Patient Zero

Chapter 7

I was breathing heavily, the body below me didn't appear to be moving. I froze as another small group passed by. They looked in, and one groaned at me. It stopped and looked at me expectantly. 

I groaned like it had, hoping that would make it go away. 

It did. I sighed in relief and looked at the collapsed person in front of me. 

I must have stared for an hour, so many hordes passed by. I just couldn't get the courage to move, not without knowing what was happening to this poor creature that only a few hours before I had had so much in common with. 

After that hour, I gave up. 

And he started moving. It started with a quiet groan, and he stood up. I was a little jealous when he stood up easily and apparently without difficulty. 

I guess being restrained to a hospital bed for a long time makes it hard to walk again. 

As he had been walking only an hour before it was easy for him.

"Are you back to the living?" I asked quietly, not knowing what I would do if he groaned as an answer. 

"Was I ever not?" The guy looked up at me and our inhuman eyes met. He looked as though he was about to scream, but I silenced him with a finger to my lips. 

"Actually, yes. You look exactly like me and a whole lot of other people in this hospital, but the difference between them and us is that we have the cure and they need it. What's your name?"

"Damien." 

"Why were you here Damien?"

"I make medicine. Hospital called me in to help replicate a cure they'd found for the Infection."

Talk about dumb luck. 

"So you made all these?" I gestured to the row of ZomBioTox next to me. 

"Yeah, I've been here for about a week. If all I had to do was replicate it then it wasn't all that hard."

A week? I'd barely woken up a few hours ago. Was I cured a week ago? How did they know before today?

He kept talking, "See, the tests they'd been doing on the other infected had been inconclusive, but they thought taking some of Patient Zero's blood might help, since he was the first. That was a huge success. They started basically milking the kid for his blood, but Dr. Zippleman thought we should try to cure him too. Dr. Zippleman coming in to my office to get the cure for him is the last thing I remember."

"Then why are there so many infected? And why are so many dead? Why does everyone have a gun instead of the cure?"

"Dr. Zippleman, a few nurses and security were the only ones who knew about the cure. And even then, it was next to impossible to get it to all the Infected without getting bitten themselves. They were sort of luring them into rooms and curing them there. They're in another part of the hospital, one that was zombie free, at least it was last time I remember."

"Which part of the hospital?"

"The Maternity Ward."