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the same suit on that he was wearing the last time I saw him. We were drinking…. Oh, wait; we were both downing a bottle of whiskey. I guess we had the same fate."
    The black man took a martial arts defensive stance as if about to attack. "I insist you take me back to my village and return me to the body of which I am accustomed." Looking at his hands, a confused expression crossed his face. "I have never seen skin so dark. Why is this body this color? No one in any of the villages, even as far away as the mountains surrounded by mist, have skin like this.” He relaxed his stance and grabbed his groin to make some adjustments. "How did your friend Greg ever fight in battle? With this man part as big as a tree between my legs, I cannot move freely without it getting in the way."
    Gunnar slapped his hand down on the man's shoulder and let out a deep laugh. "My new friend, Greg . If your ability to drink ale is as great as your willingness to fight, you will make a fine Viking."
    * * *
    Military personnel and the suit-wearing foundation executives, who fund the lab, occupied all the seats in the large conference room , Daniel listened to the presentation and wondered if he had ever seen this room actually filled to maximum capacity. General Brown pointed the remote at the projector screen. “Local news crews have been airing random videos of people suffering from this sleeping sickness.”
    On the screen, the video showed a zombie stagger across a busy street in downtown Chicago . He walked in front of a city bus, which crushed him underneath the tires. Blood and pieces of internal organs splattered across the windshield. Some of the suits cringed at the sight. “Unfortunately or luckily, depending on how you see it, the people suffering from this disease have lost their rational mental state.” The video switched to another undead in Dallas stepping in front of an oncoming train. As his body came in contact with the engine, it vaporized into a red mist. “They have no sense of danger, no basic instincts to keep them from walking in front of trucks or grabbing live electrical lines. I’m not worried about a few small news channels.” The screen changed to the video of the zombies from the mall crawl that caught on fire. “There are videos showing up on the Internet getting much more exposure than some local TV station. This event occurred last week, right here in Denver at the Zombie Festival. At first, they thought it was some drunken participants staggering into danger. When the dental records came back to identify those people, it turned out they both died in a car accident two weeks earlier. Their bodies were never reported missing, because the Adams County Coroner didn’t want to sound crazy trying to explain how two dead bodies sat up and walked out of her office. It’s not just happening here. Reports are flowing in from coroners and morticians all across the country.”
    The General turned the projector off and opened his briefcase, which was sitting on top of the table. He pulled out a silver flask with a small dent in the side and an army star on the front. After opening the cap, he took a swig. He handed the whiskey to the executive sitting next to him. The suit cautiously took the container and glanced around the room, giving the impression that he didn’t know what to do next. With a bit of fear expressed on his face, he took a sip. Immediately, he coughed, choked and almost vomited. The General grabbed the flask back from his hand and said, “Smooth, ain't it.” He almost placed the cap back on the flask, but then decided to leave it off. “The way I see it, if we can’t find an anti- virus, they will eliminate themselves by walking into traffic or being attracted to fire like moths. However, until that time, you nerds need to find the cure. It won’t take long before teenagers start treating these folks like a live video game, trying to run them down, scoring more points than their