Chapter 5

Emma 's POV

They cut me out of the mascot suit.

I am, at this moment, drooling at two living people with no dignity whatsoever.

If I weren't roped to this tree, I swear I would bite David's neck through.

"What are you looking at?" Marcus wiped the blade on his pant leg.

"Very strange," David said.

"Strangely pretty?"

David turned his head and gave him a look with no temperature in it at all.

Marcus rubbed the back of his head and laughed right away. "I mean, this is the cleanest mouth I ever saw on a zombie."

I let out two howls. Honest to God, I have never eaten a single bite of human flesh.

"Not only that." David's eyes moved from my jaw to my wrists, to my ankles, to my collar. "She's clean all over."

Marcus clicked his tongue, walked a circle around me twice, and conceded. "Fair enough.Say she was jammed inside that bear suit and never bit anybody, that holds up. But she's got no wounds, no blood, no torn cloth. So how did she get infected?"

David nodded slightly.

"Unless." Marcus clapped his hands together.

"In just a few days, the virus evolved? Now it doesn't need a bite or a scratch? Airborne?" The faster he talked, the further back he drifted, and the color went out of his face.

I watched him bouncing around in front of me, and I could not hold back the urge to eat them both.

David took one step forward and stopped.

He stood at the exact farthest point I could reach if I lunged.

"Impossible. If it were airborne, the human race would already be finished." Then his eyes dropped to the back of my right hand "Look here."

Marcus bent down and squinted for a long while. “A mark this fine and this even doesn't look like a zombie did it.”

"A knife." David said.

Marcus froze for two seconds, ran the two words through his head, and then it landed.

"You're saying this person already had a fresh cut on her hand, and it got exposed to the virus in the air?"

While he said it he lifted his arm, saw the red swollen mosquito bite on his forearm, and his face changed on the spot. He clamped his other hand over it. "Oh, hell. Does a mosquito bite count as broken skin? Does this count?"

Marcus moved three meters off to the side.

If I could open my mouth I would let out a screech right here.

Last time around he knocked me down with one punch and bent over to finish the job, moving with the same tidy precision as a man taking out the trash. This time I only ate a shoulder throw and two punches.

David said without turning around:"You were bitten twenty-four hours ago,The incubation period isn't that long."

"Oh! Haha!" Marcus relaxed.then he came back in: "But I still can't work it out. A zombie, twisted up like that, no mind left in it, there's no way one of them climbed into a mascot suit on its own.But say she hid in there before she turned, wrapped up that tight. Then how did she get hurt, and how did she catch the virus?"

David's gaze rested on the thin mark, and he said nothing.

"I've got it!" Marcus slapped his thigh. "This woman was a coward. She infected herself on purpose and turned into a zombie. Hahahaha—"

I howled twice. Honestly, I kind of like this guy in the black hoodie. Talkative, lively, and at least he hasn't punched me.

And he guessed the most important idea of my life, which practically makes him a soulmate.

He laughed until he was bent over, one hand braced on a knee, the cleaver still in his other hand, the tip swinging at the ground. "She's out of her mind, hahahaha, the wiring in this lady's head, I'm dying—"

But his laugh was so ugly that I got angry and roared twice more. Can't beat a zombie, so I'm not allowed to join them? Turning into a zombie without any pain, what a good plan.

"What are you looking at?" Marcus turned back once he'd laughed enough. "The suicide zombie?"

He followed David's line of sight and looked too.

"Seriously, even with her face all crooked and her eyes off to one side, going by the features and the skin, she must have been pretty when she was alive. What a waste, what a waste."

"What an idiot" David finally said.

"Me or her?"

I rolled my eyes internally. You, obviously.

Marcus straightened up, slid the cleaver back behind his waist, and brushed the fluff off his hands. "We've been wound tight for days, it's nice to loosen up for once. Let's go, meet up with Simon."

David nodded, but his eyes didn't leave my face.

The skin on my scalp went numb.

For the sake of the fact that I have never bitten a single person and I'm tied to a tree right now, could you just leave me here quiet. I'm not taking up much space.

Marcus waved a hand in front of David's eyes. "Come on, let's go."

Only then did David pull his gaze back: 'What I find a little strange is that she looks familiar.'”

Marcus's neck stretched out:"That doesn't sound like something that comes out of your mouth. Don't you not talk to women? So how does a zombie look familiar to you?"

Every muscle in me pulled tight.

I was grateful I was already dead, with no heartbeat to be overheard. You're remembering? Finally remembering?

"I killed a zombie the day before yesterday," David said, "that looked exactly like her."

I thrashed harder, the rope biting dark red lines into my wrists.

That's me. That's me. You killed me and that is a grudge I will never, ever put down. But I couldn't get out one complete accusation, only mangle my own tongue: "Blehh blehh blehh—"

Marcus scratched his head. "I've killed a pile of zombies these past few days and I couldn't tell you what any of them looked like. They all look the same."

"The clothes were the same too," David said.

Marcus thought about that for a long time. "Twins?"

David didn't answer.

In my cloudy, crooked red eyes, a pair of hands with clearly defined knuckles closed around that aluminum baseball bat. This picture I know down to the bone.

NO, I screamed inside my head, another zombie's about to get killed. What came out was still "Blehh blehh blehh."

"May heaven hold no pain," David said quietly. "Amen."