Winner!
Third Place Sci-Fi Winner on The Dream Awards July 2020.
What would happen if one day you were infected with a virus that ate at your brain, your skin, and all your internal organ all while you were self-aware?
Would you still feel? Want to...
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When Morgan stepped into her daughter's bedroom, the rich aroma of Frankincense filled her nose. It helped with the faint acetone malodor usually lingering from room to room. Her daughter didn't carry the smell as most zombies do. She wasn't repulsed by it, but Teal favored the sweet perfumes and not the stench many zombies carry since turning.
When she'd been human, Morgan enjoyed the scent of oils and collected massive amounts of incense and candles. She passed these gifts on to Teal when she was old enough to appreciate them. When it came to her children growing up with rancid odors, guilt followed her like a shadow, but she realized Jax wasn't sensitive to them luckily, and Teal didn't mind them.
Shimmying her posterior onto the bedding, she sat on her child's thin, sheetless mattress patting the space beside her for Teal to join her.
"Come." Morgan's voice quivered when she met her daughter's eager eyes. After eternally avoiding the conversation, she understood the inevitable had to happen. "What would you like to know?"
"Everything." Teal's breathy voice spanned between them.
Her mother chuckled exposing darkened teeth. "How about we start when your dad and I met?"
Teal nodded crisscrossing her legs, elbows on her thighs, her head rested on her hands.
"Before I begin, you need to understand I never meant to keep secrets. These are painful memories and realities I was not sure how you would handle. Worst, I didn't know how I would either," she hawked. "Javier and I met at work. We were scientists; I analyzed blood, urine, and tissue samples to detect and diagnose disease. Your father worked on treating diseases and creating vaccines for new, mutating, or rare illnesses."
Her eyes swelled; half pride, half shocked. That her parents were scholars, a shock. A veil of melancholy coiled itself around her chest and a flash of understanding emerged. The anguish her father experienced daily, became clear.
"An interesting case came to our attention one day. A man with the characteristics of a dead person moved and talked as if alive. He wouldn't eat, his sight grew sensitive to light, and his skin—became cold to the touch much like a cadaver's. Thinned and tarnished a dull grey. He had no heartbeat and lost most visceral functions."
"The first!" Teal interjected.
She gave a reassuring nod, "The first. No one knew what to do. Before they called us, many specialists were brought from all across the country, but doctors couldn't figure it. They did however determine it was a virus."
Teal was as quiet as a mouse, her face glued to her mother's.
With a mouthful of air, Morgan continued, her hands slightly moist. "The military named him X because when he was brought in, the paperwork was signed with an X. Mystery surrounded this case as if it was secret. We got blood samples but impractical, your father and I felt it necessary to go to the source. We emailed the lead doctor, who agreed based on a prior study we'd done with the Teal duck."
