Chapter 7

Waking up in the morning Babette found a new resolve she wasn't going to die from this she wasn't going to end up like Bill who locked himself in a freezer to die alone because he had no one left to bury him and was afraid of rumors about the illness. At first, she couldn't understand some of the crazy stories overheard from customers that he mentioned one night during a phone call. It sounded like one of the zombie novels she had disregarded in the horror fiction section of the library, and he dropped the notion when she laughed. Resisting the urge to start reading the fiction, Babs decided to look up the facts first. She began pulling books on fungi, fungal infections, pathophysiology, and several medical journals. She also used the library resources to access and print out hundreds of pages of information on the fifth pandemic disease. Researchers and doctors were certain the VRFS of Pandemic 4 was not the thing that caused Pandemic 5. It was something new, possibly a fungal-viral or fungal-bacterial chimeric microorganism with an airborne transmission route, but from her reading, Babs was certain Pandemic was something that the doctors had not figured out before they all died as well.

For the next two days, she learned everything she could about fungal infections of the lungs, eyes, and organs. She studied the symptoms and tried to message people who had posted to medical blogs and social media threads. There were pictures of victims and crazy claims of some becoming zombies, which led down a voodoo zombie rabbit hole and information on fungal zombiism in rainforest ants around the world. Doing what she had been trained to do as a librarian, she began collecting and collating all the information she could on the disease that was causing Pandemic Five

On the morning of the third day, she stared at a man who could easily be the drunk that tried to mug her three weeks earlier. Babs began reading. The person who posted the picture was looking for him, she claimed to be his wife, but the missing person thread had not been updated for over a week. There were thousands of other threads; some looking for people who 'wandered away while very sick'. Many posts begged for help because they were ill, or because their loved ones had died. Over and over, she saw pictures of people with purplish-black lips and caked eyes weeping sooty tears, mixed with pictures of the pandemic victims people claimed came back from the dead. The claims made Babs wonder if hallucinations were part of the disease. There were a few stranger blogs about how people's pet housecats saved them for their family members and neighbors. Cats seemed to attack the sick during the end stages of the disease or allegedly after they returned from the dead. One from a woman who claimed her cats licked the place she was bitten by her dead sister and cured her, but the woman also claimed that eating any kind of preserved food would make people more susceptible to the infection because her cats refused to eat or let her eat it so she encouraged people to eat pet kibble.

Her blog linked to a very official looking US Navy Blog page that told people to not eat foods preserved with Pharaoh's Yeast Extract and advising everyone to keep their domestic cats close because the infected dead seemed to avoid them. Babs laughed out loud at the assertion that the 'curse' was actually in extra-terrestrial organism found and first eaten. when a meteorite crashed into the Sahara Desert. It blamed the same Fourth Dynasty prince Mrs. Thorpe asked her about, then it talked about a lost city and the first modern zombiism outbreak after the discovery of King Tut's tomb. The mention of her eldest patron's grandfather, Lord Carnarvon, and the citing of articles claiming his death was a result of the Pharaoh's Curse had Babs closing the page. It was a very well written fiction mimicking a scientific blog and she wondered if the person who wrote it was still alive, but it wouldn't help her find the truth about the cause or a cure, so she went back to researching.

When the lights dimmed, she realized she skipped lunch again. She had piles of printouts from websites and blogs because she feared the internet would go out. Several servers on the west coast were already coming back with Gateway 404 errors. She decided tomorrow she would risk going down to the copy and printing shop a few blocks away and getting a book binding machine. She needed to preserve this digital record in printed form for the future, if there was a future. She hoped tomorrow would be a sunny day because it seemed those infected by Pandemic 5 did not like bright sunlight.

^..^

Babs was surprised when her work laptop beeped that it had received an email. It was from Mrs. Thorpe requesting several books, the same of the ones she was reading. Remembering the Navy Blog, Babs wondered if the century old cat lady knew the world had ended. She wondered if Mrs Thorpe was able to get any more cat food since Babs had taken her her groceries. She responded to the e-mail and ask Mrs Thorpe if she needed more cat food or Kitty litter. Trying to call she discovered cell service was out so she sent a simple email.

Mrs. Thorpe,

I have your book order. Do you need more catfood?

Dr. Babette Bland

EPFPL Head Librarian

Babs dreaded the thought of going back to Lerling's grocery basket and being near the place where Bill died, but it was the only place she knew where she could get the pet food because neither Mr. Ocampo's pharmacy nor Mr. Trans's Asian market carried it. As she waited for the response, Babs wondered what would happen to them. she thought about the blue FQD cards and the instructions for disposing of the dead bodies of those who died from the fungal pneumonia. Baps googled the population for Baltimore and shuddered at the number of people who could now be wandering around the city in a bizarre undead state like the zombie ants of the rainforest.

Her e-mail chimed again.

Babette,

Yes, dear, that would be lovely. My cats enjoy fish-flavored food, especially King.

When do you think you will be coming?

Mrs. Thorpe

Babs considered her response carefully because she needed to go and pick up a book binder from the print shop and she wouldn't be able to do that for a few days after she visited Mrs. Thorpe and all of her cats. Her allergies would make doing anything miserable for a few days.

Mrs. Thorpe,

I know of a store that has several pallets of pet food remaining.

I will pick them up for you and bring them over tomorrow.

Dr. Babette Bland
EPFPL Head Librarian

Changing into warm, thick clothing and taking her pepperspray with her, Babs checked the security cameras before she went out. She was grateful the little e-car could be charged by the library solar panels. She drove over the Copy and Print Emporium. The door was locked but had been broken. Stepping cautiously over the shattered glass, Babs went into the back looking for a portable book binding apparatus. there were several large machines and one printer with an attachment to bind the printed documents into a spiral bound book. It was too large for her to move or to even put the parts in her small electric car. Continuing her search, she found an old electric comb-binding machine. She had used them at the Harvard Library to make workbooks and bind printed resources from the internet, so she carried it out to her car and put it in along with all the paper, plastic comb-binders, and plastic covers. She would only be able to bind twenty-five to fifty pages together at once. It would be a lot of work, but it be a start to preserving the digital records of those who suffered through Pandemic Five before the servers lost power. It was her hope that someone in the future could find an answer because she hadn't, even with all her resources she couldn't figure out what caused the disease or how it was spreading so fast. She left the business district and started to drive back to the library, but then she saw a pet store. She parked in front and went to the door. It was locked. Shaking her head, she went back to her car and got out the jack handle.

"If you get the cat food and litter here, you won't have to go back to Lerling's. Just break the window and go in. No one is left. The pandemic is ninety percent fatal," she reasoned aloud.

Standing in front, it took her several minutes before she could talk herself into breaking the door. The glass took five blows to break it completely, then she smashed the edges out of the way. Stepping inside, she felt terrified, but she would rather be arrested for looting than go back to the place Bill died. It took three trips to carry everything out to her little car. Feeling guilty she left a note with a list of the bags she took and her phone number, offering to pay for the glass door too. She worried about the weight limit as she crawled back to the library. After plugging the e-car in, she set the comb-binding press and the boxes of supplies in the hall of the delivery dock, then sanitized them thoroughly, before going to get a shower for herself and wash her clothes. Eating her simple meal of homemade noodles and vegetables, she wondered if she should set up a small hydroponic garden. Surprising herself, she put several bowls of kitty kibble out on the loading dock.

After her late lunch, she began binding the blogs and message board documents together, labeling them in her neat box script, and putting them on a shelf she cleared just for them. When the lights dimmed, she went to eat dinner, then returned and by the light of a small desk lamp, she worked into the night binding almost five-hundred volumes, organized by dates and symptoms. Around 2AM, she turned off the light, leaving only the dim glow of the occasional overhead light at ten percent. Yawning in fatigue, she checked the security cameras before retreating to the safety of her basement apartment after. The only things she saw moving outside were the stray cats she had set out bowls of kibble for in the loading dock area. She didn't know why she put the bowls out. She had never done it before, but the stories of the infected avoiding cats had crept into her subconscious.

On one camera, a movement in the darkness drew her attention, so Babs went to a window and peeked out around the window display. She only saw shadows in the moonlight and mist. With the occasional solar-powered intersection lights being the last to illuminate the streets, the city seemed creepier than ever in the nightly fog. Her mind played fanciful tricks on her, conjuring demons from the best horror movies. She could imagine the dark spots and swirls were the ghosts of condemned people walking around. Shivering, despite her common sense telling her she was being foolish, Babs almost ran back to her little apartment, locking every door between herself and the outside world.

^..^

After a rough night of terrifying dreams, Babs gulped her oversized travel mug of extra strong coffee, she knew she shouldn't waste her coffee supply by making it double strength, but she needed it. As she began, collating and compiling information from online medical journals and periodicals, she remembered the Navy blog she dismissed as fiction two days earlier. Pulling up the page, she read it again, then printed it out. In the comments, she asked if freezing the dead was adequate to destroy the disease and explained how she found Bill decomposing after being frozen for three weeks. Printing out two copies of the blog, she bound it with the medical articles about the fungal yeast pneumonia. She wanted to take the copy to Mrs. Thorpe and see what she thought about it.

Her computer chimed. She was shocked to see an email from Lieutenant Lionel T. who wrote the blog. He asked her questions, and she explained what she found and the information she collated from the blogs and message board threads confirmed that the infection seemed to be fungal in nature. They talked about how it spread, and she asked about the statement to not eat certain preserved foods. He seemed relieved when she revealed she was allergic to yeast and the one time she had accidentally eaten it she had to be hospitalized. She agreed with him that if the Pharaoh's Yeast preservative was the source of the illness that would explain the rapid spread and high infection rates.

She typed,

Does the Navy know where the organic preservative called Pharaoh's Yeast came from?

Instead of answering, he asked,

Have you encountered any zombies? Those who died and came back?
The infection preserves the zombies perfectly and they can only be...

It made her mad as she decided he was messing with her, as she interrupted,

Not you too. This isn't a movie. Zombies are a pathophysiological impossibility.
In all cases of humans and insects acting like them, there is an underlying cause such as a drug or infection and the afflicted are not really dead.
Baltimore is filled with hundreds of thousands of dead people, and I haven't seen any of them walking around. My boyfriend was so afraid of the zombie rumors he locked himself in a freezer to die and he was rotting when I found him.

He ordered her,

Please, Babette. The Zombiism is real. Pharaoh's Yeast causes it.
Stay where you are until we can come and get you.
And find a cat to keep with you.

She couldn't believe someone who seemed as rational and intelligent as Lionel actually believed such nonsense and told him.

It's Dr. Bland. Zombies are not real and using them to scare the public into obeying marital law because of an incurable pandemic will not work on me. I am leaving to run an errand. Goodbye.

Shaking in rage, she logged out of the library's system. Huffing, she looked out at the cloudy sunlight. She talked to him for hours, and now she would be out until the evening fog rolled in. Grumpily, she dressed in layers, tucked her rescue inhaler in her pocket. She glanced at the blog she printed out to show Mrs. Thorpe then she crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. There were several cats asleep on the loading dock near the food bowls. She resisted the urge to shoo them away, feeling stupid for her superstitious reaction to the blogs claiming cats protected people from those with the disease as she unplugged her car.

"I might as well tie a dead fish to my ankle and walk through the streets shouting, bring out your dead," she huffed at herself as she remembered what people did to avoid the Black Death.

Leaving the library, she drove the side streets because she didn't want to encounter a FQD checkpoint. She was happy that her car made no noise other than crunching the leaves as she drove through the silent city. It started drizzling as the clouds covered the sun. Parking in front of Mrs. Thorpe's home, Babs got out and stared in shocked surprise at a group of nearly a hundred people in the park at the end of the street. They were standing under the trees. As they turned to face her, she noticed they all had dark smudges around their lips and eyes. It was leaking down their cheeks leaving tear and drool streaks like the man who tried to mug her. Someone grabbed her and she screamed as the group began to shuffle quickly toward her. Mrs. Thorpe's large yellow tabby yowled and jumped past her shoulder onto the face of her attacker as she twisted and punched him. He fell over and she saw he was infected. Suddenly, a half dozen cats attacked the sick man as others yowled and hissed running toward the crowd from the park.

"Babette! Get inside, you fool girl!"