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Ravi had gone back to the lab after the taco bar, and Major and Liv went back to his house, where they ended up falling asleep on top of the covers together because they were both too excited to sleep alone, and because they each wanted so badly to see the other one cured and back to normal they couldn't bear to say good-night.
They woke in the morning to the buzzing of their phones. Liv reached hers first, blinking at it until she was awake enough to read it. "Ravi. He's got some results. He wants us in the lab."
Major was out of bed in a single bound. "Let's get there! It's cure-time, baby!"
Liv grinned at him. "I like the sound of that."
In the lab, Ravi was still wearing his waders from the digging excursion. Probably sensible, Major thought—given the smell of the decomposing body, digging into its cavities for Utopium had to have been a messy job. Ravi seemed pretty okay, though, and not as tired as Major would have been in his situation. No question about it, this kind of thing got his roommate all fired up. It was nice to see someone really enjoying their work that way.
Ravi gestured to a tray lying near the body, filled with deflated condoms and some kind of liquid that didn't bear too much thinking about.
"Stomach acid ate through all the tainted Utopium-filled condoms they swallowed. But, luckily, one of them had the good sense to stash these in his prison wallet, allowing me to salvage enough powder—"
"If not your dignity," Major put in. Much as his roommate—and his former fiance—loved digging into people's bodies, he could have lived just as long and as happily without ever having to know these two bags of salvation had spent a year and a half in some corpse's decaying rectum.
"To create more cure," Ravi finished, ignoring Major's contribution. He put the bags down and picked up a bottle of liquid. "Starting with this. The exact same formula as the stuff Liv used on you ten months ago. I've got it ready to go, just plug and play." He picked up a syringe.
"Yeah, but now we know the effects are only temporary," Liv protested.
Major added, "Yeah, then it's reversion to zombie state followed by death." He didn't understand why Ravi would have made the same thing over again when the first one didn't work.
"Still, should keep you human for a few months until I can properly develop and test version two of the cure." Ravi drew some of the liquid into the syringe.
"Oh, yeah, a couple more months of not being a zombie sounds good to me." Rolling up his sleeve, Major glanced at Liv. "No offense."
"I'm gonna take a little offense."
Ravi looked at Major's bared arm and shook his head. "Sorry. Not for you."
Major sighed, following his roommate and Liv as they headed for the room with the rat cages.
"He's got to make sure it's safe first," Liv explained.
"We've never used it on a previously cured subject."
Liv took the lid off one of the rat cages, lifting the furry white rodent out. "Fortunately, we have the perfect guinea pig."
Ravi prepared the syringe and injected the rat, and Liv put it back in the cage.
"Well, how long?" Major asked.
Frowning, Ravi studied the rat, who seemed … pretty much like a rat, as far as Major was concerned. "Talk to me again in two days, and we'll see if there have been any effects." He held up a finger warningly. "Not that I'm promising anything, you understand."
"All right. I get it." Major was trying to, at least. But he was no scientist, and proper scientific procedure just seemed to be getting in the way, leaving him in the same place as before—sitting and waiting for that awful urge to eat brains to take him over.
But he couldn't wait two days. By the middle of the next afternoon, he was itching to know if the rat was cured or not, so he casually dropped by the morgue.
Ravi was leaning over a microscope, studying something. "Hey, buddy. What's up?"
"You know, saving the world."
"Oh. Don't let me interrupt." He bent over Ravi, looking at the reflection of what was under the microscope on the big screen. "Or slow you down."
Ravi looked up from the microscope, frowning. "This is how it's going to be now."
It was. No arguing with that. "You know, imagine how put out the guy who invented the polio vaccine must have been, you know, what with all the impatient children dying of polio stacking up."
"Jonas Salk is the man's name. Perhaps if he scored a touchback for your Hustlers," Ravi snapped, burying his face in the microscope again.
"Well, a touchdown for the Huskies," Major corrected.
Ravi tried to concentrate for another second, but gave it up for lost, which had been exactly Major's intention. "I suppose our test subject is due for a look-see." He got up, turning to Major. "I should remind you, it's only been a day since I injected her. We might not see any results for a while. Science is a marathon, not a sprint."
Major followed him back to the rat room. "Yeah. Sorry. You know, it's just my life. It's not like whatever happens to this rat happens to me. Oh, hey! Maybe he's grown wings, and, like, super powerful—" Or not. Major stopped talking as soon as they turned the corner. The only thing the rat had grown was a massive bleeding sore along its back.
"Balls," Ravi said.
It was as good a word as any for the disappointment. The rat was covered in sores, bright red against the white fur, and clearly dying. As they watched, it launched itself at the window, screaming, and scrabbled at the glass, trying to get at them through it. Major couldn't help but understand—he'd want to do the same thing to someone who did that to him.
"So. Prognosis for me is, uh …"
"Look, Major, this isn't the end," Ravi assured him. "I have more of the tainted Utopium. I'll tweak the cure."
"Before or after I turn into a zombie again?"
"Before. I hope."
And Major was going to have to live with that … or die with it. Whichever came first.