The shorts are only gone after they buy back the shares they have borrowed and sold into the market. If shorts were able to buy back shares at the 0.0001 level it would have been a job well done. It has been pointed out many times on this board, however, how little volume has traded in the recent few months. So it seems unlikely that any significant short positions have been covered (i.e., bought back in the market and returned to the original shareholder they were borrowed from...).
My guess is that there are still open short positions that had hoped the company would go bankrupt, therefore relieving them of the task of buying shares back in the market to return to the shareholders they borrowed from. As the share price continues to rise, shorts feel increasing pressure to join in the buying in the hope of repurchasing shares below the price they sold at initially. Failing that, they are forced to buy back as quickly as they can at any cost to avoid the potentially unlimited loss they incur as the shares continue to rise. This often results in very sharp upward moves in a stock as natural demand is augmented by "short cover" demand. The near vertical surges in stock prices that result are aptly described as a "Short Squeeze".
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