Riley is scared of me.
My eyes fluttered open as I stared up at the ceiling of a white room. My body was sore but not as bad as the back of my head. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull.
Even if this cure works, will she look at me the same?
Groaning, I raised my hands to rub my face, only to find I was attached to an IV. I groggily looked at it as I shined it in the light.
Did they take what they needed?
"Hey." Gerry dropped into a chair beside my bed. I slowly moved my gaze to him. His brows pinched together as he stared at me. "You did good, kid."
I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut. I tried to remember what had happened. There were bits and pieces in my mind, but it felt loose, messy, and out of order.
I knew I saw Riley. I remembered the look in her eyes. The terrified crowd behind her. Yet, once I changed and mutated, everything combined and meshed in my head. And I needed to know—"Did I hurt Riley?"
Gerry covered his mouth, raising his brows as he looked at me without saying a word.
Balancing myself on my elbows, I half sat up. "Did I hurt her?" I repeated.
Gerry lowered his head and sighed, but lifted just his gaze to look at me. "You scared her that's for sure, but no, you didn't hurt her."
I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted to happen was that I took the chance of exposing myself only to hurt her. I'd die.
Worst case scenario hadn't happened. "So, we're smooth sailing?"
He nodded. "We are. Mertz and his team have stabilized desired reactions."
"Already?" I sat up and rubbed my face. "It's been, what, a few hours?"
Gerry blinked at me. His eyes slowly panned around the room before he sat back. A low chuckle slipped out of him. "It's been days, Axel. Days."
Days? No, it couldn't be. It had to have been hours. I saw Riley, I changed, and Mertz and his team scooped me up. I was still wearing the—oh, I wasn't in the same clothes.
I passed my hands over a white tee with gold trim.
"Jonathan's clothes really fit you." Gerry smiled.
Lifting my gaze, I met Gerry's softened gaze. "What made you..." I passed. I wasn't sure how to phrase the question. How could you ask about the death of a young man? Gerry had done it; he told me so himself. That was a topic that could never heal. It would always be a fresh wound.
"What made me kill my son?"
I gulped. I didn't have to ask. He was going to tell me. So, I nodded.
He sighed. "We didn't always know about how this infection worked. Jonathan got sick like everyone else, and then..." He shrugged, gaze passing off to the side. "He started changing. It would be after hanging out with his friends, but he'd come home covered in blood, in pain, whispering weird things."
Gerry closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. "One night he didn't change back."
"Your son stayed," I looked at my hands and stretched my fingers, "a zombie?"
Gerry nodded.
"We can stay that way?"
"If you come in contact enough, yeah." He relaxed his arms on his knees. "Turned out Jonathan and his friends thought it would be cool to cross the wall. Each of them changed, too, some slower than others."
With my tongue pressed into my cheek, I processed what he said. But I knew I was still missing most of the picture. "I'm assuming one of them said something, huh?"
Again, he nodded. Then he nervously laughed. "If Jonathan hadn't tried to rip my face off, I would've thought all of those boys were crazy."
Rip his face. His son tried to rip his face off.
Gerry stood, pushing up from his seat. I watched as he turned for the door at the end of the room. "You killed your son because he was going to kill you."
"No." Gerry wrapped his hand around the doorknob. "I killed him to save him from this life, because if I didn't, the world would."
What?
He looked back at me. "Coming? I think Mertz would want to see ya."
*
Every part of this building was clean, white, and sterilized. Plastic covered some of the walls, The halls echoed with our steps and as we walked down them, only two people walked past us; a man and a woman with clipboards in their hands. They glanced at me but didn't say a word. I had to look back and watch them as I followed Gerry.
A door opened. When I looked back, Gerry had pushed one open at our right. I blinked, completely lost. "We're going in there?" I asked.
"Mhm." Gerry shifted aside so I could walk into the room. Mertz was inside, at the far end of the room. There was a table in front of him and on top of that was a microscope. He had focused on it, playing with the dials before turning around. Gerry shook his head and laughed. "Still busy, Mertz? I brought Axel."
Mertz adjusted his glasses and smiled. "Oh, Axel! It's been a while. I hoped a month on IV hasn't been too hard on you."
"A month?" I blinked and looked at Gerry. "You said it's been days."
"It has." Gerry clicked his teeth. "You didn't ask how many, though."
He had me there. But also, it wasn't right. If he'd told me it had been so long, I would've moved with more urgency. A day or two—fine, everything had just gotten started. But a month? What had I missed? Was the government involved now? Were the 'infected,' and Riley still at the warehouse?
"Okay." Sliding past Gerry, I walked toward Mertz and his microscope. There was the test glass underneath the scope. A small light brightened it. "Have you figured it out yet?" I glanced at the doctor.
Mertz nodded, pointing at his microscope. "I have. We've created a vaccine that eradicates the virus from the blood cells. If you look in here, you can see what's happening—"
"A microscope can show me all of that?" My jaw dropped slightly.
"An electron microscope," he lightly laughed, "yes it can. Go on and take a look."
A lot could happen in a month, I guess. I looked back at Gerry, right as he closed it, before I turned back at Mertz tools. The microscope was cool when I touched it. Was I nervous when I hovered over it, peering into the little hole? Yes. I didn't know what I was going to see.
Moving close to the microscope, I peered through the lens. I saw the plate beneath it, highlight by the tiny beam of light.
"The red and brown you see are your infected cells," Mertz said.
I glanced at him. "This is me?"
He nodded. And I looked back at the glass.
"Now, I'm going to drop the base of the vaccine on the glass and you can see what happens."
I waited. I watched as Mertz moved a small dropper in the way. Three drops of clear liquid hit the red. Immediately, the brown dispersed until it broke apart and faded away.
Blinking, even though I didn't fully understand what I saw, I had to admit, I was enthralled. This was it. A cure. A chance to be normal.
Pulling away from the microscope, I looked at Mertz. "Have you tested it yet?"
"This process takes some time, Axel. Maybe a year or so, but—"
"No." I bit my tongue. "I can test it. Let me do it."
Let me have this chance.
"Axel," Mertz sighed, "you've been asleep for a month to help with your recovery. There's no guarantee that—"
I faced him, tapping my fingers on the table. Swallowing my nerves wasn't enough. I wasn't dumb. I knew this took time. But time wasn't an option we had; the damage was done. Everyone outside the walls needed our supplies more than we did. They needed this cure more than we did.
"Follow me in a van again," I said. "It worked last time."
Gerry stood beside us. He tapped his foot as he listened and observed. Then chimed in, "We barely got you out of there the last time."
"You almost bit her, Axel," Mertz added.
"Nah," I chuckled and stepped back, "y'all just took too long to get out of that van."
"You raised your hand for one minute," Gerry said. "We didn't know if that was a signal."
I shook my head. "It was more than a minute."
Mertz pursed his lips. "It wasn't, but the fact that you think it was means—"
"Means that we should try," I snapped. I wasn't going to back down. It had to be on my face. The idea that this cure could work, that it could break that wall between us and the others outside the wall; we needed to take that chance.
After a minute, Gerry sighed and tossed a hand in the air. "Just give it to him."
"Gerry, we can't." Mertz shook his head. "I wouldn't be a doctor if I just administered it in this state."
"But you will, because if you were as noble as you think you are, you wouldn't be hiding possibilities from people and keeping the world in the dark." I extended my arm and tapped it with two fingers. "Let's break that silence."