But I Am a Zombie

The flickering fluorescent tube above your head sputters, casting jagged shadows across the mold-stained tile of the subway platform.

The sliding scrape of something dragging itself across concrete grows louder, and you twist your stiff, rotting neck to look: a mindless zombie, its lower jaw rotted clean off, trails a string of black gore behind it as it crawls toward the source of the copper-and-fear scent you picked up earlier.

It pays you no mind at all, as if you’re just another chunk of rubble in the ruin.

Further down the platform, past a crumpled, rusted turnstile, you spot the scavenger: a teenage boy in a tattered flak jacket, huddled behind a stack of loose concrete barriers, his flashlight trembling in one hand as he fumbles to reload a rusted semiautomatic pistol.

The alien viral whisper in your skull swells to a roar, swallowing the faint hum of the failing lights: «Warm flesh.Run.Tear.Eat.

» Your human consciousness recoils, your stiff fingers scraping deep gouges into the cracked tile beneath you, as the boy’s flashlight sweeps slowly toward your hiding spot, seconds from locking onto you.