A/N: Chapter 5, y'all. It's a bit meatier than the last one, so I hope you'll enjoy it. I don't own Valve, blah blah, don't arrest me for copyright infringement. Slight gore in this chapter, so watch out.

Ah, crap, it talks now.

He, part of my head corrected me.

No, I thought back. It is a zombie, and if you call it a he, then you will get all mushy and attached, and you'll try to save it, and your cabin fever-induced delusions of an intelligent infected will result in you getting your guts eaten out, like our good friend Mr. Pilot back there.

Who says they're delusions? I countered.

As the internal debate raged on, I noticed that the zombie had (Seemed to have, at least) fallen unconscious, his body slumped and trapped in the wire. It looked a hella lot more helpless than when it had tried to kill me, earlier; In fact, it almost looked pitiful.

Almost.

The rules of survival say to put yourself first. No deer is too cute, no bug is too gross, and no task is too difficult, messy, or unnerving to get in the way of your chances to live. There is no mercy given to you in the world, so why offer any back?

I asked myself, as I stood there on that cold Maine autumn morning, a zombie stuck in the fence, that may or may not have just spoken, and my pistol aimed for home.

So why wasn't I shooting?

Any sensible person would have, speaking or no. But for some reason, my finger wouldn't pull the trigger, and though the cold part of me was telling me to get it over and done with, to shoot and burn the body and get on with my life, there was a slanderous little voice in my head that asked me, through all my tumult.

If you shoot him, are you any better than him?

Would I be any better than an animal, fighting for survival, based on pure, raw instinct? Any more than a zombie, killing for the sake of killing, not seeing anything human in its prey?

Or was I just in it to survive?

I reached a decision.

You are going to regret this. Big time.

I carefully clipped the wire fencing around the zombie's sweater, the wire cutters biting into the metals and slicing through.

You are breaking every single rule of common sense, rational thought, survival, and basic function there is.

He asked me for help. I argued, the cold part of by brain not relenting. What was I going to do, leave him to die?

No, you expedite the process. It countered.

Shuddup, the both of you. I silently yelled, my collective sides giving me a headache from their arguing. What's done is done.

It was slightly better after that.

I finished cutting, pulling the barbs away from the infected, with gloved hands. Grabbing his arm, I started to haul of out of the wire, wincing at the tearing sounds the hoodie made is it was pulled through. After some delicate tugging, additional cutting, and untangling, I managed to get him free. He lay on the ground near the fence, still unconscious, but breathing.

Grunting, I lifted him up in a fireman's carry. He didn't look like his spine was injured, so I reckoned it was safe.

The body was surprisingly light; I could lift him easily. Rising, I carried him over to The Cabin.

Well, no going back now.

While I may have had a temporary onslaught of soft-heartedness in rescuing the zombie, I was (In no way) stupid. (Well, not entirely.)

Which is why said zombie was now tied to Dad's old bed. (Sorry, Dad, but it's not like you were using it.) This embarrassed me, as sensible as it was; I felt like a mix between a Saxton Hale villain and someone in an X-rated porno film.

Maybe it isn't such a great an idea to think about it.

The zombie was still out of it, breathing peacefully as tested the ropes. Satisfied with their security, I rolled up my sleeves, pulled on some gloves, tied up my hair, and got down to business.

Y'know the combat medical course I mentioned earlier? The one where you learn to hack off limbs with a bone saw, or perform a blood transfusion in the dark in the mud with men dying all around you? It isn't a class for the fainthearted. We had half of the people who signed up for it drop out in the first week alone. I lasted through it, mainly because Dad made me, and he would never have spoken to me if I'd dropped out. Also, I'm not really squeamish. (Learning how to gut fish and skin deer since the age of 7 does that for you.)

Even so, this job was a nightmare.

After I cut off the sweater (And the duct tape holding it down) the first thing I noticed was the infected's face. Specifically, his eyes.

The area around them was a mass of shredded tissue; Covered in a blood and grime and god-knows-what. The eyelids, while less mauled, had several slashes through them, and were encrusted with dried blood.

It's like he tried to claw his own eyes out. I realized. Then I looked at the whole mess again; the angles of the slashes, and lines of the cuts. Scratch that, he did try to claw his own eyes out.

What kind of fucked-up virus would do that—Make people try to gouge their own eyes from their sockets?

Fearing what I might see, I lifted one of the eyelid, expecting a scratched cornea, at the very least, if not a mass of bloody, tattered—

Or a perfectly whole, (If unseeing) untouched white sphere underneath.

No way could it have healed that fast.

Hell, it wasn't scarred, for gods' sake.

I snapped the eyelid back, glancing at his hands. I'd noticed they'd looked odd as I was tying them down; They were bonier than the average human hand, and had some blood on them, but I hadn't has much time to look.

Now I did.

It was like they were claws, tipped with rust-red dried blood; (Whether it was his own or someone else's, I couldn't tell) Upon close examination, it looked like they were made of some hard substance, like bone, or nail…

Whatever the hell the virus did, no way could it have come out of nature.

It took me a moment for me to re-gather my composure. You'd probably have to do the same thing, if you were me. In the meantime, I took a good look at the zombie itself, and not just the fucked-up bits.

For one thing, he seemed fairly young; Maybe early-mid-twenties, though the messed up eyes made it hard to tell. He had short-ish brown hair, which struck me as odd; Either he hadn't been infected that long, or the virus messed with his system enough so that his hair didn't grow at a normal pace. Either way, it wasn't as overgrown as I expected it to be; the only obvious hair growth was the 5-o'-clock shadow on the parts of his face that weren't clawed apart, either his claws, or the barbed wire.

I'll tell you this: Barbed wire is nasty shit. You don't go messing with it (It's pretty much the point) for very good reasons. Case in point: Our friend the zombie.

What hadn't been snagged on the sweater had torn through the arms, hands, and a bit on the legs, all bleeding a good amount on the towels draped over the bed. However, his face was unscathed (Well, by the wire anyways) and the wounds seemed superficial, at most; Not enough to pass out from blood loss. If anything, he conked out because of the pain.

Well, and because I knocked him over the head with a Glock 17 Gen4 butt. I most likely gave him a good concussion, at the very least. They never show that in the movies; When you knock someone out, often, the damage from hit makes them keel over again soon after they wake up.

Which is exactly what happened here.

Probably.

Unless he's playing you for an easy kill, my thoughts whispered, once again, deviously to me.

Shut up. I thought. I took all the necessary precautions, and if he tries anything, he's getting a bullet to the skull; and I hope it doesn't come to that, because it would stain the sheets.

Well, the sheets are already pretty stained, what with him bleedin' all over the place. I argued back. Damn, my headache was coming back with a vengeance, with all this internal arguing going on.

No time for that, anyways. I had a long job ahead of me.

I will, again, spare you the arduous task that faced me at that moment; all I will divulge is that it took me half a bottle of povidone iodine, 8 pairs of gloves, several hours, and more nerves than I possess.

I noticed several things while getting through all of this. Firstly, his body temp was high. Not incredibly high; just hovering around feverish. Guess it was an effect of the virus, with immune system fighting it, and all.

The second thing was his sweater. I had to cut away nearly all of it, in order to get to the rest of him; it was dark-blue under all the grime and crap caked on it. (Which, quite frankly, I'd prefer not to think about) I only noticed then there was a logo on the left side, over the breast, faded and tattered under the dirt. Denver, I read, with little logo of some mountains under it. Must like Colorado. I thought, though it didn't tell me much more about him. As far as I knew, the Infection hadn't hit the Rockies yet, so it couldn't have been his home-town. Hell, it could be something he bought from a thrift store.

There was a bite mark on his shoulder. It was half-healed, and there weren't any tears in the sweater where the bite was, so he must have been bitten, put on the sweater, and turned.

It made my stomach churn again; to think about the human life he had once left.

The one he had left behind.

I pushed these thoughts aside, as I finished my wrapping. Though it wasn't the most sterile of environments, and no the most medically professional of jobs, it would be enough to hold him together. Probably.

And then my little internal monologue was interrupted by a sound.

It was at this point that I realized that my patient was waking up. Like a good doctor, I made sure that the ropes weren't too tight, or constrictive.

Then, unlike a good doctor, I drew back, unholstered the Glock, and waited.

He stirred, opening his eyes muzzily, and letting out a little groan against the light of the sun through the windows. He squinted, and started, well, snorting, (For lack of a better word) taking little whiffs of air in and out through his nose…

Like he's sniffing the room… if zombies could smell, in any case. Could they? I'm no expert.

Then he whipped his head to the side, and he looked straight at me, his eyes wild. He seemed to tense under his bonds.

My move.

"Hello." I said, cautiously, never taking my gaze (or aim) off of him. "Can you understand what I'm saying?"

The blank stare he gave me wasn't very reassuring. At least he isn't trying to break free and tear your guts out, I reasoned. I tried again.

"What's your name?"

Another blank stare. Damn. I was hoping to get somewhere with that; Infected or no, it think it would be a bit demeaning to keep calling him 'zombie'.

I sighed. "Look, can't you even remember what you used to be called? Er, Harry? Alex? Steve? Jacob?" I rattled off names, but each was met with the same blank, neutral stare; I was getting nowhere.

"Evan? Zach?" I thought back to the sweater. "Denver?" I asked, thinking it would be a good a guess as any.

The reaction was immediate; his eyes widened, and he stiffened, breathing speeding up; all the time, he never took his eyes off of me. Slowly, he nodded.

I nodded, sharply, in return, trying to hide my shock. Clearly, there was someone in there. The question was, who?

At least I had a label for him, now.

"Denver it is, then."

A/N: Aaaaand now our friend the zombie has a name! On this note, Allan4242564 brought up that Marcy's name sounds like Mercy. This is very true. It is also pure coincidence; I named Marcy and Denver long before figured out a title for this story. When I finally figured out a good title, it was a bit too late for me to change it. I considered changing Marzia's name after naming the story, but I decided not to, since I'd been working with it for awhile, and was too lazy to go back and edit all of my chapters. I guess I could've changed the title, but I thought it was too fitting to the story for anything else to work. So, live and let live (So to say)

I hope you enjoyed this chapter; If you did, please leave a comment and a fav, and recommend it to all of your friends, family, enemies, and long-lost relatives. Until next time!

-Author