Chapter 4

Emma 's POV

After the change, I was issued a new way of walking: pigeon-toed.

Bow legs last time, toes turned in this time. So every death comes with its own deformity package.

My body was showing a genuinely depressing amount of creativity about the whole turning-into-a-zombie thing.

I wandered that park for two days, slow and aimless.

Whenever a living person showed up in my field of view, I was off and running, no say in the matter.

However, sealed inside a heavy, chubby bear suit, I couldn't catch anyone at all.

And the moment I lost sight of a target, I could hold the grabbing urge down again.

So I sat on the bench with my head hanging, thinking about how lonely life was.

Then footsteps came from somewhere down the path, an even rhythm, not the rhythm of people running away.

A voice landed right beside my ear.

"Hey — the one inside the bear? You want to come run with us?"

I heard a human voice, and instinct lit before I had caught up with myself.

I slid off the bench and came up fast.

"Hey — those people back there wouldn't take you. We will. More of us, better odds."

Mid-sentence, my bear paw went for his neck, and the thick plush filling turned the whole thing into a soft, gentle pat.

He didn't move at all. He just let my cotton paw land on his face, and it came out looking like a caress.

"Listen to me! Whoever's in there doesn't look right!"

The other one bent down and put his face close to the mesh eye holes in the mascot head.

Through that mesh I saw a face, very close.

Instinct dumped saliva into my mouth at an absurd rate.

I snapped at the hole — the filling of the bear head jammed my jaw shut tight, and I closed on nothing. I didn't even get a corner of his shirt.

He straightened up and shouted, "It's a zombie in there!"

Then he kicked me over.

I went down on my back, all four limbs in the air, a turtle flipped onto its shell. My hands and feet scrabbled and got me nowhere.

The whole squad's footsteps scattered and were gone off the far end of the lawn.

I didn't land a single bite, and I took a kick for it.

The grass was soft. May sunlight came through the mesh holes and lay warm across my face.

I scrabbled a while, understood I wasn't getting up, and stopped.

The sun was warm. My awareness started to come apart, the way you drift off somewhere you really shouldn't be sleeping.

Half there, I seemed to dream. A silhouette dropped into view — tall, white shirt, light coming from behind it, face unreadable.

And then I actually saw him.

White shirt, work pants, hair a little messed up, a stain at the collar, expression perfectly calm.

Instinct lit before my mind caught up.

I started thrashing, trying to get up off the grass, bear paw reaching toward him, pigeon-toed feet scrabbling at the ground again and again until some angle finally levered my upper body up.

A man in a black hoodie came running in from the side, dropped his voice, and I heard him say: "David, there's a storeroom in the little supermarket by the lake — Simon's getting the door open right now."

So the good-looking one was named David.

I look the man over through the mesh: hair a little messed up but the shape of his face clean, the stain on the white shirt not really hurting anything, eyes calm to the point of having no temperature at all.

That face. Where had I seen it before.

Who was he?

I finally got my body up and went at him with everything I had.

The man in the black hoodie asked quietly, "How's it look around here? Any danger?"

David glanced at me.

I was already on him, instinct driving my bear paw out toward him. He noticed, his brow drew in slightly, he didn't back up, and he opened both hands slowly.

He took the bear paws, used the momentum, and threw me over his shoulder. I hit the grass face-first and did not get up again.

"No danger," he said, his voice level.

I lay on my back in the grass, staring through the mesh holes at him standing over me.

Calm eyes. Low, deep voice. White shirt.

The memory snapped shut on itself: the second loop, outside the office, a man in white dropping me with one punch, bending down, and finishing it.

That was him.

This was bad.

The black hoodie crouched, brought his face to the mascot head, squinted in at me, looked for a few seconds, then grinned. "It's a woman."

He stood and shook his head at him. "David, do you have to be this rough." Then he pulled a meat cleaver from his belt, raised it overhead. "Let me do it. I'll go easy."

I stared at the blade and ran a quick comparison in my head: David's shoulder throw meant eating grass and not getting up, but all of me still attached. The cleaver going easy — I didn't know what that ended in, and I didn't especially want to find out.

David stopped him.

He bent, picked me up off the ground, and set it on its feet.

The second I was steady, instinct took over again. I went at him, bear paws locked around his waist, jaw grinding toward his neck and shoulder — and the filling blocked every bit of it.

From the outside it must have looked like a bear going in for a hug.

His face didn't change. He added one punch.

I staggered back two steps and sat down in the grass.

However good-looking a face is, right now it read as the plague.

David studied me sitting on the grass, said nothing for a few seconds, then spoke："Marcus, cut her out of that thing. We know far too little about how the infection works. This is a sample."

I sat in the grass watching his fingers feel along the bear's back for the zipper, and my head went blank for a moment.

As a person, I couldn't beat a zombie. As a zombie, I was about to be cut open and studied.

How does a person get this unlucky？How does a corpse get this unlucky？