Thursday, June 28, 2012

Fighting With Fire

Hey, all. It's Kincaid again. Josh is feeling better but decided to let me write today's blog as a sort of victory lap. I'll explain, but I guess the best way to sum up the last day and his reasoning for giving me another chance to post can be summed up simply.

I kind of cured the new plague yesterday.

Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are. Like I said, I've been reading the blog and catching up on it during my stay here. While I was talking about the fire that put my group and I on the wrong path, I remembered reading some of Josh's posts about experimenting on his captive zombies. The New Breed are very susceptible to heat, even just very hot days like we've had recently.

I went back and read those posts. Then I asked Josh if I could see his notes from the experiments.

This was the part of his notes that made me pretty sure I was right:

"Tissues of the New Breed subjects tend to soften and become more pliable at temperatures above 130 degrees F. The hotter they get, the faster the tissues weaken, and the curve looks pretty steep."

So I talked to Josh about it, and he talked to his brother Dave and Will. Will talked to the council. All of that within two hours. Took Dave about twenty minutes after getting approval from the council to set up a rough version of my idea, which isn't an original one. People have been using them for centuries.

Our cure is a makeshift sauna. It's not a perfect solution because so many people are so weak, but one of the first to volunteer for it was Jess. Josh still isn't 100% but he sat in there with her for almost half an hour. We had to heat up stones with fire to do it. Makes the thing inefficient, but the thermometer in the tiny room read about 160 degrees. Sunlight and hot days helped a lot.

Jess is better. That was all it took. My small flash of inspiration came with another thought, which was that the people who keep waking up totally fine are probably developing huge temperatures while they sleep. That's why some wake up okay--the fever is caused by the worsening new plague attacking the original zombie plague already in their lungs, and the fever helps win the war--or they die in their sleep. Because it was too much for their bodies.

It was a guess. An inspired guess built on the work of other people. I just had an idea. I'm really glad I was right, not because I want recognition or anything. Just because it helps my people.

You really are my people, you know. I'm not a brave guy. I still get that weak feeling all over me and a ball of ice in my stomach when I'm in danger. I want to live. But if I died tomorrow, nothing I could do to stop it, I could at least take solace in the fact that I've done something to help. Maybe it's a start toward making up for the things I've done.

It's risky and dangerous, but so is the new plague itself. But it's hope. Sometimes, that's all we have.

Most times, that's enough.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much for this Kincaid! I'm with a small group of people as well, and we've lost too many already from this, sickness!

    Thanks to another larger group up a ways from us, they sent a messenger earlier with the news, we're doing the same with other communities near us. Trying to get the word out. We're working on our makeshift sauna now, but Thank you!

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