Cured [ManxMan]

Chapter Thirteen

I blinked my eyes open, yawning and bringing one hand up to rub at my eyes. Waking up and having to come back into full awareness was still a strange feeling after four years of being a zombie incapable of sleep.

Sleep crusties rubbed away, I dropped my hand to glance across the room, but Mattie was not on his mattress in the corner. I froze, blinking at the empty space. I couldn't remember the last time I woke to find Mattie gone, he left so seldom. Where could he have gone? Had he finally given up on me? No, he was so kind the night before, had touched me, soothing my nerves until I fell back to sleep.

Soft voices drifted in from the hallway, through the cracked door, and the tension along my spine dissipated. Mattie and Kiara. They were just in the hallway talking, so they wouldn't wake me. He hadn't left me. Mattie was still here.

"He had a nightmare? If he's having trouble sleeping I can see about giving him something, but I don't know how it would react with the virus and the cure still in his system," Kiara said, worry tinging her words. I must have just missed Mattie telling her about our late-night interaction.

"It probably wouldn't have helped anyway. He used to have nightmares all the time, the drugs always just made it harder for him to wake up and figure out what was real and what was a dream. He... he told me most of his dreams are memories, and... well, some of his memories are worse than others. I'm not surprised, honestly. I should have expected this to happen earlier. His nightmares have always been... very similar. I know how to handle it, I just thought you should know." Mattie sounded tired, and I wondered if he'd been back to sleep after I woke him. Guilt curled in my gut, but with it was an almost pleasant feeling. The nightmare was horrible, but if it meant I was returning to who I was before... well, maybe it was worth it.

There was silence in the hallway, broken by Mattie. "Why did you want to speak with me?" he asked. "Surely it wasn't just to ask how Topher is sleeping."

Clothing and paper rustled, and I could almost see Kiara fidgeting with the papers on her clipboard. Finally, she sighed. "Topher's been here for two weeks now, and... well, usually I wouldn't have pushed so hard so fast, but I wanted to test the cure on more zombies, so we'll have a better idea what to expect with him, even if it is a little retroactive. So I've been sending Ajay and his team into the city more than usual for more... test subjects."

She paused, the sounds of fidgeting continuing. "And?" Mattie prodded her.

"They've brought back a dozen zombies, and I've given them all the same formulation of the cure in the same dose I gave Topher." There was a wariness in her voice when she admitted this, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know where this was going.

Mattie must have disagreed. "How are they?" he asked, almost demanded.

Kiara seemed to agree more with me. She coughed, stalling with "It may not mean anything, it's a small sample size, and there may be factors we don't understand skewing the results..." She hesitated, her words trailing off instead of continuing.

"How are they?" Mattie asked again, his tone less eager and with an edge of desperation.

"They all experienced the same symptoms Topher showed upon the initial dose, falling into a seizure within ten minutes." Her tone was clinical, detached, but I could hear the edge under it, the nerves. "Three of them didn't survive the first seizure, and another four passed before the end of the first twenty-four hours."

Absolute silence fell as the weight of those words sank in. Seven of the twelve zombies--thirteen, if you counted me--died within the first day of receiving the cure. More than half.