Hello! First off, a giant thank you to everyone who has followed, favorited, and reviewed. I am overjoyed by the response this story has gotten, so thank you! Here's the new chapter. You keep reading and reviewing and I'll keep writing, deal?

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36: Turning Into Myself

I didn't feel different when I opened my eyes. Maybe it had all just been a bad dream? Maybe this was heaven and in seconds I'd be reunited with my family? Maybe this was hell and I'd have to pay forever for all the people I've killed since Z-Day? I sat up and looked down at my arm. The bandage was still there, so not a dream. How? How am I not dead? I swung by legs off the bed and stood up. Was I really okay or was this all just a dream? I looked out the window. The sun was high in the sky over the field covered in rotting bodies; I must've slept in, but how? How was I not one of them? I should be roaming around looking for raw meat to chow on, but I wasn't. A bolt of pain shot through my head, and I groaned. I was still the same Annie I had been last night, wasn't I? I still missed my family and friends. I still felt alone in this big horror show of a world. I still had that impossible to satisfy hankering for pancakes. I slid on my comfiest pair of pants and went down to the garage, carefully navigating the remaining carnage from the day before. I was still alive and functioning, for now. I guess I might as well put on a fresh bandage.

"Maybe the incubation period changed," my words rung through the room. I really didn't want to get my hopes up. I might not have turned yet, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to. Any second now I could drop dead and pop back up a cannibal corpse. I took off the bandage and was surprised to see the bite healing nicely. Flickers of hope flooded my heart, but I tried to calm myself. Could just be a fluke. Could just be a dream. Could just be a delayed reaction to the virus. I cleaned the wound again, debating if it needed stitches or not, but the new skin was already forming, so I decided against it. Too much hope. That's what this was. Too much hope and I was not lucky enough to warrant it. I replaced the bandage to the tune of my rumbling stomach. Did I eat anything yesterday? I don't think I did. No wonder my head hurts. Stupid Annie, too busy dying to eat something. On my walk to the kitchen the blood spatters became more apparent, "I'll need to clean up after breakfast." I pulled out a carton of old cereal and poured it into a bowl. "This can't be a dream, or I'd have milk." I grabbed a spoon from the drawer and shoveled the dry food into my mouth. How was I not dead? I should be dead. I should be gross and drooling and eating the things on the front lawn. If I hadn't felt so utterly shitty I would have been freaking out, I guess that it's good I'm so damn tired. And sore. And mentally fried. I poured a second bowl and looked down the hall. I really do need to clean.

-o0o-

Hunched over, scrubbing and spraying various harsh chemicals, constantly wondering why I hadn't turned yet, the windows and doors wide open to help with the smell; my day was spent like that. Every once in a while I'd get a snack to make up for yesterday, or I'd look at the bandage for a minute to make sure it wasn't just some weird afterlife thing. I spent a solid eight hours like that, and somewhere in it everything made sense for a second. Everything leading up to today, and my inevitable demise once the virus kicked it. It all made sense, and I think in that moment I was happy even. But it slipped away into my weariness. When I finished the cleanse and put the cleaning supplies in their proper places I felt a weight off of my shoulders. At least the house was clean. I laughed, "Mama would be proud as a peach." A clean house and an exhausted Annie.

Day one: done.

I woke up bright and early the next day, again wondering if it had all been some bizarre dream only to look down and see the bandage. "This doesn't make any sense." I lazily made my way downstairs. I shouldn't be alive. Definitely. I can understand yesterday. Yesterday being alive was completely reasonable. But today, today I should be dead. I opened the garage door and cleaned the wound. Then breakfast. I shouldn't be having breakfast. I should be doing something else, something zombie-ish. As I finished off the box of cereal I decided to do some real investigating. I needed scientific proof or at least some sort of solid information or it'll drive me insane. I needed to know the real reason why I hadn't become an undead freak yet. The first step into the query was a trip to the further shed. There, sitting in its spot on the shelf, was a rather nice microscope, case and all, that I'd swiped from some hospital for no particular reason. That thought from yesterday returned; everything I have done so far has brought me exactly here. Exactly where I needed to be. I shook my head, "You're losing it." I lugged the case into the house and set it up on the kitchen table. The next step was a trip to the garage where I grabbed two of the smallest syringes I had. No use wasting the larger ones. Third, I walked outside and got a blood sample, or more icky blood-like sludge sample, from one of the walkers I had killed just two days ago. While I was kneeling down I saw his wallet was falling out of his back pocket. I set down my things and pulled out the scrap of leather carefully before opening it. I carefully wiggled out the driver's license. Alabama. Robert Wilkinson. DOB 08/05/1978. 180lbs. Organ donor. The picture was fading, but in it he looked happy. Just a happy man from Alabama. I flipped through the rest of the wallet's contents until I found a picture. Him and his family. Smiling. Happy. They were people, just like me. Robert Wilkinson was a person just like me. He probably got bit and turned into one of these things. That should have happened to me too. Why? Why did I get to live? I don't even really have anyone, Robert had people. It just wasn't fair. I took the wallet inside with me, and set it beside the microscope as I went to work. Finally, when everything else was ready, I took my own blood sample from the vein nearest the bite.

I stared in through the lens at the two slides with the blood samples, turning the knobs to get a better focus. What was I even looking for? I had never had an interest in being a hematologist, so I had no real clue as to what it all meant besides the basics. The samples looked drastically different, that's got to be significant. One was infested with virus structures, and the other had only an eighth as many of the structures, and it seemed like every time I focused on one they'd disappear into a Leukocyte. "What the fuck?" I increased the magnification to its highest setting and watched as the white blood cells ate at the viruses, "They're fighting it." I pushed my seat back, smiling for the first time since the bite. "I'm fighting it." I looked back into the scope to double check before standing up. "And I'm winning!" I didn't push the hope away this time. It was real. I might make it. There was evidence that I could make it. Hell, I would make it. I could survive the bite and stay human. I didn't have to turn into one of them. I wasn't going to be one of them. I was going to stay just the way I am. A day ago I was a wreck with the ominous threat of my destruction, but today everything changed. Today I breathed easy. "This is cause for celebration." That night I made myself a legitimate feast of a dinner and finished a whole bottle of wine on my own. Afterwards I cranked up some music and danced around, joyful and proud. Proud to be me for the first time in my whole life. With a cheerful heart and a fuzzy head I climbed into bed, re-read the notebook, and went to sleep.

After all this time being scared, here I am: Annie, immune.

PS: Let me know what you think of the new chapter, because I was kind of worried as I wrote it (didn't want to let you guys down), so comments and criticisms as ultr-welcome. Also, I totally got the first compendium of the comics! So stoked. They don't have Daryl (sadface) but hopefully I can add some fun references in the upcoming chapters as we get through the mid-season lull. :) MAKE SURE TO REVIEW!