Side Chapter: Record 02

[Ogata Tomoya]

It had been two days since we had run away from the zombies chasing after us and managed to hide inside this room. Saya, the news reporter that had joined me in this makeshift lab had barely eaten anything since the death of Takano, her cameraman, and possibly partner in a relationship.

"Hey, you need to eat more than just one sandwich a day. Do you actually plan on dying?" I quietly question her as I moved closer to the corner that she had been sitting on since we got here. While her lack of an appetite meant I had more food, the fact that I am still a doctor prevented me from just watching her slowly kill herself.

"Why the fuck do you care huh? Just go do whatever experiment you want to do, just stay the he-" She answers back, her voice rising in terms of volume only to then be cut off as I put my hand over her mouth.

"Look, the zombies that were pounding on the door the other day might have stopped hitting it but there is still a chance of it being outside. If you keep talking with that much volume then you might as well get every other zombie's attention in the hallways outside." I whisper to her, my hand still kept covering her mouth as I awaited any form of reply.

She nods to my words a few seconds later before shaking my hand off, bringing her face down as she looked back down at the floor to think or do whatever she wanted. I go back to the table where my stuff was kept, taking out another sandwich and a bottle of water from the plastic bag that Ms. Yura had left for us.

Ms. Yura had yet to appear, her body probably was dead somewhere inside the building or wandering around alongside its new dead companions. I leave the sandwich and bottle of water beside Saya who makes no attempt in eating yet.

I turn my attention back to the mice inside the cage, I made sure to feed the three of them bread and water regularly but I left one of them with nothing but water, starving it since I needed it for my experiment. I had plans to begin my second experiment, one that involved the mice and the meat and blood of one of my "human" assets who were kept in the other room. I put on medical gloves and take out one 5ml syringe, a 3ml syringe, a 1 ml syringe, an empty tray, and a scalpel to bring with me as I open the door to the other room.

The mechanical sound of the door opening and closing behind me was more than enough to garner the attention of the two tightly strapped former humans on the gurney. I move closer to the zombified form of Takano who kept struggling to get out of the gurney.

I take out a small amount of blood from its arms, each injection being filled to the brim to take accurate measurements. I then use my scalpel to take a small piece of the area around where Takano was bit and put it on the tray.

I leave the room afterward since I didn't have any need for them, for now at least. I saw Saya as I walked out of the room and closed the door behind me, her position remaining the same as it was though I did take note of the fact that the sandwich that I had left for her was now gone while the bottle of water only had half of its contents remaining.

I throw away the contaminated gloves and move closer to the wall-mounted table where the mice were kept, bringing with me tweezers and another empty tray that was left atop one of the medical carts. I leave the tray beside the cage to its right while the tray carrying the small piece of zombie meat was placed on its left with the tweezers alongside it.

I placed the three injections atop the tray that had zombie meat on it as well before I threw away the contaminated gloves earlier. I turn my attention to the medical cart and open one of its drawers to look for something to place the mice on but it ultimately failed. In the end, I settled for just using surgical tape to keep the mice in place after separating one and taping it down to the surface of the last tray I had.

With everything prepared I take out another set of gloves and wear it, I take out one of the mice from the cage and tape it down to the tray, its head, and tail erratically moving as it tried to escape from the tape that kept it in place. I take the 5ml syringe and carefully clean it before injecting its contents into the trapped mouse.

A few seconds later, its body movements completely came to a halt. Small trails of blood leaked out of every orifice as I put the emptied syringe down on the tray that still had the pieces of meat and the two syringes on it. I observed it for 3 minutes before concluding that the mouse was truly dead and incapable of rising back up.

I attempt the same experiment twice, each time with a different amount of blood with every result being the same, the mouse would die and not come back to life with the sole purpose of spreading the virus to other hosts. With every syringe empty, I moved on to my last experiment which involved the starved mouse from earlier and the small piece of meat that I had taken from what was once Takano.

I pick up the tweezers and use them to carry the small piece of meat on the left tray and bring it to the small hole above the cage of the mice. I drop the infected piece of meat inside and seal the hole back, the mouse for a few seconds, ops to just observe the meat before ultimately deciding to eat it. The result was the same, it dropped dead and didn't come back to life.

That was the last phase of my experiment so I just disposed of their corpses by throwing them all back into the cage, leaving it there as I saw no point or way to properly dispose of them. I take my recorder out of my pockets and turn it on before leaving it on the table's surface.

"Record 02, test subjects whose designations begin with the letter A refer to experimental mice. Test subjects A1, A2, and A3 were all subjected to varying amounts of blood from test subject 02 being injected into their bodies via syringe. All of which ended with the same result, the test subject would drop dead with no signs of coming back to life like its human counterparts." I state to no one in particular, hoping that the audio being recorded by my recorder doesn't end up muffled.

"Test subject A4 on the other hand, was subjected to the act of consuming a piece of meat around the bite wound of test subject 02. Though different in the way they made contact with the virus, all four of the mice had the same effect after having the virus be put inside their system." I continued stating to the recorder, my voice wandering off as I looked around the room, the possibility of it being my coffin as well not being too improbable.

"I can only hypothesize that any animals, regardless of whether or not they are big or small will only die once the virus makes contact with their system. Recording 02, end clip." I turn off the recorder afterward, sighing to myself as I found nothing better to do but to stare at the room's ceiling while waiting for either death or the unlikely rescue to come first.

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AN: Just a side chapter I wanted to make, I briefly mentioned how the other characters noticed a few carcasses of animals like birds, dogs, and cats were left scattered on the road alongside other zombies in one of my recent chapters so this is just me trying to paint a clearer picture of how the virus affects animals.