Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [56]
I lifted my hand to my face and felt swollen cuts across my left cheek and a painful line of stitches near my ear on the same side. There was a mirror near the bed and I grabbed it to see. I groaned.
I was pretty much a mess and not even a hot one. My face was puffy, bruised, and scattered with scratches that I guess must have happened when I banged my face on the window. I vaguely recalled a crash of glass at some point during the accident.
“Now, do you want to tell her what you did when you found us?” Dave asked.
I put the mirror down and looked at the two men. Dave was still standing next to me, not looking at Kevin, but his entire body was laced with undeniable tension and fury. As for the good doctor, he had backed up and was standing behind my husband. In that moment, he looked like he wanted to bludgeon him with whatever was at hand. Currently it was just a clipboard, which was sort of a funny idea.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly when a full two minutes had passed without a word from either one of them. “Did something happen after the accident that I need to know about?”
“When I approached the vehicle, I checked on you—” Kevin started.
Dave spun around, fists clenched at his sides and eyes wild with anger. “After that, asshole! What the fuck did you do after that?”
Kevin hesitated, but his gaze never left David’s. “Seeing that the zombie was almost entirely free from his binds and that he was threatening both the child and David, who were pinned by the wreckage, I injected him with a serum.”
“A serum?” I repeated, watching the two men in confusion. My brain was still foggy and I didn’t really get what was going on.
“He knocked the fucker out with some kind of drug, Sarah,” Dave snapped.
I drew back with a shake of my intensely painful head that I immediately regretted. As I sucked in a breath and touched my skull, I said, “N-No, that’s not possible. We’ve tried all kinds of sedatives since the outbreak, from Luminal to horse tranqs to fucking heroin. They just don’t work on the dead.”
“Well, this one did.” Dave’s voice was dangerously soft and almost gentle, but his expression was anything but. He looked ready to kill. “The zombie went down like he’d been shot.”
“How do you know he wasn’t dead?” I asked. “Maybe he took a blow to the skull in the wreck that put him down.”
Dave arched a brow. “He isn’t dead. His hands kept moving, his lungs kept filling even though the dead asshat doesn’t need to breathe to live. He was still living dead, Sarah. Just down for the count.”
“How?” I breathed in utter disbelief as I stared at Kevin again. “How is that possible?”
The doctor sighed slightly. “You’re correct when you say it isn’t possible. At least not traditionally. Normally the infected system doesn’t allow for distribution of a sedative. The blood no longer flows since the host is dead, rendering drugs of any kind ineffective.”
“Then how did what you did work, Doc?” Dave insisted.
Kevin glared at him. “I admit, I’ve done some testing using the head specimens in my lab. I developed a sedative that uses the zombie virus itself to drive forward to the brain of the infected.”
I stared. “You use the zombie virus on zombies?”
He nodded. “It’s a remarkable agent—”
Dave interrupted him with a snort. “You would think so.”
Kevin ignored him, though his jaw tightened. “—it’s almost totally self-driven. It doesn’t require a beating heart to make its way to the brain.”
I blinked. “Th-That’s remarkable,” I said with a smile over Dave’s head at him.
He smiled back. “Thank you.”
Dave was less impressed. “Before you start sucking his dick over this wonderful invention, I have a question, Doc. How long have you had this miracle serum in your possession?”
I stared at Kevin. To my surprise he was going pale, his eyes wide and filled with something like guilt merged with intense and righteous anger.
“Well?” I asked, my voice as soft as Dave’s, though less accusatory.
“I came up with the formula about a month ago.”
“He had this miracle the entire time we’ve met with him