The Mutatio Disease

Sector Two

- - - - Sector Two - - - -
- - - - Part One - - - -
No Urge to Eat My Brains?

     I always knew I'd go to hell.

    Everything felt like I'd been chucked into a wood chipper, sewn back together, freeze-dried, and smashed with a hammer. Every inch of my skin ached, my brain itself felt like it had eaten itself and spat it back out, and my bones felt like they'd been stuffed with concrete and glass.

    What else could this be other than hell? I mean, come on. Maybe I shouldn't have put that dye in Lyra's shampoo.

   I shifted uneasily, a groan escaping my mouth.

    "...tcher?"

    My eyebrows pinched. I was dead. Had Lyra died too?

   "Fletcher?"

   Slowly, my eyes cracked open. Light seared into them, and I squinted against the light. "Sorry." The familiar voice pulled the flashlight back. "Just making sure I wasn't going crazy."

   "Lyra?" My mouth was incredibly dry, my throat sore as if I'd been screaming for hours. "Did you die too?"

   Lyra blinked down at me. Bags hung under her eyes in the light of the morning. "Die? Uh, not that I'm aware of. And you aren't dead, Fletcher."

    I stared up at her. My body was sore, but to my surprise, that soreness was rapidly fading, like it was being sucked into a black hole. "But, I'm not dead?"

    "No," Lyra actually laughed, almost delirious with relief. "You're not dead. You survived, Fletch. You survived the damn Mutatio Disease."

    "How the hell?" I lifted my arms up and patted myself down. I felt normal, no extra heads or arms. The rash on my neck was gone.

    "No urge to kill me, right?" Lyra arched an eyebrow down at me, something I'd always been jealous of. I looked at her.

    "Uh, no?"

    "No urge to eat my brains?"

    "Well..."

    Her eyes went wide and I cracked a smile. "Kidding. Got any water? I feel like I haven't had anything in days."

    Shaking herself from her stupor, she went and opened up a water bottle. She handed it over, careful not to touch my skin. I didn't comment, knowing that was fair. There might have been lingering traces of the virus on my skin.

    "Are you sure it was even the Mutatio Disease?" I asked dryly. "I'm not dead."

    "I'm sure, you went into the convulsions. It was identical. What else would it have been?" She looked at me pointedly.

    I shrugged, feeling better now that I'd gotten some water. "Just hard to believe. How long was I out?"

    She put the empty bottle away and climbed back into the driver's seat. I moved into the passenger side, staring at my hands in wonder. I wasn't dead. Somehow.

    "Two days," she replied. "After you passed out, I started driving. We should be there in two more days of driving." I looked at myself in the mirror, but didn't see any changes. I didn't have fangs or anything. "So you're part of the twenty-five percent," Lyra stated as she started up the car again. "The percent that survive the virus unharmed. You won't catch it again, either."

     "What's the other five percent?" I inquired, doing some quick math. She glanced over.

    "Mortems."