Alpha-9

"Is my hospital secured?" asked the police Captain.

"Yes sir, we have evacuated every non-infected from the building.  We also cordoned off each exit and have uniformed officers standing by with weapons to make sure no one else gets in or out".  The police sergeant was exhausted, he had just run around the hospital from each post making sure that every officer was in place.  In his career he had never seen an emergency at this scale, occasional fires or car crashes but that was typical for a police officer in his day to day duties.  This was the first time he had to respond to a call of people biting other people, and then those people carrying on biting others.

"What about the Syrafax family?" inquired the Captain.

"Sir, Mr. and Mrs. Syrafax are gone.  We don't know where they went but in the chaos of everything they just up and disappeard."

The scene within the hospital walls was a terrific nightmare.  The hospital staff that had responded to Philip in his room were now roaming the hallways and treatment rooms looking for their next target.  It took 12 armed police officers just to restrain Philip and move him into the quarantine tents set up outside of the hospital.  The local emergency response unit had set up 3 giant white tents each with it's own treatment and testing facility.  In the night they looked like an oversized golf balls set amidst blue and red flashing lights.  Doctors and scientists had already been dispatched to review this extraordinary case and were hard at work poking and prodding Philip inside his secured treatment tent.

What was left of the survivors in the hospital was undetermined.  What the police did know was that approximately 125 people had been evacuated and moved into adjacent tents for evaluation while the remaining people were left to fend for themselves inside the coffin of a hospital that now existed.  From the outside you could hear the chaos, screams of people being attacked, groans of the infected as they hunted their prey.

Doctor James Dawson was one of the responding physicians in Philip's tent.  As the onscene doctor he took command of the response staff.  They had restrained Philip to a gurney with half a dozen straps from his ankles to his neck.  As he lay there, a former figure of himself he continued to gnash and bite as the team would walk by, straining every muscle of his tiny frame to get to them.  In the midst of all of the tests, one of the junior doctors approached Philip too closly and unaware of his capability to manipulate his body was bitten on the left forearm.  Immediately the doctor was escorted out of the tent by guards and placed into a different treatment room.  "I want every person who has been bitten to be kept alive for testing" shouted Dr. Dawson.  "It's imperative that these people have a chance to be treated in the case that we find the cause of this virus".  Dr. Dawson approached Philip, wearing his white plastic hazmat suit and drew blood from his arm.  Philip's veins were dark, almost black and as he inserted the needle into his left arm the blood sprayed out onto the visor of the doctor's face shield.  Dr. Dawson extracted only a small amount of blood before Philip's vein collapsed.  He attempted the blood draw several more times but was unsuccessful in collecting any more.  He looked down at the sample he had taken and thought to himself that this would be enough for now.

Philip's body had begun to depreciate in just the few hours that he had ressurected.  His skin was a grey hue and had dried out significantly leaving creases at the point of his folds.  The sclera of his eye was still a deep blue color and the cause was unknown.  The gun shot wounds that he had incurred were still very present but had stopped bleeding hours prior leaving behind only streaks of dried blood.  The whole wound in fact was completely dried out as if they had been there for years of his short life.  On his hands his fingernails were a cloudy grey color, like the extra skin that grows from the cuticle to the tip.  His hands were stained with dark arterial blood, and fragments of skin were still lodged underneath his fingernails.  A tooth was missing from his mouth, most likely from when he had bitten one of the hospital staff but was no where to be found.  As he lay on the gurney that the doctors had restrained him to he was unable to be still.  The muscles in his body were constantly twitching and straining as the staff worked dilligently around him.  Every so often he would gnash his teeth in the direction of one of the nervous scientists.  Tubes and sensors were strewn about his body and the tent, monitoring his status.  His heart continued to beat at a rapid pace, as if he had been running for miles, but his breathing had not accelerated at all.  His brain scans showed significantly little activity in general aside from the hypothalamus which was over reactive at a constant rate.  "This part of the brain controls a multitude of daily activity, but in this case it appears that the subject is extremely hungry" Dr. Dawson commented to his staff.  "Let's try and bring some food in here and test the subject's reaction to various food stimuli".  Philip's body was also running a temperature of one-hundred and six degrees which would have technically killed him, had he not already died.  "It appears that the only thing keeping the patient alive is his craving for sustenance."

Two hours later the staff had come through Philip's tent with various types of food.  The first test was a head of lettuce.  One of the young doctors took lettuce out of a grocery bag and held it up to Philip's nose.  Philip studied the vegetable with is eyes though it was obvious there were no signals being retrieved in his brain, it was a blank stare like someone who was on the verge of falling asleep.  He cocked his head left and right as he examined the food in front of him.  His brain waves indicated his hunger and he took a bite from the lettuce and promptly spit it out.  He was not interested.  The doctors produced a raw chicken leg and held it up to Philip, his brain waves began displaying a higher measure of activity as he investigated the raw meat.  He took a bite out of it including part of the bone and began to chew as if he was unsure of the product that was in his mouth.  He swallowed and immediately bit off another piece, chewed it once and swallowed.  As he lunged for the next bite the doctors took the chicken away from his face and his head followed the meat as they placed it into a container for further examination.  "It appears that the subject has an appetite for raw stock please note that in the records, now let's try something cooked".