Subbasement 5: Microbiology and Biosafety Level 4 Containment: 

This is the second installment in my Hyde Heavy Containment series. Click here for a link to last week’s installment.

***

Igor and everyone else in the subbasement crowded around the door to the next floor, but it beeped *access denied*. Apparently, it was under quarantine orders.

We heard a whispering voice coming over the door intercom. “Is anyone alive down there? We’ve had a bit of an oopsy daisy that has resulted in, well, it could be described as a very minor extremely dangerous biohazard contamination, so I’ve quarantined this floor. Nothing to worry about, really. Sorry for any inconvenience. Just sit tight, I’ll get this cleaned up… eventually.”

The floor happens to be BSL4 Containment, where we store all the most dangerous biohazards, bioweapons, chemical weapons, the gay bomb, etc. Pretty much anything you’d need a hazmat suit with its own scuba tank to be around.

I could still use my admin privileges to override the quarantine lock and open the door. Luckily, Prof. PhD had a few hazmat suits in lockup, so we could still safely go in. PhD declined going himself, saying he needed to stay behind and stabilize the portal or whatever. But really it’s because after completing his character arc he’d lost his plot armor so needs to get written out of the story one way or another.

The lab floor was a spotless sterile white indicative of clean rooms. Or at least it was. Blood, vomit, scraps of clothing and torn hazmat suits, and human bones were strewn across the white floor. I was glad I couldn’t smell through the suit. As much as the suit smelled of musty sweat and latex, when was the last time this was cleaned!?

There was a man in a lab coat and crouched behind a chair. His uniform was stained by blood and bullet holes, though I doubted the blood his hands and mouth were slick with was also his. Its belly was distended to the point that its skin was visibly stretched. He was clutching a plastic bottle of fetal bovine serum and repeatedly smacking it against the floor as if trying to smash it open.

He dropped the bottle as we opened the door, stood up, and sprinted at us.

I whipped out my Ray Guninator™ and shot him, which didn’t seem to do anything. Turns out that morning I had grabbed my Gay Ray™¹it’s a ray that makes you gay! by accident. Hilarious prank at bachelor parties. Not so great for combat.

It tackled me to the ground, forcing me to do that thing in the Walking Dead where they struggled to hold back the zombie. Unfortunately, my nerdy femboy arms weren’t exactly cutting it this time. So it’s fortunate that my henchmen managed to shoot him off me before it could bite through my suit.

“Blyat! Was that a zombie?” Igor cried, muffled by the hazmat suit.

“Oh, yeah, looks like one. I guess that’s the biohazard they were talking about.”

“Why are you so calm about this?”

“Oh, it could have been so much worse. We’ve got stuff in here that would have eaten right through our suits and made us explode! That reminds me, watch where you shoot in here. Don’t want to break any more vials, y’know?”

“But why do we even have either of those things?” Igor asked.

I shrugged. “Because we’re evil mad scientists, duh.”

***

Zombies are a pretty cool concept. They’re scary, uncanny, they tap into western culture’s inherent fear of loss of self, and shooting them is pretty fun. But most importantly, it’s a disease that can’t be solved just with washing your hands.

Oh, you think you might have zombism so you’re just going to social distance yourself to stop the spread? Nope! Bitch, you eat people now.

But if zombies are so stupid that they can only operate on base instincts, how are they supposed to tell the difference between uninfected humans and friendly zombies? We don’t have any base instinct for that, so they wouldn’t. 

You can make zombies hangry and aggressive enough to overcome the base instinct of not doing cannibalism. The disease just needs to increase certain hormones like ghrelin and adrenaline, cause some brain inflammation, etc. 

But then they’ll just attack each other and eat everything in sight, making hordes impossible. Also, if the only way to become a zombie is to survive being bitten by one, but the zombies always try to kill and eat everyone, how many people are actually going to be turned into new zombies?

We experimented with a zombism virus that makes the zombies super horny and rapey and spread the disease like an STD. That’s actually way more effective. It has a much higher zombie conversion and survival rate (though they are easier to kill when they’re distracted having orgies with each other). 

Rape zombism doesn’t get as many buyers at black market bioweapon expos though, I’m not sure why. It clearly wasn’t what escaped containment though. We were definitely dealing with the hangry zombism.

***

I heard the sound of a gloved hand tapping against glass. There was a surviving scientist inside one of the sealed cleanrooms. He opened the door and ran out. Given that he was still alive, not to mention how distinctly he was dressed, I guessed this was the floor boss. 

“Oh, boss, you just came in! Even though I quarantined the floor. Yeah, that’s not reckless at all. Right, um, I guess I did need help with that uh, zombie guy there… We- uh, I still need to decontaminate this floor, though… if this spreads it maybe might end the world possibly. Please don’t fire me.” Dr. Whatshisface said, muffled by his mask. I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. 

Dr. Whatshisface’s only supervillain “superpower” was that he has a really good immune system. Like, he’s never taken a sick day as long as he’s worked here.

Here at Arete Labs, we don’t care about silly things like nepotism, seniority, or actual merit. The only basis for promotion in this company is your ability to have a cool boss battle against a superhero and how flamboyantly you dress. 

Are there some problems caused by everyone in middle to upper management having no relevant qualifications of any kind? Yes. Are staff meetings way more interesting when everyone there are eccentric demigods and tumblr sexymen? Also yes.

So yeah, super immunity isn’t super useful for having a cool boss battle against a superhero. I mean, yeah, he can literally kill people with just his white blood cells, but any attack that you need to get bodily fluids on someone to work is never going to be cooler than fuckin’ laser vision. But he is a pretty good scientist and if a hero gets this far down we’re probably boned anyways.

Whatshisface was pretty skittish. I guessed the alarm startled him and he dropped the vial of zombism juice. I couldn’t wait to gossip about this in front of his back to the other minibosses.

Oh well, it’s not like it killed anyone important. Though I guess a zombie apocalypse would throw a wrench in my plans for world domination. We should probably do something about that.

***

The problem with Hollywood zombies is that you’ll never get a zombie apocalypse if bites are the only transmission method. Unless the survivor isn’t paying attention and gets jumped, zombies seem to only be dangerous when they outnumber them a hundred to one. Even without guns, most people should have a pretty good matchup against a zombie if they have time to prepare. I mean, they’re basically drunk, stupid, and are literally falling apart.

So how are you supposed to get enough zombies in the first place? How is a single zombie supposed to infect enough people to make a whole horde? After all, it’s not like rabies has ever snowballed to apocalyptic numbers.

In order for a zombie disease to actually pose a significant threat, it needs to be super transmissible and spread in the same way as smallpox, or coronavirus, or the flu. The zombie component is more to cause general panic and disorder, break quarantines, bite through hazmat suits, and generally make developing a vaccine harder. 

But then you still have the problem inherent in all bioweapons; blowback. What exactly is stopping the disease from coming back and infecting your people? As you could probably guess, we still hadn’t worked that out yet.

***

Whatshisface led us to the room with the decon controls. He said that he appreciated the help and all, but that he could handle it from there.

“Oh, yeah? What if you run into another zombie? Planning on cytokine storming it to death?”

“Yes! N-no, um… It’s my job, I have to do this, boss! Besides… there’s so many fomites here that any of you’d get infected from just a small cut in your suit.” Dr. Whatshisface said, disgust at the word “fomite” clear even through his hazmat suit.

“But you wouldn’t? Why do you even wear a suit?” Igor asked.

He rubbed the back of his head. “I’m a bit of a hypochondriac.”

We found that there was a zombie henchman in the room with the decon controls. Being a henchman, he’s bigger and stronger than the last zombie and is wearing full military surplus NBC gear complete with a bulletproof vest and helmet.²NBC gear is basically a military hazmat suit, it stands for national broadcasting center Nuclear, Biological, Chemical. They don’t get much use, as there thankfully haven’t been many wars involving nukes, bioweapons, or chemical weapons recently. But most militaries insist on buying and training with them fearing there will be. This is the kind of thing that’s really easy to buy for cheap off corrupt Russian military wear house managers. Except for the gasmask which he seemed to have removed before the containment breach. I know those get sweaty, but they’re issued for a reason, dammit. 

The zombie saw us through the glass door and shoulder charged through it, showering the hallway with broken glass. The henchmen opened fire on him, but given that the zombie was wearing armor over its vital areas and was too jocked up on adrenaline to care about the non vital areas, this had little effect.

The zombie barreled into a henchman, sending them both to the ground as it tore through his rubber suit. Dr. Whatshisface ran behind the zombie and grabbed it in a headlock trying to pry it off him. 

The zombie bit Whatshisface’s arm, who screamed about how gross it was. Whatshisface’s blood pools in the zombie’s face and mouth, which quickly turns necrotic and gangrenous. Whatshisface keeps pulling with the headlock, until he pulls the head off. 

Whatshisface rubbed his arm, wincing. The blood had already stopped flowing and had already formed a scab over the tear in his suit.

Unfortunately, the Henchman who the zombie wrestled had his suit compromised, so I took his gun and, uh, terminated his contract. Yeah, let’s call it that. 

Dr. Whatshisface sealed the door and ran a sterilization procedure on the whole floor. All the air was replaced with a highly reactive gas destroying every germ and virus not inside their sealed cupboards. It’s no replacement for a deep cleaning, but it’ll do for now. Probably. Definitely wouldn’t be enough in any lab following actual safety protocols. But, of course, one of the perks of an illegal secret lab is no health inspectors. 

We worked our way to the floor exit, careful to step over all the bones. As we left, the one remaining henchmen said, muffled by the hazmat suit. “Hey, boss. I just had a think.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Ain’t we kinda heroes now? I mean, we just stopped the zombie apocalypse and all, didn’t we?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess we are!”

“We did cause it in the first place.” Igor said.

“Oh, shut up. Practically every superhero has accidentally caused an apocalypse and needed to redeem themselves by saving the day.”