Confessions of a Teenage Zombie [Chapter Four]

...then I woke up in the Nurse's Office. My head was spinning. I moved and the harsh sound of the crinkling paper startled me.
"Oh, you're awake?" A voice said, I turned to it. "You've been out for a while."
"What?" I asked lifting myself up, blood rushing all around the inside of my head. It made me feel dizzy, like my head had nothing in it.
"Well, you were in line for the blood test and you passed out, so they brought you here. Its almost lunch period. Like I said, you've been out for a while." The woman said walking into the room. She wasn't the Nurse I knew.
"Who're you?" I asked her.
"I'm Samantha Cummings." She said. "I'm the new nurse." She was so young, probably still in her twenties. She had white blonde hair pulled up in a bun above her white coat. She was wearing thick glasses that made her look super smart.
"So did they take my blood?" I asked.
"Yup, I had to." She admitted almost ashamed.
"...and?" I asked. She shrugged.
"It was fine." She said and helped me off of the bed.
"Fine?" I said to myself, but I guess she heard it.
"Yeah, fine. Everything's fine. Did you want me to call your father and have him pick you up, or are you feeling okay?" She asked.
"I'm a little light headed." I said.
"Well, would you like to lie back down?" She offered.
"Yeah." I did. "Sam? Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure!" She said, sitting down on a plastic chair next to the bed.
"How would you know if someone was a zombie? I mean how sure are you that the blood test will work?" I asked not holding anything back.
"Well, we really don't know anything for sure. We just extract the blood and test it to see if it has the virus." She said almost as if she wasn't allowed to.
"What's the virus called?"
"Jessica, I'm just a school nurse. I have no idea." She said.
"Oh, sorry. So what if you test someone and they check out, but are still a zombie?" I asked hoping she wouldn't catch on.
"Like I said, we don't know if it'll work. Why are you confessing that you're a zombie?" She laughed, and I tried faking one.
"What if I was?"
"Then you'd be killed. Not by me, but by the army. They always kill what they don't understand."
"Wait, so you wouldn't be scared?" I asked.
"No, if you were a zombie right now that would change the whole perspective we have on them. Your brain clearly still functions in a cognitive way, so therefore you aren't all primal monsters."
"Go on."
"And then, if you weren't violent, I'd like to do tests on you. Because there are theories that since the zombie is essentially a walking corpse, the body decomposes. So take for example, when you walk, your muscles tear, but they grow back and that's really how your legs become stronger. Zombies, on the other hand, wouldn't grow those torn muscles back, at least not naturally anyway. So if that were true, I'd like to find out if perhaps there was something that could allow zombies to appear human."
"Uh, huh." I was confused but I think she knew I was lying to her.
"Let's just say zombies ate meat raw, and the blood from the animals allowed them to adopt an immune system, and other things lost after death."
"Such as?"
"The mending of torn tissue such as muscles, maybe it could allow them to pass for human; pupil dilation, a faux heart beat, a cover for the virus. Who knows?" She closed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. I wanted to tell her, it already felt like she knew. But what if she didn't? Would she rat on me? Or would she defend me?
There was only way to find out.
I took in a deep breath and said,
"Sam, I have something to tell you..."
"You're infected. I already knew, I saw it in your blood." She said with a smile.
"If you knew why didn't you say anything?" I asked.
"I wanted to see if there was any ounce of humanity left in you after reanimation." She said.
"So you're not going to kill me?" I asked.
"No, well yeah. I mean I'll only kill you or call for help in the event that my life is threatened, but you don't seem too hungry." Then she laughed, I didn't. "That was a joke." Then I laughed.
"So how did you know?" I asked.
"I saw tiny traces of the virus in your blood, but it looked like they were hiding in the cells of something else. Did you eat anything last night or this morning?" She asked.
"Yeah, my dad bought stakes." I said.
"Were they cooked?"
"No, they were still all bloody and raw when I ate them." I admitted ashamed.
"That must be it!" Her eyes lit up and she stood up. "I think the virus extracts the blood and feeds it into your blood stream, and hides itself in there."
"So as long as I keep eating raw meat I'll be fine?"
"I'm not too sure about that. We'll have to test my theory about your muscles mending themselves. But I'm afraid to, because if they don't then I'll have ruined you."
"Yeah, that would suck." I said.
"I'd like to try something, if you'd be okay with it." She asked me, kneeling down beside the bed.
"What's that?"
"I'd like to test the difference between processed meat, butcher meat, and living meat."
"You mean like a hamburger, raw meat, and the actual cow?" I asked.
"Precisely." She said.
I thought about me gnawing on a living cow's leg, and her just mooing in pain. It made me laugh, I always hated cows. They smell like shit. But then again all farm animals do, thank Jesus I'm not a hick. Pig on the other hand...I've always liked bacon over burgers anyway.

"Sounds like it'd be fun." I said.

-Sir Jestro