The Only Cure

"To General John McGrew,

Our team has worked exhaustively to study this new infection, and in spite of tremendous setbacks and logistical challenges we have made major strides in understanding its mechanism of action..."

---

The man writhes in his bed, thrashing against the bindings that your fellow physician has had to assure you over and over is strong enough to keep him in place. He bares his teeth, decaying lips pulled back to reveal the jagged shards of bone that still remain. You hear them click as he gnashes at the air, neck restrained too tightly for him to be able to lunge at any of the doctors. Steadily, his rotting blood drips out of a syringe and onto a microscope slide.

You slip the slide under the microscope, but before you've even a moment to register the result, the infected man slams his arm into his bindings hard enough to shatter his elbow, dragging it free and somehow managing to move it enough to slice through the other bindings with his claws! The science team all start to panic and scatter, but thinking quickly, you dive for a scalpel, sweep it off the table, flip it into a hammer grip and in one brutal motion lodge it up through his eye and into his brain.

You dig, twist, and rip it out, spraying infected blood across the nearest wall. Panting, you withdraw as he snarls his last, glancing around at the other doctors around you who look on in resigned horror. These are your new working conditions.

---

"... but in spite of the success of our research, we have not been able to approximate anything like a vaccine. This virus mutates rapidly past any kind of immunity, rendering any vaccine we create quickly obsolete. As for a cure..."

---

Most of the lights have been cut. You have not seen a hospital this quiet in years. There are no more patients, merely wanderers; the infected snarl at the air as they drag themselves through empty hallways, trailing the scent of living prey through the stench of sterile chemicals and latex. A wing of the hospital, through the efforts of the security guards and a few responding police officers, has been secured... but the door is never quiet for long.

You and everyone else sit, as if simply waiting to die, crowded around the door. A security guard has fashioned a makeshift spear out of a hunting knife and a stick, and slips it between the planks he's used to barricade the door so that he can stab any approaching zombie. It's a functional system... for now; the moment that stick breaks and his hunting knife ends up on the other side of the door, things could get ugly.

That's your thought process, as you sit curled up in the corner, eyes dancing across the other doctors and nurses all of whom are not much more composed than you.

"What are we waiting for?" you ask.

"... Military intervention? For someone to come up with a bright idea? I dunno', the fuckin' rapture?" answers the resident parasitologist.

"Bitter because this wasn't in your field of expertise, aren't you?" replies a phlebotomist.

"Perhaps if it was, we would have developed a cure," hisses the parasitologist in return.

"You cannot blame this on--" starts the phlebotomist, but you cut in, clearing your throat loudly.

"... I think we need to leave," you assert, however shakily. All eyes fix on you. "... We're sitting ducks here, in a dead-end room on the third floor. We need to go somewhere... in the country. Or at least, out of this godforsaken city."

"... alright."

---

"A cure is not possible. There is no way to reverse the advanced damage done to the brain in the course of the infection. I understand that this is not the news you want to hear, but the only cure for the situation on the ground here is..."

---

The ruined remains of your eye hang free of their socket, blood coating the entire right half of your face. You grit your teeth, drag yourself to your feet, and wrap your fingers around the haft of your fire-ax. Three infected, your former colleagues, shamble in through the front doors of the hospital. Your outfit is in tatters, soaked through with blood over almost every inch, be it yours or theirs.

You glance back, but there is no one behind you. All of your colleagues have fallen away behind you, your group picked away at by the horrors of the hospital until it was only you who remained.

Drawing a shaky breath through your teeth, you step forward, brandishing your axe at the last of the infected that stand in your way. You flex your fingers around the handle, finding not all of them there... but even missing fingers and an eye, and with your hands slick with blood, you still aim true.

You step out into the streets of Louisville, alone and reborn in blood--as a survivor.

---

"... complete destruction of all infected persons, and disposal of infected material."