Would You Carry Me To The End?

Max's POV
When Frank first told me the antidote wasn't working, I instantly dismissed it, assuming he must've just made in error while doing it. But after countless retries, I soon realized that wasn't the case.
Nothing. Our gloves are covered in dried blood and antidote. We've tried everything. All it's done so far is make it stronger. Why the fxck is this not working? I've spent years working on this formula, and I'm not going to let it contradict me now.
"Let's try giving it a larger dose." Says Frank, running a hand through his hair before looking at the zombie blood on his hands and sighing in realisation.
"Do you think that would work?" I ask, doubting him subtly.
He seems to notice and looks down. "I guess you're right..." He says, his tone lowering.
That reminds me of someone I used to know. I just can't place the name...
Just looking at him I see his disappointment in his own ideas. Instantly some sort of caring instinct I didn't know I have takes over and I step close to him.
"No, let's try it." I say, careful to not touch him with my blood soaked gloves.
His eyes peer up at me through a curtain of jet black hair. "You sure?"
"Yeah, of course! Come on." I say, already over at the table whipping up another batch into a syringe.
"Max, calm it." He says.
"Don't worry. I'm getting right on it." I say, taking the syringe and plunging the needle into its shoulder and pressing down, pulling it out and setting on the table.
Waiting....
Waiting...
Waiting....
Nothing.
But then-
Something.
The zombie suddenly jumps up, pulling its wrists up and snapping the restraints off like they're nothing.
"WHAT THE FXCK?!"
The zombie jumps up, running towards us, we dodge it quickly.
"Max go get a gun." Says Frank, grabbing the post next to him for support.
"But Frank-" I say, about to object.
"I DONT GIVE A SHXT. JUST GET YOUR FXCKING REVOLVER."
His tone is grave, and for a second, he reminds me of Jack from 'The Shining'.
Practically scared, I turn and go out the door, getting my revolver from the other room before coming back in and stopping out of shock, staring at the zombie in front of me.
The muscles have grown immensely, and although the body is decayed beyond recognition, yet I can surely say it looks like it spent the last 5 years of their life bodybuilding. It wasn't like that before the extra antidote...
"Max!!" He snaps me back into my senses quickly and I aim gun to shoot, but the zombie is moving constantly and before I can even shoot, it's got my arm and it's twisting it to the side, the gun falls from my hand.
I try to beat the zombie, but every hit is literally useless against a corpse with no working nerves.
I would normally be able to get my wrist free, but it's suddenly like iron against me.
"Frank!" I shout, kicking the gun over to him.
He quickly picks it up and shoots the zombie in the chest, the blood splatters onto my skin and I cringe, gritting my teeth.
"IN THE HEAD OR HEART, FRANK." I try to hold in my frustration, but what can I say, I have a zombie gripping me and not letting go.
Fxck.
Frank steadies his shaking hand and aims the revolver towards the zombie's head.
And the zombie falls to the ground, dragging me down with it's airtight grip.
I manage to break the hand, which is now surprisingly brittle, and pull my wrist out. The bone practically shatters at my touch.
"What just happened?" Frank asks, pulling off his gloves, and tossing them to the sink.
"The extra cells in the antidote must've made it stronger." I say, shaking my head in confusion.
"Well then why would it work on the other zombie, but not this one?"
"Beats me. I guess we'll have to do some experiments and change up the independent variable."
His face just looks confused. "...English please?"
"We have to get a bunch of zombies that are different in one way. For example, age, or level of decay."
"Oh..."
I take of my gloves and put them in the sink, thinking hard.
How could this not have worked. All the calculations I made couldn't have been wrong, I worked so hard on this formula, I can't just accept that it doesn't work. After all of this.
Frank walks over to me and runs a hand through my hair.
"Maybe we should just set this aside for a while." He says, biting his lip. "You wanna...maybe...head into the bedroom and set all these problems aside?"
But through all the constant calculating and creating hypothesises in my head, I barely understand a word.
"Dude, concentrate. Sure...we should break open a bottle of champaign in do it in a pit of dollar bill profits once we get this done, but for now there's no time."
My tone is cool and conserved, but on the inside, I'm secretly freaking the fxck out.
"What do you think we should do?"
I stand and think for a minute, before speaking.
"Just..." I grab my revolver and start walking towards the door. "Get your gun and follow me."

**********

Franks POV

In the course of an hour, we've managed to catch about 8 zombies. 4 old, 4 new.
"Is this enough of your 'independent variable', axxhole?" I ask, jokingly.
"Fxck you, biceps." She says, trying to suppress a laugh. "The usual drill?" I ask, getting some syringes ready at the trey table. "You got it." She says, taking the syringe I hand her and slowly giving each zombie an equal amount of the antidote. For some of the zombies, you could actually look past the dead eyes and see human there. But for the other zombies...not so much. I guess it's just the age difference. A… very large age difference. Within a matter of minutes with our constant observation, two completely different things happen. The antidote works for 3 of the newer zombies, but for 5 of the older zombies, it does nothing except cause their dead pulse to race, slightly. But that's all the antidote we can give them. At least, without repeating the scenario we had with that other little fxcker earlier. The new humans look up at us. All different. Two boys and one girl. All of the humans look frightened. Like we've kidnapped them or something. "What's going on?" Pipes up the girl, with wide eyes, shaking. "It worked." I say, grinning. "What worked?" Asked the boy with blonde hair, looking from me to Max. But suddenly, the humans seem to realise what's happened. "It seems like it won't work on the old ones." Says Max, thinking. "I guess that there aren't enough cells left with the old ones to cause it to take effect. "What are you talking about?" Asks the girl continuing to shake. "Come on." Says Max, pulling me out of the room and closing the door. "I think we have something bigger on our hands right now." She whispers. "What do you mean?" I ask. "Frank, did you notice how many fresh zombies there were out in the open?" "Yeah, what about it?" I don't get what she's trying to say. "If there were THAT many fresh zombies, imagine how many humans there are left." My eyes widen in realisation... We're not the only ones left.

Notes

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