They Call Me Daring

Chapter 16

"That went well." Meg sighed the moment I entered the house, the Doc and Clark behind me, along with a few other strong-minded individuals.
"I think it did." I agreed sarcastically, and she pulled me over to a corner near the old grandfather clock, leaning forward so only I could hear her.
"What were you thinking!" She hissed in my ear. "You could have gotten yourself shot!!!"
"I did, actually." I admitted, and she pulled her hand back away from where she had been leaning on my shoulder, disgusted at the blood on her hands. Jeez, thanks for the concern.
"How many people did you hurt? Did you kill anyone?" She added in a grim whisper, wiping her red hand down my shirt.
"I'm the one with the bullet in my shoulder, here, and you're worried about them!?" I jerked my thumb at the group behind us, deep in a hushed discussion, shooting continuous glances at me from over their shoulders. I saw Dad, frowning, join the group from down the hall, and my heart tripped. "But, yeah, no one died... And there were thirteen."
"Thirteen!?" Her eyebrows went up, magnifying her eyes further until the point when they seemed to take up her entire face. "Thirteen!? How did you manage to maim thirteen people before they managed to shoot you!?"
"You're making it sound like I'm the bad guy here." I said, hurt.
She gave me a withering, unimpressed look. "You were the bad guy."
"Yeah, so, you don't have to keep reminding me." I shivered at the memory of the pleasure it had given me to snap their weak, pathetic little human insect bones... Not a monster...
"I think I do, actually."
"I think I made up with them."
"Yeah?" She raised an eyebrow. "You realize you still have to make up with the thirteen people you maimed."
The color drained from my face. "Crap."
"Yeah. What did you tell them out there?"
"I told them...." My eyes wandered over to the hushed huddle in the hall. "I told them... That I believe in the cure."
"Wait, you told them you were diseased?!" She squeaked, eyebrows arching like scared red cats. "Are you insane!?"
"Probably." I agreed, my eyes still on the group of men. I saw my father step back, mouth gaping, wide eyes traveling from me back to the Doc. A few more of the men looked back over their shoulders at me, and quickly looked the other way when they saw me glaring coldly at them.
"Liam!" Meg grabbed my shoulder, and I blinked, looking back at her. "Are you even listening to me?"
"You were talking?" I frowned, watching out of the corner of my eye and the Doc nervously ran his hand through his hair while staring intently at me from across the room, along with my father, who still looked dumbstruck.
"Dude!" I heard the smack before I felt it, and I gingerly massaged my jaw. "Aren't they going to lock you up now?"
"Uh..." My eyes slid back over to the huddle. They were all staring at me now, and a few began to walk forwards towards me. "I don't know, but I get the feeling I'm about to find out."
"Run!" Meg exclaimed, her voice hushed down to a whisper, and she grabbed my shoulders, looking into my eyes, silently pleading. "Run! You can escape now!"
"I know. I'm making a choice." I whispered just as quietly in her ear. I pulled back, and she bit her lip, looking troubled. Finally she sighed.
"Okay. But if you get locked up, I'm coming just to annoy you." She warned, then turned and skipped away, and next thing I knew I was facing my father.
He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a little shake, like he was trying to jerk me into normality, staring intently into my eyes like he could detect the sickness.
At last, he spoke. "Is it true?" He demanded urgently, while the others looked on in half-faked pity. I blinked, still slightly dizzy from the whole experience.
"IS IT TRUE?" He growled again, louder, shaking me harder.
The Doc put a hand gently on his shoulder. "Eddie-"
"Don't Eddie me!" Dad shrugged him off, without taking his eyes off me. He took a deep breath and spoke with a forced calm. "Son, tell me right now. Have you been bitten?"
Wordlessly, I lifted my hand and slid my watch up my arm, exposing the infected flesh. He stared blankly at the wound for a moment, then seemed to visibly shrink, his shoulders slumping, head bowing, the wrinkles on his face deepening in grief.
He looked up at me one last time, taking in everything, my ice white hair and alabaster skin, the bite marks on my arm, the bullet wound in my shoulder. I saw a million emotions pass over his face in a matter of seconds, memories flickering past his eyes and tearing at his heart. Conflicting urges tore at him, as he fought an eternal battle... between his son, and his deep hatred for the creature I was becoming.
I gripped his arm suddenly, about to say something that would make it all okay, something that would heal the break between us; say something that would make him be brave, and stop being scared of me.
My fingertips brushed his arm, and he recoiled immediately like my touch was poison... which, I guess, it was. He jerked back away from me, fear sparking over his face, and my heart sank. My own father was terrified of me.
What had I become.
"Dad, wait-" I began, taking a step forward, but a metal bar slapped against my chest. My eyes traveled up it to the hand that was holding it, to the scared face of an older woman. "What-"
"Restrain him!" A man called out, as I backed away, confused. I thought the Doc had been intrigued by my search for the cure, my determination... What was happening?
"What are you guys doing?!" I tried to turn the other way, but another metal bar slammed into my arm, the wounded shoulder, sending another shock of pain up my arm.
A throb of anger surged through me, electrifying my body and turning my vision red, waves beating against my ears. I reached out and grabbed one of the bars, twisting brutally. It bent easily in my hand, until the weak metal gave way completely and snapped in two.
"He's resisting!" The woman shouted, and two more bars came over, baring every way out, trapping me in a little box. The pulsing pain in my arm brought me out of the furious haze, and suddenly I was exhausted. I just kept getting deeper and deeper into something I could never quite dig my way out of. Why did I keep on fighting? Why not just give up?
I weakly nudged at the bars around me, then-
"Liam!" I heard my father's voice, and lifted my head to try and find his face over the milling, panicking, pole-bearing people. "Don't hurt him!"
Then there was a sharp prick in my neck, and suddenly everything became fuzzy, my vision fading and doubling everything, and I staggered on my feet, barely able to keep my balance. I stumbled, suddenly very tired... I needed to sleep...
Then there was another nudge on my shoulder, and everything began to come back together. I snarled, my vision again pulsing red, and I regained my solid footing, feeling the strength returning to my limbs.
"He's coming back! Get him again!" Somebody cried, and before I could turn there was another tiny stab, this time in my arm. My vision wavered briefly, and I stumbled, but only a little bit. The fury became stronger, and I roared in rage, snatching the nearest bar out of somebody's hands and using it to wham the others aside, the metallic clanging ringing fiercely in my ears.
"Somebody, hit him again!" They cried as I quickly overpowered them, panting with fury. How dare they try and restrain me with their petty, fragile human bodies! I swung the bar like a bat, knocking somebody's feet out from under them, perhaps breaking a bone or two in the process, denting other people's metal bars with the thunderous impact of my own, knocking them out of their hands.
This time I was ready for the knife. I heard the quick footsteps behind me amidst the chaos, and spun, snatching the knife out of their hand and jamming it into their own shoulder. They dropped like a rock.
"The door! Block all exits!" They screamed, running around everywhere like crazed insects. I stood still for a moment, fists flenched, fangs bared, panting in smoldering fury, watching as everything whirled about me in slow motion. Every slow twitch and grab and reach and pull; all of it completely predictable. They were pathetic, straining to close every door when I could easily break my way through it or jump out a window and simplify the entire thing. Everything pulsed with a furious red light, the dull throbbing in my ears beating in time with my rapid heart rate.
I heard the heavy, panicked breathing close in behind me, and spun on instinct, my hand shooting out to grab the attacker's arm. I snapped around, twisting the arm behind the man, grinning at his porcine squeal of pain, and then, just before I moved to snap it off, I felt a sudden, irresistible surge of raw instinct running through me like an electric shock.
"Liam!" I heard vaguely in the distance. I blinked, hesitating for a moment, then shook my head and lowered my mouth to the man's exposed arm, holding his weakly struggling body with one arm. I could smell the powerful scent of flesh and blood leaking off him, so tempting.
I was so hungry.
I opened my mouth, and felt my fangs brush the skin. I felt a ping of victory inside me, and then I was about to bite down-
"LIAM!" I blinked, my poison fangs inches from the man's wrist. I looked down, confused. What was I doing? Who was calling my name?
I looked up, my eyes darting around the room, and I realized the battle had gone still. About two dozen people stood motionless around the perimeter of the hall, looking at me with mortified expressions. I blinked again, then looked at the man whose arm I was still holding to my fangs, my mouth still open.
"Uh, sorry dude." I said awkwardly, releasing him, red hand prints left imprinted on his skin where I had been holding him. He scampered off and out the door, half screaming. The door slammed behind him, and the bang resounded through the room.
Silence.
"Liam, now, if you'll just hold still..." I heard the Doctor say, pleadingly, and I whirled to meet his face. He flinched under my gaze.
"No. I don't want to be locked up." I said cooly. "I might only have a few days left to live, and I'm not going to waste those locked in a glass box, being experimented on." I took a deep breath. "And, besides, you guys kind of need all the help you can get."
"Now, Liam, we appreciate what you've done here," Another man stepped forward. "Don't get me wrong, you've organized something that could hold the potential for the survival of the human race... But you yourself endanger that plan."
"Excuse me?" I raised an eyebrow coldly at him.
"I mean," He said carefully, eyeing my clenched fists, which I relaxed immediately. "that you, being, you know..."
"Yeah, I think I know." I snarled, baring my fangs. I can't tell you how many times I had already bit my tongue with those things, in essence poisoning myself again, which I'm sure didn't help.
"Well, no offense," He added quickly when I glared at him. "But, I mean, you could transform any minute... Face it, Liam, you're a time bomb, and your time is running out. And we don't want you taking all of us with you when you go off."
"Besides," Somebody else cut in, and I recognized him as the man who had threatened to shoot Clark. I hadn't forgiven him, and I re-clenched my fists. "I think you've already demonstrated what you can do when provoked. Imagine what would happen if you fully lost control."
The people around the room nodded and grunted in agreement, and I waved my hands.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," I held up my hands hurriedly to stop them. "Whoa, no, see, that's the problem."
People looked at me expectantly, as if they couldn't wait to hear this excuse.
"See, I'll be the first to admit, I sort of have a... problem..." I muttered. "And, yes, when I forget myself, sometimes I lose control." People shook their heads and muttered quietly to each other, all of which I could hear clearly. "But that's the keyword there. Provoked."
My father looked up from where his eyes had been the entire time, on his feet, and I saw lines of thought crossing his brow.
"Look," I said, being careful not to look directly at him. "I'm doing the best I can here not to go nuts and tear all your throats out." I said honestly. Yeah, it was harsh, but right then I needed all the persuasion I could get. "But it's kind of hard. Now, if you guys, and everyone else, can kind of stay out of my way," I reasoned. "And let me do my thing, I'm gonna do the best I can to make sure you guys live through the second apocalypse. But you need to help me here. Help me- help you." I pointed my thumbs from myself to them, repeating the action in case they didn't get my message the first time.
"But, Liam, what happens after we're secured and safe? You realize we can't exactly allow you to walk around inside our walls, when any second you could go off the deep end and.... There goes everything you, and us, worked for." One of the women reasoned. I opened my mouth to reply- then closed it again when I realized I had nothing.
"I... don't know." I admitted. "But people, right now, I don't know whether my life is measured in days.... Or hours...." My eyes travelled across the room, and then I found Meg hidden in the back, watching intently, nodding ever so slightly in approval. "So... uh.... I'm just kind of taking it as it comes. And that's what we all need to be doing. The reason the first outbreak hit us so hard was because we spent months wasting time planning an operation that didn't even work, because the disease wasn't at all what we expected!" I drilled my brain for things we learned in school, trying to remember exactly. "We- you- had focused for so long on that one thing, that when what you expected, what you had prepared for, didn't happen, you were lost, and had no idea what to do!"
People nodded in agreement, remembering better than I did. "The world fell to chaos in our confusion... And that's why now, when we're not quite sure what is happening, we need to be prepared for anything, and ready to change plans instantly."
"Lovely, but you dodged the question." Another man said, unconvinced. "Like Bill over there said," The man said, jerking his chin to the man I was really beginning to hate. "You're a time bomb waiting to blow.  And you could go off anytime, any place, and wherever you are when it happens, people are going to die."
"Dude. What I'm trying to say is... um..." What was I trying to say?
"Doc!" I jumped, and saw Meg running through the crowd to the doctor. "I know how Liam can stay!"
"You do?" He and I said simultaneously.
"Yes, you see, we have absolutely no clue what's happening right now to the other species," She said delicately, her eyes flickering over me, but she avoided my gaze. "And there's no way we're ever gonna figure this thing out if the only specimens we can get have bullet holes in their heads!"
The Doc blinked, and a look of realization dawned on his face. I waited for him to explain, because I still had no idea where Meg was going with this. "So what you're saying is-"
"You need a cooperative specimen to experiment on." She confirmed shortly, still not meeting my eyes. I nodded as I let that flow over me, along with everyone else in the room, as they tasted the idea like a new flavor of ice cream. I thought about it, nodding to myself, allowing the last remnaints of tension in my muscles to relax, and then, all of a sudden, I was completely human.
Completely Liam. And suddenly it all hit me.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I held up my hands in the time out symbol, and every head snapped in my direction, hands darting to iron bars and guns as they prepared for me to bust out another ninja attack. "Whoa, whoa. Wait, you... you want to... to experiment... on me?"
"Yes! Isn't it genius?" The Doc exclaimed, a wide, slightly maniacal grin bursting over his face, one that he didn't even bother to try and hide. "Brilliant! There's so much missing data that we can get from you! Of course, we'll need to make some arrangements with the Box, and the cameras, the sedatives..." The Doc turned and began rattling off a list of materials to an assistant in a lab coat, who eagerly jotted down his every word.
Seemingly satisfied, everyone began to turn away, shuffling towards the door, shrugging in indifference to the latest events in the chronicle of Liam's Cursed Life.
"Um, guys?" I called out, still standing in the middle of the room. They all turned, eyebrows raised. "Forgetting something?"
The Doc frowned, his eyes sweeping the room. "No, I don't think so... Rodrick, did you forget anything?" He said, turning to his lab-coated assistant. Rodrick shook his head. "Nope, we're good." The Doc replied to me. I smacked my forehead.
"Um, yeah, just one little itsy-bitsy detail." I nodded sincerely, dropping my voice so they all had to come closer and lean in to hear me. "Yeah. Me."
Silence.
"Right, right... Um, yes, well.... erm..." The Doc scratched his head awkwardly, keeping a good arm's length away from me. "Yes, um, Rodrick? Rodrick, you can... detain him and bring him back to the lab for me, okeydoke?" He forced a grin at Rodrick, who's eyes had widened to the size of dinner plates to accent his mortified expression.
"Who said I'm going back to the lab?" I said slowly.
"Uh... Well, if we're using you as a test subject, we need to keep you in the lab..."
"Keep me?" I winced. "Um, yeah, no. There will be no keeping me. I thought I'd established that I have control...." People glared at me, and I shrugged innocently. "Alright, most of the time. But nobody is going to be locking me up to stick needles into me and keep me in a sedated sleep for the rest of my life. Kapeesh?"
"Liam, I understand that you're sensitive to this sort of thing, it's completely-"
"A journal!" Meg shouted suddenly. For the second time, everyone fell silent and turned to look at her. "I mean, he... he could keep a journal about the way the disease is affecting him, and the behaviors it causes... And he could still live at home that way..."
"It can write?" The bald, dislikable man grunted. I spun in the space of a heartbeat and clenched my fists, snarling to bare my fangs.
"Don't. Make. Me. Come. Down. There." I growled between my teeth. He backed away to behind the others.
"Yes, and he's not an it." Meg spat at the man, who awkwardly ran a hand over his skull, as if trying to remember where his hair had run off to.
"But we need to collect blood samples and bpm's and-"
"And you can still do that." Meg cut the Doc off. "I'm sure Liam will give you an hour or so a day to do whatever you need to do... But he doesn't need to live in the lab. If he's going to try and cure himself by holding on to who he is, locking him up in a lab and telling him he's a monster sure as heck isn't going to help him with anything."
Everyone looked to the Doc. "Fine. I mean, it works for me, and apparently it works for him..."
"Works for all of you." Clark added. I jumped, forgetting if he had been there the whole time. "Liam's the best hope you've got. In this time of chaos, he's the only one who kept a level head- and he's freaking half zombie!"
"Clark's right." My father cleared his throat from the corner farthest from me, and my heart shuddered in fear. I didn't lift my head, but focused on his feet. "He's right. Liam... Liam had the guts to stand up and take the initiative. We panicked, and he herded us in the right direction... He knew what we had to do, to survive... he..." Dad's voice cracked, and he cleared his throat again. "He was the leader we needed."
"Yes, was." The bald man drawled. "And now he's come up with a plan which we can all follow and change, and- I'm not undermining it, it's genius, and it will work. But the fact remains, that, Liam- you're dangerous."
Right back where we started.
"Look, I think I've made it pretty clear, I'm trying to control it." I reasoned. "I can usually tell when I'm about to lose it, so I'll have time to lock myself up in a room or something until I'm stable again. I can do this, guys." My eyes swept the room, meeting and holding everyone's gaze for a fraction of a second. "Just don't provoke me."