Voraciously perusing everything he could about the zombie plague, Lucas discovered another peculiar fact hiding within the specific details of this ongoing epidemic. The apparently spontaneous outbreak had only been around for just a little bit longer than a day by now. Yet according to the varying anecdotal records people were providing, it was already becoming apparent that the disease exhibited by a bite victim could progress at wildly different rates.
Of course, Lucas already knew that at least partly. He had discovered fairly clear video evidence depicting victims who were bitten multiple times which had seemed to die or lose consciousness within a minute or so of the repeated, aggressive attacks. Then mere seconds afterwards, those who had been attacked became mobile and transformed into- apparently- a fully symptomatic carrier of the infection themselves.
Although that seemed like it was far more rapid than should even be possible, it still at least made a sort of sense if the infectious agent was delivered by something present in the mouth. More of the attacks simply meant more of whatever thing causing the disease was getting into the person's body. Fewer attacks were an indicator that the person would last longer before falling to the epidemic. Whether the bite of a newly created zombie was infectious immediately or how soon they became so was still a tiny lingering question that might complicate or invalidate the evidence for this theory, but that would be something to ponder over when there weren't so many other larger and far stranger things to occupy his mind.
In theory Lucas knew it should be extremely unlikely that anything could travel from a bite wound on the arms, legs, neck and body and be produced by some means within the mouth only a couple minutes later. But whatever was responsible for this, it could apparently change the workings of the brain in that time frame and was also somehow altering the way the body's muscles worked. These undead things were already seeming to break natural laws based on what little he knew about biology. For the sake of simplicity and safety, he figured it would suffice for now to just tentatively assume the plague functioned that way until proven otherwise.
Besides, there probably was some video footage somewhere which could demonstrate that the new zombies were infectious. If Lucas had nothing more interesting to do, he could try to find evidence for that later. That is, if nobody else had done so first and reported it in the media by then. In the meantime, that was a distraction.
There were many very clear warnings on every site Lucas visited that the disease had an extremely high mortality rate. And an observed incubation period so quick it verged on the unbelievable, yet the evidence was very clear. From what Lucas could discern, it seemed as if it was very uncommon for people to escape with just one or two bite injuries inflicted by an infected. That was to be expected. The attacks he witnessed on video were performed with a mindless, unrelenting fanaticism.
The bites were aggressive enough to puncture and tear at skin and sometimes muscle. Enough of that sort of damage would definitely seriously injure someone. But it didn't seem like it could cause direct incapacitation as suddenly as it seemed to do so in the videos. There were isolated reports of people somehow escaping with a couple dozen bites succumbing to zombification moments later despite medical examinations indicating they should have remained in good health. That could only indicate that they were succumbing to whatever mysterious thing was transmitted via the bite itself and not the actual wounds the attack created. So it was clear that enough of the agent would impact someone far too quickly to intervene.
People who got away from an attack with only one or a couple
bite injuries did seem to be fine for a time, but would eventually come down with a fever. Then the fever would tend to grow worse fairly rapidly, producing fatigue and disorientation , delusions or unconsciousness before reanimation as another undead carrier of the plague. The entire process could last for only a few hours in total for some unlucky people with a single small bite.
Yet despite that, there were a few sparse claims that some of those attacked within the first few hours were still alive. According to the sources, they were said not to be doing too well and had been flickering between periods of cogency and hallucination. Knowing the stark efficiency with which the sickness killed, how quick it could be, Lucas doubted such claims when he saw them.
But Lucas found videos providing evidence with a timestamp which seemed to support such a case. Someone which had been bitten twice, only a few hours after this crisis began was still alive as of only a half hour ago. It wasn't indicative of a recovery, but surviving for several times longer than people with more minor injuries had managed to seemed to indicate that there was a way to at least resist the impact of the disease.
Lucas sighed. Without being certain that all bites were equally infectious, it was impossible to know whether this really was as good a sign as it seemed. It looked like if he really wanted to think about this, he'd have to look for that video after all. He really did think it was true, but he didn't want to leap to the kinds of unsupported conclusions that other people were doing right now.
While not quite giving up, he rose from his chair and decided to take a bit of a break from his reading.
