The Multigenre Mashup Smackdown Collection

Part 3:1 : All that Survive

"Hold him down!" Commander Adams said as he helped strap down the zombie they had brought to the lab.

His subordinates did as he asked but one could see they were terrified as they held the infected man down. They looked between their leader and the scientist who slowly approached them with a syringe.

"Is this really necessary? This was one risk we didn't need to take." Commander Adam's second in command - Rhody Philips - asked with a raised brow.

As a soldier, his only job each day was to go out into the zombie infected world, take down hordes of infected and hopefully reclaim more land for the remaining population. From the year 2025 that was all humanity had been trying to do.

The three strongholds were all the safety humanity had left, the only thing standing between the survivors and the total annihilation of humanity. Fort Salvatore was meant to be the most impenetrable and yet here they were bringing an infected person inside the walls for some stupid experiment.

This was one thought everyone else in that room had but no one could voice that thought as Doctor Imogen walked closer with her syringe.

"That's it, just a little drop will be enough for the tests." She said as as took a blood sample from the zombie.

"Really? All this for a drop of blood?!" Lieutenant Philips said in disdain.

"Well you can't exactly get me a clean sample out in the fields." Doctor Imogen said with a shrug as she injected her sample into a test tube. "But don't worry, I may need some more from him."

She ignored the soldiers, even as the commander took out his rifle and shot the creature straight through its brain to end its existence before it could infect one of them.

"I said I may need more!" She complained but was cut off when Commander Addams gave her a stern eye.

"Not worth the risk." He said to her.

Doctor Imogen, frustrated, walked up to her little cage in which she kept a litter of white rabbits.

She stood in front of the cage a few seconds before she finally picked her lab rat.

"What is the purpose of this? You know we could have lost some valuable team members, right?" Phillips asked with a frown.

"We need to determine how the kid's genetic system has mutated to allow his DNA to merge with the virus." She replied as she injected her sample into the rabbit." By comparing his blood sample against that a fully turned individual perhaps we can ascertain what makes him special."

Hearing this, the Commander Addams tensed. By now it was no secret that his adopted son Jesse had at one point in his life been infected but - unlike everyone else - his immune system has somehow adapted to the virus and prevented him from turning into a mindless zombie driven by the need to devour humans.

In the era they lived in his immunity was something short of a miracle and yet there were some who still remained skeptical. Even in the year 2525, whilst the virus claimed numerous hosts everyone knew that it had a single central hive mind. An organism they have termed the Omega. Although that was just a theory the field scouts together with the research teams had come up with over the years, everyone collectively agreed that there were moments in which the undead acted in more intelligent ways and carried out co-ordinated attacks.

It was for this reason that bringing an infected person within the barrier of the stronghold or keeping one who seemed to have been infected for an extended time left many uneasy.

"This is messed up." Said another soldier who simply stood there. "So Jesse is now your lab rat? We're going to pretend we didn't grow up with him for twenty years? That he isn't the best soldier on the team?"