Another Successful Procedure

Phi wrung her latex covered hands together and smiled painfully.

"Zombies," she said aloud, to no one in particular.

She closed her eyes.

"Zombies," she said again. Shuffling, decomposing, sacks of germs that would be directly making their way to her pristine and clean person, she imagined.

Phi swallowed and continued her painful smile. She felt that, under the circumstances, she was dealing with the potential sudden influx of germs very well. Her therapist would have called her utter failure to panic a 'stage three success'. She had hated therapy almost as much as dirt. She would have called it 'getting better'. There was no need for all the fancy talky nonsense. She hated germs and they terrified her to the point of standing in one place and thinking about how much she hated and was scared of germs.

She opened her eyes to follow the rest of the ram shackle crew to the drive room. Phi decided she would reward herself later for not letting the surrounding germs bother her, perhaps a bar of chocolate if the food dispensers were running. She then thought about how 'melty' chocolate could get and imagined it on her clothes and felt a cold wash of fear.

This was called a stage nine regression. She shook her head and tried to focus on the important things; running for one's life.

It was then that she saw a pair of disembodied human legs speeding towards them.

"Legs!" she shouted, confused. They zipped past her and ran straight into Seymour, jump kicking him to the floor. Seymour curled into a small ball as the legs kicked and kicked and kicked at their former owner.

Jay leapt towards Seymour to try and pull them away, but their steel toe capped shoes proved far too powerful. There was a squelchy tear and the legs broke in two, the right attacking Jay and the left focusing on Seymour.

"Don't just stand there, Phi!" Jay shouted as a boot stomped the wall by the side of his head. "Give us a hand!"

She stammered and looked at the legs. Reaching into one of her lab coat's many pockets, she scrambled about for something useful, before finding a small bone saw.

"I've never performed an amputation before!" she shouted, running at the legs. Jay and Seymour stopped wrestling with the appendages as Phi stabbed the legs in the thighs with the bone saw.

"Careful! You best not hit my face! This face is known all over the cosmos and one must keep up appearances!" Seymour moaned as Phi slashed the back of the left leg, causing it to flop over on the floor.

Jay held the right leg over his head triumphantly and brought it down on his knee, the bones inside snapping. He tossed it to one side, satisfied and helped Phi pick Seymour up.

"We need to get moving, everyone. These legs are just the beginning," said Whitewolf, as he and Cassandra continued leading the group down the corridor.

"Are you hurt, Sir?" Phi asked, looking at Seymour.

"I think I'm very badly bruised and I most definitely have internal bleeding. There's no question, I require constant care."

Phi thought for a moment and a hand vanished into one of her pockets. She brought out an orange lollipop.

"Will this do for now?" she asked, handing it to Seymour.

He looked away nonchalantly, taking the lollipop. "It will suffice."

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