Death Role

The Chinese Herbal Medicine Shop

The narrow streets of Chinatown were deserted, save for the occasional walking corpse. Ed navigated them easily enough, having wandered them at a casual pace many times before, back when the world was normal.

“They have to have it,” he told himself as he made his way through the district. He was seeking a cure for the plague that was overtaking the city. He’d spent time in China and heard rumors of undead armies and the herbal concoction that brought them to a halt. He wasn’t going to save humanity though. He was only going to cure himself. Finally, at the end of an alleyway, he saw the bright red door he was looking for.

Inside the long, narrow shop, shelves of jars and stacks of drawers filled the walls. A funky smell lingered, but he breathed it in deeply, telling himself there had to be some healing properties to it; micro particles of the hundreds, nay, thousands of herbs around him.

First, he had to find the correct book, then the right recipe, and finally any number of ingredients labeled in scrawling Chinese characters. Having limited knowledge of the written language, he relied heavily on the brush stroked images that accompanied the cocktails.

He flipped through the book quickly, aware that he was losing time. And then he found the page for which he thought sought. The drawing, grotesque but still delicately painted, was that of a dead man. His eyes lifeless, his posture bent, his fingers turned in impossible shapes. Ed had doubts for a moment, thinking he might be looking at the recipe to create a zombie, instead of destroy one, but he pressed forward. I’m already infected, he reminded himself.

His trembling hands grabbed jar after jar, matching hand-scrawled names to those written on the page. When he couldn’t find one, he picked the closest match. He might die from the mixture, but he would definitely die without it. The area around the bite on his arm had begun to lose feeling. That couldn’t be a good sign. Ed could wait no longer.

After a rushed grinding of the bigger ingredients and mixing of the finer powders, he combined the two with a cup of water, stirred and hoped for the best. Even if his blending technique was incorrect, he would still be consuming the beneficial items.

“Down the hatch,” he said and then plugged his nose as he swallowed gulp after gulp of the foul drink. It took every bit of him to not throw it back up. He sat on the floor behind one of the counters and waited to feel something different. Instead, his body continued to go numb.

Then, the front door of the shop was forced open.

On his way to the shop earlier he’d heard footsteps behind him. “You’ve been following me,” Ed said from behind the counter.

“No, we simply took the same path,” a woman replied. “You just got here first.” She walked slowly toward the sound of his voice, her hand resting on a handgun strapped to her waist. She took in the cluster of jars on the counter.

“I only made enough for me,” Ed said, “and I’ve eaten it. So you can jus-” Vomit spewed from his mouth. When it stopped, he couldn’t pull his hanging tongue back in. I have to feel worse before I feel better, he told himself.

The woman found a stool and sat down. “It only works if you haven’t contracted the infection yet. It isn’t a cure. It’s a preventative. And besides, you got three of the ingredients wrong.”