To whoever hears this – because, unlike the others, I know for a fact that this will never make it out of this room unless someone strong enough can break in to it – my name is Doctor Mary Arden and I have made a huge mistake. I suppose that whoever finds this tape deserves to know exactly what happened, and hopefully you've succeeded in finding the file as well. My employees were foolish enough to not realize what the power of tape can do. We were doing everything we could to try to revive these coma patients out of their comatose, but we kept failing. I know this sounds cheesy and unethical, but I prayed to God that night for a miracle. Instead, what I received was a gift from Hell. When I entered my car at my home on the way to the hospital, it began to rain. With that rain fell a large, heavy stone of sorts. It was definitely foreign and not of this planet. It almost looked like it fell from Mars or the sun, but yet again I doubt that's destiny… when I arrived early to lab I studied it and realized that it may have just the kick that my shots of essentially nothing more than amphetamines and caffeine – with deadly amounts of amphetamines, might I add – needed. I… I crushed up the rock until it was a fine powder. I photographed it and hopefully you find the picture in my file. So I put it into the mixture, letting the others know that something had been added but I refused to tell them what – mainly because I had no idea what to call it – and then we began to inject the patients. They became… they became zombies. One of the other employees is dead and an intern has been infected or vice versa and I am losing my wits due to the extreme guilt that I feel due to being the sole cause of this entire apocalypse. I know I speak early into this era, but that is what it will become, I can tell. This is how the human race-
Doctor Mary Arden is suddenly cut off with a distant scream that is her own. This is where the recording ends. Her entire tape, she was surprisingly composed, despite the graphic sounds that could faintly be heard in the background. The zombies must have been having their way with the doctors.
"They didn't try to run," The Doctor noted. "Not a single one of them."
"Probably her orders. She knew they'd die anyways," I shrugged. "It was her responsibility, she felt the need to die with that."
"Then where were their bones when we went to the hospital?" The Doctor asked.
"Doctor, they're dead," I concluded. "You heard the noise going on in there. I've heard it one too many times to know exactly what that means. I've seen zombies suck on bones like a child with a lollipop. Trying to get every last bit of meat off of there that they can." The Doctor pondered this for a moment.
"May I see that photograph that Doctor Arden referenced?" he asked. I flipped through her file before finding it and handing it to him. He didn't take long to study the photograph before the shock covered his face. "What?!"
"What?" I also asked, confused.
"This…" The Doctor shook his head, standing and walking around the TARDIS. "No. This can't be possible. How is this possible? It can't be…" He then compared the photo to something he had pulled up – I didn't care to move from my seat – and his face fell. "No."
"Doctor, what is it?" I asked.
"Do you remember my home planet, Runner? Gallifrey?" I nodded. "This rock… this rock was part of Gallifrey."
"I thought Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War?"
"It was," The Doctor explained. "But I guess little pieces of it were left to wander space and eventually get caught up in an atmosphere."
"So, what do we do now?" I sighed.
"I know exactly what we have to do to wipe this planet clean of zombies. There's something we can send out into the atmosphere-"
"But what about the living?" I reminded him.
"Haven't thought of that yet!" The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS' control panel. "I need to figure out a way to do that without eliminating humans that haven't been infected yet. It's almost as if we need to send out a vaccine but it only works if you're infected."
"And if you're not infected?" I dared ask. I knew the answer: the answer sat in a lump in my throat.
"Death," The Doctor confirmed.
"Would you mind if we left here so I could go check a radio report?" I managed past that massive lump. The Doctor saw the pain in my eyes and I saw the struggle in his. Neither of us wanted to kill the living, but we had to kill the undead. The Doctor nodded.
"Good idea. Let's go check up on the rest of the world."
