Blood Soaked and Contagious by James Crawford Read Free Book Online Page A

sister.”
    His eyes crossed and he may have turned a little green at the thought of me enjoying a carnal embrace with his sibling. Jayashri’s eyes were a little wide, and Baj was coughing gently behind his hand.
    “All right. Baj is the resident genius, which means he’s already thought of a couple of ways to approach this.” I continued, regardless of the facial expressions, “I’m betting he’s thought of the old ‘Go Along With It So I Can Sabotage The Project,’ the ‘Kill The Fucker Now,’ and maybe even ‘We Are Going To Flee And Hope He Doesn’t Find Us.’ Am I missing anything?”
    “I had also considered going along with it in order to give the human race more time to fight and find some sort of cure or vaccine. To be honest, I also considered that suicide could be a valid option. Of course, the karma involved in any of these options is difficult to contemplate. I’d prefer not to be reincarnated as a weevil.”
    “Nobody dies, at least none of us at this table. Can we agree on that point,” I asked, holding out my hands, expecting agreement.
    Everyone made noises of assent or nodded at the very least. I wasn’t worried they’d disagree. Really.
    My esteemed country boy, mechanical genius, and sibling to my imaginary love interest, tossed out an excellent question.
    “Is there any way to use the nanomachines to kill the virus in the zombies?”
    “Based on what I understand, Shawn, it doesn’t look possible,” Bajali answered. “It might be, but making a change like that to the base programming would be obvious enough that Hightower or one of his minions would know something was amiss.”
    “Silly question, but if the virus can’t be grown in the lab, how are you going to get enough of it to spread?” That part didn’t make sense to me.
    “Since the virus is healthiest in living humans, the particles would harvest the infectious material from people who already have it and spread it to the designated population within a 24-hour period.”
    I nodded my head and asked, “Would it be possible to use the nanos to strip all of the virus out of people who are infected and then self-destruct?”
    “I had thought of that, but it becomes an issue of particle-to-virus density. If one nanomachine can destroy one infected blood cell, you have to manufacture enough particles so every infected cell is effectively targeted.” He put his teacup in the middle of the table. “If you have enough infected cells to fill this teacup, then what will be destroyed is twice that because it is both the particles and the cells.”
    Shawn and I nodded, following along.
    “Now, you have two tea cups of material. How should the particles destruct? Heat? Micro-explosions? A teacup of explosive material powerful enough to destroy two teacups completely is not a small detonation.”
    “Okay, yeah, but how much virus does one person have in them anyway?” Shawn asked.
    “Have you ever had a bad cold, Shawn?” Bajali asked in response.
    “Yeah, not too long ago.”
    “The mucus your body expels,” Baj explained, “contains cells that have consumed the cold virus. About how much did you blow your nose when you had the cold?”
    “A whole lot. Oh. I see. All the snot I had would be like the particles and the virus. Damn.”
    “Exactly. Let us imagine a teacup of infected cells as an estimate for someone experiencing a moderate level of infection.” We nodded. “Imagine the explosion of a teacup-size bomb spread out through a human body.”
    Shawn and I had no trouble imagining it, based on how we groaned at the thought.
    He continued, “If it could be done, it would certainly erase the zombies from the planet, but there would be a huge amount of collateral damage from human being-sized bombs going off everywhere. The only other method would be to build nano-material that would strip the virus from infected cells and render the material inert. Unfortunately, there would still be apparent alterations to the