8/14/2019 About WMD

1/7

About WMD

By S. Lei Pyke

Let me introduce myself to you, perhaps again. My name is Janice Mabrook, and

I am a reanimate. An unliving, non-breathing WMD created by the government for the

initial purpose of war. I have touched on this subject here and there, but I have never

really come out and told you what you will be fighting sooner or later. It was sort of

classified before. Not really any longer. Well, it is, but I sure as hell am no longer

interested in keeping it a secret. The government lost control over us in trying to silence

us. The dead do tell many tales, I have discovered, and here I am, telling you yet another

one.

This one is quite personal to me. I told you all that I would take a break from the

stamping out of undead fires, and I was not joking. We four are quite tired of being

hunted, shot at and despised by all the peon humans we are trying to protect. We are not

heroes. Not really. By god, how would you feel if a cancer patient was required to go

out and kill other cancer patients simply because they have a similar disease? It is no

different for me. I am the product of disease, whether or not it is considered supernatural.

And you know what? I would be blessed if there were more WMD II victims out

there. Perhaps then we would not be so lonely in our vigil.No, I take that back. Sometimes I wish that I could be easily killed. I would not

wish undeath on any living soul. Apparently, one of the laws of supernatural existence is

that if you die and then you rise to life it is a miracle celebrated by humans and the lucky

sucker gets to die a nice mortal death. End of story. But if you rise as something else

you just cant go back. And you cant die again by means of anything short of the rules

of your species. With vampires, its the stake, sunlight, holy symbols, holy scriptures,

holy water, or beheading. All of them, regardless of breed, have this list of ways. True

Zombies are fortunate in they have a chance to undo their curse if they do this little ritual

where their living friends either kill the bokor that made them, or set free the soul from

wherever it is being kept. But only within about a week of the actual making of an

undead. After that, just slaughter them. Theyre almost totally mindless, even if freed

from their master. And theyve suffered enough.

8/14/2019 About WMD

2/7

Im still not telling what will kill us. Quite frankly, we are not sure. What I can

tell you is about my cousins in reanimation, those who suffer with Wilkinson-Meyers

disorder Type I. Those are the creatures I want dead and gone from this world. I never

hated something so much in my life or in death, more than these guys. There is just

something about them that turns my dead little stomach. Even when I enter their lairs

and grab hold of their dim little minds, I know that I want them dead. You should want

that as well. There is not any way to save a plague zombie. There is only the mercy of

death to relieve their poor, disease ridden souls.

Here is what you need to know in order to launch your own crusade against them:

The good news is that WMD, even at its most virulent, while it is 85% fatal, only

about 15% of those corpses will successfully reanimate. After that, it depends on what

strain of WMD I the reanimate contracted that will determine the likelihood of creating

an intelligent one.

Only 1 in 300 American strain WMD I victims retained their intelligence. The

Russians tweaked theirs to 1 in 10. The Iraqis did not like that, and changed the formula

again, so that the ratio of intelligent to unintelligent ones was about 1 in 1,000, but what

they did was make it 99% lethal overall.

The American variety, of which I do believe the British and Irish as well as the

Israelis, Canadians, Aussies, and Indians have a sample of, is quite different from the

Russian strain, which was aided by Wilkinson but was already in the advanced stage of

completion by the time he got there. The US does not deal in the serum any more, but

when it was in use, the agent was virulent and effective on 85% of the population.

People of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean descent had an infection rate at 82%. Other

Caucasians had a 97% infection rate; Africans were at 74%, Asians were at 99.5%,

people of the Indian Subcontinent were right at 85%. After infection the victim had 48

hours to live, tops. Most died after 24 hours. That we actually have a reliable spread on

the infection rates should clue you in to how many people were experimented on.

With WMD I, the longer you lasted as a living creature, the more likely you were

to retain your intelligence after dying, or to avoid death altogether. If you survived the

thing with your heartbeat intact, you were usually immune for life. For the rest, after

rising, the creatures were 100% percent capable of passing on the infection by touch or

8/14/2019 About WMD

3/7

fluid contact (bite) for 28-56 days, whereupon they fell over dead. The ones that retained

their intelligence usually surpassed that cutoff date and would have continued existing, if

it wasnt for the governments tight control over them. Since they were disease vectors,

they were quietly given their eternal rest. For most, it was a relief for them. For the rest,

even the most highly intelligent ones found their minds twisted and dictated by their all-

consuming hunger.

The hunger is what distinguished type I from type II. Even those of us with type

II were infectious for some part of our existence. Luckily, that part passed while we were

still dead. Type II reanimates are not fully dependant on flesh. We simply exist as

reanimates and only require freshly dead human tissue when we are injured. We still

prefer all human flesh over any other kind of meat, but that is not a terribly safe way to

continue an existence in a world dominated by breathing humans. That and human flesh

is a mighty tasty snack overall. It is, as I have said before, a serious addiction.

I say breathing humans or mortals because I still consider myself to be human.

I still have the same human body, and it has no other powers than that it does not require

respiration, rest, or refreshment, technically. That is the product of disease, and not

evolution. Besides, I am not a sort of living being that can pass on my disease or my

genetics anymore. At least the Type Is can pass on their condition. In that, they have

more of a claim to life than Type IIs ever will.

I am telling you this because everyone has to be prepared. Who knows what is in

store for the future. I am certainly prepared for the worst. In Iraq we were not looking

for bombs and missiles, and pocket nukes. We were looking for evidence of the

reanimated. We found them. There were hundreds being kept in sand bunkers all over

Iraq, locked and waiting for release. They were desiccated, they were all virulent, and

they had all passed the critical lifespan for a WMD I shambler.

That was the creepiest part, to uncover these things that had obviously been dead

for years, were totally unintelligent abominations, and yet still clung to existence with an

inexplicable tenacity. We are only so lucky that the four of us can enter those places

without a qualm. If a breathing human had entered those bunkers, the plague would have

been unleashed upon the world.

8/14/2019 About WMD

4/7

I told you before that for some reason, unintelligent WMD victims can sense the

presence of another victim. I can sense them too. It is something that is not quite a scent

and not quite a psychic connection. I can taste their presence more than anything, and I

only have to be about of a mile away to sense them. There is a sort of pheromone, I

suppose, though the scientists never figured it out.

Well whatever it is, you had better watch out. That pheromone is the reason why

WMDs tend to congregate in clusters. Even I am not immune to this tendency. It is just

that I have had a few years to learn to live with it. There is a really big reason why we

balked at letting the Scions finish off the good Doctor. Any threat to our little horde of

four is inviting disaster. There is a sort of switch, you know, a switch on the inside of the

brain that just flips when stuff happens. Like going without human meat for more than a

decade, or being severely wounded. Its all frenzy time. Think rabid dogs on crack

frenzy. Squirrels injected with PCP and unleashed into a nut factory frenzy. The wolves

tried it on Cal and got a good 10% of their pack killed for their efforts before we were

successfully restrained and allowed to return to a normal state.

Speaking of that, I can now tell you now that I know what my fingernails look

like. They are like werewolfs claws. Trust me in the last few months I have seen my

share of them. I can flay the skin off of a rhino with these hands. My fingernails can

scratch stainless steel. The wolves showed me how. But I think I will still keep them

trimmed. Actually, they are the best at digging. That was also a neat lupine trick. I can

dig a hole in the soil as fast as I can walk. I never thought of it like that until just

recently. I can dig my own grave.

Just be glad that all of our so-called powers pretty much amount only to

supernatural versions of natural defenses and adaptations. I have been learning more

about myself in the short time among the supernatural than we ever learned in all the

clinics and all the experimentation the military put us through.

If only there was more of us that were created as Type II, or that the unintelligent

type IIs were not all destroyed before we realized the horde mentality that we have. But

no. We had always been kept like chimps in individual cages. Abe, Tony and I had been

abandoned after the war and taken out of mothballs during Korea and by that time, all of

them were long gone.

8/14/2019 About WMD

5/7

For the living researchers who never considered it until it was too late, it would

have been an interesting study into the way the unintelligent WMDs function. It was a

pity too. Type IIs were very compliant in undeath, once they got past the original frenzy.

Type Is are something else.

Those of us who are intelligent can actually control the unintelligent. The scariest

thing is that the more of them that there are, the more likely it is that they will be

controlled. The unintelligent have a sort of collective connection. The more of them

there are, the more that the horde will act like an intelligent organism. When you throw

in an intelligent WMD into the horde, the horde becomes a hive.

I am very serious in telling you this. As an intelligent WMD, regardless of type,

when there are more than 20 of the unintelligent clustered together, I can take control of

their actions just like a queen bee. I can direct their actions, but I cannot order them to

destroy themselves or to attack another WMD. I wish I could, because nothing would

give me more pleasure than to make a type I eat its brethren, but it just doesnt work that

way.

I already told you that unintelligent WMDs become confused when another WMD

attacks them. Intelligent ones are not free from this fluke of reanimate psychology, and

though we have the mental capacity to overcome it when it comes to attacking the type

Is. Even I cannot attack my fellow Type IIs. In us, that drive of horde preservation is

unbreakable when it comes to reanimates of our own type. Trying to is even impossible.

The human brain has invented a million ways to avoid confrontation, and when we try,

its like all of those ways kick in at once. We cant even get mad at each other, and you

know, we dont even have the will to do it.

Against the type Is it is different. I can kill them all day long unless I manage to

link up with one of their hordes, and then its only my differing strain that allows me to

keep my hatred long enough to force them out before a firing line of living people with

lots of guns, fire and axes.

Under 20 of the unintelligent together and there is not enough of a consciousness

to manage. Linking up with a horde is like expanding myself into the greater organism

that is the horde. Every time I link up with type I victims, I am still in danger of losing

my individuality. It comes back once you thin the numbers. Abe lost his once. Abe

8/14/2019 About WMD

6/7

hates the type Is with a passion bordering on rage. This is largely because he once

hooked up with a type I horde that had a latent intelligent one, and he was overpowered.

He said afterward that there was no difference at all between us, and that losing himself

was like a waking dream of glorious feasting.

After that, it took us all a long time before we were killing them again. Abes

coping mechanism was to turn on the hate and the rage of a victim who had been

essentially rendered helpless by his enemy. Thats military training for you. In those

days, it was any method to get you fighting the bad guys without question. By God, we

were brainwashed fucktards back then.

We have, in the last 60 years, put down 84 groups with the potential to cause mass

infection, some of which had intelligent masters. My hatred of the Type Is now is not

because of revenge or anything stupidly human. There has been a rift in our budding

species, and supernatural hate, has filled in the gap. That seems to be a common theme

among the undead. That and I think Wilkinson is still kicking out there. If he is undead

and/or still demon possessed, then he knows that Meyers is the one that created the type

II strain, and he has never forgiven Meyers for utterly succeeding in creating the undead,

and then for utterly failing to reproduce his result. That is the predictability of evil for

you.

Between intelligent reanimates in the same type, it is usually a matter of who

dominates whom, and the likelihood of domination is largely dependent on age and

numbers. Among the four of us, there is kind of a cooperative effect. We cant read each

others minds, but we cannot fight each other or attack each other, or even leave each

other with the intent of permanently leaving. After about five years apart, we all sort of

drift back without planning it. As I said, theres some weird supernatural undead stuff

going on there that we cannot escape. That is where humans will always have the

advantage. None of us from the loftiest vamp to the lowliest ghoul have true free will.

Getting down to business, it is relatively easy to kill a type I. Well, it used to be

easy until Iraqi scientists perfected the formula. You just had to hide and wait. Most of

the underground undead community would give their genetically useless genitals to kill

off the intelligent type Is. The rest used to die off after about a month. Not so any more.

Now they are surviving their time limit to potentially cause harm for long centuries.

8/14/2019 About WMD

7/7

The easiest way to manually take care of them is to use projectiles and shoot for

the head. Thats it. Anything else and they will eat you and move on. Well, other than

complete incineration or dissolving them with acid or lye. Whatever you do though,

dont touch the bodies. Humans are the only things that can catch WMD. It doesnt even

transfer to anything else.

If you are ever in contact with their fluids or their skin, thats it for you. 48 hours.

Tops. Maybe youll be lucky. If so than you are golden for zombie hunting because you

are immune to the disease. If not, it wont matter anymore, regardless of your state of

post mortem mobility.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, but we were your first line of defense against

them. And then your government fucked it up trying to do the Christian Right Wing

thing. So. While we cool off and discuss whether or not it is worth saving your sorry

butts, have fun with the consequences.

Because they are certainly out there and ready to be unleashed. At any moment,

there is a chance that some terrorist finds a way to make his reanimates quiet for long

enough to unleash them on the streets of some city. It wouldnt have to be out in the open

initially either. It could be in the sewers or a single intelligent one in the right shelter.