Free Zombies! (Episode 9): The Changing of the Guard by Ivan Turner Page B

responsibility for lost lives had redoubled. So, powerless to stop Todd from continuing his cannibalistic endeavor, he slumped down against the wall and prayed that he was next.
     
    ***
     
    Heron told Alicia everything that had happened to him that day, starting with the doctor's prognosis and ending with the cure for the incurable infection. She took it well. Well, she took it silently. He supposed that if it weren't for the two fatal illnesses he had experienced that day, she'd have torn right into him. Thank heaven for fatal illnesses. Instead she controlled herself and asked if she could come see him. He told her she should do that. It would do them both good.
     
    Just before turning him over to an army of lab technicians, Luco told him that he wouldn't be able to go home that night. It didn't surprise him, but it didn't make him happy to have to hear it from her. While there was no sign of the infection, they weren't taking any chances on a reoccurrence. Heron had a penchant for reoccurrences. The techs wasted no time in putting him into the one of the full body imaging machines. There were actually two more appointments for the day but Luco had trumped them. Wherever you went in the hospital, the word zombie got you priority over everything else. The machine confirmed that the cancer was still present in the lungs and the lymph nodes and pancreas and several other parts of his body. It was just everywhere.
     
    The results were in. Cancer beats zombie plague.
     
    Luco didn't know why. Perhaps it had something to do with the way the bacteria reprogrammed the body. The cancer was an enemy it couldn't allow to exist but fighting weakened it so much that his own immune system was able to kill it off. Or, perhaps, the effect the cancer had had on his immune system had made it stronger. She took more samples from him. She took so many samples that he felt he would be leaving the hospital with less than he'd come in with.
     
    By the time Alicia showed up, everyone was finished pulling a pound of flesh. Heron had been checked into a regular room and was sitting in bed, playing with the television. His phone was charging on the nightstand. When his wife walked into the room, she had a look that he had seen on countless battered women's faces in his early days as a police officer. Though he would never lay a hand on her (she'd kick his ass), he could tell that he had abused her severely over the past several months. This was just the last kick in the head.
     
    "I was thinking about you," she told him after a guarded hello. "I was thinking about who you are and what this cancer and this job have done to you?"
     
    He didn't know how to respond so he just didn’t.
     
    "I know you, Anthony. You may think all of this has changed you but it hasn't. When I thought about all of the things you've done, all of the mistakes you've made, I realized that you could never have done it any differently."
     
    When he still didn't know what to say, he told her didn't understand.
     
    "You don't know how to lose," she said to him. "And this just keeps beating you down. You try to protect people but they keep dying. You do your best to fight cancer and it comes back. You try not to bring your pain home and you end up hurting us. And the more you lose, the more desperate you become. The more desperate you become, the more destructive your choices become."
     
    "I do my best," he said, frustrated with her analysis.
     
    Shaking her head, she responded, "No. You only think you're doing your best."
     
    "That's not fair, Alicia. I…"
     
    She took a deep breath, cutting him off in mid sentence. "Did you get bitten on purpose?"
     
    "What?" he blurted. "What kind of a question is that?"
     
    She nodded to herself, knowing now. "I'm surprised Lance didn't see it. It's just another desperate act to beat the unbeatable."
     
    "Well," he said, looking away, not bothering to deny it. "Didn't I?"
     
    "No!" she shouted. "You're still sick!"
     
    He