By the time Lucas returned to his room, he figured he just didn't know enough to understand the blood experiment's anomalous outcome. Of course there had to be an explanation, he just didn't know enough right now to come up with one that made sense. Even if the zombies were somehow caused by nanomachines, he figured they'd still probably be in the blood. So he considered that explanation, as arbitrary as it was, pretty unlikely as well.
Performing a few searches to first check up on the blood link, Lucas
found a few anecdotes suggesting his observations were made by others, but nobody had yet given a try at a serious
explanation. By all indications to his ameteur knowledge, it seemed as if something entirely unknown was happening. Some other chemical process to generate movement.
It was unfortunate, but the only thing Lucas knew for sure was that he didn't know enough to figure out this particular puzzle. Maybe somewhere on the Internet already had an answer of some kind, but he doubted it. Of course eventually scientists would figure it out, but he would have to wait for that to happen.
Although Lucas had no idea how to progress further on the blood issue, it might be possible for him to figure something else out. He had a logical, scientific mind, and this phenomenon appeared to be ripe for investigation. There might be a lot of other things to discover about the zombies. He'd just have to stumble upon something else.
Searching the news, there was still little information about the nature of the epidemic. The same recommendations were being provided and the same sparse details remained. The general news didn't say anything Lucas didn't know. Other than general information about evacuations and what the government responses was looking like. Some of it was new, but it wasn't very interesting, so Lucas ignored it for the time being.
Lucas found a momentary sense of amusement as one article warned against people venturing outside and trying to confront or neutralize the infected. Oddly, even though people in the comments section and everywhere else seemed to have settled upon calling these zombies, the news was steadfastly refusing to call them that. The step by step guide to survival and key to recognizing an infected were a little silly given that constraint.
Finally, with the news not much help, Lucas decided to turn his thoughts towards science. Not knowing where he might be able to learn something useful, Lucas didn't know what to search for. Perusing online for videos to examine seemed like a start, so he tried that.
Examining a number of videos, Lucas tried to aim for direct video of the zombies themselves. Not many videos were suitable for study, as most of them were short, or part of a news broadcast, but after a bit of scanning he did discover some invaluable raw footage.
Most of the direct videos were useless messes of shaking and screaming. Lucas turned the volume down on his computer in response. Many were obviously taken via a cell phone camera. A few less were of substantial quality, but annoyingly short, showing only a few seconds of a marauding figure before ending. It was almost as if the people catching the video were outside and close by, and stupidly attempted to record the zombie before they realized that it might be a little dangerous.
After many tries without any success at all, Lucas did manage to find something which might give him a lead. It had a vantage point from a second or third floor of a building, and showed a busy street intersection below. A few people were on the sidewalks in small groups, walking around. A small cluster crossed at an intersection as the direction of traffic changed. The place was unfamiliar to Lucas, but looked like just another street corner.
As the video proceeded in silence, the people walking along the sidewalks paused, drawing to a stop. A moment later a tight knot of people ran into the view from up the road. The people scattered about spread, and one car hit someone who ran into the street. The traffic ground to a halt as the human traffic around them burst into a roiling mob.
A few people straggled behind, either trampled or confused amidst the panic. Some cars still moved, careless of and knocking about the figures swarming the streets in a mad dash. Then the zombies came, maybe a dozen and a half, recognizable by their frenetic pursuit. The figures, quick and heedless of the automobiles, sometimes leaping onto or climbing over them, ran towards the nearest figures and tested car doors or windows. Cars came to a halt or collided into each other in an attempt to avoid the undead forms.
Impeded by the crowds, the chasing figures did succeed in knocking over some of those fleeing. One climbed into a car. A man who tried to fight back was taken down by a group of three attackers. As most of the zombies succeeded in claiming a victim from the crowd, the mob thinned out, making its way out of the frame with most of their pursuers behind. One car hit a couple zombies as it careened out of frame, which only sent the figures splayed out on the ground momentarily before rising up and returning to their selected targets.
The scene was relatively quick, less than a minute, and it seemed to be over. A final zombie, not as fast as the rest and probably injured, pursued its quarry out of the frame to the left. The others, as far as Lucas could tell, were biting at their victims, but it was a little hard to tell where. The chaos was more or less over, and the victims were trying to fight back against their attackers. Thanks to the distance, the little spots of spreading blood were a little easier to tolerate than they otherwise might be.
As Lucas watched the remainder of the video, he did notice something peculiar. Surprised by what he saw and curious to examine it closely for clues, he rewatched the video a couple of times in order to understand the progression of events more carefully.
After a little more than a minute, one zombie, apparently done with the woman it was biting at, rose up and ran to join one of its peers to gnaw upon its new target. The woman that had been left behind had stopped moving, and lay there motionless, a dot of discoloration upon the road where her blood was pooling.
Then the three who had taken down the fighter leapt up and abandoned their target. Leaving their fallen victim behind to bleed out in motionless death. Again, they joined nearby figures, fanning out and eagerly piling onto them where they could fit.
It happened again and again, until there were no more people upon the ground who had not been attacked and the zombies ran out of frame, scattering. By the time that began, the woman who had been abandoned first moved. Lucas thought he saw a twitch at first, then she stood up and took off in a mad sprint out of the frame.
Between the time she was abandoned and the time she rose up to dash away, barely under a minute had passed. The others who were attacked soon followed her lead, but one remained behind, lingering around a crashed car and attempting to open the door. The video had lasted just under three minutes and in that time the zombies had nearly doubled their population. That was quite worrisome.
