Pathology

Evans has released me and the others from isolation. Overnight the remaining three Louisville people had sudden and dramatic improvements. They're up, breathing well, and apparently on the mend. It's sudden but fits with the results of the autopsies he's been performing.

Which I didn't get to hear the results of until this morning, because he didn't want to get my hopes up or scare me to death. That the line between the two was narrow enough for him to withhold information is pretty terrifying by itself.

Because I'm free to move about (if gingerly since I still have a huge stitched-together wound in my belly) and because today is my wedding anniversary and I'd like to spend as much of it with Jess as possible, I'm going to have to keep it short. Again.

Evans says that whatever hit these folks isn't likely to be transmissible anymore. I don't know what his reasoning is there, but he's the expert. The lung tissue of the people who died was badly damaged, as if a giant fist had squeezed them. The fibrous material threaded through them, the parts of the zombie plague that grow inside each of us, were brittle and withered. Evans thinks some pathogen began to attack the plague itself, at the lungs first because it was likely airborne. The last few weeks we've been seeing the Louisville crew acting as the battleground between the plague organism and whatever has been attacking it.

That's his theory based on the evidence.

Not that he can really look at the lungs (or most other parts of a person) who is still alive to confirm. So we'll just work on the operative idea that we can't do anything about it and hope that these folks were exposed to whatever this is before they came here to help us. Seems to have a long incubation period, which is a silver lining.

Jess is doing a lot better. Her wounds are annoying the hell out of her, but she's keeping a positive attitude and frankly managing to get a lot more work done than I am. Don't know if we'll be able to do anything special today. Being alive, being together, is something wonderful all on its own. I cherish that even if nothing else happens today.

One good thing is that the zombie attacks have stopped. Well, good in the short term. I don't imagine they've just given up. Maybe deterred considering the number of bodies we created during their test runs.

Ahhh okay, I'm drifting. Time to give the wife some cuddles. Cuddles are manly. Don't judge me.