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"Just so you know what you're getting into, you might want to bring some light reading material or a hand-held device. Being a spectator at a Ritual of Life can be really dull."

Bryan felt his pocket to make sure his phone was still there - he could read a few pages of his current novel if things got too boring - but he suspected that having a live (?) zombie so close at hand would keep things from being too dull. Still, he had little to do but follow the group to the conservatory, and he remained curious as to what the Ritual would be like.

Doc stood facing the zombie with her hands stretched in front of her, and her fingers entwined. She closed her eyes and stood there in that position for over 10 minutes. She wasn't used to performing the ritual on an unwilling participant. It was hard to let go of distractions and trust that Annie would save her if anything went wrong.

When she finally immersed herself in the ritual, what she saw amazed her. Colonies of bacteria were formed along the walls of arteries and veins in the shape of fluid pumps, and elsewhere in the body as replacement parts of injured organs. It was the most sophisticated microbe she had ever seen.

Eventually, she shifted her arm position so that her right hand was grasping her left forearm, periodically switching back to finger fold. She was eradicating the infection, colony by colony. This was the most dangerous part, because of the risk that her efforts could accidentally stimulate the bacteria, rather than destroying them. She continued this process for a long time. As she continued, the zombie seemed to gradually lose it's energy.

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When Doc realized that the subject's infection was completely purged, she sighed as though she had been holding her breath for hours. He was no longer a zombie, but what was he now? A man or a corpse? He had sustained a lot of damage, internal and external. She was still standing with her fingers entwined in front of him, so she checked him for signs of life that way.

The infection had almost killed him, but not quite. Doc concluded that she had to heal his injuries immediately, otherwise he could die any minute. She grasped her forearm again, and proceeded to repair the damaged tissues with all possible speed. When she was done, she paused the ritual to undo his shackles. He collapse on to her arm before she lowered him to the ground. She then stood over him and with arms crossed and completed the resuscitation part of the ritual. Otherwise he would have faced months, if not years, of convalescence. The newly rehumanized man regained his color and alertness.

The man groaned, then sat up and rubbed his head. He opened his eyes, look around, then frowned at the threesome looking down at him.

"Ok, that was weird," he said, slowly getting up. "Who are you, and where am I?"

Annie had watched the ritual with the gun grasped tightly in her hand. She'd half expected some sort of mutant zombie to rip its way out of the shackles and start nomming on Doc's brain.

"My name is Annie," she said, stepping forward to the man's side. She gestured at the others in turn. "This is Doc and Bryan. You're in the Mansion. Doc just cured you of a very serious illness, but we need to know how you contracted it. Do you remember anything from before?"

"...it'd...help to know what I contracted," the man said, rubbing his head again. "I mean, I remember lots of things--I remember everything...I jusst don't know what starts where...."

He looked around.

"Where are my kids? Are they with their mom? They're doing better, right?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know. I wasn't in the group that brought you back to the Mansion," Annie said. She took a deep breath. She knew this next bit of info probably wouldn't go over well. "You were turned into a zombie. Brain-eating. Shambling. The whole package. Do you have any idea if your family was infected also?"

"Yeah," the man snorted. "My kids bit me when we were trying to get them in the car to take them to the hospital. They came home from school complaining about headaches and begging for food. My wife took their temperature, and it was...it was...they didn't have one. We'd seen the advisory on the news, so we got them as bundled up as we could, and they started crying and fighting us...we almost had them in their car seats, when my little Tina turned around and bit me."

He rubbed his face again, then looked at Annie.

"Why did this happen? They all got this season's flu shots, just the day before."

"Interesting. So that's two possible infection points, the school and the flu shots," Annie said, thinking out loud. "Okay, we need to know which school your kids go to and also where they got the flu shots."

"...Ditto Town Elementary?" the man shrugged. "And the school usually does all of the flu shots and stuff. It's required."

"We should let Neal and Delia and the others know. The school sounds like our best shot at finding the source for the infection," Annie said, turning to the others before asking the man one more question. "Is there anything at all you can think of besides that that might be a clue? Something you saw while zombiefied, maybe?"

"Zombie Chickens!" Doc gasped under her breath, but she decided to wait until everyone was together to bring up her newly forming theory. She decided to add to Annie's stockpile of questions. "By the way, what's your name? Also, how many kids do you have, and do you know whether or not your wife is infected now? And, where on your body were you bitten?"

The man rubbed his head again.

"Um, name's Bob," he said. "I have two little girls, Tina and Anne Marie. Tina bit me on my arm. I...I don't know about Jane."

He fell silent for a moment, then rubbed his head again.

"Look, I don't know what you gave me, but I have a first-class hangover. Can I get some water and an aspirin or two?"

"I'll run upstairs and get some aspirin and a glass of water. I'll let the others know what happened while I'm up there," Annie said.

Annie hurried back up the stairs. She poked through some cabinets in the kitchen for aspirin and a glass, which she filled with water. Then she detoured back to them room Delia and Neal were in.

"The ritual worked. He says his kids turned him and they came home sick from school soon after getting flu shots, which they got at the Ditto Elementary. Seems like a likely vector for the infection."

"No wonder there were so many of the little creeps..." Neal muttered before taking a final swig from his drink. "I guess the school is the place to checkout next. At least it's closer than Monstropolis."

While Annie was gone, Doc continued her conversation with Bob, "If you're well enough to answer more questions, I would like to explore the idea of contaminated flu vaccines by setting up a possible timeline:

1. Tina and Anne Marie get their flu shots.
2. They develop obvious symptoms 24-30 hours later.
3. Within a few hours after obvious symptoms appear, Tina becomes zombified and bites you in a part of the body similar to where she was infected.
4. Within the next 30 hours or so you progress to a state of severe zombification.

Is this about right?"

Annie headed back down to the group surrounding the ex-zombie. She handed him the aspirin and water.