Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [85]
“Let me do this!” I screamed at Barnes. “Don’t you want to know if it works on humans?”
The doctor chuckled. “Oh, it does. I’ve tested it many times before. On both fully infected subjects and on those who haven’t yet turned. It was the long-infected subjects I hadn’t played with yet. Do you know what happens once a person goes full zombie?”
He didn’t wait for me to ask.
“It turns out they lose most of their brain cells almost instantly. So if I wait for you to return him to normal until after he’s become the living dead, then I get to watch you both suffer.”
I stared at him. Barnes looked perfectly serious and my stomach dropped. The idea that Dave could be saved, but would still be irrevocably compromised, made my hands shake.
“Why?”
“You ruined my research,” he said and then he lifted his hand. “And you took my thumb. And I have worked too hard and for too long to give it all up for—”
He didn’t get to finish. As he started into what looked to be a long, villainous monologue that wouldn’t end until Dave did, there was the explosion of rapid gunfire behind him.
Barnes’s eyes went wide with shock and disbelief before he tipped forward and landed face first on the floor. The two holes in the back of his head told the story.
Behind him was The Kid, holding a smoking gun. Tears streamed down his face.
“Fix him!” he demanded, motioning to Dave with the barrel of his gun. “Hurry!”
I jammed the needle into Dave’s arm and depressed the plunger. He sucked in his breath and stiffened beneath me. His head began to twitch and he grimaced as whatever I’d put into him moved through his bloodstream.
The Kid lowered his weapon and we both watched. Waited. Finally, Dave opened his eyes. And they were green, not black. Not red. Not filled with a desire to overtake and feed.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice was normal, not strained anymore or garbled by growing infection.
“Hi,” I whispered as I moved toward him.
“I’m okay,” he said softly.
With a sob, I dropped down and hugged him as hard as I could. “You’re okay.”
Fake it ’til you make it. Just make it.
We stayed at the lab for over a week. Long enough to bury Barnes (for The Kid’s sake, if nothing else) and ensure that the “cure” that had saved David wasn’t temporary.
But after lunch on the seventh day, The Kid took us up the elevator and we all stepped into the bright, warm sunlight. Dave and I stared as Robbie motioned toward the same SUV we’d been carried in just a few days later.
“Take it,” he said softly. “You earned it.”
I spun on The Kid with a gasp. “Take it? What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “You can’t stay here forever.”
Dave nodded as he clutched his still-bandaged hand against his chest. The wound was slow to heal, but it was healing.
“That’s true, but when we leave you’re coming with us.”
Robbie looked at us, looked at the SUV, and I could see a big part of him wanted to do just that. But another part, a part that was more man than boy, hesitated.
“There’s a lot of dangerous shit in this lab.” He smiled as he looked at me. “Sorry, language. And there’s a lot of good research that can’t just be stopped.”
I stared at him. “And you want to keep that research going?”
He nodded. “Someone has to.”
“Honey, you’re so young,” I whispered. “We can’t just leave you here.”
The Kid smiled at me, wry and knowing and suddenly I felt like the child.
“I-I always knew what he was doing,” he said softly.
“You did?” Dave asked in disbelief. “He sort of implied he kept you away from the worst of it.”
“He tried, but man, adults are stupid sometimes.” Robbie laughed, but his voice cracked. “Even my so-called brilliant dad. He thought he was sheltering me, but I hacked into the surveillance camera logs months ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. What The Kid had seen… I couldn’t imagine.
He shrugged. “No, I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Dave asked with a confused shake of his head.
The Kid looked out over the desert.
“I should have stopped him before… I just… I was just too afraid