Patient Zero

Chapter 2

Just after he said that sentance, there was panicked knocking on my door.

I tried to look out through the window with my peripheral vision, as my mouth restraint didn't let me move my head much, but I could only see the two security guards and the orderly.

One of the security guards unlocked the door and looked outside, and I could sort of see a young girl, she seemed terrified.

"Please. Help me," She had tears streaming down her face, and her eyes were squeezed shut. She held up her arm, revealing a gruesome bite mark rimmed with the same black goo I'd seen earlier.

One of the security guards started to motion her in, but when she opened her eyes, they were...

Let's just say I'm using the term eyes very loosely here.

They looked like red rings floating in tar, her irises were blood red, and the whites of her eyes were black.

She smiled at the guard, her teeth covered in black and red fluid, staining her mouth with gore.

His thought process was clear. He pushed the little girl out of the room, intending to once again close the door and lock it, but she got a deathgrip on his arm, and she pulled him outside with her. He screamed, and the other security guard looked like he wanted to help, but everyone in the room, including me, saw her bite his arm and heard him scream in pain.

The other guard slammed the door shut and locked it, regret evident on his face. He peeked out the window, watching. I looked up, not wanting to see the horror, but their shadows were on the wall, and I saw the guard pull a gun on the girl. She just ripped his arm off, without a second thought. I could still hear him screaming.

And suddenly, all I heard was gnashing sounds that made me feel sick to my stomach.

I made more muffled noises that were meant to be words.

The doctor looked at me, regret and fear written all over his face. He took a deep breath and tried to explain what was happening to me.

"Mr. Statler, I realize this must be very confusing, as you seem to be having amnesia. While we didn't expect that, that could explain a few things about..." He droned on and on and on in a voice that just made me want to go to sleep, despite the trauma I had just seen. He was like one of my teachers at school, who didn't do anything in their class except talk and expect us to take notes for tests.

"Do you understand?"

I shook my head as much as I could again.

"Was that too complicated? Or are you still waking up?"

He took from my confused look that I still didn't know what was going on.

"Alright, let me start over then," This time I made sure to listen.

"You were the first victim of what we have taken to calling Zombiotox. We call it that from the popular horror movie subject, zombies, bio, meaning life, and tox, meaning toxic. What you have, Mr. Statler, is a biotoxin that was introduced into your blood from some unknown means. Can you tell me the last thing you remember before waking up here?" He took off my mouth restraint so I could talk.

"Um... Falling asleep at a sleepover at my friend Byron's house."

"Byron Johnson?"

"How'd you know?"

He looked sad for a moment, and you didn't have to be a genius to know something had happened.

"Byron Johnson... And his family... Have been dead for three months."

"How? What happened to them? How did they die?" I bombarded the doctor with my questions. Three months? I thought to myself.

"Well, technically I suppose it wasn't your fault, they died in the military quarantine..."

"Military quarantine?!"

"Perhaps I'd better begin the story from what we know... Mr. Statler I'm going to have to ask that you try to remain calm, we don't know if you could relapse to your... Previous state," He looked at me, and for the first time I swear I could see some fear behind his eyes.

"One night, our ambulances were dispatched to The Johnsons' house, the call made stating that you had were acting strange, almost as if you had a severe case of food poisoning. They said you may need your stomach pumped, and that they would call your parents at the next possible opputunity.

"The ambulance arrived to find you... Chewing on Byron's younger sister while she screamed in pain. The rest of the family were scattered about the house, Byron was unconsious on the floor with multiple cuts and bruises and a few nasty bites that cut through the skin. From our lab analysis of the saliva on the wounds we know you caused them. His older sister was hiding under her bed, mostly unharmed, and his mother and father were in the closet behind the clothes.

"We took you and left them, as none of them needed immediate medical assistance, and got you into leather restraints and a muzzle. We found these gave you too much freedom, so we had to improvise. We made this especially for you... And the others."

"Others? Like that... Thing that just got the guard?"

The orderly, remaining security guard, and doctor exchanged a pained look.

"We'll get to that, anyway, the police report states that when little Suzie Johnson went to school on Monday, two days later, she fell asleep in class and reportedly attacked her school mates, biting them, as you had her. Byron, his older sister, and their parents were reported with similar symptoms. The military quarantined the family, and..."

"And what?"

"And burned the schools and workplaces of the family, and everyone in them."

"I went to school with Byron, does that mean when I get out of here, I won't have anywhere to go to school?"

"Let me keep explaining..."

I looked at him, growing more and more concerned by the minute.

"The military found that when you had bit Byron and Susan, they had bit Jennifer and Mr. and Mr. Johnson, when and how, we don't know. They knew we had you here with us, and they requested you to be quarantined as well, but... We were stubborn. We wanted to find a cure for this, in case it ever broke out again in the future. Which turned out to be for the better, since the Johnsons died in the quarantine unit two months later from, according to the report, cardiac arrest.

"Their hearts just stopped beating?"

"Their brain tissue was slowly dying, and their hearts were no longer beating. Tests on the Johnson family found they didn't have any of the body's natural electricity running through them, and that by eating the nerves of the central nervous system, they gained some electricity back. By eating brains, which has constantly firing synapses and neurons packed with the electricity they needed, they filled their so called, 'hunger' temporarily. Tests on you backed up the  theory, but from scans of your brain we could see that the same thing had happened to you, so we induced a coma, and medicated you with almost anything we could think of that might keep you from death. A few days ago we mixed a certain cocktail of psychological therepy, common medicines, and a hunch ingredient that in larger doses would kill you, and Voila! You're a normal, functioning human being again. We don't know, however, if you will stay that way, so we are going to wait a while before letting you out, okay?"

I nodded, it all made sense.

"Wait," I said.

He turned around and looked at me.

 "You mentioned something earlier about 'the others'?"

The doctor got a grave look on his face.

"How many 'others' are we talking here?"