Oblivion {n.h.}

Chapter 64.

It was that time of day again, where it was okay for me to leave the hospital, and I was alone in the white room.

I sweep my legs off the side of the bed and rub some sleep out of my eyes, all while being extra careful not to hurt my stomach.

I reach down just enough to where it doesn't hurt to lace up my boots and pull the hospital gown over my head.

Changing into some fresh clothes Perrie had brought me, just as the door clicks and Niall enters the room.

"DANI!" He practically screams, his blonde hair sticking to his forehead as he reaches me, grabbing both my hands that were sticking to my sides.

"What?" I ask in a confused manner, chuckling the slightest bit as the boy is a smiling mess in front of me.

"Come with me!" He tugs on my arms, leaving me no choice to even object to his order. I stutter out an okay as I dodge a doorway with my shoulder and sluggishly drag behind Niall.

He comes upon a doorframe at the end of the hall, and I look up to the sign that limply hangs above it. The sign reads 'LAB' in big green letters, and I knew exactly where we were then.

Niall pulls me further into the room, to see standing there, Jackson, Kaya, and Thomas all crouched around a table intensely.

Kaya turns around at the sound of Niall and I entering the room, and she smiles widely.

"What's going on?" I ask, and as I make my way around to the blank spot on one of the sides of the table, seeing what lies there.

A blonde female, dead and already turned into a walker, strapped down with belt ties on both her hands and feet. She chomps at the air out in front of her and her white eyes revert from each one of us quickly.

"Kaya thinks she's found the cure!" Jackson looks up to me narrowly, yet excitedly at the same time.

"The cure?!" I speak loudly, jumping up and down, creating excruciating pain in my abdomen that I ignore. "Are you serious?" I nearly scream, making Kaya stick an arm in my direction and try to hide back her smile as she shushes me.

"I still need to run a few tests and need a subject, but so far as we know; I've created not only a cure, but an antivirus that makes us immune." She tells me, and all I could do was nod wildly.

"How do you know?"

"Well,–" Thomas starts for her, turning around and walking over to the wall where a cage sits, pulling out something as he makes his way back to the table.

A little white rat scrambles around in his palms, and he holds the rat just over the walker's mouth, and I hold in a gasp.

The walker shows no sign of wanting to eat the small rodent, let alone even seem to know if it's there. Her lifeless eyes just revert between the five of us hungrily as usual.

"That's fucking crazy!" I yell, more in excitement than fear.

"It is, and all we need is to collect more from the flakes I'd recovered off of walkers, which won't be hard to find. Next step is to try it on someone human; preferably myself." Kaya states scientifically, and my mind scrambles with delight. "I'll have to wait to test the cure until we find someone bitten, which there is no telling when that'll be."

Just then, someone scrambles to the doorway of the science lab, and Kaya moves to block her work from the view of whoever stands there.

Harry looks at all of us with wide eyes from where he stands, and speaks quickly through small pants, "There's someone here you might want to see."

We follow the boy quickly down the hall, Kaya and Thomas stripping off their gloves and not far behind us, Harry leads us to the outside and down the street, straight for the front gates.

People huddle around the gate and Steven appears from the edge of the crowd, motioning us closer before he disappears again into the wave of citizens.

Harry pushes through some faces I don't recognize while some I do, as I apologize when my shoulders get tossed from side to side.

My mouth hangs open as I wait for my eyes to settle upon whoever hides behind the crowd.

Perrie's blonde hair was the first thing I could see as small happy sobs are to be heard around me, and Louis runs around frantically with a humongous grin on his face, and Perrie stands there hugging someone, shaking them around between her arms from side to side.

"Liam?!" I call, running over to where Perrie rejoices his comeback, and I feel my cheeks hurting as I make my way to both of them.

Thomas calls not far behind me, having the same reaction as I, and he presses his hand to my back when we reach the two of our friends.

"I saw it, I saw you get pulled away, how?" Thomas stutters, his jaw hanging down in disbelief at the boy in front of him.

"I wasn't bitten surprisingly, but I could've never made it here alone." Liam states, and just in that moment I expect some more strangers to come stumbling out of the truck that Brandy had driven, but it isn't.

Shaggy blonde hair, now down to his eyes, the one man I thought I lost forever, the one man I called my father, Joshua Ameen.

"Dad!?" Someone calls from behind my head, and I see it all in slow motion, whipping my head around to who could've yelled right in my ear, Thomas runs past me quickly, pushing my shoulder a tiny bit and running up to hug Josh.

Joshua had explained his son was on his way to the UK to meet him when we first arrived at Greg's house, and it all became clear now.

Joshua went down, just as Liam did, but he wasn't bitten.

"Dad?" Jackson yells shortly after, and before I knew it, I was moving off of my feet and quickly toward Joshua, nothing in my way able to stop me.

Tears escape my eyes when I collide into Joshua's arms. His warm embrace surrounds me in no time, and without a doubt, it felt like I was home.