Decaying Humanity (14 page)

    “I love you,” I struggled to say. Shay locked eyes with me and she wiped the tears from her face.

    “I love you more,” she said.

    Pablo reached down and picked up something in a white paper wrapper. He jumped up excitedly and handed it to Shay. She tore open the package and pulled out the clean unused syringe. I battled to keep my eyes open, but I could feel my body shutting down as each breath of air became harder and harder. She slid the needle into her own arm and pulled out a line of blood.

    “Wait … what?” I started.

    She injected the needle right into my left arm. It felt like hot shards of glass coursing through my veins. The pain snapped me back into focus. She took a second injection and put it into my other arm. Despite the pain, exhaustion was still setting in and my eyelids felt as though they were a hundred pounds. My eyes fluttered shut and she stabbed me in the chest with a needle full of her blood. “You can’t leave me alone,” she screamed.

    “I wanted us … to be together … forever,” I whispered.

    “We will, I promise, we will.” She wrapped her arms around me and just held me. I felt like if there was ever a time to die, this would be it.

    “I’m sorry, please don’t hate me,” she said softly.

    I questioned her words as my eyes slid shut. What felt like only a second later, my entire body seized up. It was the most pain I had ever felt in my life. Every single part of my body strained and locked up. My eyes felt like they were going to explode out of my head. I vomited for an amount of time that made me think I would suffocate. I gasped for air between each violent fit and then a second wave of intense pain washed over me. My vision had cut out, leaving me blindly floating in a sea of agony. Through the waves of pain I could feel her embrace and hear reassuring words. I lost count after the thirteenth time I seized up. My heart was going to explode, I just knew it.

    Then the seizures just stopped. My vision came back and the sun was already sitting on the horizon. Shay squeezed me even tighter as I blinked with confusion. She pulled back a little and smiled at me through the dark circles under her eyes.    

    I started to sit up and then turned away from her, vomiting hard one last time. Beside me was an unbelievably large puddle of bloody vomit. I finally found the strength to sit up and did so with her help. I looked at my chest and it was absolutely drenched in blood. I put my fingers through the holes in my shirt and ran it across my smooth skin. There were no wounds. I took a giant breath of air without any struggle. I was completely baffled. She gave me a worried look, like a child who was waiting to be scolded for breaking her mother’s favorite vase.

    I fumbled my words, trying to find the right question. “Who, I mean
what
, are you?” I asked.

    There was a long pause before she broke into an embarrassed smile.

    “I’m Tiffany Mason.”

    Hello, my name is Tiffany Mason and I have cancer. Or, at least I did a few months ago. Now, I’m not sure what I have, but I know it isn’t cancer any longer.

    I used to work down at the music store in Freeport, NC. They were having a rough time ever since music became digital, and morally acceptable to steal. We were going out of business and everyone knew it. I had gone to college, but that didn’t work out, so I dropped out and starting working at this average paying job. It wasn’t much, but all I had to do was run a cash register and listen to music all day. The years I worked at the music store I always knew I was supposed to do something important, but until I could figure out what it was, being a cashier was just fine. I was perfectly happy with the way everything was going … that was until I went to the doctor for a checkup.

    The doctor ran some tests and soon told me I had cancer. I can tell you that hearing news like that feels like falling. As he told me about the difficult road of chemo treatments I could barely comprehend his words. His last words stuck into me like a knife, “…Although, some patients elect to skip treatments and focus on enjoying the time they have.” Was he giving me the option to lie down and die?

    Well let me tell you, I wanted to live. I didn’t have anything amazing keeping me here, but that just made me want to fight harder. I never had very many friends; apparently I was too nerdy to be cool, and not nerdy enough to fit in with that crowd. There was, of course, the occasional guy of varying popularity that would offer me a
date
. I never accepted, because the last thing I wanted was for my first
time
to be a pity lay or someone else’s bet.

    High school was difficult for me because I couldn’t find a challenge, academically. I graduated at the top of my class, but with zero friends on my Facespace page. I received a scholarship to med school and my parents basically packed my bags for me.

    My parents were never abusive, not physically. They never got along and I think that if it weren’t for me they would have split up long ago. Nothing I ever did was good enough for them. When I dropped out of med school, because I couldn’t take the blood, they basically disowned me. They called me all manner of names, ungrateful bitch, was the one that stuck with me. I earned the scholarship and I took out the student loans for the dorms and expenses. I got the job to pay for myself. How was I ungrateful? What exactly was I supposed to be so grateful for anyways?

    Anyways, sorry about that, I get sidetracked easily. The cancer was very aggressive, as the doctors would put it. Aggressive seemed to be an understatement for a disease that was killing me from the inside out. I went through the chemo and it made me terribly sick. I lost all my hair and couldn’t stop vomiting. It was embarrassing and I had to stop working. So, I found myself forced to move back in with my parents.

    My mother had signed up for a bundle deal at the local video store that let you swap out movies all summer long for one flat price. It worked out great, because if it was more than $25 she would have told me to stare at the wall for entertainment. I ended up spending every day watching movies. Some people went through the stages of death—acceptance, anger, and all that jazz. For me, I went through the genres of movies. I started with comedy, but it never made me feel better. All the scenes were ridiculous and reminded me of places that I would probably never see. I went through drama, history, romance, and action. Then I stumbled onto a blossoming new genre, zombies. They were so numerous; they practically created their own genre. All zombie movies were about fighting against an infection. The infection was real, it was hungry and it was right in front of me. I wished that my infection was a physical creature that stood between me and death. That it was a monster I could battle for my survival, not some sickness that didn’t fight fair.

    I watched every single zombie movie in the store. I knew this for a fact because I made a checklist in alphabetical order; I told you I was a nerd. They all had this dark, twisted theme to them. It seemed that in most of them, the survivors, well, they all died. For me it was morbidly comforting, knowing that no matter how hard we all fought, the infection always won.

    I grew sicker as the days went by and soon I struggled to even walk. I simply couldn’t keep down food and I was hopeless. The doctors had told me that the chemo wasn’t working and I should just get some rest. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that meant go home and wait for death.

    A couple days went by and a man in a grey suit came to the house and spoke to my father. I could make out bits and pieces of their conversation. He sounded more like a salesman than a government official. He was trying to get my father to convince me to sign up for experimental treatments. There were new cures being developed and they had done wonders on animals. The whole thing sounded very under the table, black ops kind of stuff. He told my father that if I signed up, we would all be paid very handsomely. I touched my bald head, pulled myself up and walked into the room. My dad wasn’t trying to figure out if he wanted to sell me, he was trying to figure out
how
to.

    “I’ll do it,” I said firmly. What did I have to lose? I could feel myself slipping. What did I have, a week, maybe a month? Plus, I was out of movies anyways.

    I was transported to a big hospital in Medina, NC. I remember taking the elevator to the top floor and walking through a security door with a big, burly white guard. The sign read, “
Mental Health Wing.
”

    The doctor had been talking almost non-stop since I arrived. He was spouting lies, as if the lies alone would save my life. He kept telling me that I had a mental break-down and they were here to help me. I passed through the doors and they sealed shut with a cool sci-fi air-lock sound.

    “Mental illness is a good cover, I like it,” I said.

    “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

    “I just hope your new serum gives me psychic powers, like in that one movie. That is if it doesn’t just turn me into a vegetable outright.”

    “You have an active imagination, young lady.”

    “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m crazy, so no one will believe me if I talk about the experiments. It’s all good, let’s stop beating around the bush and do this.” I didn’t have time for these games. I was about to roll the dice on my life and I was feeling lucky.

    They administered the injection as soon as I got to my new room. After the injection, they strapped me down.

    At this point, I just laughed. I had accepted my death long ago and I never figured this would work. How many people do you know actually get the chance to try out an experimental drug? Maybe I had become too filled with fantasies of psychic powers or super strength, but it was all I had left.

    I don’t know if everyone in the hallway was getting the same serum or different ones; all I knew is that most of them were being wheeled out on stretchers throughout the day. The doctors would come in with their face masks and take samples and ask me how I was feeling. They would never answer any of my questions and man, did I have a lot.

    They stopped tying my hands down due to good behavior. One morning I woke up completely invigorated. I ran my hands across my head. Short hairs coming in. It was coming in thick and I couldn’t help but throw an excited kicking fit of joy. The doctor came by more often after that day and the tests ensued. That last visit, the doctor and his nurse looked pretty sick. I told them they should try the serum they gave me, but they failed to find the humor in that.

    One night there was a fight outside and I heard gunshots. There was yelling from the staff to “lock this place down.” I wasn’t sure what was going on, but nothing could ruin my mood. I was finally winning my fight. The day before the hospital had been nice enough to bring me a small TV with basic cable. Then I could enjoy
Golden Girls
reruns and terrible TV movies with lines like, holy schnauzer, and bump you.

    Then the president interrupted my TV version of
Die Hard
, yippee ki yay. It was the broadcast that asked us to stay calm as they shot up someone outside their door.

    That day I had heard people walking back and forth in the hallway, but no one came to check on me. The porthole in the door was a two-way mirror, so all I saw when I tried to look outside was my own lively face. It made me smile as my hair had already grown down to my ears. There was a month of hair growth in just a few days, a positive side effect of the drug if you asked me.

    After almost a day of just lying there waiting, I had to, well, relieve myself. My room didn’t have any facilities and usually I was ushered to the bathrooms by Jack, the security guard. After the first few days I hadn’t really been restrained. I was free to wander in my tiny cell. I danced around trying to hold my bladder and banged on the steel door. I screamed out to them. I could hear them walking around out there. After a minute without a response, I decided to stop playing nice. I slammed my shoulder into the door and it bent in like an old tin can. “Wow, these doors are cheap,” I thought aloud. I finished it off with a good shove, sending it clambering into the hallway. My doctor was standing slightly adjacent to the collapsed door and he had his back to me. Twelve other people were wandering the halls in a trance. Some of them were in gowns, while the others were in uniforms. Even Jack, the security guard, was just milling about aimlessly.

    I grabbed the doctor by his shoulder and spun him around. His face was discolored and dead. He uttered a single moan. I had seen enough movies to know what he was and cried out, “Zombie!”

    I giggled a little out of excitement. Don’t judge me; you have to admit it was kinda cool. I jumped back and lost my footing and fell on my butt. Doctor Zombie ignored me and wandered away, completely disinterested. I would have tried to grab a weapon, but this was a mental health wing, so the best I could find was the TV remote.     

    Confused, I got up and walked down the hallway. They were definitely textbook zombies, you know, wandering around, just staring blankly into the distance. I poked at them and even stood directly in front of one, but they simply ignored me like I was invisible. “This feels like high school all over again,” I said to no one in particular.

    None of them would even acknowledge me. Now, I wasn’t complaining, it was just weird. It would have been ironic to beat cancer and then be eaten by your doctor. I went over to the window at the end of the hall and I could see more people wandering the streets. They were coming out the front door in a somewhat steady stream.

    I examined the exit and it was locked with a key card reader. Before leaving, I grabbed my file and an assortment of other important looking documents from the doctor’s desk. I even printed some of his most recent emails and shoved them into my folder.

    “Come on doc, I need you to open the door,” I said while walking him to the exit.

    “Rargh,” he replied.

    I grabbed his keycard out of his pocket and swiped the reader. It turned green and made a hearty beep. “Doctor, you saved my life, but I think your other serums might be flawed.”

    “Ungh!” he said as he pushed his way out the exit.

    “What ever happened to ladies first?”

    “Ahhooouuu,” he mumbled.

    “Well, bump you, too.”

    I had found a few of my personal items and then looked around for some much needed gear. I was ready to transform myself from a patient in a gown, to a normal civilian. I borrowed a nice backpack from a female zombie stuck in the elevator. In the lobby there was an undead girl wearing headphones; she was my size and even had a decent fashion sense. I don’t want to talk about the finer points of undressing a zombie, but I can tell you that it is not pleasant.

    I managed to make my way onto the street and there were undead everywhere. People were running and driving away like lunatics. There were shootings and people stealing from stores. I just walked invisibly through the chaos, feeling like I was in a dream. I walked for quite a while, until I came to a highway that ran back home. I didn’t really have anything that tied me to that small town, my parents least of all. It was cold and heartless, but part of me hoped they had already turned … I guess I was just being an ungrateful bitch.

    A man in a small blue hybrid-car pulled over on the side of the road and called out to me.

    “Are you crazy? You are going to get eaten or shot out here. Hop in.”

    “Where are you heading?”

    “Does it matter? I’m getting out of Medina before they lock us down. I’m going to the beach. I own a yacht.”

    “I need to get to Freeport. It’s on your way, but I don’t have anything to pay you.”

    “That isn’t important, get in. We all have to help out, now that there are real monsters roaming the streets.”

    I got in and we drove off. Some small talk and eight country songs later, I finally broke away from the conversation and pulled out my records.

    “What are those?” he asked.

    “I was sick and I escaped the hospital. I grabbed some records on the way out. The way things are going, I might need to change doctors.”

    “You could say that again. If you had been to the hospital today you would have been eaten. Locals are saying that is where it all started, you know, black ops weapon research gone bad,” he said while coughing.

    “You don’t say?” I responded while thumbing through records and picking out the most important entries.

The patient Tiffany Mason has survived the initial dose. This is surprising as the other nine subjects had fatal reactions. We will monitor her condition.

Mason has shown great signs of improvement and seems to be fighting off the cancer. This is amazing as she was noted to have been beyond recovery upon admission. Regeneros-8 seems to be curing her without side effects.