Chapter 3
Emma 's POV
I lurched along the street with a stiff neck and bowed legs.
When I shuffled past a floor-to-ceiling display window, some reflex in me tried to turn my head and look, and the neck refused completely, so I settled for thinking: fine, probably nothing worth seeing anyway.
With the noise of people scattering and running in every direction, one overwhelming urge pushed me toward finding someone to eat.
The street was already zombies, and the moment a living person appeared zombies were rushed and pulled down; if the infection took fast enough the person turned zombies, and if it took slowly they were torn apart and eaten by the crowd before zombies ever turned at all.
I watched it happen several times over — someone's escape failing。But they didn't get away — the lot of them were torn apart and eaten.
I found myself thanking God that I'd turned fast enough that I didn't have to run.
I hadn't bounced more than a few steps before I saw the figure in white.
Early twenties, lean, white button-down with work pants, stride steady and eyes completely calm. Cold-looking, but genuinely good-looking.
My mouth flooded with saliva, and my body lunged at him without any input from me.
That was the drool of something that wanted to eat him.
As I lunged at him, I was screaming like a maniac inside my own head: "Hey, run! I don't want to eat you!"
He undid his cuff button and rolled the sleeve to the elbow, and there was an old scar along the forearm. The hand closed into a fist, knuckles clean and sharp.
My brain, apparently with no sense of occasion, produced the thought that it was a very nice hand. Then the fist drove straight into my stomach.
My body went down with a yelp, hit the pavement, and started heaving, and those bow legs could not get me flipped over no matter how they scrabbled — a turtle stuck on its back.
Getting hit I could live with. Going down in that position in front of someone who looked like that was another matter entirely. I felt bitter. Every last shred of dignity, gone.
He crouched in front of me and said it in a low, almost offhand murmur: "It seems the weakness of zombie is the head."
I tried to scream help me and what came out of my throat was a wet, hoarse sound. The second hit landed.
Second death. Just before it took me I managed one last look at him through my crooked field of view, and his has a blank expression.
The clock in the corner of my screen read 9:50.
Sitting at my desk in the office, I knew I had come back again.
First time back I'd felt lucky. Second time I only felt awful. This time I stared at those two digits and ran the numbers: dead twice, back twice.
Honestly, staying dead was starting to sound like the simpler option.
Easy to say. But I still had to get my survival setup in order.
So I thought it through. Ten minutes before zombies reached the office.
Two deaths and two restarts in, I still had no idea where they came from.
Getting back to my apartment in the old neighborhood from the Financial District was fifty minutes minimum on a normal day, and I had no idea whether the subway was still running or what I'd be walking into. Run home — too far.
Stay in the building — life number one had already proved that useless. Wait it out — pointless, I'd just end up back here. That left one option. If you can't beat them, join them. Worst case, I'd be ugly for a while.
I got the storage room open and dug through it until I found what was left over from the holiday party: a Halloween plush mascot suit, a fat brown bear with stubby arms.
Then the break room, for a fruit knife, and a mop handle, and I used most of a roll of packing tape to fix one to the other until the blade sat solid and didn't move.
The reasoning was simple. Inside something that bulky, even as a zombie I wouldn't be able to move fast enough to catch anyone; and even if I somehow caught up, with that foam head in the way I couldn't actually bite down on anything.
The park nearby was quiet. All I needed to be was one harmless zombie that didn't eat anybody.
In the elevator down, the two colleagues riding with me stared at the mop handle with the fruit knife taped to it and neither of them said a word. I didn't explain.
The doorman stared at me for a solid three seconds, then asked, "Ma'am, what are you doing crouching here?"
I waved one short stuffed arm at him. "Covering the door for you. Go take a break."
"Don't make trouble here!" he said.
I waddled a few feet further off and squatted down again.
They showed up right on schedule and took down one of the guards first, same as last time.
I got the pole out and jabbed the blade into the thing's arm — it was completely absorbed in what it was doing and didn't even slow down, but it bled.
That was enough. I pulled the pole back, pushed the suit's sleeve up, and drew the flat of the blade, still wet, across the back of my own hand. Shallow. Just enough.
I bolted for the door, and not one of those zombies paid me any attention in the mascot suit — they were far more interested in the living.
Nobody on my tail, so I ran loose and easy all the way to the small stand of trees in the open park near the building, pushed in among them, and squatted down with every intention of staying there indefinitely.
My body was running warm. I couldn't tell whether that was from running or something else starting up.
I was getting exactly what I was after — turning into one of zombies without any pain.
A zombie came toward me with a newspaper in his hand.
It reminded me of a game I used to play as a kid, Plants vs. Zombies, and without quite meaning to I started making the little shooting sound under my breath: pew, pew, pew.
Before long my mouth stopped taking orders from me. I tried twice to pull my tongue back in and failed both times, my neck stiffened, and my head went over to one side and stayed there.
I didn't care. I was already a zombie, and I was wearing a costume, and nobody could see my face anyway.
