that wet lab into “Spleen-eaters’ Mortuary”. As one of them, Ali belonged there, too.
“I’ll help you,” said Edsie. “What if you have another seizure?”
Kay, Dan and I stared at them in confused silence while Edsie grabbed the trolley and rolled it out of the hutch. Tanya picked up the hammer and followed him.
Okay. What have I missed?
Since Tanya started taking her meds again, she seemed to be back to her usual self, no issues with her whatsoever, apart from this unexpected feat of helpfulness from Edsie. Had he been bitten?
“What now?” Kay asked after the door closed behind them.
“I don’t know. That’s weird. I’ve never heard him offer help before,” I said.
“No. What do we do with that?” Kay pointed at the chunk of flesh on the workshop table. It smelled rancid and unhealthy. Was it a typical smell of a slowly rotting spleen, or did the presence of the virus make it foul?
“If the virus is in his cells, we should find and isolate it,” I said.
“No shit,” said Dan.
“Microscope?” I suggested.
“We have to cut it very thin for a microscope,” said Kay.
“Not with a knife, I suppose.”
“It’s not a piece of meat, Anna, of course not with a knife. With a microtome. I even know where we can find one,” said Kay.
Quotes from reviewers:
“Like The Martian meets Zombieland—serious survival mixed with dark humour and fast action”
“surprisingly deep for post-apocalyptic science fiction”
“a mix of science, survival, and zombie action with added dark humour, this book will keep you hooked”
“a totally different take on the genre!”
“absolutely loved it!”
“surprisingly robust contemplations on life scattered throughout this fast-paced book”
“Sad. Humorous. Suspenseful.”
Quotes from the book:
Sunday! What a holy day for our unholy undertakings!
Before I start hyperventilating, let me focus on the facts. Dan says that when emotions are bigger than you, facts never are; they are short and precise.
Octopuses have three hearts.
A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.
Although zombies are a fictional concept, there are “zombie” ants that are infected by fungus and jump off heights, killing themselves.
Ah, crap, ignore this last one!
We didn’t see it, Dan! In the movies, zombies are always dead, right? But our zombies – no, our spleen-eaters – they are alive. The virus doesn’t kill them, so we can… cure them. Right?”
“We? As if, in us, the five chemists? Since when does a doctor in your title involve treating monsters back into people?
A couple of years after we’d dealt with COVID-19, the UN, WHO, and other important people got together to prepare the world for the next outbreak. Their plan, called “Lock and Block”, prescribed establishing a total area lockdown within 24 hours. Isolate the area, move in the military, fence off the perimeter, and shoot anyone who tries to escape.
The last one’s a joke. Sort of.
“How did you know they would make good samples?”
Have I told you about Louise’s proprietary stare? Here it was, telling me all I needed to know about my level of intelligence.
“Good brain samples are the ones that you do not need to scrape off the floor,” she explained, in case the stare was not sufficient.
If something walked out on us in search of a late-night dinner, I’d have to fight it off with only my charisma.
Zero chance, then.
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If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
I’d love to have an unknown actor play Anna, the main character. Anna is a narrator, she is full of backstory and opinions, and I would not want the previous roles to overshadow this. On the contrary, I’d love someone famous to play Dan. I’d think Vin Diesel or Jason Statham. Why these guys? Because Dan in the book is bald, has tattoos from his previous – not so intellectually-driven – life and knows how to make Molotov cocktails. With all that, he is a British Chemistry professor, and I thought it would be hilarious for, say, Jason Statham to be a chemistry professor, for once. Hasn’t he played a mechanic, a taxy driver, a courier, a diver, etc? Why not a scientist? He’s bald, too.
Have I mentioned? I have a soft spot for good irony. Life has a habit of dumping it on us by the bucketload, and if you’re not careful, it’s easy to mistake irony for failure. You need a certain kind of immunity to tell the difference.
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What is similar between science and postapocalyptic
survival?
Everything that can, will go wrong.”
Rain Hunter is a writer of post-apocalyptic science fiction.
Having spent years as a materials researcher, Rain intricately weaves
scientific precision into the stories. “I’ve had a fun lab run over the years
and might have picked some degrees on the way,” laughs Rain. “But the most
important thing for my books is that the science has to be real. No more
can-and-know-it-all characters! If I know how to cook meth from baking soda and
cough syrup, I won’t be able to start a rocket engine, full stop. Even in fiction!”
Rain is a huge fan of the zombie genre, both in movies and
books. “I’d kill to be a zombie extra in a film. Even if they smash my brains
out in the first two seconds. Sign me up anytime.”
Dark humour and irony are the main ingredients in Rain’s
novels. “I am sure the world will die laughing. That’s what I would do.”
Rain lives in Birmingham (England), which serves as a main
inspiration for the goriest post-apocalyptic scenes. In their spare time, Rain
plays a harp in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Nah, not really.
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