Chapter One

All I see is zombies

Walking all around us.

You can hear them coming.

(They come to take your life.)

- Childish Gambino

Somewhere in the USA. Maybe Maine. Or Ohio. Or something.

Nathan ran full pelt across what had once been the football field behind his university, and which was now an overgrown tangled swamp of knee-high grass and thorny weeds that tore at his bloodied sweatpants.

Anyone who might have seen him would have been able to tell that he hadn’t changed his clothes in months, at least. It was clear they hadn’t been removed at all in days because the varying shades of blood spatter on his clothes perfectly aligned with that on his skin. They were also at least two sizes too big.

At the time of the apocalypse, Nathan had not been able to run a full minute without seeing stars, the breath rattling from his lungs easier than he could pull it back in.

The great thing about the end of the world — about peril around every corner; the scratching fingernails of death against every closed door — was that really did tend to be damn good cardio.

He cleared the football field that he wouldn’t even have dreamed of so much as gracing with his out-of-shape presence last year, without so much as a stabbing pain in the side of his receded gut.

And he couldn’t help but hitch up his backpack and look over his shoulder with a sense of pride.

Still the reanimated dead flew across the field behind him at a speed he had never witnessed. Since when could a rotting corpse move like that? Nathan had seen plenty of movies. What about their degrading muscles? Their lack of bloodflow? It was impossible; it had to be.

And yet this thought barely even registered in his mind before flitting away again. Nothing that had happened in the last year had been possible.

He reached the trees and, panting but alive, pressed his back against them to catch his breath. Line of sight — that was one thing he knew these milky-eyed predators needed in order to track their prey. They had no sense of smell, and seemed to only hear loud noises. They needed to see movement, and keep their vision trained on it. To block their line of sight and then remain still was the best, and sometimes only, way to stay alive.

Nathan allowed himself to slide down with shaking knees until he was sitting on the ground, his face in his hands, trying to control his breathing as he had done too many times to count.

He just had to keep still and he would be alright.

Just had to keep still.

His breathing slowed and he stayed curled up in a silent, still ball for as long as he could bear it. Then a couple of seconds longer. Finally, aching and exhausted and thirsty beyond anything he had experienced before, Nathan lifted his head and brushed his unkempt curly hair from his face before daring to look around.

Nothing.

The forest was as still and quiet as it might have been before the apocalypse. He breathed a sigh of relief and got up to walk home. He hitched his backpack up further, filled with the spoils of his journey — medicine for little Rita and an original Gatorade (definitely flat by now) for Carlos plus all the non-spoiled food he’d been able to find, as usual — and set off in the direction of the hideout with adrenaline pumping.

It was a rush every time he escaped death. Time and time again, it remained a rush. He had played games before for a facsimile of this giddy feeling, but when the world had become just like a survivalist horror, the rush had become simultaneously a hell of a lot more intense, and a hell of a lot less fun.

Life was now set to Hardcore, and so far, Nathan was fucking owning at it. His Kill-Death Ratio (KDR) was somewhere around thirty to nothing. It had to be. And that was the most that any of his friends had. Well, he called them friends. Really they were just bunker-mates.

Confident now that he remembered he was a badass, Nathan walked faster.

Was that a noise?

Shit, he was paranoid. But paranoia had helped him to survive, so he walked faster still, and jerked his head left and right, and then all the way behind him.

A little rabbit hopped and then looked up at him, nose twitching. Nathan let out a dry chuckle, and shook his head, turning around again. “I need to calm the fuck—”

An impossibly wide, bloodsoaked mouth lined with cracked yellow teeth was all he saw as the dead man launched at him, tongue-first, and ripped the vocal chords right out of his throat.

You have lost the game.

It was something of a bug that death triggered that text, to be perfectly honest.

Because Nathan was never going to open his eyes again to see it.