Better off Undead

Chapter 1: The Road to Hell

As he watched the news play across the television screen, Paul Brighton could feel his stomach churning. It was an exceptionally unpleasant sensation, one that he convinced himself he could feel from his head straight down through to the tips of his toes. It couldn't have been just his stomach that was churning. It must have been his whole body churning. It was as though the world was somehow spinning in perfect time to his body, so that even though it appeared as if he was sitting still, he was in fact in a very rapid, very dangerous tailspin that threatened to spill his insides across the laboratory floor.

Alan Dale, a tall, bald, and short-tempered forty-something, who also happened to be Paul's boss, would normally not have been happy about there being any sort of outside electronic in the room. "This is a research laboratory," he would have shouted at Paul in his weak, straining voice that sounded as if it had spent too many of its years not being put to any use, "not a movie theater," or some such other not quite comparable comparison. On this day, however, he was not going to be angry. On this day, he was not going to be bothered at all. On this day, he was going to sit in the corner of the room, watching the screen over Paul's shoulder, and then he was going to die.

It had been almost two hours now, but Paul still clutched the phone uselessly in his white-knuckled hand, as if he expected it to ring any moment. Or, at least, somehow alert him that it would become available for use once again. For the first hour he had refused to give up, repeatedly redialing and waiting through several of the busy signal beeps, half way expecting and half way hoping that they would turn into a ring, but it never happened. As time - and the news - rolled along, it became ever more and more clear to the two men in the room that there would not be any help coming this day. In fact, Paul began to doubt there would ever be help coming again. Help was a thing of the past. Life was a thing of the past. On the television there was only death, and he knew deep in his heart that this is what the world had become.

This is what they had made of it.

Not that this had been their intention. They never had anything but good intentions. Their lives had been spent with nothing but the best intentions. Or at least that's what they attempted to convince themselves of now.

It wasn't as though they didn't have good reason for thinking it. Their brains were veritable databases of helpful medical knowledge. Though he hadn't ever actually tried, not seriously anyway, Paul was certain that, if necessary, he could diagnose, treat, operate on, and nurse back to health almost any number of typical, problematic medical problems that they would face on a normal, day-to-day basis at any hospital. Of course, he was smart enough to realize that sending someone to an actual medical doctor or surgeon would be the vastly preferred first step to any treatment he might recommend, but with the changes in the world he was watching, it started to seem significantly less unreasonable to consider making use of those latent skills.

Yet it was that very knowledge that had led them down this path. While their hearts and minds had sung with the rigorous devotion of a priest to the anthem of "First do no harm," their hands had unfortunately created a reality that was beyond the worst horrors of their nightmares.

Alan coughed, a hacking, disgusting cough full of blood and spittle, and shifted a little on his stool. As he did so, he rolled his head along the wall, hoping to find a more comfortable spot to rest it against the metal and concrete making up the cabinet and wall he leaned against. The sound and the movement were enough to snap Paul out of his reverie and back into reality. Finally, though still with reluctance, he eased his grip off of the phone, letting it slide out of his hand and onto the table. He hurried across the room to his boss.

My co-worker, my friend, Paul decided as he walked, forcing the uncomfortable thought down his gullet. The man might be dead in a matter of minutes – in a matter of seconds, even – and there was no reason he should have to die alone, without a friend around. The two men might not have always gotten along, but surely they respected each other, and surely they could come to some mutual understanding at a time like this.