“Dude, I’m sorry,” Paul said, almost crying.
“For what? It was an accident.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so fucked up.”
“Nobody died, man.”
“We would have, if not for you.”
“I guess that makes me a hero,” Mike said. Paul knew he was kidding but kidding or not, it was the truth.
“I guess it does.”
“Dude, you’re embarrassing me, and you need to be quiet for a while. I think I’ve found a way to move things with my mind.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope, try it man. You’re on the same shit as I am.”
The remainder of the night went quietly as Paul and Mike tried to move things around their room with mind control. It was an unsuccessful experiment, but thoroughly enjoyed by both.
***
Paul was still staring deeply at the candle; half of it had burned. “Four hours, I can’t have too much time left. I sure wish I could get on WebMD and see what the symptoms were, so I’d know when to take myself out…to the disco!” He laughed. “Okay let me run down everything I’m feeling. My right ankle twinges and my left foot burns a little, my eyes feel like someone is hanging barbells on them, my mouth tastes like dry cotton and…that’s about it. No fever, no craving for brains. Can the virus not survive outside the host? Come on, how long would it have taken the bullet to go from its head to my foot? That can’t be it. Was the bullet too hot for the virus to survive?” Hope, which was at an all time low in Paul, surged. “It’s a pathogen right? How hot was the bullet? It’s got to be some absurdly high temperature, right? Maybe it cooked it! I friggin’ might be alright.” Paul thought about getting up and doing a jig, but even in his painkiller-addled mind, he knew that to be the bad idea that it sounded like.
Chapter Fourteen – Mike Journal Entry 9
“What are you doing, Mike?” Gary shouted from a window he had just opened.
“He’s been bit,” I said. At this point, I was full on crying.
I watched as Gary’s head dropped. The zombies who had previously been at the front door began to quickly move to the sound of Gary’s voice. I was just so sick of it all. The pressure of everything was taking its toll. My friend was dying because of some stupid idea I had of giving Eliza a black eye. Even if I had succeeded in killing the bitch, it wouldn’t have been worth the price of my friend.
“What are you going to do?” Gary asked. He was obscured by the zombies, but his words were not.
Just stop!! I screamed in my head. The zombies by the window didn’t move away, but they did stop jostling in their ever earnest need to eat us.
“Wow, that was weird,” Josh said, I guess from behind Gary. “They look like they’re frozen.”
“Mike, what’s going on?” Gary asked, but I barely heard it as I looked over to BT, whose spasms had stopped. He wiped his lip, and then began to stand up. I looked up into his eyes as he got to his full stature.
“You alright?” I asked him, fearful of his answer.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “The pain stopped.”
“Stopped? That’s the word you’d use to describe what happened?” I asked him, a glimmer of hope beginning to flower.
“I guess. I can’t think of a better way to describe it. One second, I was in such intense pain, I couldn’t think, and the next I wasn’t. What’s going on?” he asked. Then he looked at the grin, which I think was spreading across my face.
“I think I’ve gone two up on the lifesaving competition,” I told him.
Horror showed in his eyes. “No way!” he sputtered out. “I just killed fifteen zombies with a damn baseball bat! I think I just saved your ass, right then! At worst, making us even.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was never really in danger. The closest I came to getting hurt was when part of his bat almost hit me. “Fine. I’ll give you that one, although I might lodge a formal protest.”
“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked, picking up on my now good mood. It was hard not to. I had just been holding a gun to his head and now I was smiling like it was Christmas day and I was seven years old.
“I’ll explain it to you when we get in the house. Come on, my friend.”
Within a few moments, we were at the door having a rather heated, one-way discussion with Mary. She was doing most of the yelling and we were doing most of the listening.
“Was he bit?” she asked for maybe the umpteenth time.
“Well technically, yes,” I answered her in kind.
“Well then, didn’t I already tell you that you cannot bring him in?” Her pitch elevated each time she asked the question in the hopes that it would finally register with us on some level.
“His name is BT,” I told her.
“Don’t!” she yelled even louder. I can’t imagine how it must have echoed in that small house. She was making my ears ring and I was on the other side of a thick steel door. “I do not want to know what his name was.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve stopped it. He won’t become a zombie now.”
“Holy shit!” she yelled. “Do you see that?”
BT and I looked around, thinking there must be some new threat.
“I think I just saw a fat pig flying!” she continued.
“Hilarious, Mary. I’m telling you he isn’t in any imminent danger of turning into a zombie.”
“Imminent?” BT asked quietly.
I shushed him with my hand. “I’ll explain later.”
“Imminent?” he asked again.
“Gary, could you please tell her?” I asked my brother through the door.
“Tell her what, Mike? I wouldn’t even know what to say, and besides this is her house.”
“Come on Captain Fix-It, tell me how you stopped a virus once again with your mind control.” Mary was taunting me with a sneer in her voice.
“Did you see the zombies by your bedroom window?” I asked her.
“She’s nodding her head,” Josh said for his silent mother.
“Why do you think they just stopped attacking?” I asked, trying a different avenue.
“They’re just asleep or something. Zombies sleeping doesn’t mean that you’ve learned how to cure people from a zombie bite,” she said.
“I never said anything about a cure,” I told her.
“I’m not cured?” BT asked quietly.
“Mary, please, I need to get his wound cleaned out and a quiet place to think about this.”
“Why don’t you just fix his germs along with the virus, or whatever the hell it is?”
“Mary, I’m not a doctor.”
“But yet, you’ve somehow managed to stop zombieism.”
There was that sneer again; it was infuriating. “It’s not like that. I told you. I was given some sort of link to them and I have some moderate control, if they are nearby.”
“How nearby?” BT asked. “I mean, do I have to go into the bathroom with you now?” BT asked, looking completely mortified.
“I shouldn’t have even let you in! You jeopardized my entire family.”
She was right, anyone around me was in more trouble just for being in proximity. I couldn’t argue that point.
“What if I can guarantee you that I can control a zombie if it is around me?” I asked, but Mary didn’t respond.
“She’s listening,” Josh said.
“Meet me back by the bedroom window.”
“What are you going to do?” Gary asked.
“Just hand me some rounds through the windows,” I told him.
The six zombies were right where I had left them. Gary dropped the rounds out the window, not wanting to expose any part of himself, I couldn’t blame him.
I loaded my rifle up. “You guys might want to cover your ears and turn away.” Nobody immediately moved to do either of those things until I placed a round dead center in the forehead of the closest zombie. Mary was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear anything, at least not until the fifth zombie fell, leaving one zombie standing.