Left Forsaken: A The Last Of Us Story

An inexhaustible fight

Doctor Malcolm searches through the drawers and pulls out a syringe, along with four sample tubes. "Come on, I need your help here." I drew close, quickly not wanting to wake his impatience. My rubber scrubs squeaking against the floor as I shifted to his side. He handed me the syringe. "Unlike the usual way of taking samples, with the Cordyceps, we have been taking samples from the jugular vein. It is closer to the brain."

He gestured at the monkey. I shuffled to the side of the bed, careful not to make any sudden moves. I could feel how my fingers shook, and the syringe shimmered in the light. The doctor was on the opposite side, he had a wooden rod.

"You see it here? You have to dig deep into the neck, right below the chin." Then he pressed the wooden rod against the ape's cheek, pushing its face against the mattress.

I followed his instructions and pressed the thin needle through the animal's skin. A tiny hole through which its contaminated blood will rush through and flood the test tubes.

"Careful now. Deeper, get to the core." I did as he instructed. He watched carefully as he gently, yet firmly pinned the monkey's face.

One test-tube filled, a dark red, the same color of the stains you find on the walls of the abandoned cities, the triages, the streets. "How many test tubes do we need, Doctor?"

"Just those four you have right there."

Being so concentrated, I didn't notice the suddenly accelerated beeping of the machine beside me. The monkey jumped suddenly, knocking out the test tube I had just attached. It shttered on the floor and the blood small amount it had collected splattered. The doctor shifted his weight onto the rod, the monkey went down with a whimper. "Be careful, damn it!" He bellowed. "There are moee test tubes in that drawer beside you." I nervously reached into the drawer to collect the container to replace our loss.

Now with the monkey half-conscious and spontaneously spazzing and the doctor fuming at my clumsiness, my hands became shakier. The test tube wouldn't stop moving and I couldn't connect the syringe. I breathed deeply when I felt the questioning look from the man in front of me. On my exhale, the needle punctured the tube, and blood began to flow again.

The beeping slowed which each pacing second until it became a set of rythmic notes.

Beep... Beep... Beep

The doctor eases his weight back onto his own feet. The last tube was filled.

"This monkey has the Cordyceps Fungal Brain Infection." He said as he stepped back from the monkey and placed the rod beside the counter. "It has been infected for about five months. Most of them have been infected ever since this whole shithole began." He pulled out a set of X-rays. "And unlike us, there is no sign of infection."

The X-ray photos presented different skulls. I assumed the smaller ones were from the primates, while the bigger ones were human skulls. The primate skulls seemed normal. Their regular size brains, no cracks in the cranium, absolutely no anomaly. The human X-rays contrasted that healthy evidence; the human skulls had cracks and from them, a white mushroom looking string sprouted.

"It takes approximately two days for the Cordyceps to reach the brain and take over. Then it takes about a couple of weeks for it to puncture the skull and sprout out of it." He paused and showed me a couple of sketches with notes around it. "The signs highly depend on which way one got infected; if through a bite the bite will slowly become more and more foul: swollen blood vessels, a mustard yellow pus will collect around the wound... It doesn't matter how far it is from the brain, arm, leg; once it is in your blood stream, it will take approximately two days.

"Other manners to get infected are saliva and breathing the fungus spores. Both are the most dangerous way of infection, the symptoms go by nearly unnoticed until the fungus takes over the host's brain. We have discovered though, that the Cordyceps affect other parts of the body, the fungal plaques grow on different parts of the skin. Not quite sure about the reason, a form of further feeding on the host, most likely."