Thread: Eat Someone Else {PatientOne & AnnaBeth Belle}

It was good therapy to let him walk though Hannah kept an anxious eye on him and his still uncertain sense of balance. When she realized Sasha was doing the same thing Hannah rolled her eyes. What was the dog going to do, help him? Bring him a chew toy to convince Alexander to get up and play. She wished he'd put the dog back outside where she didn't have to worry about it. You sure do know a lot about them for not knowing anything about the outbreak. That was odd, like he somehow knew that brain trauma was the only way to make them Dead for Reals. Then again what wasn't odd about Alexander Night, her mysterious patient and, Hannah hated to admit it, person keeping her safe and warm and fed tonight. I'm sorry that my choice to go home wasn't the correct one. What drove me was- you know what? It doesn't matter, she said almost angrily and scooted a little to the left on the fireplace, further away from where Alexander was at the nearby table. Damned if she'd talk to him about Him. He wouldn't understand and obviously didn't care. Hannah was surprised he even had friends he cared enough about to leave clothes over for them like the ones she was wearing now. Were they alive? Did they even exist or was it one more part of her patient that didn't make sense. For a bit the only sound in the room was logs popping in the fireplace. When finally she spoke again, Hannah's voice was calm. No one knows where it started for sure. We didn't understand it at first. Thought it was something like bath salts or PCP or maybe a cerebral virus. We still don't know what causes it but we do know how it spreads. They have to bite you. Blood spatter doesn't seem to do it and we think that just being clawed doesn't either. It's, well not saliva borne because they don't have working salivary glands. We really don't know the mechanism but if they bite you, you turn. It may be two part. It presents really oddly. Once the walkers, the infected, are in an area if you die, even without being bit, you come back as one of them. But you don't turn as long as you're alive if you haven't been bit. But everyone turns after death. We, uh, we had to make sure that when patients were declared dead that we made sure they didn't come back. Mark did most of that, used the back end of a fire axe. It's a horrible sound. Hannah shivered despite the heat at her back that was almost painful. There's no cure. Mean time between infection and death is about eight hours. It varies extensively. Between death and coming back as a walker is about the same. Some do it in minutes. We don't know. She gave an aborted laugh and rubbed her eyes. There's a lot we don't know. It spread fast. Globally. CDC was working on plotting patient zeroes but there wasn't enough time and there were so many infected. It was like something out of a movie. They just kept coming and coming and we tried to treat them. Eventually we just tried to protect the patients we had and keep them alive. You're the only one we managed to save. Hannah sighed deeply and rubbed her damp hands on the jeans. There wasn't any sense of shame and she wasn't sobbing, just crying. Stress tears. The news reports showed what was going on but it was too much to take in. Like, a 9-11 every few minutes. They started bombing the major cities, thinking that would contain them. It didn't. It just killed real people faster. There were always more walkers that they didn't get. FEMA broke down. The National Guard imploded. Local fire and rescue and police were gone weeks ago. Then power and sewer stopped working and water too. Cell, internet, then we were just down to battery powered radios and all the stations went off the air almost at the same time. It was...crazy. Like it couldn't be happening. We were so used to talking to anyone, anywhere, any time and Googling stuff and looking at Yelp reviews to see if we wanted to try that new bistro and Snapchatting selfies. We don't know what is going on anywhere that we can't see. It's...medieval. Like the Black Death come again only plague victims don't rise up and bite your eyes out. Hannah blew out her breath and tried to shake the horror of it all out of her mind. That would probably never happen but maybe she could forget some of it by focusing on the here and now. Where are we sleeping tonight? I need to be near you in case something happens and I'll need to check your vitals every few hours.