Chapter 8

What Steven had not known was that the burnt corpse he talked to in South Korea was Connie's mother. Connie and her father came to the WHO facility during the opening days of the infection, and it was in B wing that they were infected. In the disease room, Steven watched as he saw what used to be Connie attack the door.

Steven: Oh no. I thought you were in South Korea. It doesn't matter how you got here. I just can't believe this is how I have to see you.

In the other wing, Pearl and Garnet woke up from their coma.

Pearl: Where are we?

Garnet: What happened?

Amethyst: There was a plane crash and I brought you guys here to get better.

Garnet: Where's Steven?

Amethyst: That's what you're not gonna like.

A few minutes later...

Pearl: Steven is where?!

Amethyst: In the same wing as a huge horde of zombies. He's in a room where all known diseases are kept.

Sarah: We can watch him on the security cameras.

The group looked on the cameras into the disease room where Steven was just sitting there, contemplating if it's all worth fighting for. He then looked up at the diseases, found a syringe, and put a random sample in the syringe.

Pearl: What is he doing?

Garnet: He's going to inject himself with a disease.

Amethyst: What diseases are in there, Sarah?

Sarah: I think he took one from the bubonic plague counter.

Pearl: How long will he have?

Sarah: With as much as he put in, he'd have 45 minutes to get here to get a cure, or he won't be able to get a cure.

In the room, Steven injected himself with the bubonic plague. After a few minutes, he looked up at the camera and went down to the door that Connie was banging on.

Amethyst: Ok. He's officially gone insane. He's gonna let that zombie in there with him!

Pearl: WHAT!?

Garnet: We can't let him. I'm going after him.

Amethyst: Garnet, you can't. There's too many zombies outside that door. As soon as you open it, we all die.

They looked at the camera as Steven inched closer and closer to the button that opened the door. When he hit the button, Connie walked inside, but didn't kill him.

Amethyst: Uh, Pearl? You might want to look at this.

Pearl looked up at the screen and saw that Connie wasn't after Steven. She just stared at him, then stumbled past him.

Pearl: That makes no sense. It's like it didn't even see him.

Amethyst: Maybe that's what he was planning all along.

Garnet: So you're saying it might be the plague he injected himself with?

Steven walked past Connie and locked her in the disease room. He then shot his pistol to attract he zombies and just walked past them as they all ran around him. When he made it to the other room, he was quickly given the cure.

Pearl: Steven, how did you know that would work?

Steven: You see Pearl, Mother Nature is a serial killer. And like all serial killers, she wants to get caught, because someone needs to take credit for all those great crimes. So she leaves behind little crumbs. And it takes a keen eye to see those crumbs, for the clues they are. And then it soon turns out that what you thought was the most brutal aspect of the virus, is the chink in its armor. And Mother Nature loves disguising her greatest weaknesses as strengths. I found that the zombies were avoiding sick people in Jerusalem and Beach City, but didn't think they were sick until today.

Amethyst: Steven, you realize that you found the strategy that could help us win this war. We might never know how this thing started, but we know now how to end it.

So, over the next few years, using dangerous, but curable diseases, the US Army was invisible to the zombies, and this allowed them to kill every last one of them and stop the disease. The war had soon ended

THE END