Chapter 30
Elliott opened his eyes and found that he was suspended in mid air. A bright white light hovered in the distance in front of him. He was enveloped in a complete nothingness. Just an empty white space, with that brilliant bright glow beckoning him ahead. Where am I, he thought. Is this death? Is this what you see when you turn into a zombie? Was he destined to spend the rest of eternity trapped inside this void?
His eyes came into focus a few minutes later, and it became apparent where he was. He wasn’t in purgatory, and he wasn’t trapped inside the body of an undead being. He was in a well-lit but rather ordinary hospital room. The feeling gradually returned to his limbs once his blood resumed circulation, and he could tell that he was lying in an uncomfortable bed. The bright light he had seen was nothing more than the sun reflecting off a window and shining directly into his eyes.
He tried sitting up, but soon discovered what a massive ordeal this was. Every ounce of his strength was gone. He had lost so much weight that he barely recognised his own body. His eyes struggled to remain open for more than a few seconds, as if his eyelids had heavy weights attached to them.
A passing nurse saw that he was awake. She quickly alerted her superiors, then came into the room. She helped him sit up in the bed and made him as comfortable as she could.
He tried speaking, but found even this to be exhausting. He could only manage a few words before running out of breath.
His brain was working overtime trying to figure out what was going on, rearranging his fragmented memories into some cohesive narrative. The job out at Graves End. Everything going wrong. Getting bitten. Feeling his life slowly slipping away in the car on the drive back with Miles. The crushing realisation that he was about to die.
But he wasn’t dead. That much he was sure of. He knew he still had a pulse thanks to the sharp spasms of pain he felt in his head with every beat of his heart. He knew he was breathing by the way his ribs ached with every intake of breath.
Two more nurses entered the room, followed by a tall bearded man in his fifties. Elliott thought he recognised him, but he couldn’t remember from where.
The bearded man told Elliott that it was good to see he was finally awake. Elliott tried to reciprocate the greeting, but could only manage a soft groan. The man could see that he would have to do most of the talking. He introduced himself as Dr. Martin Bishop, the director of operations at the International Biodefence Laboratory. Elliott now remembered seeing him on TV once or twice, usually in a heated debate with some pharmaceutical industry mouthpiece regarding what action needed to be taken to find a cure for the infection.
Dr. Bishop began with the good news. They had been running tests on him ever since he was brought in more than two months ago, and it looked like he was going to be okay.
Two months? How was that possible? It only felt like ... well, Elliott didn’t know what it felt like. Graves End seemed like it had only just happened, although it also seemed like it had occurred in another lifetime. Elliott’s brain was in danger of crashing due to information overload.
Dr. Bishop then provided him with a quick rundown of what had happened since. Elliott was brought into the hospital the day after he returned from Graves End. He had suffered a zombie bite to his right shoulder, a scenario the hospital staff had seen countless times before. There was nothing they could do except wait for him to turn.
But he never did turn.
Hours went by, and then days. He drifted in and out of consciousness, but remained fully human throughout. The doctors were baffled. They had never seen anything like it. Most people turned after an hour or two. Some might last a day, on very rare occasions. But they all turned eventfully.
Elliott was a medical marvel. He should be dead, or undead, languishing in a processing centre somewhere. But he wasn’t. He was the first known person to have been bitten and survived.
But then came the most staggering news. The doctors had analysed his blood while he was in his coma and found that not only was there no trace of the infection, but he was actually immune.
Elliott had no idea what to make of this. He didn’t know how to process any of this information. It felt like one big practical joke, or some warped, delirious dream. A moment ago he thought he was dead. Now they were telling him that the key to a cure was coursing through his veins.
But, as Dr. Bishop went on to explain, they had no idea why. The doctors all had their theories as to how this could have occurred, but they were still yet to locate several vital pieces of the puzzle. They were having to reverse-engineer everything, which was a frustrating and time consuming process. Dr. Bishop was hoping that Elliott could fill in some of the blanks.
He quizzed Elliott of a series of topics regarding the lead-up to being bitten. He asked him about his health, his diet, his lifestyle, his family history, his blood type, and if he had been taking any medication. Elliott answered as best he could, usually with one- or two-word responses, or by shaking or nodding his head.
And then, midway through this interrogation, Elliott fell silent. It was as if all the jumbled pieces of information in his brain suddenly slotted into place.
Everything started to make sense.
He remembered back to the two types of experimental medication he was taking as part of the clinical trials.
And the massive quantity of blood he’d parted with to earn some extra cash.
And those few drops of zombie blood that had been injected into him.
Elliott’s mouth fell open. It was preposterous, and yet it somehow made perfect sense.
That tiny jab of zombie blood, the thing that was meant to kill him. Could that, combined with the untested medication he was taking, have been what had saved him? Maybe it worked the same way as a flu shot – a small amount of the infection is used to fight off the disease. He would have laughed out loud if it wouldn’t have caused him to be in excruciating pain.
Elliott stared up at the ceiling. How could he possibly explain everything he had been through? The seemingly random sequence of events – from discovering Amy and Trent’s affair, to the attack at the processing centre, to the viral video, to the clinical trial, to the assault on the street, to the whole Graves End escapade – that brought him to where he was now?
He looked at Dr. Bishop and took a deep breath.