Curative

By Kaimaler

Okay sooooo, this yeah. Um, it starts out away from the Atlanta Group, but we'll see them later! :D

This story is primarily for the enjoyment of writing, I've never written a TWD fanfic, but I LOVE reading them. Varied between adventure, romance, drama, horror, so much to do and SO much freedom to write and utilize the universe! I can't help myself.

Like I said though, this is written for my love of writing, to enjoy writing it as much as I hope people enjoy reading it. :3
So it won't be 100% the feel of TWD, I am adding my OC's, two, but I've wanted to do this for a little while now. 'Specially since TWD season starts up again soon! So read, I hope you enjoy it!

Constructive Criticism welcome! Flames or trolls, eh, don't care. :P

Experimental story! Just want to see how it's received. :3

Unethical! How dare they say such things. That is what they called it after all, unethical. Like this world was ethical to begin with!

He was fuming, his fellow scientists just didn't understand, they saw the world through rose-colored glasses even while people ate each other. Hell, even in the world before he would've been offended by his ex-coworkers refusal to realize the world they knew, the one filled with luxury and vanity, was coming to a devastating halt.

Whether it had been a fallout, whomever wanted to drop A-bombs on each other this time, or commit mass genocide again. He wouldn't stand for it, he felt the pull of scientific discovery just waiting for him, so close he could taste it. Yes, it is around a great learning curve, sure, but one cannot expect to gain so much without being willing enough to lose equally, if not more.

That is why he did what he did, after months of planning he turned the old useless basement in his home into a fully functioning high tech laboratory. So he could continue his research in peace, away from those cowardice scientists. Who gave them the right to question his techniques? And they had the gall to call themselves scientists!

It was clear as day to him, they weren't real scientists. Merely crowd pleasers, here to say that they were trying to find a cure for cancer or AIDS without actually performing any real tests to exercise their successes and their failures.

He swore the day the dead began to rise and eat the living, that he wouldn't let those bastards stop him from doing what needed to be done. Which was finding a cure and finding it fast. Before he fell victim to the undead like his ex-partners.

Their regards for human morality held them back from doing any real good. Because of their weakness, he took matters into his own hands.

He boarded up his home very well, not a drop of sunlight could trickle through. Nothing could get in without his permission and nothing could leave unless he bid it to.

His basement, the laboratory, was so excellently stocked that he could continue his experiments for the cure to the undead condition, regardless of the outside world and what it was becoming.

Just as he was about to head back down to his lab, he stopped in the hall and looked lovingly at an eloquently framed photo of him, smiling brightly, with his ex-wife and his daughter, the background showed it was taken at night at a local carnival. The ferris wheel's lights casting rainbow lights on them as they commemorated their trip.

How he loved her so, once at least, a long while ago. She left him. She left him. He understood of course, he was a very dedicated man, he should never have married in the first place; she would never stop disrupting him as he worked, a constant annoyance.

He realized that perhaps his outbursts were, at times, too forceful. He remembered the bruises on her face when she left that day, the taxi pulling away from the house. She forgot something that day though, or maybe she left it on purpose? Possibly.

Their daughter stayed with him, his ex-wife had gotten pregnant accidentally. She never wanted to have a child within a year of their marriage, and neither did he.

Again, he found another being that seemed adamant about interrupting his work.

Though he wondered if he could blame her, she was such a young bouncy thing. He wasn't sure what to do with her most of the time. Locking her in her room didn't ever work, she was claustrophobic and would cry loudly when he did so.

He found the best way to get the young girl to leave him be was to push her away, force her to work until she was so exhausted she fell asleep the moment she hit her bed. Sometimes this wasn't enough, when she felt ill or insisted on them going out somewhere together, he would resort to the same strong handed rebuttal that he had used on his ex-wife.

That always silenced her.

Eventually, she became quieter and quieter, until she rarely ever spoke at all. A turn around he was most thankful for.

Soon, she'd began to sneak passed him to eat her meals, leaving and returning from school was like a mouse skittering across the floor; she got the message, he didn't want to be bothered.

He did feel a little remorse when he was particularly harsh on her, making her run away hurt or fearful. Those human reactions plagued him as much as they did every other human on the planet.

Well, besides a select few had disorders that was either mental or physical that made the normal, powerful human emotions disappear. He didn't think them disorders, he found himself envious of them, so much so he had attempted once to try and find a way to hinder his human hormones.

Small answers, nothing solid and permanent. That idea, of lacking human empathy, was his own personal desire. One he would lock away until the day came that he found the secret to cure such ailments.

He nearly jumped back from the picture when he realized he was staring at it and holding onto it so hard he could hear the glass cracking. It was one of the only ones he was actually enjoying himself with his ex-wife and daughter. It was evident in the pictures that as time went on he grew colder and colder. He still had feelings for his ex-wife and his daughter, but not enough to divert his attention from his work for more then a few moments.

Another reason he found to be most disturbing. Determination and desire were such basic human emotions, yet he welcomed them both with open arms. If he were to rid himself of care, compassion, hate, love, and anger, would he not also eliminate those heavily influential emotions that changed his life and drove him into the more successful parts of his career?

Bah, he thought. Futile thoughts, useless, pointless, they did not further his goal.

But that which awaited him in his lab did.

He dropped the picture back onto the hall table carelessly as he neared the door that sealed his lab from the unsanitary outside world. Typing in the code, the door popped open and allowed him entrance. Closing it behind him, he heard the registered lock before descending the stairs and opening another door that lead into the white laboratory.

Freezers full of experimental specimens, shelves of tools, heavy stocks of backup supplies. He was well prepared for holding himself up at the undead apocalypse.

He slipped on his white coat, his old badge hanging uselessly on the pocket. With a loud snap of the plastic gloves, he began his work.

Stepping to the center of the room revealed a cold metal table, resting on it was the scarred, injured body of a female undead. Her clothes torn and blood stained, her dead eyes glancing wildly around the lab, once he was close enough, the undead body lurched forward in an attempt to satisfy her insatiable hunger.

Instead of feasting upon his flesh, the dead creature was hindered by thick leather straps and a metal restraint over her neck. It couldn't move more then half an inch before the restraints pulled on her dead skin.

He was fiddling with a few vials, mixing something behind her head as he hummed a calming tune. The sound only made the creature try harder to reach him, to feed. He smirked knowingly as the restraints dug into the animated corpse.

"Hungry, my dear?" He mused, holding up a syringe to a bottle, seemingly checking the contents before continuing. "You should be, it has been quite some time since you last ate. Weeks in fact. Perhaps why you are so thin, yes?"

Now standing at her right side, he looked over the creature as it groaned and hissed. He was trying to assess the best place to administer this latest form of the cure. Or, at least, his latest attempt at formulating a cure.

He raised his hands to her collarbone, the needle hovering over her neck carefully. Though the worn and damaged muscles kept tensing and twitching while he waited for the right moment to sink the needle in.

After a few minutes, he gained his opportunity and acted quickly, the needle caused the undead creature to hiss in protest. He assumed they did not feel pain, being that their bodies were pretty much dead as it is, that the nervous system was shut down too. He supposed that even the undead didn't like being stabbed or shot.

Another theory to be tested at a later date.

Once the syringe was empty, he pulled back and dropped the needle in a small platter of alcohol, watching as the dead blood seemed to fade away in the alcohol.

He had to wait forty-eight hours before knowing for sure if this cure worked or failed like the many attempts before it. So, as he waited for the results, he continued studying the undead condition before he hung his lab coat and left to rest until the next day, where he would start all over again.

When he woke, it was to the sound of the undead outside his home. The quiet groans of the dead world that he separated himself from, only about a foot of protection between him and the hungry dead that ached to feast upon his lively flesh.

He cared not anymore, the noise would only momentarily cause him concern. Though he had a gun in the off chance that the undead make it through his barriers. That was highly unlikely though, he had enough supplies to keep him locked up in his home for years so long as he rationed his meals properly.

As if on autopilot, he reached for his gun and dropped it absent-mindedly in his holster before rising for the day.

A quick breakfast, cereal, it kept well and lasted a long time. He ate it dry though, he had making the unfortunate mistake of not buying a substantial amount of powdered milk. Dairy products would spoil fast and he felt no need to bring anything into his home when the world was crumbling.

He read the same newspaper he did everyday, the last one published before the world ended. It spoke of the outbreaks across the world, the mass confusion, the body count, and how unbelievable it all was.

Granted, he always figured that humanity would kill itself off long before a virus ever did.

Once finished, he set his bowl in the sink and took a long shower, preparing himself for his busy day, to focus on his work.

Readied, he began to head down into the laboratory again. Once the door opened, he swung his coat on and headed straight for his test subject, the infected woman.

He heard it then. A beeping sound.

At first he was confused, then alarmed, before staring long and hard at the heart monitor. The line, it jumped! It was slow, abnormally so. A human being couldn't survive with a heart beat so very slow.

It was painfully slow actually, every time a beep finally came by, he was sure he was imagining things. Then, after a few seconds of a flat line, there would be another beep. It was so faint, so shallow, that it was barely even there.

The undead was alive!

He ran over to her side, studying her face, hoping, praying,for some kind of movement.

Then it happened. The mouth twitched back, not like when the undead would open their mouths to bite the living, but the corners of her mouth pulled back like someone dreaming deeply.

"Are you awake? Are you aware?" His voice was pleadingly low. Could this have been a success? Did he find the cure? After all this time, all his hard work, and all his sacrifices.Had he actually done it?

The heart monitor told him her heart was beating yet again, but no where near human rate. The irregularity made him concerned, what if she died before he got his answer?

He tapped her arm with his gloved hand and her skin twitched in reaction.

Her nerves, her muscles, they felt his unanticipated touch and reacted.

She was alive.

Dreadfully slowly, her eyes began to flutter open. The bright light of the laboratory blinding her as she tried to get her bearings. Her arms pulled weakly against her restraints, she wanted to shield her eyes, but felt herself being held back.

It was so bright.

He was acutely aware of every sound she made, every movement. He wanted her to wake up so bad it physically hurt. The anticipation built within his chest, he held his breath, and then she looked at him.

She looked at him.

Her eyes were still rather milky, that was unlikely to go away, but she was still capable of sight, that much was clear. "Can you hear me?"

Time seemed at a near stand still, her eyes staring tiredly at his face. She heard his voice, it was almost as if she was underwater when he spoke. He kept trying to talk to her and every second that went by allowed her to listen better.

"Are you alive?" He stressed her for an answer, this cure could be temporary, it could last a few seconds or a few hours, maybe even days or months. He had to know.

Even her blinking was in slow motion. She licked her lips, her mouth almost completely dry as she tried to swallow. Mustering up her strength, she turned her head towards him and, sure enough, the blinding light began to fade into barely tolerable blinding light.

A shadow was cast over her, it was a man, she could tell by the voice and the shape.

Five minutes passed before she could make out enough of the blurry figure to recognize his familiar face.

She smiled through her sleepiness.

"Dad?"