Playing For Brains

Chapter Nineteen

The neighbourhood was nice. Everyone was nice. Maybe too nice sometimes. It was strange. It wasn't like anything I had experienced since the world went to shit. I tried to give in and change so that I could fit into this place, but I couldn't just forget the fact that I was dead. That I was one of the monsters these people kept out. The walls were built to keep my kind out, yet here I am walking among the living as if nothing was wrong with me. Everyone keeps getting offered jobs, there are just a few of us left that haven't been allocated anything. I guess we are the ones nobody knows what to do with. Rick got offered a job as the community's sheriff. He apparently was one in king's county before all this started, so I guess he was made for the job.

Even Daryl had a job now. Aaron gave him one last night. The party sucked, it probably was best not to go like Daryl did. He sounded like he had a much nicer night with Aaron and Eric. With Beth gone to help Pete in the doctors, I was all alone in the house left to my own thoughts and that usually wasn't a good thing. My mind began to drift back to less peaceful times.

*Flashback*

The lights flickered as the machines began to slow down to a stop. The fuel was running out. We all knew that this day would come around soon enough and it appeared it was time. We had spent around two months since the end of humanity as we knew it, working on something to stop the epidemic. We had identified a few characteristics and managed to slow it down in certain samples, but we were still so far away from a solid cure. We needed test subject's, but we hadn't seen many survivors outside the building recently. It is like a ghost town. Sometimes there was a group of the undead, but that was usually when the equipment went down or caused noise pollution, attracting their attention. We have 5 samples so far that we want to try, but without having a bite it wasn't clear how these would work, and none of us wanted to risk our lives in such a way for an experimental drug which was highly unlikely to work.

The emergency generators came into actions powering simply the computers and lighting in the areas we were based. The clock on the wall began the countdown. The countdown till facility wide decontamination. The thought of such an event was terrifying. What was we going to do? Would we try our luck out there, among all the infected? Or would be stay here and die trying to create a cure?

We worked hard for hours on the five possible cures trying to test them on samples we had collected, but nothing more could be done to test them in the little time we had left.

"You all have to get out of here! You shouldn't be here when the time runs out. It is no way to die and I don't want you to waste your life" the professor looked at us all as we turned to face him. Questions running through our head on what he could be wanting us to do. Just walk out the door, it would be like suicide. The things out there would be the end of us. We didn't know how to survive out there. We had watched countless people die from those monsters over the screens when it first happened, and our chances didn't seem much brighter.

He brought the five different medicines that we had been working on over to the workstation we were stood behind.

'I printed some documents off. It has all the information about each of these medicines. The solution we have will make two injections. I think the only way we can carry on our work once the timer has gone, is if we are living Guinea pigs. I will inject each of you with one of them and give you the other half of your medicine and a set of documents. I hope that you never find out if what you are injected with works or not, but should you find yourself in a situation, you must all promise to record it in your booklets. I fear that we are the only solution to our little crisis left. I am counting on you'

It took a while for the information to sink in. That one of us could end up injected with the cure, but on the other hand we could die from a harmful medicine pumped into our body. I was nervous of what would happen as the professor began to prepare the packs and needles ready for us leaving. I could see on everyone else's face they felt exactly the same. What would happen once we walked out of those doors?

As the doors of the research facility went up for the last ever time, we all looked at one another in fear. We were leaving the safety of the research centre for the last time, who knows what will happen to us out here. What if one of us did get infected and had to the cure, how would we help people with this information. Such controlled drugs would be hard to find and giving people it. They wouldn't trust some random strangers and what if they took our knowledge and killed us. My mind was running around with all these crazy ideas before we had even encountered any groups of people yet. We didn't know what they were like anymore. The only ones we had come in contact with were people who were injured and dying. And that vulnerability changes you.

We had only been out in the city for a few hours when we came across our first group of the dead. About five of them against the five of us seemed simple enough, one each. We pulled out the various sized knifes we had brought with us from the facility. We knew it had to be the brain, but the skills of getting the knife to reach the brain seemed to be a problem. Some of the knifes had were quite small, meaning we needed to get close to their faces before we could push the knife through their eye sockets. As the dead came closer, we tried to push them away and end their miserable existence, but they were strong and kept coming at us. Lucy was the first one to lose her grip on the dead one in front of her falling to the ground behind Sarah. The screams filled the silence of the city as the dead one bit into Lucy's shoulder, flesh hanging from its mouth. The scream was going to attract more, we all knew that. We had managed to take out 3 of them when the one on top of Lucy plunged its teeth into Sarah's ankle. When we had finally killed the last two walkers began to look at the damage caused.

"She's dead" Naomi stated, tears beginning to well in her eyes.

Sarah didn't look very good herself. The colour in her face had vanished and sweat had started to bead onto her forehead. We all knew that she was experiencing the fever, brought on by the bite. We knew we had to wait, that's what the professor asked. To observe the fever and see if they turned, but they couldn't do it here. Looking around they found a parking garage to the left of them. trying the shutter, they found they were in luck and moved both Sarah and Lucy inside, out of the way of the dead that could appear any minute now.

The night seemed to drag for the girls as they sat and watched another friend die from a bite. How were they supposed to survive out here like this? They hadn't even been out here for a day and already they had lost two of their people. They waited, watching for any movement from the two dead bodies on the floor. By sunbreak the two girls had turned into one of the dead, making the rest of us have to put them down and record their cure as unsuccessful. I didn't know how long the rest of us had but I didn't think we would be long before we lost someone else. Unless we found somewhere to hide out, somewhere to fortify. Somewhere to become stronger.