"Ahhh!"
Pomona's attention was drawn by a woman's piercing scream. A female tourist had been scared pale by a monster covered in blood, its rotting face exposing its nose, while the monster curled its lips into a ferocious grin.
They were at Saint Sebastian Hospital in Venice, and this sort of monster appearing at a hospital entrance was called a "zombie."
Americans' "taste" in monsters remained as consistent as ever, focused chiefly on creating a "bloody" visual effect. They had completely confused the concepts of Carnival and Halloween.
In the movies, the virus outbreak supposedly began in a place called Raccoon City. Infected by the virus, people became living dead, behaving crazily and strangely, losing all reason, devouring the flesh and blood of living people or other animals, and spreading the infection without end. Once mutated, they could not recover. There were huge numbers of them, moving in packs to harm humans and animals alike. Aside from their own kind, they were basically like zombie deer in the way they infected others of their species.
Those who survived in the movies were probably genetic mutants as well, just like humanity's ancestors who survived the catastrophe wrought by prions.
Besides the "zombies" caused by viruses, there was another kind of "zombie." They were still living people, but due to drugs or other causes, their nervous systems had mutated as though their wires had been connected wrong.
That was America: a world where people ate people, where drugs were widespread. Marijuana was relatively mild; heroin was more rampant, along with other bizarre chemical anesthetics used in pursuit of thrills. These drugs could damage the human brain.
The hypothalamus regulated body temperature and managed the endocrine system. When the hypothalamus was damaged, the body's heat-dissipation mechanism went out of control and body temperature