Chapter 7

Emma 's POV

I sat at my desk staring at the screen. The clock in the corner read 9:00.

No question about it — I had been reborn again, and this time one hour before the zombies outbreak.

My head swam. The blast was still echoing somewhere behind my eyes, and David's neat, unhurried escape was right there in front of me, clear as a photograph.

I rubbed my pounding skull. What exactly had I done in some previous life to deserve this?

I was an ordinary person .I don't want to die a horrible death.

So why couldn't I manage to die at all?

As a human, the zombies came for me.

As a zombie, a human came for me. Three times, all on the same name: David.

But none of that was the point. The point was that I had been reborn and had an entirely new set of dangers to face.

This round was different: the clock had jumped back a full hour, the first time that had ever happened. In the last few rounds I had woken with only minutes left, no option but to lie down and take it. An hour was enough to get me home..

I had done the math. Downstairs, into the subway, one transfer, counting the wait — fifty minutes at best to get home.

At ten o'clock the Financial District would fall. The old block was on the other side of the city and probably wouldn't have zombies that fast.

That was my chance to live. I took a deep breath, picked up my bag, and got ready to run.

"Is my iced Americano ready? And where are you going with that bag?" Sarah's voice came down over the top of my partition.

Looking at her gave me a strange feeling. I had hated this woman, who watched the backs of everyone's heads on a wall of monitors, and yet when I actually bit down, it hadn't felt good at all.

I didn't explain. I turned, pulled open the drawer, found the folding fruit knife, and flashed it in my hand.

Her mouth opened and the words stuck in her throat. The whole floor turned to stare in alarm, and I took my bag and shot out through the glass door.

After dying at David's hands three times, I no longer had the nerve for the painless route of turning myself into a zombie.

Zombies don't need food or water, sure, but their limbs are twisted; there's a great deal they can't do, and escaping is not one of the easy things.

More importantly, the second a zombie hears a human voice it loses control and charges at the person, which is exactly the way you run into a David and deliver your own death.

So I decided not to court it, and to escape properly instead: buy a few large boxes of supplies, hide at home, and stay hidden until the zombies were dealt with and the world was peaceful again.

I had a clear read on myself. Timid, weak, no fighting ability, no sharp head, and not even a real will to live.

Someone like that does not get handed the heroine's script. Staying home and not causing trouble was plenty.

All of it, of course, depended on my getting home safe within the hour; and if I did run into a zombie on the way, then it came down to the fruit knife and I would fight for one thing only — a whole corpse.

On my phone I hammered the delivery app one-handed, picking the neighborhood market six hundred meters from my door: ,canned goods, instant noodles, hot dogs, paper towels, batteries.

Every item with a plus sign to the right of the picture got hit. The total came up $4,123. My hand shook when I paid, and I confirmed anyway.

I began watching my surroundings very carefully.

The car held a thin scatter of people, each in a corner of his own, nobody looking at anybody; the nine o'clock rush was long over.

The fruit knife I'd pocketed on the way out had been confiscated at security, so now I could only wish myself luck and pray I didn't meet a zombie on the way home.

On a subway whose cars opened into one another, if zmobies come in here, there was nowhere to go but dead.

Twenty minutes in, at the transfer station, I looked around so hard and so constantly that a transit cop nearly took me for a terrorist and pulled me aside.

On the next train I checked the app, and it said not yet prepared.

A text came through on my phone: buying this much at once meant packing took time, the rider's e-bike couldn't carry it, so once the order was complete the owner would drive it over himself; the whole thing would run about an hour late, please be patient.

It was 9:35. Twenty-five minutes to the outbreak, and he wouldn't be downstairs for forty at the earliest.

By then his phone would be full of zombies videos. Why would a man who ran a grocery store pull his car out of the lot for four thousand dollars? Four thousand dollars of supplies, gone.

At ten sharp I came up out of the station, and the outbreak hit. The station, which had been quiet, broke into commotion — some people running flat out the way I was, others standing in twos and threes staring at their phone screens and arguing.

Passing them I caught "urgent, spread it," "official," "get home and shelter," and a few who came right out and said it: zombies in the Financial District.

"My friend says they've got zombies over there."

"Ha, cosplay, right? There's no such thing as zombies."

"There's video, look — this guy actually bit another guy's throat out. That's not CGI. That background looks like —"

Then the alarm went off and the subway PA came on. Notice from the city: all residents should return home as soon as possible, prepare sufficient supplies, and no one is to go outside until further notice.

It was phrased very delicately; it never said the reason was zombies. My guess was that they were afraid some people wouldn't believe it and wouldn't go home, and just as afraid that the ones who did believe would take it too far, exaggerate it, and stampede the supermarkets.

By the time I reached the red brick building in the old block, my legs had gone soft. The delivery was not coming now; I needed a second hand to play, and that meant buying whatever I could nearby.

At the corner market downstairs,Peter and his wife stood by the register with a cleaver and a baseball bat between them. I thought it was a robbery until I got inside and heard that it was an argument.

"A thousand dollars for one can of soup — that's robbery."

The world hadn't gone to pieces yet, but people had. The zombies hadn't reached the old block and the place was already a mess, every shop jacking its prices, the grain and oil store next door even hanging out a sign that said cash and gold only.

Peter, the owner here, had always been a generous, straightforward sort, and I hadn't expected this kind of business from him.

peter cracked the bat against the counter. "food costs more in hard times. If the zombies don't show up, come find me tomorrow and I'll refund the difference. peter keeps his word. And anybody who starts trouble, I won't be polite about it."

The crowd quieted.

I got out my phone and checked the balance: a little over five thousand, more than four thousand of it tied up in an order that wasn't coming, a bit over a thousand left.

Then I found that money wasn't the problem at all — the shelves were nearly empty. Where the instant noodles had been, only the price tags were left. Two packs of crackers, three bags of chips.

Two packs of crackers and some chips was all I got. Some people walked out empty-handed; some had a basket of food and guarded it carefully against everyone around them.

They were all longtime neighbors from the block, nearly everyone knew everyone, and it hadn't yet come to tearing each other apart over overpriced goods.