Disclaimer: I don't own 'em (except for Major Boyer). Square does. If I owned them, though, I would share!

Author's Note: Nearly done; if all goes according to plan, I should have just one more chapter left after this. I'm glad you're all enjoying this; and I'm especially glad that I'm nearly done. One less fic to worry about! I hate having so many unfinished fics. When this is done, I can move on to another neglectee. I'm putting Infinite Requiem on a (very) slight hiatus until I finish this; I've got three fics I want to complete soon, and I'm going to concentrate on those. My apologies for the dirty humor… But this was spawned from a conversation about how there are romance novels about vampires and werewolves, but not zombies. So I was just exploring why zombies are so neglected… The really 'romantic' bits come next chapter.

Zombie Love

Four – Romance of the Dead

Aki stared stupidly at Gray, her mind reeling from his unexpected emasculation. All she could think was, Why did it have to be that? Why couldn't he lose a leg, or an arm? Or even his face? I could deal with that! Suddenly, all her romantic plans for her reunion with her dead lover came to a screeching halt. "Uh…" Aki said, unable to say anything more intelligent.

"We need to get to a hospital! Now!" Gray said, his voice shrill. "They can still sew it back on!"

That snapped Aki out of her stupor. Hospital? No way! Body parts didn't just randomly disconnect themselves; if Aki took Gray to a doctor, there'd be even more questions, and she hadn't even figured out how to answer the ones she was already being faced with. "I can do that," Aki said. It couldn't be too hard, right? She'd darned her socks dozens of times. This couldn't be too different…

Gray stared at her. "No, I think I'd rather a hospital handled this! I mean, we have to take Ryan there anyway, right? So let's get him and go!" He glanced over at Ryan, who'd been duct-taped to a chair. He was still making those strange, Phantom-like cries, and seemed confused that he couldn't just pull his arms through the tape.

"No hospital," Aki said, turning from Gray to rummage through her desk drawers. She had the needle, but she'd used the rest of the thread stitching up Ryan's chest. But she had to have more in here somewhere…. She found a spool of thread with a needle stuck into it, and wrinkled her nose. Sky blue… She hoped Gray wouldn't mind. After all, it wasn't like anyone would see it…

"What? Aki, what the hell is wrong with you! We need to go…" He trailed off, and his voice lost its shrillness as it switched from hysteria to suspicion. "Why no hospital? What aren't you telling us, Aki?" He glanced down at the wound, which was still bloodless. "I can't even feel this wound, Aki. What's wrong with me?"

"Ah…" Now she had to think of something to tell them? Aki had never been good at coming up with brilliant lies to cover up for her actions; now she had to convincingly lie not just to her mentor, the man in charge of the city, and the rest of the general populace; she also had to think of something to satisfy the team! She decided to tell them a half-truth. "It was an experimental procedure, one that hasn't been approved yet," she said truthfully. "If the hospital finds out, I could be discredited. So could Dr. Sid. And we can't have that happen now, when Major Boyer would do anything to make us look bad. I know, I shouldn't have done it without approval. Apparently, there are some… flaws," she said, pulling a pot out of the cupboard and pouring in a thin stream of water, enough to immerse the needle. She began to boil it to sterilize it again, since she'd just used it on Ryan, though she wasn't sure that would be necessary. The wound, what she'd glimpsed of it, had looked peculiar… there'd been no blood, no raw flesh. It resembled the hole in Ryan's chest, now that she thought about it…

"'Flaws?'" Gray repeated incredulously. "You call this a 'flaw?'" He was on the verge of a breakdown, and she needed to calm him down now before he fell to pieces… literally. "To hell with your reputation, Aki, I'd like my manhood to be restored!"

"If I can't fix this, we'll go to the hospital. I promise."

"How about we skip the part where you try to fix this and we just go to the hospital?" Gray demanded.

She was saved from answering when Neil finally made his entrance, looking like the cat who ate the canary.

"Where were you, Neil?" Aki demanded, as she pulled the sterilized needle from the boiling water. "We're having a bit of a crisis here, and it's better if we all stay together!" So she could keep an eye on them, she didn't add. Clearly, something wasn't right here. Perhaps the serum that had restored their bodies hadn't stabilized yet, and she needed to keep a close eye on the team in case any more peculiarities manifested in the mean time.

"Sorry, boss," he apologized meekly. "I was hungry, so I grabbed a bite to eat," he said, shrugging his shoulders. Before Aki could question him further, he asked, "What's going on?"

"Cap's gonna be singing soprano from now on," Jane said, looking as if she was unsure whether to be horrified, or to laugh her ass off. She seemed to be leaning towards the latter.

"Maybe we should do this in the bathroom," Aki said. Gray didn't look too happy to be sharing this crisis with his squad mates. So much for team solidarity… He followed her obediently into the cramped bathroom, where a sad-looking lump of flesh sat in a pool of water. Aki was about to reach for it, then felt a blush creep across her cheeks. This was not how she'd envisioned their reunion… Just like darning a sock… Yeah, right… This was going to take awhile…

XXX

Major Boyer shambled towards the soldiers' barracks, which were mostly empty thanks to the Council's decision to cut back the military forces. Not that that bothered him any more; nothing bothered him, now, not the great big hole in his skull that was lined with tooth marks, or the drool drying on his chin… He only had one thought in that vacant cranium of his: to feed on the brains of others, to fill himself with that which he had lost.

That he'd be damning others to a similar existence didn't matter to him. His lips stretched into a rictus grin as he crashed through the barracks door, no longer caring that using a doorknob would have been much simpler.

In his undead state, Major Boyer moved painstakingly slowly, his shuffling steps loud, and his mental capacity was limited, to the point where he could only cling to one simple directive at a time. Any fit soldier would have been able to outrun him once they heard him and identified the threat he presented – in fact, they'd have been able to out walk him without difficulty. And even the most brain dead private would have been able to outthink the major, because something as simple as rounding a corner would be enough to confuse the nearly mindless zombie.

But this was a military that had been pared down to a bare minimum; the only people who voluntarily stayed were men out to impress women, keep from landing in prison, or escape the difficulties of Real Life. The USMF had become the only job where they could spend the night binge drinking and partying, because the soldiers had become little more than glorified security guards with rank in this now peaceful world. While several of them were still awake, playing a game of strip poker, they'd spent a hard couple of hours drinking.

They'd become the cream of the military, if not humanity in general.

They didn't have a chance.

XXX

"Let's never speak of this again," Gray grumbled as he followed Aki out of the bathroom. He was pulling on his pants, trying to hide that he was now a little… lopsided. He'd calmed slightly, now that he was a little more whole, but he hadn't stopped his demands to go to the hospital. Aki wasn't going to be able to come up with excuses for much longer. The truth was, she didn't think a hospital would help. She'd had her doubts, but after examining the wound more closely, she knew there was nothing that could be done. The flesh reminded her of the cadavers she'd worked with in college: limp, bloodless, and utterly dead.

The reanimation process had only been partially successful, she realized, horrified.

Gray strode across the room, deliberately not looking at his squadmates. He began to unwrap the tape around Ryan's arms; the sergeant didn't even react as the tape was pulled away from his arms. His intentions were clear; they were going to the hospital. Maybe it would be for the best… maybe it could prevent…

A meaty thunk echoed through the room, and everyone froze. "What the hell?" Gray yelped, lifting his right hand. His eyes widened as he saw the stump that had been his middle finger; the actual digit had come to rest by Neil's foot. "Aki. Hospital. Now." Gray snapped.

"No," Aki said, her voice choked. "We need to get to the lab. Something went very, very wrong…"

XXX

THUD.

The noise seemed to be coming from the lab next door, and Aki put it out of her mind as she led the Deep Eyes back into her lab. She fretted over what Major Boyer would make of another late-night visit to the laboratory when he saw the tape; could she persuade him that it was the ideal site for a late night liaison?

THUD.

"What is that?" Jane asked, halting.

"Who cares?" Gray snapped. "We have a much bigger crisis on our hands!" During the short walk to the lab, Gray had lost another finger and an ear, with each wound being as bloodless and dead-looking as the previous ones. Even he'd seen the sense in going to a lab instead of an infirmary; this obviously wasn't a normal health problem.

I'm going to have to tell him the truth, Aki realized as she unlocked the lab. "I'm going to need blood samples from all of you," she said. Jane gave her an indignant look, so Aki added, "I used the same procedure on all of you. Maybe you're not manifesting symptoms now…" she trailed off.

"Or the same symptoms, anyway," Neil chipped in, nodding towards Ryan. The befuddled Phantom-man had calmed somewhat, but his eyes were still darting around as if he was looking for something.

THUD.

"Tell us a bit more about this procedure," Gray said coolly, as Aki pulled out a syringe and drew a blood sample from his arm. When she pulled it away, the skin around the needle came away with it.

THUD.

"It's…" Aki was suddenly tongue-tied. She turned away from him and prepped the sample for viewing under the microscope. "Well, it's highly experimental."

"Go on," Gray said.

"It's been highly successful on plants."

Gray arched an eyebrow. The movement almost made his left eye pop out.

"One plant," Aki blurted out, unable to lie under that steel-eyed glare. "The serum I used is supposed to restore spirits to bodies that have lost them."

"You mean… dead bodies." Gray's eyes widened in horror, making his right eye wobble in its socket. Aki tried to calm him before Gray got too angry – God only knew what would happen to the veins on his forehead that normally stood out when he was mad…

THUD.

"Are you saying that we were dead?" Jane asked incredulously.

Aki adjusted the slide, then fiddled with the controls so the image would appear on the holo-screen, where it would be visible to all of them. She frowned at what she saw, adjusting the focus to see if that made things better. But the truth was there, before her eyes. Gray hadn't been brought back from the dead… "No… I'm saying that you still are dead," Aki said.

Gray suddenly collapsed against the table, but fortunately, it was the result of shock and not the sudden degeneration of the muscle tissue in his legs. "Dead?" he repeated, his voice dull. "But… I don't feel dead."

"Neither do I," Jane said. Neil nodded emphatically. "Same here, boss," he said. "And that doesn't explain Sarge."

Good point. "I don't know how to explain it," Aki said helplessly. "But there's got to be a way to fix this. If I can trigger cell regeneration, the dead cells in your body will be replaced, and you'll be… normal…" Assuming all the kings horses and all the kings men could put Gray back together again.

THUD.

This time they all jumped, even though they'd grown accustomed to the persistent banging. "I think I'll just see what that is before it drives me nuts," Jane said quickly. She spun on her heel and walked away rapidly. Aki was going to call out to her not to interfere with someone else's project, but Gray stopped her.

"This is a bit much for her; Jane needs to do something to keep busy or it will overwhelm her," Gray explained. "She'll come back with a clearer head."

Aki hoped she'd come back; if someone had told her that she'd been dead, she'd run like hell and not look back. She decided to take a page from Jane's book and keep busy. "Neil? Can you help me get a sample from Ryan? I need to know why the two of you are manifesting odd symptoms, and the others seem to have nothing wrong at all. I might have to tailor a cure for each of you." She grimaced; that would take forever. But maybe there was nothing wrong with Neil and Jane. That would cut down the time, and she might find a clue to their cure in their cells.

THUD.

"Whatever you say, boss," Neil grinned at her, a twisted smile that showed far too many teeth. With strength surprising in one so small and wiry, he pinned down the much larger man, enabling Aki to take the sample, and Ryan hooted in protest. She was about to prep it when Jane reentered the lab, her face confused.

"That sound is coming from inside this lab," she said.

"What?" Aki blinked.

"I could hear it through the wall; it's coming from back there." She nodded towards where the storage closet was located, out of the way of the cabinets holding the laboratory equipment. It was on the wall adjoining the next door lab, hence their confusion as to the sound's source.

THUD.

Puzzled, Aki went over to the closet. The center of the metal door had bulged outward, as if something within was pounding on it in the same place, over and over again.

THUD.

This time she saw a shudder go through the door. Whatever it was, it was definitely inside. "What the hell?" Gray said. He'd come up behind her, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement. They didn't unfurrow – the muscles were no longer responding to his commands. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Aki said. No one should have been able to access the lab except for herself and Dr. Sid. What could he have left in here that could make all the noise?

"Uh, you might not want to open that, boss," Neil said from somewhere behind them.

Aki ignored him. Her hand went to the handle, turning it slowly and gently swinging the door open, stepping backwards just in time to avoid the pale figure that tumbled out. She stared blankly for several moments, then realized she really was seeing what she thought she saw. "Sid!" she cried, relieved. "What happened? Who locked you in…" her voice choked off as the old man got to his feet and stared at her with glazed eyes.

For a long moment, her mind refused to accept what she saw; then it slowly sank in. Dr. Sid was standing under his own power, true, but there was something so terribly, horribly, utterly wrong that it made the problems with the Deep Eyes seem normal.

He had no brain.

To Be Continued…