Of Tomb and Cradle

I think if people would have gotten over their issues and actually

worried about fighting the real enemy, we could have stopped this

madness over a year ago. Millions of lives could have been saved.

Those re-animated bodies out there just eat and stumble about. How

in the hell could they have managed to take over most of the world

without some help from the living. I wonder how many more years

will slip by before we stop squabbling and start retaking our planet?

Oh wait, I have a better question. How many of us will even be left

by then, if any at all? .

-Still on the Air with Ray McClendon, 2012 AD

Part 2

"Lindsey."

The void.

"Lindsey!"

And then there was light.

The light of her bedroom lamp, to be exact. She was back in her old trailer, back when things had begun to fall apart. She was starving, and locked in her room. The banging and thumping continued, but not directly outside of her door. Apparently, her brother and father had forgotten she was in there. They were hungry, very hungry - but too stupid to figure out how to leave their trailer.

Doorknobs...high-tech shit.

Lindsey was also hungry, but she preferred that what she ate was already dead and cooked. She had not had anything to eat for nearly a week, and desperation was beginning to set in. Thirst had been managed, for she had at least been able to get water out of the bathroom adjoining her room.

Another loud thump came from somewhere on the other side of the trailer. One of them had more than likely fallen over...again. They were away from her door, which meant she might have a fighting chance. She would have to go out there, run for the loaded rifle hanging from the gun rack in the living room, and fight for her life.

Part of her realized that she was reliving an all too familiar moment of her past, but her behavior was nothing more than that of a thirteen year old girl who was scared out of her wits. How many hours had she stood in front of her door, pacing back and forth? How long did it take her to summon up the courage to open it?

Finally, her hand reached for the knob and began turning it. The unlocking mechanism clicked with the punctuation of a tolling bell. She still had time to lock it again and just sit and wait.

Wait? Wait for what?

No one had come for her, and no one would. If she had just run shortly after her two family members had been brought to unlife, they might never have bothered her. At that time, people had not known when exactly the undead would become hungry and begin feeding on people. She had not wanted to take any chances, so she had stayed locked in her room.

"Welcome to their world, my dear." Lindsey spun around and saw a familiar person sitting on her bed. His throat was a gory mess, and although she could not see the back of his head, Lindsey was certain there would be a bullet hole there.

It was Kenneth.

He stood up and walked over to her and for a wonder, his manner was not the clumsy shuffle of a reanimated corpse. In fact, he seemed rather graceful as he wrapped an arm around her. He opened her bedroom door with his other arm, revealing a hallway. Her brother Jamie was staring blankly at a frisbee. Her father was standing next to him, also enthralled by the object. They both looked up at Lindsey with stupid shock, just as she remembered them doing.

"Just walk on by them, hon. They won't try to stop you. In fact, you won't even need to grab a rifle like you did before. You are on borrowed time, and eventually they will catch you. We will catch you. GIVE US OUR WORLD YOU FUCKING-"

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!" Lindsey screamed out, shoving the nurse away with a force that sent the older woman falling on her ass. And what a large ass at that.

As Lindsey's mind focused on her new surroundings, she saw where she was. Her hand went up to her shoulder where she could feel a bandaged wound. What in the hell good would a bandage do her? How many days did she have left? Three? Two? How long was she out? Shouldn't her body be in the throws of the deathening? Her joints flexed smoothly without the slightest hint of stiffness. Maybe she had been drugged to relax the muscles?

"Why hasn't anyone shot me yet?" Lindsey heard herself say as she became gradually more alert.

"There won't be any need for that, sugah," the nurse said. She looked to be in her mid-forties, and she probably had made a point not to miss a single meal during those years. For someone to be so obese while others were starving - having to go on foraging missions in land crawling with the undead - seemed almost like an act of treason against humanity.

"And why is that? I have rights, damn you!" Lindsey had a small tattoo above her heart. It was simply a tear drop. The symbol had come to mean that if the wearer is found bitten - and with such a tear drop - she is to be killed quickly and as painlessly as possible. The tear drop went back to the early days before things had completely fallen apart, back when hospitals were still jammed with bite victims who clung to the hope that they would not fall to the deathening. The only successful treatment was amputation if the bite had been inflicted on a limb, but by the time people reached the hospital, the infection would have already spread enough to make such an act useless. So, many young men and women began wearing a simple mark that cut through all the bullshit. Of course, these days, people were liable to shoot an infected person with or without the teardrop. Hope had all but ebbed away.

"Perhaps Dr. Kellinger should speak to you. An explanation is necessary."

"You're damned right it's necessary! Give me a service pistol and I'll take care of it myself. You aren't going to just sit and let me become one of them! Hell no! I ain't your fucking guinea pig!" Lindsey screamed, her bottom lip quivering with anger and fear combined. The nurse only turned and hurried out the door. At least she was going to get the doctor. He would have some answers, and if he didn't, she still had the option of throwing herself from a window. She had to be at least three stories up.

After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was a mere two minutes, the doctor entered the room. The nurse stood out in the hallway and peered in anxiously. Lindsey had a sure bet that if she tried to make too much of a fuss, the overweight nurse would have a nice syringe full of artificial sleep at a moment's notice. Lindsey, being damned sure to control her emotions, put on her best poker face and prepared herself for whatever story the doc would try to feed her.

"Lindsey Carson," the doctor began. "I was hoping we could have avoided such an outburst on your behalf, but understandably, you have your reasons to be upset. Hello, my name is Doctor Kellinger."

"Well, Doctor," Lindsey cleared her throat before continuing. "If we both understand each other so well, why have I not been laid to rest?"

"My dear soldier," oh boy, Lindsey thought. He's about to get melodramatic. "You have no idea how long I have been wanting to utter these words: I have a strong reason to believe that you will recover."

"W-what?" Lindsey's lip began to quiver yet again, this time from an endless amount of various emotions. This is great! Is he kidding me? Recover? A cure?! Am I cured?? Is he lying? What's his agenda? Carefully, she summoned the proper words together to form a complete sentence without going into unintelligible babble. He could be fucking with her. Oh yes. Doctors did things like that from time to time, and if the military found out, those doctors usually ended up as corpse food. "How good of a chance do I have of recovering, doctor? I have never heard of anyone making it more than three days after..."

"And you are right, but we have been working. Very hard. For twenty years, we have searched for an answer to this plague, and we think we have finally found it."

"You used me for an experiment," Lindsey said, but not as icily as she wanted to. "That happens to be illegal under Martial Code 201-A- "

"Yes, I am aware of the law, my dear, but I am also aware of my oath as a doctor and my responsibility to my patients. I'll be damned if I will continue to watch this plague continue any further."

"You said this cure might work. I don't base my life on a maybe or might-be."

"Well, look at the facts: we have stopped this disease in every laboratory test so far. We administered your treatment more than twenty-four hours ago, and blood tests came up negative. Look at yourself. You have yet to come down with a single symptom. You aren't deathening. Your joints and muscles are as good as new, and your mind seems to be somewhat sharp." Lindsey frowned at that little comment. Somewhat? Ha! "Compare that with the scores of victims you and I have both seen for the past couple of decades and tell me we aren't onto something."

Lindsey was at a loss of words. She had wondered the same thing upon awakening from her nightmare. She did not feel out of sorts in any negative way whatsoever, and moreover, she felt better physically than she had before being bitten. "Maybe you are onto something."

Doctor Kellinger cocked an eyebrow and gave her a quirky smile. "You don't trust us, do you?" That was a question that had to be answered carefully. The Affiliation of Science and Medicine was not as strong as the Army and Defense Force, especially not after the bulk of their security service had been purged during the military coup, but Lindsey would have to be a total fool to believe that they had not been quietly rebuilding.

"As long as we keep in mind that helping people is our collective goal, I am sure we can get along just fine."

"That is my fondest wish as well, Ms. Carson." His face revealed nothing. Lindsey was frightened to see someone not entirely on her side who had a better poker face than she ever had.

The silence generated between the two of them was deafening. Where did they go from there?

Before either of them could break the awkward silence, an Army officer stepped into Lindsey's room. The nurse dared not tell him where he could not go. Lindsey did not know if that comforted her or not.

The doctor turned and smiled at the newcomer. "This is our first volunteer for the plague vaccine. Captain.. Uhmmm..Daniels, am I right?" The forty-ish looking captain nodded with a half smile before speaking.

"The Army - not to mention humanity as a whole - is very interested in this miracle cure."

Lindsey felt a little relieved that she was not the first person to be experimented on. She wondered if Captain Daniels had truly volunteered, or had been ordered by his superiors to volunteer. "Pleased to meet you, sir."

"And it is a pleasure to meet you, militia member. From what I have read," by that he meant some dossier that held every detail of her life, "and from your confirmed kill-count on the day you became a casualty, I must admit that I am glad we got to you on time."

"Thank you, sir. If this cure is real, I am glad you got to me on time as well."

"Well, enough of the formalities," the captain switched tracks. "Down to business. You and I should both be immune to the plague, so we need to put it through the ropes."

Now, Lindsey a little disturbed. "You mean get bitten...again?"

"Well, not exactly. But what we do need is to go on active missions together in corpse-laden territory. We have a strong reason to believe that our undead friends might bite off a little more than they can chew." That was a rather stupid pun, Lindsey mused. "Besides, we need to provide for ourselves and the civilian population, so that means we need as many able-bodied soldiers out foraging."

"So, what good is immunity to a plague when one has to worry about being completely eaten? In case you haven't noticed, they tend to not stop after one bite." Yes, he was an officer, but she was a soldier of the militias. The Defense Force was not as weak as the Affiliation when it came down to standing against the Army. They needed each other to hold back the zombies.

"Well, that's the glory of our cure," the doctor interjected. "If one of them bites into you, in theory, they will wish they had not."

"So, I taste bad now?" Lindsey asked.

"Not by looking at you." The captain smirked. Lindsey rolled her eyes.

"You know what I meant." She was thirty-three years old, and had managed to keep in shape, and she had learned to live with the looks and comments from her comrades.

"Err...yes," The doctor continued. "Due to the fact that we are discussing classified information, I cannot go into too much detail, so I will just brief you on the rumors you might have heard. The plague does not classify as either bacteria or viral. It is both and neither at the same time. Science often debated on whether a virus is alive or dead, well this baby has per-plexed us even more. It's close to a virus in how it behaves, yet the way it can manipulate live or dead cells - turning the live ones into dead ones - and then making these animated structures work as a collective, is just mind boggling. It should be impossible, but as we all know, it has been a grim reality for the past twenty years."

"So, if it's so damned mind boggling, how did you find a cure?"

"Well, that is classified. What I can tell you is that we have learned to turn your average garden-variety virus into a weapon that combats the deathening on a cellular level."

"And which virus did you use on me?" Lindsey hoped she did not have herpes or something now.

"Oh, you do not have to worry about that. You see, our designer virus carries no sickness inducing elements. It does, however, carry instructions that make it the most advanced creation ever made by humanity."

"Alright. I think I know all I need to know." Lindsey looked up at the Captain and asked: "So, when do we get on with this?"

"Well, how do you feel?" Asked Captain Daniels.

"Not bad. In fact, I feel quite energetic."

"I've noticed the same thing about myself, soldier. Maybe it's just that I am starting to gain a sense of hope." Lindsey thought about that for a second. Was it hope, or was there more to the cure than they were told? Maybe she needed to ask a few more questions after all. She decided against it, however; knowing too much could be a dangerous thing indeed.

Lindsey threw the covers off her bed and swung her legs over the side. Upon standing, she looked for her clothing. That's when she realized that her shirt had been ruined from her last encounter with the undead.

"Soldier, I brought along a fresh uniform for you. I remembered that your clothes were ruined from... your last mission."

Lindsey managed a smile. "Thanks, Captain." The only time she wore a uniform was when she really had to have one, although many militia members chose to wear military style khaki without any qualms whatsoever. Not Lindsey, though. She was a civilian first and a soldier second - out of necessity.

The Doctor motioned for the nurse. "If Brenda will be so kind as to bring your new uniform in, we'll get out of here so you can change and be off on your way."

When finally given privacy, Lindsey took off the ridiculous medical robe and examined herself in the mirror. She had lost weight, by the look of her body. Not surprising considering the fact that she had been unconscious for over twenty-four hours, and thanks to the drought, the collectivized farmland had been coming up short, which meant soldiers had to forage for themselves and the civilians. She had seen lean times before, so it was not anything new. In fact, Lindsey kind of liked how trim her body looked. It made her appear healthier...in better shape.

To be completely honest, it made her look a little younger.