When he awoke three hours later in the hospital, he was hooked up to a variety of machines, each with its own distinctive trills and beeps. Mike was asleep in the bed next to him and Dennis was nowhere in sight.
“Mike? You awake?” Paul asked, barely above a whisper. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the all-consuming pain that it had been in the car.
“Dude, they gave me Diadlin. If I open my eyes, the room spins like a top on a playing record,” Mike said.
“Is it any good?” Paul asked.
“It’s unreal, I’ve tripped with less intensity.”
“Where’s Dennis?” Paul asked, concerned that possibly their friend hadn’t made it.
“I think he went to get some potato chips.”
“Huh?”
“He’s fine. Got a knot on his head; that’s about it. I think he’s going home tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“Compound fracture on my left arm, no baseball for me this spring. But if they keep giving me this shit, I won’t really care.”
“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.”