Chapter 2

Chop Shop

The autopsy containment lab had once been a large recreation yard for the prisoners on the boat. Steel floors, walls and roof had been modified with internal bulkheads, positive pressure systems, high grade air ventilation systems and scrubbers to prevent the escape of any pathogens. Everything needed for the facilities to host the most modern systems for dealing with the deadliest thing known to humanity.

Carl Jenk stood silently in his protection suit, they were always uncomfortably hot, confining and noisy. His air hose lead up to a guide rail above. They were designed to do one thing and one thing only. Do the utmost to protect the occupant from the most feared contagion's known to humanity.

Short, black and balding, Dr Carl Jenk PHD. MD and Pathologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital, wasn't known for his patience with others, especially colleagues who kept him waiting. He regarded his time as the most precious commodity in the world. And right now, when he should have been cutting into the subject at hand, he was stuck waiting for that asshole Griffiths, who hadn't performed an autopsy since med school.

He looked at the cadaver, or what should have been one. Taylor lay strapped to the autopsy table. Not an ordinary autopsy slab. This one had once been an execution table for lethal injections. They'd asked for something suitable to dissect the newly animated and this is what the Navy produced. Taken from the death row of one of the local Georgia prisons. It had already been overrun by the dead and securing it had cost the lives of three men. They were, in fact, the first three autopsies performed on this table.

Unlike the usual execution tables, this one had extra reinforcing. Nowadays the dead fought back so Taylor was pinned with strong straps, polymer reinforced with Kevlar mesh to ensure that they couldn't be bitten through. Both ankles, knees, thighs, waist, abdomen, upper chest, neck, head across the eyes, wrists, elbows, and upper arms were strapped down. Most important of all, he had a ball gag stuffed in his mouth with the strap tightened to its maximum tension.

Taylor had no concept of what was happening to him. In fact, Taylor had no concept of who Taylor was. He only knew that he had no movement whatsoever. He could follow sounds, listen in to the noise drawing his attention around him, and try to attack whatever it was. The man whose life had ended with a myocardial infarction due to the stress of knowing his wife and child were trapped in a dead city, now lay growling through the gag and writhing in an attempt to escape the bonds that held him. It was no use, they were too tight.

Jenk looked up from Taylor to Samuels standing there in his own protection suit. He squeezed the airflow to quieten the suit down enough to that he could talk into the mike clearly. "That fucker had better hurry up, I'm not waiting around all day!"

Ben Samuels raised his eyes from the subject, still not used to the process of cutting open a 'not quite living body' and did the same. The airflow in protective suits often interfered with hearing and speaking. "Relax Carl, besides, having the input of someone like Griffiths, might actually provide some serious clues for follow-up."

Jenk stared at Samuels with a look of disdain. "He's still an asshole who shouldn't be interfering with our work." Jenk looked at the assistants arranging sterile tools on the trays next to both himself and Ben. "Fucker thinks he knows better than us and seriously, what's he think he's gonna' learn when we could provide the same samples?"

Ben sighed "Dunno', either way we wait. Shit! I could use another cup of coffee right about now."

Just at that moment they heard the outer airlock door open and close and through the plexiglass they could see Griffiths in his protection suit. The inner airlock opened with a hiss and John strode into the room.

Like all Bio- Level 4 labs, the air pressure in this room had been reduced slightly to prevent the loss of containment. Any breach would only result in air rushing into the room, not out and air was extracted from the room through a complex filtration and decontamination setup. USAMRIID and the CDC used to be the only places with facilities like this but now, they had been set up everywhere. At least everywhere the best minds to deal with the crisis could be safe harboured.

Jenk gave John an icy stare "About damn time. You might have time to fart about on your computer, we don't."

John gave him an exasperated sigh, "Look Carl. We're all here trying to do the same thing ok. And times are tough, but it doesn't mean you get to be an asshole every day of your fucking life. Jerkoff!"

Ben Samuels broke into a slight smirk behind the face plate of his protection suit but said nothing. He turned his eyes to the two assistants who had just finished laying out the tools. Their faces showed the same bemusement as Samuels. Not many people had the front to call Jenk out on his behaviour but John was one and his boss could be a real prick when his impatience got the better of him. Which was usually all day, every day.

As a pathologist though, Carl Jenk was second to none, which was why he was here on the ship as one of the hundred. Behind his back however, everyone, including Ben Samuels, referred to him as "Jenk the jerkoff", or just plain jerkoff.

"Fuck you John!" Growled Jenk in a rising fury. "Some people including Leyland might think the sun shine's out your ass, but I'm escalating this interference to the admiral."

John just shook his head, his eyes focused on the moaning form of Taylor strapped cruciform to the lethal injection table. "Whatever! I have it on good authority that the admiral thinks you're an overrated pissant too. Shall we get started or do you want to piss into the wind some more?"

Carl Jenk looked fit to explode inside his protection suit but said nothing. He merely turned and walked out the airlock, pausing only for decontamination before stripping from his BL4 suit and leaving the lab. The assistant's, their tasks finished for the moment, simply followed with the same bemused look on their faces. Jenk usually treated them with disdain, so they were all too happy to see him embarrassed.

"Well. I guess that one's going to come back to haunt me. Sorry Ben, I just wasn't up to dealing with his bullshit today. Shall we get started?"

Smiling, Ben merely shrugged "Sure John. But just remember, he might be a giant pain in the ass, but he really knows his shit. And in the two years I've been with him, I've learnt more than the other 5 years I've been a pathologist. Anyway, where did you want to start?"

John merely looked at Taylor, struggling against the restraints. "I want to start with a clean sample of the Cerebro-Spinal fluid. I have a hunch regarding the encephalopathy we keep seeing."

"I know we see that, but shit, that could be related to normal necrosis. We don't see it much in fresh cases, only the older ones. But then again, there's nothing that really makes sense with these cases anyway." Ben walked up and looked at Taylor laying on the table.

"I know that, I'm just worried we're missing something important here. Besides, the French were onto something. Not about the necrosis, more about the environmental cause that might explain things." John was worried. "We know that people change, even those not bitten. You get bit, you get a fever and die, then come back. You don't get bit, but die, you still come back. That tells me most people seem to have been exposed to it and either the immune system is stopping it, or it's dormant until death."

Ben looked at John, "So how do we get the cerebral sample? You do realise he's strapped to a lethal injection table? There's no way to access the spinal area without releasing him from the restraints? I ain't going to be doin' that… No way!" Ben shook his head.

"Yeah I get that. Neither am I" John reached down onto the sterile tools lying in wait, and picked up a powered saw. "I know it's a bit gruesome but we need to remove the appendages first, then we can play with the torso all we like."

Ben looked almost shocked as he stared at Griffiths' with the powered saw in his hand. "You can't be serious?"

"We need that sample. Then I can…"

At that moment, the shrill tone of Alexandra Leyland's voice cut through the intercom. "WHAT THE FUCK JOHN? I've just had Jenk storm into my office screaming about you interfering with his work and calling him a jerkoff to his face. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

John rolled his eyes at Ben and moved towards the intercom and pressed the button. "I know, I'm sorry! I just wasn't in the mood for his bullshit this morning. Not today anyway and I needed to check on something really important this morning!"

He looked at Alex and admired her petite frame. Despite the strength of her personality, she carried herself with the poise, dignity and grace reminiscent of a ballerina. Her beauty also masked an exceptional brain. She was especially good at the management of disparate teams of talented individuals who almost never worked well together and often found the right combination of motivation and anger to get them to succeed.

Alex looked at John through the protective Perspex and softened her attitude. Despite her anger, she had a respect for John which surmounted her ire. Something she'd held since they were at Johns Hopkins studying for their doctorates, when his brilliance with protein chains and their complex folding had become apparent. "Alright John, fill me in. What is it that forces you to fuck with that asshole Jenk and why shouldn't I be concerned?"

John sighed, "The French sent a message through Porton Down. Everyone seems to think it's some form of meningitis, but they thought it related to a protein coding rpoC gene they designated LGA251."

"That's pretty fucking thin John. Have you had any follow-up contact?"

"Just the one contact this morning. I tried to IM them but they've gone dark. I was going to send a request through Porton Down as soon as I got the samples I need on ice."

Alex suddenly looked weary as she rubbed her forehead, then looked up and activated the intercom "John, we just got word 20 minutes ago, Porton Down is now dark. We're now only getting sporadic feeds from the occasional UK army unit, but the last word was they were evac'ing to HMS Ocean and had lost pretty much everything."

John stared silently at Alex through the window for a moment before reaching up and pressing the intercom "We're losing. Aren't we Alex? The war against this. We're in a cascade failure and pretty soon even here's going to crash. Humanity's going to end up as isolated little feudal kingdoms fighting over the scraps and surrounded by the dead."

"We're still fighting it John, we have a chance. Don't give up on me ok! The base is still secure, and we're sitting on a giant barge in the middle of the bay. Even if the base were to go down, we're pretty safe here. And while we're here, and still doing our job, there's still hope."

John slowly reached for the intercom "Yeah! Ok! Well I'd better get back to this. I'm going to have to do a couple of unconventional things, so it's probably better if Jenk isn't here. He wouldn't approve as it won't be normal pathology procedure."

"Like what John?" Alex's look of concern grew in intensity as she looked from John to the prone form of Taylor struggling against his restraints.

"I want to do a spinal tap and to do that, I'm going to have to remove the appendages."

"Why?" Alex's look of concern turned into one of horror.

"I need some clean samples in order to run some assays. My hunch is that it's not meningitis. Or even viral."

"Ok John, do what you have to. I'm sceptical, but we can't leave any stone unturned. Just don't let the Navy people know that you took him apart piece by piece. I somehow think they just won't understand. And take care, ok!" Alex smiled then turned away, shaking her head as she walked down the passageway.

John walked back to where the table held Taylor and shrugged at Ben Samuels. "Ok, well I think we should get this started. I'll do the cutting if you can stack the parts in the cooler drawer."

Ben just shook his head at the thought. "Ok John, I'll play along. Do you really think it's not viral?"

"Yeah, well I won't really know anything until I do some assay's first, but there are certain aspects which don't fit. Its transmissibility. It doesn't seem viral. One bite and you get sick, die and turn. But there's also the fact that you can simply die and turn. So maybe there's an environmental factor as well. Or even a combination of factors."

John picked up the powered saw and turned it on. Its high-pitched whine drowned out all other noise in the room while John lowered the blade and began cutting through the flesh of Taylors upper arm. Taylor growled through the gag and struggled even harder against the restraints while blood and tissue started to splatter everywhere.

An hour and a half later, John had most of the samples he needed. The arms and legs would provide plenty of muscle tissue for analysis. Taylor had continued to groan but couldn't fight the restraints as they'd taken a clean sample of the cerebral-spinal fluid. He growled as they cut open his chest cavity and one by one removed the stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas and kidneys as well as samples of the large and small intestines.

Both John and Ben were amazed that, despite the removal of nearly all of Taylor's blood and major organs, Taylor was still twisting his neck to fight the restraints and growling at each new violation. The growling stopped when they removed the lungs, Taylor no longer able to force even the tiniest amount of air past his larynx to cause a growl.

Strangest of all was the heart. There were clear signs of damage regarding the cause of death, but too much of the tissue was also necrotic.

"Can you believe this Ben? No blood flow, very little oxygen entering the lungs until we removed them. The digestive processes all seem mostly inert. All organs non-functional and yet there's still enough neurotransmitter activity to move, as well as the cells themselves continuing to process for movement. I wonder how the cells are cycling the ATP?"

Ben looked down at one of the arms laying on the gurney, "Yeah! I see what you mean. We could spend fifty years studying these and still not get to the bottom of everything. Even the red muscle tissue, it's like the calcium and sodium ion channels are still acting normally to activate muscle contraction and release."

"Changing the electrical potential?"

"Yeah I did my Masters on the SCN4a Sodium ion channel mutations on para-myotonic and dystrophic muscle groups and particularly the M1370V mutation when it came to the changes in electrical potential in the cell."

John was impressed. "So even if the tissue is abnormal, you're saying that much of the non-autonomous muscle mass is still being affected by the normal chemical interchanges? How would that even work and where would you begin?"

Ben smiled at the underestimation he had of John. "Bear with me for a moment." He said as he walked over to a bench to grab some equipment.

John instantly knew what Ben was up to. "You plan to use microneurography? That won't work on severed limbs."

"I realise that John. I'm more interested in testing for sympathetic nerve outflow." He placed the pre-amplifier down on the gurney next to one of the arms. He inserted both microelectrodes into the arm and turned on the device. They were both interested to hear the high frequency response as electrical activity was converted to sound.

"That's a hell of a lot of residual sympathetic nerve activity Ben." John was seriously impressed with Ben and right now wished that the guy had chosen another field apart from pathology.

"Yeah! We used to see this with the para-myotonic patients. Normal people would barely register unless they tense the muscle. The patients would send the needle off the charts as their nervous system tried to signal for the muscle release."

"The electrical potential issue?"

"Exactly, I mean, Muscle tissue still needs a feed of chemical's such as sodium ions to increase, and calcium ions to negate, the change in electrical potential needed for the tissue to contract then release. That's how everyone's muscle tissue works, even if the tissue is like the heart and autonomous. In the myotonic and dystrophic patients, the ion channel that flooded the cell with Sodium ions was slightly mutated so that the cells, even when trying to relax, were still being overloaded with sodium."

"But the heart of Taylor was dead, and his circulatory system is no longer pumping blood around the body so how are the necessary chemicals reaching the cells in sufficient quantities for normal function to occur? How do you think that the chemicals necessary for movement are being transported to the major muscle groups? And what of the neurology?" John himself was trying to understand the changes in biology.

"I'm not sure John, to understand it we'll have to re-map the whole process and that could take years of investigation. What about the endocrine system? What about neurotransmission?"

John shook his head "That's another thing I'm trying to figure out. Neurotransmitter chemicals are released, change the nerve cells potential to trigger signalling and are then re-absorbed into the synaptic cleft for re-release."

He looked down into Taylor's empty chest cavity, frowned, and made another unorthodox decision. "I want to try and remove the spinal column, brain stem, brain and eyes without damaging them. So, we need to remove the head and spine from the torso first."

Ben smirked and then looked at John "By chance, your colleagues back at Hopkins didn't call you Doctor Frankenstein, did they?"

John let out a slight laugh "They would now. Ok we need to turn the torso over and get to work."

Together the managed to flip Taylor over onto what had been his chest, cut away the dermis above his spine and then commence cutting the vertebrae away from the rib-cage. In twenty minutes of messy work, they managed to sever the head and spine from the remainder of the body. Not a neat job, but the removal of the vertebrae from the spinal nerve, as well as the other parts from the skull, would be a painstaking matter best left for later.

Ben rolled up another gurney with a body bag and they placed Taylor's superfluous parts, the headless torso as well as the legs and arms minus the tissue samples, into the body bag. Lastly, they surgically removed the jaw and some of the neck away from the head and placed those in the body bag before sealing it. It was now practice to burn corpses in an industrial furnace so they rolled the gurney with the body bag away from the dissecting table.

Ben looked down at Taylor's head, as they carefully placed it into a cooler box for transport to a John's own BL4 lab.

"Oh! that's just creepy. They eyes are still moving. Ok! I don't need another coffee, I need a drink."

John laughed as he sealed the last sample crate. They were already sitting on a trolley ready for decontamination and transport. "Come on! We'll let the assistants clean up and transport the samples. I'm starved, I'll buy you breakfast."

"You can still eat?"

They started walking towards the decontamination airlock. Inside it took a good 15 minutes of wash-down before the last traces of Taylor's blood and tissue were gone from their biohazard suits and they could step into the change area. They stripped out of their suits, re-sealed them and proceeded to inflate them to ensure that there were no punctures.

The two assistants, both Army Corporals from USAMRIID were waiting for them in the outer lab. John proceeded to instruct them on which BL4 labs were to receive which samples and thanked them for doing the messy task of cleaning the lab. Both of them commenced checking their own BL4 suits for integrity before the messy job ahead.

To reach the mess hall, John and Ben had to do the one thing that was always pleasant on the boat in good weather. They had to take one of the external walkways up four decks. The hours everyone was working meant that spending a lot of time outside was a rarity, and Kings bay sure could be one pretty area when it was sunny like this. Mused John.

Just then his reverie was broken by the roar of twin turbofan engines as an A10 Warthog swooped down towards one of the roads in the Naval base. They both rushed up the stairs and reached the top deck just as a long puff of grey smoke emanated from the front of the A10. A few seconds later came continuous ripping noise of its 30mm minigun as it sprayed rounds down onto the roadway. There was a crackling sound as each of the rounds exploded.

The A10 pulled out of its dive as another dove in behind it. John and Ben quickly walked up the platform to where Bill Collis was leaning over the railing, watching the show with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

"What gives Bill?" Said John just as the noise of the second A10's gun crossed the distance to them.

"Hey Docs. A hoard of the dead was just herded into a killing zone for the A10's to take out…There's also a rumour going around that you called Dr. Jenk a jerkoff to his face. I would've loved to see that if it were true." Bill smiled at John.

"Nah! Now Chief, you've been around long enough to know you shouldn't believe any rumour. I've got respect for Carl, he's one of the best at what he does." Replied John quietly. Just then another A10 made another pass. Another ripping noise, another crackle of exploding ordinance.

"Sure Doc, sure..." Smiled Bill knowingly.

John looked at his watch, almost 11am. "Well it's breakfast time for us. Do you know when Hancock's due?"

"Yeah Doc. He's due to fly in at thirteen hundred. Someone'll come and get you from your lab."

John and Ben walked toward the mess door and their long-awaited breakfast.