Al's ready to smash the call button into the wall by the time the duty nurse appears, except that his hands are occupied preventing Ed from hurling himself off the bed in his delirium. "Can't you give him something else?" he asks, as the nurse prepares the same syringe as last time.
"Sorry. Doctor's orders."
Al pins Ed's torso and right arm and lets the nurse worry about getting the needle into his left. Ed whimpers, kicking the sheets, and tangles his legs into immobility as the drug takes effect.
Al strokes his forehead helplessly, wishing him dreams of home.
Author's Note: Before the torch-and-pitchfork-carrying mob breaks down the gate, I must confess that I had this conclusion in mind from the very beginning and planted clues to it in the dream logic of the plot (e.g. Zeb Carter, dead and alive). I simply couldn't conceive of a way to make actual zombies plausible in a universe whose second commandment is "What's dead stays dead." Besides, this way I was able to play with Jungian archetypes and domestic terrors. The Brothers Grimm ate my brain long ago.
To those who prefer actual monsters to monsters from the id, I recommend the first and second place entries in the LiveJournal 2007 Zombie Apocalypse challenge: sevlow's "Welcome Back" (archived here as "Mistakes") and mikkeneko's "Countdown Till Dawn".