Cured [ManxMan]

Chapter Ten

There was a knock at the door, Kiara letting herself in without waiting for a response, as was her habit.

It had been several days since my near-death experience, and they had settled into some feeling of normality. I hadn't had a seizure during that time, but tremors came and went, centered in my hands and arms, but sometimes spreading to my legs as well. It was an unwelcome, uncomfortable sensation to not have control of my body, but the pain had mostly passed. After a particularly long or violent tremor episode, my muscles would ache, but it felt more from overuse than the burning from before.

Kiara smiled, glancing at the corner where Mattie sat on the mattress they'd brought in for him, his guitar in his lap. He didn't look up at her entrance, continuing to pick listlessly at the strings. When she looked back to me, her smile had dimmed, but not by much; she, like me, was used to this behavior by now.

He rarely left the room or spoke to anyone. Most of his time was spent in that corner with his guitar, like a safety blanket, while he stared at nothing, lost in thought. Sometimes he would move to the chair next to me, and we conversed in fits and starts, neither speaking more than a few words at a time, usually about how I was feeling.

As she did every morning, Kiara moved over to the right side of the bed, clipboard in hand, so she could check my vitals. After the usual circuit, she turned back to me, smiling, and asked, "How are you feeling today, Topher?"

Mattie had informed her I spoke, but I had never spoken to her. It wasn't that I didn't want to, per say. I could see how much she wanted to hear me speak, so she wouldn't have to take Mattie at his word. But while the words came to me when I was alone with Mattie, they just... didn't with anyone else. Usually this question would be met with a shrug and however much of a smile I could muster, but today...

Today I had something I wanted to convey, and it wouldn't take much to do it. My stomach gurgled to punctuate my thoughts, but the other occupants of the room gave no sign they noticed. I knew hunger; as a zombie, the sensation lingered all the time, driving every action. Since I'd been here, though, and Kiara had given me the cure, the ever-present hunger had been gone.

I would have been more concerned by its reappearance, but this was not the hunger that had been my constant companion for four years. It wasn't accompanied by the desire to attack my human companions, to bite into their flesh and feel their blood running down my throat. In fact, the thought made my stomach twist with nausea. It had been so long since I'd eaten anything else, I couldn't imagine what it would feel like, but my stomach insisted it was time.

Kiara watched me, waiting for a response. As had become habit when I had to speak, I imagined what I wanted to say, how it would feel to speak it. Then I opened my mouth, and I said, "Hungry." My voice, as usual, was scratchy and soft, but it grew stronger every day.

She stilled, the smile slipping from her lips as she took a step back. I watched her through narrowed eyes, unsure why she looked so startled.

The soft sound of the guitar stopped, Mattie's voice replacing it. "Kiara? What's wrong?" He stood, setting his guitar on his mattress and moving toward us. His eyes darted between Kiara's shocked, almost fearful expression and my confused one.

"Hungry," I repeated. The word came easier this time.

Mattie did not look nearly as startled by this as Kiara, though he did get that crease between his eyebrows he got when he was thinking too hard about something. After a moment of thought, he said, "Topher, when was the last time you ate?"

Well, that had a complicated answer, and I wasn't sure how to explain that my memories as a zombie were all mushed together, making it difficult to discern exactly how long it had been. I also didn't want to get in to how I'd been surviving off of scraps for months or longer, if I could have mustered enough words to in the first place.