Chapter 1

Emma 's POV

"Emergency notification. All departments are to release employees immediately. Everyone go home and shelter in place. Do not go outside."

Nobody moved. We just stood there with our heads tipped back, trading looks, waiting for someone to say something first.

"What's going on?"

"That didn't sound like a fire. The company has never sent out an evacuation notice like that."

"Earthquake? Or a typhoon?"

"We don't even get earthquakes around here, and a typhoon would come with warning."

I was wedged into the corner, and the moment I got my phone out with my left hand and opened it, two new messages popped up.

Vivian:* Why did the broadcast just tell everyone to evacuate? @Lila*

Lila: No idea. I have nothing on my end.

I was just about to reply when the doors opened.

The delivery came in through the back door, and I took the coffee he handed me.

I: so is there an evacuation or not, because if there is, I'm slipping out through the ground floor right now.

Vivian :* Sarah says no evacuation. She also says one more executive showed up, so get five coffees ready.*

I：where am I supposed to come up with an extra one, I'll just switch the whole order to bottled water.

Vivian:* no. The executive is jet-lagged and has to have coffee to function.*

Sarah was the finance and compliance director at my branch, and nothing got past her, not the monitor wall, not the badge logs, not the online status, not the time clock.

I stared at the word must on the screen and counted what I was holding. Four. Whether I could get back upstairs and find five paper cups and split the coffee out evenly was the thing I was working out as I walked, and it is the thing I am best at: turning an absurd demand into one executable motion.

I switched the delivery bag to my left hand and typed one-handed:* pour the coffee over the executives' heads, one cup per head, and then for the last one, the one with no coffee, give him a slow wicked smile and tell him he got lucky today.*

Vivian: You'll just get chewed out, die of shame, and then go home, wash up, and hang yourself from Sarah's desk in the morning.

I laughed at the screen without making a sound, put the phone away, and actually turned around and headed for the break room to look for paper cups.

That was when the scream came from the lobby doors.

The security guard was flat on the floor with a man on top of him, struggling and howling. Two colleagues went over and tried to pull the man off and could not, because the man on top had a strength that made no sense, his head buried in the guard's neck, the position of it wrong, like the joints had been installed backwards.

A red patch spread fast across the warm yellow tile. I did not believe anyone settled a fight by biting, but that color was blood, and the guard's carotid was spraying, spraying in rhythm, and after a few spasms he stopped.

The one who had bitten him lifted his head slowly. A face covered in blood, eyes gone pale and turned off to one side, jaw hanging as if it had come unhinged, the neck craned at an angle no neck should hold, head tilted, as though listening for something.

blood gushing like that could not be staged.

While I stood there frozen, the guard who had already died pushed himself back up.

Limbs twisting, eyes blood red, and with a low howl he lunged at the nearest person. He was faster than the first one. Blackened fingers went straight into somebody's chest, and the blood sprayed across his face.

Half the coffee in my hands went across the floor. I screamed, and reception screamed.

The ones at the doors all tilted their heads at the same instant, turned toward us, and then came. The crowd started to run.

The receptionist took a step in her heels, then went down the steps, and she stared at me in terror, wanting to call out for help. Her outstretched hand was less than two meters from me.

I didn't help for her — I turned and ran.

In the instant I instinctively turned my head back, an even more horrific scene was already there — the receptionist who had fallen was being seized by the limbs, thrashing on the ground, Her screams were absolute agony..

The limbs she was caught by were torn off quickly, and several of the zombies grabbed them and fed on them.

She was split apart alive, in front of me. I ran for the other doorway without looking back again.

The alarm was still going, and it finally got through to me that the broadcast had been serious. In two minutes, three people had died in front of me: one bitten to death, one opened up at the chest, one torn apart where she stood.

My scalp crawling, I bolted, and the thought in my head was this: is there any way to die fast and painless before anything bites me? I am more afraid of pain than of death.

The broadcast had said go home and shelter in place, and the main entrance was the shortest way home, so I ran for the main entrance.

My eyelid started twitching. Outside the main doors it was a solid black mass, the ones with their necks craned were pushing inward, and the blood red eyes all locked onto me at once and then zombies came.

I tried to brake — a person who has not exercised in years cannot brake.

I went down flat on the steps and rolled all the way to their feet.

That was it, then.I tried to get up. Too late. The first one put a foot down on my back, the second came down on my hip, and I heard myself yell help, and the rest of the word got stomped back down my throat, and I saw stars.

They kept coming, one after another, stepping across me. I had seen people bitten to death, clawed to death, pulled apart, and I had been scared out of my mind the whole time, and it turned out I had unlocked a whole new way to die.

Just before it ended I was overjoyed: thank God I was dead, I would not have to be bitten.