#241 rambles

The outbreak starts from a facility Mia’s working in. (Is it legit or not? Idk but it does start there) What Mia’s job/involvement with it getting out was I don’t know either, but she does feel guilt and a need to “fix it”. When Ethan gets infected is a coin toss of either at the start or right after Rosemary was conceived, but either way Mia’s stuck staring at his frozen corpse until it decides to get up. Expecting to die by the hands of her husband’s corpse while stuck in shock, she instead hears Ethan call out “Mia? Mia!? What’s wrong, why are you just sitting there?! We need to go!!”

Ever so often she needs to take out the staple gun and sow his arms back on, they keep rotting off for no good reason. She gets him to wear only hooded jackets or shirts, trying to stave off the rotting brought by the sun. She says it’s because the failing infrastructure is messing with the amount of sun radiation let through the atmosphere, he knows she’s bullshitting him but still humors her, she knows this. He misstepped once while descending down a ladder, the fall wasn’t far but his foot got stuck. “The limp just won’t heal,” he complains to a passing survivor, “why would it?” She thinks to herself.

Mia knows she’s moving on a time limit now, no matter how fantastical a zombie is, it’s still a walking corpse. And corpses rot.

One day they come upon a hidden lab. It’s a small thing in the shed of a normal home and the repurposed mini fridge inside is overflowing with several fungi. Mia looks for a first aid kit while Ethan inspects the now mold infested mini fridge: “isn’t there a whole zombie mushroom that’s a thing?” He laughs out after a bit, “though I think it was more mind control than anything.” Mia stops with her hand around an unopened flask of mystery liquid. Slowly she turns her head to look at her husband, suddenly a rush of ideas floods her mind as she stares at him crouched next to the pile of mold. Aren’t fungi known for being extremely resilient and hard to kill? Don’t they grow from dead things? Like any plant, can’t you control how it grows? A thought whispers to her: “that Miranda woman you two met some weeks ago was experimenting on the dead. What’s a few dead people, fresh and not, compared to Ethan staying whole?”

Like I know theoretically what to do but I’d much rather have a step by step physical guide of what to do.