Attack of The Nose-Picking Snot-Eating Zombies

Planet Ionine is a major hub of commerce for many races. Due to the differing biological needs of its visitors, artificial biomes have been constructed that divide up the landscape conspicuously, often with sharp lines between vegetation of different colors. In orbit are vast space stations that resemble alternating stacked pie plates, each with artificial gravity holding a designer atmosphere and perfectly-constructed habitat for one race or another. Originally a colony world of the Humans, they are still the dominant race.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill land their space bed in a Human zone. Neon lights and shiny surfaces abound. “Do you want to trade Gruezhlings?” a young Human asks.

“These are my best friends. I can’t trade them,” Nathaniel says.

“Why not? I’m a friend trader. I’ve traded thousands of friends and they traded me,” the boy says.

“Well, my friends are trained explorers, so to replace them you’d have to find some with as much experience,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh,” the boy replies.

While they continue to talk, another boy shuffles up to them, breathing through his mouth. He begins to pick his nose. “Hey, don’t do that. That’s gross!” the first boy says.

The second boy simply pulls out a large booger and stuffs it in his mouth. “Gah!” Nathaniel says, shuddering.

“That’s not food!” Fred exclaims.

“What’s wrong with you? Did you sell your brains?” the first boy asks. The second boy simply stares and breathes. Then he reaches his picking finger toward the first boy’s nose. It is slapped away. “Stay out of my nose! My snots are not for sale!”

Nathaniel and his crew back up. The first boy leaves and the second boy starts to follow Nathaniel. He is not very fast and eventually enters a noodle store. “That was weird,” Nathaniel remarks.

The explorers window shop for a while, looking into a hammer store, a sock store, and a light bulb store. Then they cross a river. They walk through a crowded park filled with Humans, Meekons, Hammer-Faces, and other Ninos. Then there is a commotion up ahead and the crowd parts. A Human chases after others with outstretched arms. Finally catching one, he reaches into his nostrils with his fingers and licks them off. “Now, that’s weird,” Haticat remarks.

The police arrive shortly and take care of the situation, but Nathaniel suspects the situation is far from controlled. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, just someone gone crazy. Third one this hour,” the cop says.

“Where were the other two?” Nathaniel asks.

“The first was just outside the hospital. The second was at a coffee bar two blocks away,” the cop answers.

“Where’s the hospital?” Nathaniel asks.

The cop checks his GPS device. “About thirty blocks that way.”

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill run to the hospital. No one is at the reception desk. It seems strangely quiet there. Wandering the halls they finally come across a crowd of people trying to break down a door. When they see Nathaniel and his crew they look at him with blank expressions and open mouths. Then they shuffle toward him.

Nathaniel whips out a tissue and blows his nose. “Do you want this?” They chase him down a side hallway where he drops the tissue and doubles back. Then he uses his anykey to unlock the door and slip inside, followed by his Stuffians.

“Ah!” A Human swings a broom at him, but he simply grabs it from his hand and sets it aside.

“Careful, you could hurt somebody with that,” Nathaniel says, locking the door. He turns around. There are five terrified Humans in the office. “Give me a full report. Leave out no detail, no matter how insignificant.”

Yesterday, a Humanoid of unknown species entered the emergency room complaining of fever, stuffy nose, and difficulty concentrating. Because of his insistence, and on their unfamiliarity with his biology, the doctors admitted him. He had a fever of fifty-one Celsius. Three hours ago, they found his bed empty and the other patients acting strangely. By the time they realized what was happening, half the staff had already been infected. Instead of helping lock down, they left. Then the remaining patients chased the remaining staff into the office. “Did you call anyone yet?” Nathaniel asks.

“No, the phone in here doesn’t have a contacts list,” the Human in glasses answers.

“What?” Nathaniel sputters.

“I dropped my phone with the emergency numbers in it,” the Human explains.

Nathaniel can hardly believe it. “You lazy-brained morons! No wonder computers end up thinking for you in the future!”

Once the hospital is secure, Nathaniel and Fred do their best to coordinate with the authorities to quarantine the zone, but so many agents have already been infected that it is only a matter of time before the entire command structure breaks down. Their job is made even harder when the internet freezes and there is no one left to fix it. Nobody knows their way around town without a map, having always relied on GPS instructions. “What if the plague gets offworld?” Fred asks, worried.

“That’s why we need a cure. Then it won’t matter where it ends up as long as the cure follows,” Nathaniel answers.

In the meantime, Haticat and Doctor Bill work with the remaining doctors in the hospital to find a cure and are shocked to learn they cannot do basic math. “How am I supposed to know how many two times four is without a calculator?” They all get frustrated with each other.

A few hours later, Doctor Bill’s scanner beeps. He runs into the office. “Captain! My scanner indicates something was just teleported to the roof.”

Taking the scanner with them, Nathaniel and Fred run up to the roof to check it out. It is a large, metallic box with a blue light shining through the slits. Nathaniel opens it up. “Yikes times infinity.”

“Are those time crystals? Is this a time machine?” Fred asks.

“No, it’s a timestopper,” Nathaniel answers. The machine’s gears wind slowly, counting down the hour before the crystals come close enough together to magnify their effects, slowing the rate of time to zero. “There are enough crystals packed in here to stop the entire planet.”

“To buy time to work on a cure?” Fred asks, hopefully.

“No. The longer the planet remains in timestop, the more photons from the sun and elsewhere build up on the barrier. Eventually, there is no way to free it without burning it to a crisp. One only uses a timestopper when they intend the timestop to be permanent,” Nathaniel says. The gears move one notch closer.

“How do we shut it off?” Fred asks.

Nathaniel tries to pull out the time crystals, but the box is full of trazonic energies that burn his fingers. “Let me see if I can get a teleport link on it.” He pushes a whole bunch of buttons on the scanner. “No good. It’s energy-blocked.”

“Who would put this here?” Fred asks.

“Somebody that really doesn’t want the plague escaping the planet,” Nathaniel says. The two of them just stare at the box for a while. “Help Doctor Bill! We need that cure as soon as possible!”

“Where are you going?” Fred asks.

“Getting the ship. It’s the only way to move the box.” Nathaniel runs and runs. Zombies are scattered everywhere. He swerves around them easily. Rounding a corner too closely, he collides with one just on the other side of the wall. They both fall down. It rolls over and crawls after him, but he is already up and running. He attempts to cross a bridge next, but his way is blocked by a hundred zombies. Each has at least one finger in another’s nose. Each has at least one nostril occupied by the finger of another. Checking his watch, he sees he has fifty-two minutes left. He has to find another way.

He takes the ferry instead. There is no one to stop him. It seems the entire city has been converted. No one is doing their jobs. They are simply picking each others’ noses. Back on land, he checks his watch again. He has only thirty minutes left. He isn’t going to make it on foot. He needs something faster. At the end of a side street, he sees a crashed police car. His anykey works to start it up and he speeds down the street. He has twenty-two minutes left.

Finally, he gets to the spaceport. No one is guarding it, but the gate is closed. A sign warns that the planet is under quarantine and no one is allowed spaceport access. He drives through the gate, shattering it. Fifteen minutes. Then he finds his ship. Ten minutes. He squeals to a stop against the force field. Nine minutes. Once inside, he powers up the time machine. He materializes just under the hospital roof immediately after he left, now with fifty-seven minutes to go.

Tearing up the roof, he flies away with the box pressed against the force field by his acceleration. Then he plots a spacetime interval to the nearest black hole. He can just make it. With thirty-six seconds to spare, he comes to a sudden stop and the box keeps going. It tumbles into the black hole harmlessly, ending time only where it has already ended. Nathaniel lets out his breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding. He wipes his head. Is it hot in here? He continues to breathe heavily. The sudden rush of air dislodges a booger that gets caught further down his nose. Instinctively, he reaches for it, picking it out with his index finger and eating it.

“It works!” Doctor Bill announces. The zombie he has just sprayed in the face coughs and sneezes, sometimes at the same time.

“How can you tell?” Haticat asks.

Finally, the zombie lies back in bed. “Oh, I can finally breathe through my nose. I feel so much better.”

“See?” Doctor Bill says.

“Okay, I’ll call the captain,” Haticat declares. No one answers.

“I wonder where he is,” Doctor Bill mutters.

“He’s using the ship to move the timestopper,” Fred says.

“I hope he’s back soon,” Doctor Bill says.

Over the next few days, the Humans begin to cure the zombies. The more they spray, the more helpers are available to spray others. Once the cure is widely available, the quarantine is lifted. The plague soon spreads offworld, but so does knowledge of the cure. The pathogen itself is quickly defeated by the immune system, but it tends to leave one in a state of oxygen starvation, leading to confusion. The spray shocks the nervous system and stimulates the mucus glands so that one can recover on their own. The Stuffians all end up working for the hospital, the constant presence of other beings providing enough play energy to sustain them. They adjust to their new life on Ionine.

Six months later, something happens at a nearby school. According to the eyewitness interviews, a bed materializes out of thin air inside a classroom. On it was a crazed Nino who immediately attacked the teacher and tried to suck on her nose. Grabbing the aerosol, Doctor Bill, Fred, and Haticat run to the school. The police have surrounded the building, but no one knows where the Nino has gone.

“He’s the one who saved your planet!” Haticat protests.

“That doesn’t matter. If he’s infected, he has to be stopped. I have orders to shoot to kill,” the head cop says.

The Stuffians run inside and search every room. Suddenly, there is a superspeed blur and Doctor Bill is yanked up into the air while the spray can tumbles away. Nathaniel tries to pick his nose, but Gruezhlings do not make snots. He throws him to the side, molesting Haticat and Fred next while Doctor Bill retrieves the can. Then he runs from the room before the spray can catch him. “He’s too fast. How can we spray him?” Haticat complains.

“Maybe if we set a trap?” Fred suggests.

It is almost sunset. A figure moves quickly in the shadows. A mannequin stands alone and unmoving in the middle of a parking lot. It has a nose. In a flash, Nathaniel is upon it. He digs one finger into its left nostril. Suddenly, he is sprayed in the face from the mannequin’s mouth! He collapses onto the ground, gasping. In seconds, he is surrounded by his crew. “Where have you been?” Doctor Bill asks.

Nathaniel takes a moment to catch his breath. “I went to dump the timestopper into a black hole. I just got back. Why am I on the ground?”

“You tried to pick my nose!” Haticat yells.

“What?” Nathaniel says weakly.

“Why were you gone for six months?” Doctor Bill asks.

“Six months? I…must have mistyped the return spacetime coordinates. It’s all a little fuzzy,” Nathaniel says.

After three days of rest and plenty of fluids, Nathaniel is ready to move on. Ionine was fun, but there are billions of other planets to visit. His crew climb onto the bed and they take off.

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