Warm Bodies: Awakening

The Death Between

R shot up, his heart hammering in his chest, and gagged as something shifted painfully in his throat.

Something... on my face... choking!

Panicked, he ripped the thing away, gagging again as a long plastic tube came up, scraping his throat raw. Coughing violently as it finally came free, he fell back on his side and tried to understand where he was, and what the hell had just happened. There were machines surrounding him, he was in a bed, a hospital bed? Tubes and wires ran everywhere, attached to his arm, his leg, his neck...

"R? Oh my god, R! It's okay, you're okay!" came a panicked voice to his left. Startled, he flinched away from the sound. It was Julie, next to him, holding his arm. Just as she had been in his... nightmare? Was that what that was?

I can still taste her blood...

No! Jerking back from her touch, he pushed himself away, but everything started to pull and hurt. He felt like an animal trapped in a snare. Frantic, he grabbed a bunch of stuff to tear it free. I have to get out of here, get away from her!

"No, R, don't!" Julie cried, desperately reaching for his hand.

"STOP!" someone yelled, and he froze at the utter panic he could hear in the person's voice. He sought the source, and saw a figure in a white coat who'd just entered the room, a bearded man with a tray who was now running to his side.

"Don't touch anything!" the man snapped, and raised his hands as he approached more slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you, but you're about to do something really stupid. You need to move back into bed, okay?"

R didn't know who the man was, and didn't like being told what to do, but the fear coming off of the man made him edge back into the center of the bed. He watched as the... doctor? quickly worked to secure everything he'd almost ripped away, taking extra care with whatever it was that was going into his leg. Jesus. Is that my blood? What the hell were they doing to him?

Julie reached out to touch his arm, and he jerked away again, not wanting to look at her, smell her...

"What... what's wrong?" she asked.

"Don't want... to hurt you," he mumbled, the dream still fresh in his mind - the tearing, the feeding. His stomach twisted, and he realized, skin prickling with horror, that he was actually hungry. God, he had to get out of here - he hadn't eaten in so long, why was he here? Everything felt scattered and jumbled inside his head, like puzzle pieces shaken inside a box. He vaguely remembered an accident, lots of glass... being shot, and running...

"Why would you," Julie started to ask, but the bearded man interrupted her.

"Hungry?" he asked, in a carefully nonchalant tone.

R flinched at the word, looking up at the doctor for a moment before looking down at his own hands. With them, he'd torn his last meal from someone's broken skull. The memory of the killing flashed in his mind, mingling with the vivid sensations of his nightmare, and when his stomach growled he couldn't take it anymore. His body lurched forward and he vomited over the side of the bed.

What came out was dark, almost black, and thick, which just made everything worse. It splattered on the cold concrete floor beneath the bed and over the pants of the man standing there.

"Aw christ!" the man yelled, jumping back from the growing puddle as R retched again and again, no longer in control of his body as it heaved everything in his stomach to the floor.

A warm hand touched him gently on the back. Julie. She rubbed his skin softly, letting him know she was there. It soothed the sickness in him, and gradually the nausea faded. He fell back against the side of the bed, shaking.