CHAPTER EIGHT
I came too. I guess. Actually, I was never passed out. But my vision and mind turned back on. I was crouched over the fallen zombie, brains in my mouth, blood all over the bottom half of my face.
I felt like my blood ran cold. Or colder, I guess I could say…
I had lost it.
I had become a zombie, fully. That was definitely scary. Not something I want to happen.
Taking control again, I ate my disgusting fill. I considered taking some to go with me for emergencies, but I didn’t feel too cool carrying around brain chunks in my pocket. I want to feel as human as possible.
The night ended, the day began with the rising sun. I watched it rise. Even though I registered all it’s panorama of color, it didn’t hit me as beautiful as it used to. It seemed a little plain now, through my zombie point of view.
As I went home, the streets were still as empty as if it were the dead of night. Lockdown in action.
I realized something that made me hurry. You see, during a lockdown, and if the zombie movement actually breaches the zombie watch, and gets to the town or city under lockdown, the zombie watch moves into the town or city. And they will find me.
I had to move.
I got to the barricaded door of my human home. I knocked. Loudly…oops.
“Alex?” a cautious inquiring voice came from within.
IF THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT TO CALL ME, my little keyboard toy pronounced electronically.
The heavy two-by-eight pins were disengaged and the door was swung open for me. Eric’s hair was smashed in a funny shape. I saw his blanket and pillow on the kitchen floor. He had slept there waiting to open the door for me. I felt quite gratified.
THANK YOU, I typed.
“Never knew that a kitchen floor could be so comfortable,” Eric said, massaging a crick out of his neck.
Dad called the doctor. The doctor had somehow convinced the police to escort him to our home to see me. I waited in my room, as dad brought the doctor and the cop in the house. Curious, I peered around the corner toward the staircase that leads to the front room. “Thank you, officer,” I heard my dad say to the cop below. “If you don’t mind, as this is family business, would you mind making yourself at home in our front room?”
I saw the cop pass by the bottom of the staircase, without looking up the stairs. He was in black zombie armor, with a riot helmet on, which he apparently decided not to take off, yet. I could understand. He also had an assault rifle slung on his back. The armored cop sat in the front room, and I heard dad turn on the front room’s large TV to the news station.
I stepped back into my bedroom and sat on the bed, waiting for dad, Eric, and the doctor, to come upstairs.
Dad and Eric stepped in. Then the doctor.
The doctor did a double take on my face, gasped, and stopped in his tracks.
“It’s okay, doctor,” my dad said quickly, “I know, I know – but talk with him, he’s totally himself.”
The doctor looked back as if to call the cop upstairs, but his gaping mouth uttered nothing, as he looked back at me, wide eyed.
“Well,” the doctor breathed out, “Alex?” he said my name to me, as if asking me if I was me.
I pulled up my keyboard toy.
YES. WELL, MOSTLY.
Don’t know quite how to answer that one anymore.
Well, the doctor took me in, checked my vital signs (there were none), and examined me.
“He’s completely transformed into a zombie,” the doctor confirmed. “Well, I guess I could say almost,” he said, studying my eyes seriously.
I shrugged and nodded. Those two motions were getting smoother and more natural, and the doctor noticed this gesture as being so.
The cop was standing in my bedroom doorway with disbelief all over his face.
Well, we had some explaining to do.
Pretty much went through what we went through with the doctor, but the cop was a little more skeptical. I could understand: he had battled zombies himself and I more than looked like the real thing.
Anyways, fast forward through the next couple days until the doctor appointment:
Word spread to the hospital the doctor was from, by the doctor’s medical report.
Then the local authorities heard of me, the zombie man, or living zombie.
I didn’t like getting hyped up so quickly, but it came in handy for the next couple of days of lockdown – the zombie watch squads of cops and soldiers were tipped off about me and recognized me, and let me go around at night, fighting (and then eating) zombies. I still had that sign slung on my back that Eric made for me.
Eventually, I got escorted to a medical facility in the city. I got to explain my entire story (summarized) through my keyboard toy. And I got a CAT scan.
The results were funny.
“Your brain,” the doctor said to me, as I sat on the CAT scan bed, “shows activity in these parts,” he pointed to several points the scanned pictures, “with only these parts shut down.”
That was actually a translation. He had a lot of technical medical mumbo-jumbo and had me lost to meanings. I saved you a mental trip.
“However, these sections of your brain are not dead and decomposing like normal (normal?); they seem intact, but just more or less indefinitely dormant.” He stood there, all his interest on the picture. “Which explains your lack of proper depth perception, and” he indicated my typing toy beside me, “your lack of speech capability. Those sections of your brain don’t currently function.”
“But I did come up with a theory explaining your particular situation, Mr. Henry,” he said, sounding pretty certain with himself. “Your epilepsy – which relates directly with the brain sort of short-circuiting – most likely created permanently these “circuits”, if you will, to various sections of the brain. So the section of the brain that is solely active in a zombie, well, in your brain, it is a bit hot-wired to the rest of your brain. This negative condition brought you a positive outcome to your zombification: your brain not fully shutting down, and so you maintaining a consciousness and so a sentient capacity. And this is a very singular phenomenon in medical history!”
Well, I was happy with the explanation.
But I wasn’t happy with his following request.
“I’d love to do some experiments on you,” the doctor said. He almost sounded kind of hungry about it.
I thought about his statement for a brief moment and my imagination went wild. Experiment. It made me feel like I was going to end up as diced bits of Alex Henry chunks all over laboratorial tables, or be suspended in a giant liquid capsule, or…
I picked up my keyboard toy.
I NEED TO GET HOME.
I looked up at him.
“Well, I don’t know if we could do that quite yet,” he retorted quietly, and rather flatly.
I had a bad feeling where this was going. I had to come up with a good one.
IT’S GETTING LATE. I AM