Author's note: Zach is now Zac, short for Zaccalone.
Horror gave way to shock and Zac's fury faded, his body becoming limp. Angelina pressed her shoulder into his torso and guided him up the stairs, grabbing her bloodied handcuffs on the way. In the alley, she guided him to a rugged mountain bike, secured with a chain thick enough to hold King Kong.
“C’mon,” she said, getting onto the bike and motioning for him to climb aboard.
Zac’s head was spinning. A few moments ago, he thought, he was in a hopeless relationship with an upper-class debutante and now, he was living in a world where things like zombies were real. He wondered who this woman was and why was she riding a bicycle?
Zombie-like, he swung his leg over the frame and grabbed onto her shapely waist.
They whizzed along the streets and sidewalks of Philadelphia, down Broad Street, past brightly lit Independence Hall to Chestnut Street. Taxicabs veered dangerously close to them as they crossed the bridge over the Schuylkill River. He looked at her and she seemed unperturbed by the close call.
She huffed and puffed as she pedaled, but never slowed down. To him, she seemed driven, maybe to the point of wrecklessness, as she steered them in and out of traffic. They passed through the University of Pennsylvania campus, to a large building with rows and rows of windows. They rolled onto grass and debarked.
She led him down some steps and through a locked, steel doorway, in the basement of the building. When the lights came on, he was surprised to see what looked like a scene from his high school chemistry lab: black marbled tables, Bunsen burners, flasks filled with green fluids. In the corner, he noticed a small cot, big enough for one, covered with a wool blanket.
“Welcome to my abode,” she said, extending her arm outward in a sweeping motion. “Now, let’s take a look at that wrist.” She grabbed his arm and held it up into the light.
She dropped it abruptly and walked over to one of the flasks, picking it up and holding it to the light.
“Here, let’s put some of this on that wound.” Angelina stated, moving back to him and seizing his arm, once again.
Suspiciously, Zac asked, “What’s that?”
She said, “I call it Boolean Glue. I synthesized it from moss that grows in caves, deep in the Andes Mountains of Argentina. It seems to search your DNA and knows, incredibly, just which body part it is supposed to heal.”
She put on a pair of latex gloves and picked up a white cloth. She poured some of the liquid onto the cloth and spread it all over his bloodied wrist.
“It is very potent medicine,” Angelina cautioned and led him over to the tiny cot.
At first, Zac noticed a slight chill from the green goo. By the time he sat down on the wool blanket, he felt as if his wrist was being turned inside out. The pain shot up his arm, to his head. Suddenly, he saw stars that gave way to the blackness of space. His vision faded and he fell sideways, guided onto the bed by the steady hands of Angelina.
“Oh,” he heard her say, as his consciousness faded, “this is experimental. Hopefully, you won’t turn into a zombie.”
He awoke, later, and it was light outside. His head ached and his wrist burned like it was on fire. White gauze and surgical tape covered his wound. Angelina was sitting on the edge of one of the marble tables, staring at him, examining him.
“Very powerful medicine,” she said, “that Boolean Glue. It is an invention of mine. I’m a professor of chemistry here, at the university. I’m working on an antidote. I hope you don’t mind, I took the liberty to take a sperm sample, maybe two.”
Astonished, Zac squeaked loudly, “What! What...a sperm sample? What does that mean? An antidote? How…..?”
His mind raced back to last night’s events, to the zombies, the scream. Then he remembered her words as he passed out from the medicine, “turn into a zombie.”
Again, he asked, his face contorted, trying to understand the impossible, “An antidote for what? And how….? A sperm sample?”
“Yes,” she said, unapologetically. “I think I might have taken three, but one can’t be sure. Maybe the first one was just a warmup.” She smiled, slightly, and turned her head away. Then she began again, “I synthesized the Boolean Glue myself. You are the first person I’ve tried it on. I believe it is the chemical that makes them zombies, but….I could be mistaken.”
Reaching behind her, she grabbed a pear and took a big bite out of it. She continued to stare at him.
“You’re crazy,” he yelled, finally at the edge of his wits, “you’re really fucking crazy! Who are you? How could you? A sperm sample?”
He stood up as he said this and noticed his pants were gone. He was standing there in his scivies. He picked his jeans up from the floor, put them on and ran out the door. Spying her bike leaning against a railing, he took it and rode off.
An hour later, he was at the scene of the crime, yellow police tape blocked his entrance to the alley. Detectives and crime-scene photographers were everywhere. There was a policeman standing at the tape and he spotted the bandage on Zac’s wrist.
“Hey, kid, what happened to you?” He asked.
Zac looked at his bindings and said, “uh, ah, nothing.”
Nervous, he turned to walk away when the policeman yelled at him, “Hey, stop right there.”
In a flash he was back on the bike, heading back the way he came, pursued by several cop cars, lights flashing brilliant bursts of red and blue. Because of traffic, he managed to elude capture until he got to the Chestnut Street Bridge and was met by flashing lights coming from the other side: he was trapped!
He turned to run back and crashed into the shopping cart of a homeless woman. She began striking him, furiously. As he tried to pull her off him, he heard a voice booming over a bullhorn, “Freeze! Freeze or we’ll shoot!”
He broke free of the lady and was struck in the chest by several bullets. He spun to his left and vaulted off the bridge, falling one hundred feet down into the Schuylkill River. As he plunged beneath the surface, he looked at his right wrist and saw the bandage was ripped off. His eyes widened when he saw his skin was completely healed. He felt feint, then all went black.
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