They Call Me Daring

Chapter 21

"So... you still feel aversion to the light?" The Doc leaned in, scrutinizing me under a careful gaze.
"I did," I said hastily, then added, "but things are changing. During the moments I feel myself going, when everything is suddenly loud and threatening and I feel angry, light is like a constant sunburn." I said. "A really bad one, at that."
"And when you have control?" The Doc pushed. I blinked, looking around the lab, with every fluorescent light cranked up to high. I gingerly unclenched my sore hands from the seat of my chair.
"Not as bad.... Sometimes I need to expose myself, because it will hurt until the anger is gone... and then I feel human again." I thought back to the church. The sunlight had begun to feel normal again. It had changed overnight from a raised fist to a gentle hand.
The Doc nodded to his assistant, whose hands flew across a computer keyboard, a rapid series of clicking like rushed morse code. It was only the three of us in the lab, and it was getting late. I glanced at the clock. They had been debriefing me for nearly two hours.
"I really need to go-" I began, but the Doc grabbed my arm and pulled me back down to my seat.
"Not yet you don't. You've already told us you don't need to sleep, so you don't have any excuses." He said coldly, and I rolled my eyes.
"What else do you need to know?!" I exclaimed. "I've already told you everything-"
"Not everything." He murmured. "No, not everything."
I waited. At last, he spoke.
"Liam, you said you believe in a cure... now tell me, Liam... do you think you've found this cure?"
"I-" I opened my mouth and closed it again, thinking hard. Finally I said, "I don't know. I-I- a friend, told me me that the cure, and half the disease, might be entirely in our heads..." I said slowly, and the Doc looked up curiously.
"Go on."
"She said..." I thought. "She said that the disease might not actually be as strong as we think. But when we're bitten, we give up all hope of survival before the disease has even started in." I bit my lip. That wasn't quite what Meg had said, but it was close enough. "That we've been told for so long that there is no cure, we actually believe it. We've lost the battle before it even starts."
The Doc nodded, intrigued. "And so you've been holding on to hope. The reason you're still here, is that you've cured yourself by believing the cure is in your head...?"
"To some extent, yes," I said. "But I also would like to hope that there might be a way to get rid of it completely, as well as the physical aspects." I sighed. "White hair isn't exactly in style."
"Of course, we already got a blood sample, I'll set to work immediately." The Doc nodded to his assistant, who snapped his laptop shut and got to his feet. "You're doing a good thing, Liam."
"Yeah, that's what people have been telling me lately." I sighed, getting up and stretching. My arms were going to be so sore tomorrow.
"I mean it." The Doc said pointedly, and then he turned away, and I turned down the stairs.
The night was nothing like the day had been. Cold and dreary, damp and musty, the clouds hung low in the sky. I breathed in deeply, sucking in the night air, soaking up the darkness. There were only so many hours of sweet darkness, and I had to savor them while they lasted.
Laughing slightly, I began to run. The sluggishness, the lag in my muscles that I felt during the day was gone, replaced by a vigor, a deep, exciting surge of electricity. I treaded silently, lurking through the streets as a nonexistent shadow, my feet barely touching the ground.
I breathed evenly and deeply. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of this whole zombie business.
I frowned. Who came up with the idea to call them zombies in the first place? They only began to rot once their body systems shut down, and they couldn't exactly qualify as the undead, considering they were fully alive...
They were more of an alternative species, really. Once you're infected, of course, you forget everything, even your own name. You lost your identity... who you are. And you become something else entirely... a something which is exactly the same as everything else in it's own kind.
And then it hit me, that besides losing everything you'd ever known, you lost your individuality. Every zombie was one the same, down to the T- they had no personalities. They were mindless, hungry animals, with one basic instinct--
Survival.