Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

The six that are remaining were stunned when they saw me pull out the exact numbers of containers for each of them. They seemed to be frozen in place since none of them moved a muscle despite me casually opening one of the containers.

The guy celebrating earlier that the lady volunteered snapped.

"YOU FUCKING SICK BASTARD! THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT US TO CONSUME THAT?! IF YOU'RE GONNA KILL US, JUST FUCKING KILL US!!! YOU SICK FUCK!!!" he bellowed.

"WHAT WOULD YOU EVEN GET FROM DOING THIS?!" another person added.

"YOU SICK FUCK!!!"

"FUCK YOU!!!"

"MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

"SICK BASTARD!!!"

Curses rained towards me but I struck his jaw hard for it to get dislocated. His jaw is just hanging down and it made it easier for me to place the chunk inside his mouth. He still made an effort to scream and move his head away but, in the end, it didn't do much to hinder me from doing what I want. The people outside are wearing serious expressions while they watched me. I didn't mind the stares and continued to open the next container. The guy I force fed the meat has an expression of fear at first but after a few moments, he's just staring blankly at the ceiling feeling hopeless.

"PLEASE~ DON'T DO THIS!!!"

"WE ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT WE KNOW!!! PLEASE~!!!"

The remaining people started to beg me to stop but I still continued on doing what I want to the rest of them. A few of them didn't require their jaws to be broken so I could do what I want and it goes well slightly. One of them I needed to knock out completely since she's making it too hard for me. I faced them and a mix of expressions are what they gave me through their eyes since I taped their mouths the same as Bob.

"You six here will only serve a single purpose. I need to confirm something and I need live subjects that people here wouldn't give a fuck if anything was done to them. If you turned, thank you for your service since you've become evidence to confirm one of my theories. If I'm wrong in my hunch, you'd still live and you'd only have consumed human meat. However, that doesn't mean that I'd let you go. I still have a lot more to confirm and what better way to prove a theory than to test it physically. Sorry it tastes bad since I don't have any experience in cooking human flesh, just cutting them into pieces." I said as I left the room.

I closed the door and I locked it myself. What I didn't know is that Oscar came back and he brought Jared and Tatiana back. Ferdinand is also back from the hospital and all of them are looking at me with worried and serious expressions.

We made our way towards the exit with a few others since we already spent a bit of time here. I glanced at the far left and the fence seems to still not be finished. It's made much higher and much stronger than what we have at home since that would be the boundary for that side. Large vehicles could still pass through and platforms on both sides would be placed for the guards to watch over.

"Kid..." Oscar trailed.

"What happened at Woodlands? Has everything gone smoothly?" I asked.

"Bro, we shouldn't be torturing them like this. I know what they did but we shouldn't be playing with their lives like that." Jared said.

"..." Kaley was silent.

"You see what they did several times, you shouldn't be feeling sorry for them. They'd do worse things to you if you ever got captured. It's better to kill yourself before they manage to get their hands on you. The moment you feel sorry for them that's the time your positions would be switched and you'll regret ever saying that." Tatiana said.

"Still... kinda feels wrong... playing with them like this." Jared made a difficult expression.

"I'm not playing with them. This is research to say the least. I can't and will not do that sort of thing to our own but we'll do it with our enemies. It could answer a few questions honestly." I replied.

"But! How could feeding them human meat answer anything? I thought that was already answered by what happened here earlier?" Jared asked and I figured he caught up with what happened here.

"It's different. It's..." I explained that the Prions are more concentrated in the brain area and consuming it causes more complications compared to simply eating flesh.

"I know about that! I played that game!" he rebutted.

"Oh. Right, I gave a copy to you last time. It's different though." I replied.

"I know, but that's the gist of how it works, right?" he replied.

"Well... we have no fast-forward button here and the scientists to help us!" I rebutted.

"The fuck are you two talking about?!" Oscar chimed.

"Contagion Inc." we both said at the same time.

"..." Everyone else.

"Be serious here!" Kaley snapped.

"..." Jared and I.

"A-anyway, what are you trying to accomplish by feeding them just the flesh of a dead person if we already established that eating the brain causes it?" he asked.

"Few things actually. What we know now but not proven 100% yet that if you consume another person's brain, it triggers some form of the Kuru Disease or something similar. He's the only one that's different when he turned abnormally. I just wanted to find out more clues. It could be his either personality or the most obvious one that we witnessed earlier." I started.

"Like Mad Cow Disease but for humans?" Oscar asked.

"Yeah, Tim really started to get hysterical after he ate his mom." Kaley said.

"That was something we didn't see happen to normal people alright." Thomas added.

"Yeah, it already happened so it must be the case, correct?" Tatiana said.

"Yeah, somewhat correct. But what if we're wrong? What if there's more variables needed to be met? What are the limits? What if eating not just the brain and simply human meat makes you turn slowly? Is it just blood? We've seen the black lines before forming, right?" I explained.

"But we won't be eating people, how does it affect us kid?" Oscar asked.

"Really? A lot of things. The biggest thing now is that Tim's mom didn't show signs of her blood getting darker compared to what happened to Tim himself. You kinda understand what I'm getting at, right?" I said.

"Sure..." Jared replied.

"Just fucking tell us kid!" Oscar snapped.

"Here's why I fed the six flesh and Bob brain matter. I'm trying to recreate what happened earlier but in isolated cases to determine what caused what. Depending on what happens next may very well dictate if we could even safely perform blood transfusion from blood bags that are preserved. I know that it's highly unlikely and me just being paranoid but I'd rather know for sure than to regret later. I fed more people flesh to have more subject to confirm whether just eating it by itself would turn people or not. What we know is that eating brain matter has more chances of you turning compared to the latter because something similar happened but not 100% confirmed." I explained.

"So, you mean that people that have an idea to become cannibals need to think twice before they start to do it now? If the people there turned, there would be zero chance of us encountering a group of cannibals, right?" Jared asked.

"Well, if you think about it like that, yeah. However, only us here would only know that causes it and we need to broadcast that piece of news to our radio station. Also..." I trailed.

"Also?" Everyone grew curious.

"Also, if we ever ran out of food and fall into eating each other, we'd only need to avoid the brain. I might need to learn recipes though since I don't want to eat them raw. We're not even sure if it's like chicken or beef. I wonder if we could store them too? Smoking sounds good as well if we're gonna preserve them." I joked.

Silence. Complete and total silence.

Kaley, Oscar, Jared, and Tatiana started to facepalm while the soldiers around us were taken aback.

"Kid..." Oscar looked up in the sky.

"Yeah?" I replied with a smile.

"BE SERIOUS HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT!!! YOU'RE SCARING EVERYONE AROUND YOU!!!" he bellowed while I started to laugh uncontrollably.

Oscar tried to smack my head but I quickly avoided it. However, Kaley attacked in my blindspot at which I took slight damage from my back. Oscar explained to the soldiers that I have a sick sense of humor and that it usually pops out at very serious moments. A few understood and they started to shake their head in amusement while a few are in total disbelief that I would make a joke at such a situation.

The tension in the atmosphere quickly lessened compared to what it was earlier.

Oscar then told me that half of Marvin's group went home while the other half stayed with the soldiers who came to Woodlands. A schedule has been made that would ensure that each place has their people guarding Woodlands so that there would be no issue for each group.

I also decided that the relays we made for Ana to be installed in this camp, the public market, and Woodlands for better signal coverage. It could reach farther on its own but I want to be sure that it wouldn't be stretched out too thinly. It will be done after we leave the camp and do other things for the time we have before dark.

Before we left the camp, I gave a few instructions to the people guarding the cult member and to isolate Bob and to place him on his other cell where Tim and his mom were previously located. The two were now being burned in the corner where they pile their bodies.

"This thing that hit us is more complicated than what we expected. Makes one wonder how much work is put into this." I thought to myself.