Episode 46: Death: Cured?

“You won’t get away with this, Mabus!” Hunter yelled, shaking his body threateningly. His ray gun was on the floor at his feet.

“Most people don’t shake like that unless they’re being physically held,” Camron growled, thrusting the rifle into the captive’s back. After entering and making the four captives freeze, Camron had circled around them so that he was behind them. Hunter didn’t respond to the thrust.

“Get away with what, exactly?” Doctor Mabus asked absently as he continued to dissect the writhing and snapping Nole.

“Well, there’s a lot!” Hunter said, stilling his body against another jab of the rifle. “You’re knocking people out…”

“We never told you that,” Joseph interjected. Nurse Lotus’s voice was still weak from being shot, but she seemed to be a little better off than she should have been. Andy was standing stock still.

“…And dissecting the undead, putting everyone alive here at risk!”

“I am trying to save everyone alive here,” Doctor Mabus mumbled idly.

“To do that, shut down the man’s brain!” Hunter screamed. Amy and Desiree gave each other a look.

Doctor Mabus paused and looked upwards, toward nowhere in particular. Nole continued to thrash on the table. “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.” He nodded curtly and returned to his cutting.

“There’s nothing to prevent!” Hunter cried out. Doctor Mabus paused again.

“You’re right,” he said after a moment. “This disease is a boon. It is the cure for death.” He smiled distantly.

Hunter frowned. “Aegrescit medendo,” he said with perfect pronunciation.

“The remedy is worse than the disease?” Doctor Mabus translated casually, smiling. “Then you agree that death is a disease.”

“No,” Andy said distantly suddenly. Hunter and Camron were both surprised to hear him speak, and so turned their heads to stare at him. He looked blankly around the room and continued. “Life is the disease,” he mumbled. Silence swept over the room.

Hunter finally broke the silence. “That wasn’t as profound as you think it is.”

“Actually,” Camron responded, “It’s pretty profound. Life is a disease; fatal and sexually transmitted.” He jabbed Hunter in the back with his rifle for good measure

“Oh for…” Hunter would have shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, but the gun in his back suggested that he not. “That is so cliché! Spent all your time on the internet before we got together, didja boss?” He spat the last word.

“Don’t take that tone, Hunter,” Camron sounded hurt for a moment. “We can still be a team.”

“No, we can’t,” Hunter sounded sad. “It wasn’t meant to be in this universe. For one thing, Lotus wasn’t with us.” Everyone in the room except for Hunter, Doctor Mabus, and Nole froze. Hunter continued talking. “I tried to tell you that. I tried to tell you a lot of things.”

Camron’s voice was filled with wonder as he interrupted. “You’re not just crazy… are you?”

“I told you. I’m an alien.” Hunter prepared to strike, but was beaten to the punch by Desiree flying through the air. Amy had thrown her with all her might directly at Camron, and she struck him. He fell to the ground and his rifle scattered out of his hands, to the one side of the room with no one in it. Hunter spun and dove at it; Camron pushed himself up and leapt towards it; Desiree cried out and held her left arm with her uninjured right; Amy dove towards Desiree whimpering a half scream; Joseph struggled to try and get up; Nurse Lotus’s chair was knocked over; Doctor Mabus ignored all and continued to dissect his subject; Nole continued to thrash in his bindings. He had no legs now. Andy stood. Hunter and Camron both pushed each other, attempting to slow the other down, at the same moment. Amy reached the wailing Desiree and lifted her up. Nurse Lotus yelped and attempted to clutch at her throat, to confirm that the searing pain she felt wasn’t connected to a new bleed, but her hands were bound to the chair. Joseph, with a roar that sounded more like a grunt, ripped his hands out of the ropes and began to untie those around his ankle. Hunter and Camron continued to struggle with each other. Desiree’s screams softened to pained moans as Amy clutched her right arm comfortingly and examined her left arm carefully. Joseph got himself free and stumbled to the floor quickly to untie Nurse Lotus. Hunter and Camron stopped fighting directly with each other and both reached for the rifle. Andy continued to stand there. A shoe came down on the rifle from the shadows and dragged it just out of reach of Hunter and Camron.

The room froze except for the thrashings of Nole and the knife of Doctor Mabus, as all eyes except for those and Andy’s scrolled up the shoe that had claimed the gun, watching the figure bend over and pick up the rifle.

Corwin smiled at them all as he straightened back up. “Time to purge evil,” he said loudly.

* * *

“Daddy, where are we going?” Dinah asked her father in that sweet little voice that always made him smile.

“Well, honey,” he tightened his grip around her lower legs to ensure that she wouldn’t fall into the disgusting “water” below. “That’s very hard to explain.”

“Well, you could try daddy? You never told us what was down the caves in the basement!” Lee stepped over a dead rat.

“Well, one of them leads to the sewers that go to the basement of the hospital! Isn't this place gross? That’s why I never let you go down there.” Dinah giggled. “The others… Well, you’ll see.”

“Oh…” Dinah whimpered a little. They were both quiet for a minute.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Doctor Ruby is dead.”

“I know,” Oswald said sadly. “He was my best friend, you know.”

“Tell me about him, daddy!”

“Jack Ruby was a great man…” Lee Harvey Oswald began.

* * *

“Okay,” Hunter said calmly, standing up very slowly. “Let’s think about this rationally.”

“Rationally,” Corwin said, “The best way to save everyone would be to kill the infected.”

“No,” Camron snapped. He too was slowly standing up. “The best way to save everyone is to cure the infection!”

“Okay, both of you make very rational points, but…”

“Quiet, alien scum!” Corwin yelled. He pointed the gun at Hunter and squeezed the trigger tightly. A bang erupted from it. A bullet erupted from it. A bullet struck Hunter in the torso. His torso seemed to wobble. Camron was the only one at the correct angle to see it become silvery…

“Kill him!” Camron screamed immediately. He began scrambling for some sort of weapon. Hunter, unfazed by the gunshot, sighed.

“This is just not a very good situation for any of us.” Corwin began to fire as much as he could.

In the meantime, activity in the rest of the room had resumed. Amy, after making sure that Desiree was not more hurt than she had been, was lowering herself to the ground carefully so as not to drop her friend in order to attain Hunter’s ray gun. Joseph had returned to untying Nurse Lotus, whose eyes were beginning to flutter as if she were going to fall asleep. Andy still stood stock still, and Doctor Mabus still sliced and examined various parts of the still-writhing Nole’s physiology. He severed the left arm at the shoulder, eliciting no direct reaction from the wolfish corpse.

“Look,” Hunter said after Corwin ran out of rounds and Camron had pushed himself to the back of the room. Before he could continue, Camron began yelling once more.

“One of the killers! He’s behind this! All this time that he’s been with us, he’s been against humanity!” Corwin grimaced in response to Camron’s words and threw the rifle drastically at the alien. It struck his neck, which shimmered silver and lined for a moment. Hunter ignored this and stared at Camron in puzzlement.

“One of the killers? Against humanity? My people would never kill humans! I can’t imagine...” A strange look crossed over his face, one that human faces are not permitted by their very arrangement to generate. “Oh, you mean… Oh, damn. I knew something was wrong when I lost contact…”

“JUST KILL HIM!” Camron screamed. “Axe to the forehead!” He began scrambling around for some sort of weapon again. Hunter looked puzzled again for a moment, and suddenly nodded vigorously.

“Yes, so, the prototypes did escape. Why did they come here, though?” He finally really noticed the two terrified men in front of him. “Oh. I should probably stop talking to myself about this in front of you two. Camron, Corwin, it would be very beneficial to everyone if you were to sit quietly right there for a little while.”

Joseph screamed in agony, startling even Doctor Mabus and Andy. Hunter spun to look, as did Amy and Desiree. Nurse Lotus had latched her teeth into Joseph’s arm. His scream continued to cut into their ears. Hunter took note of the fact that Nurse Lotus’s eyes were empty and frowned. Amy shot up and pointed Hunter’s gun at her and pulled the trigger. She cursed when nothing happened. Desiree bit her lip and, after a moment, began trying to push herself away from Amy. Amy gripped her more tightly. Andy returned to his frozen despondency. He stood in the middle of the room, doing nothing. Hunter pounced forward and jumped directly over the two girls, knocking Andy to the ground, and landing in front of Joseph and the dead Nurse.

Doctor Mabus continued to cut into the corpse of Nole; he had now severed the spine down to the fifth Thoracic Vertebrae, and Nole, despite the amputation of his arms legs and the majority of his torso, still snapped at the Doctor, gnashing his teeth. Doctor Mabus was unphased.

Corwin pressed himself farther into the shadows, trying to disappear, wishing he could remember how he had gotten so quietly into the room. Camron ran wildly around, looking for any sort of weapon. His face was screwed up into an expression of utter hatred. Two words would not leave his mind: “Betrayal” and “Kill.” With every thought of them, he became more furious.

Hunter paused to think for less than a moment, which is a very small amount of time. He screwed up his face into another expression that the human face cannot produce and thrust his right hand towards Nurse Lotus. His hand did not stop at the end of his arm and continued to extend, forming into a fist and then into a silvery, line-marked ball. It struck the Nurse in the forehead, knocking her back and detaching her from Joseph. Joseph’s scream abated and he fell to the ground, clutching at his arm where she had bit him. Hunter crouched down over him.

“Are you alright?” Hunter asked softly.

“Kill me, alien,” Joseph growled through a grimace. “I don’t care what your reason is, but kill me now. I don’t want to come back like her.” Hunter screwed up his face into still a third expression, and thought about it for what stretched on for him and the failing hunter an eternity. In objective reality, it was no more than a few minutes. Hunter’s face finally returned to human proportions and his body became solid again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, apparently to Joseph. “I’m so sorry.” He thrust his left hand towards Joseph’s forehead.

Andy had not stood up, but was still breathing.

Amy began pulling back, taking a struggling Desiree with her.

“Let me go!” Desiree screamed.

“I won’t,” Amy whispered back. “I won’t let you go.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“I don’t care. I’ll be with you until then.”

“I don’t want you to die, Amy!” Desiree lowered her voice.

“It’s probably too late for that,” Amy chuckled nervously. “I’ll hold onto you until…”

“It’s some sort of physical issue!” Doctor Mabus burst out suddenly. Nole had stopped gnashing his teeth futilely as soon as the seventh Cervical Vertebrae was separated from the rest of the spinal column. “It must be spread by virus,” Doctor Mabus said, “But the actual condition of zombism is caused by something in the spine and brain!” He grinned madly. “I’ll just need blood samples from the infected to be sure…”

A piercing scream rang out from all directions, from outside of the Hospital. Six of the seven still alive in the room covered their ears and cringed in horror. Nurse Lotus began to crawl forward, towards Hunter. Andy joined the sound.