The Dead Want Her Alive

The first person to abandon me during the apocalypse was the man who had promised to love me forever.

The second was my sister.

The third was God, apparently, because when I looked up at the blood-red sky above Manhattan, even the heavens seemed to have abandoned New York.

“Vivian!”

I slammed both hands against the steel security door.

“Vivian, open the damn door!”

Behind me, something dragged its feet across the pavement.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

I didn't need to turn around to know what was coming.

I'd seen enough of them in the last twenty minutes.

A woman in a torn business suit, chewing on a man's fingers. A police officer with half his face missing, still clutching his gun. A little boy whose mother had screamed herself hoarse trying to pull him away from the creatures surrounding them.

They had all been human once.

Now, they were hungry.

And I was running out of time.

“Vivian, please!”

I struck the door again, hard enough to split the skin across my knuckles.

Through the narrow reinforced window, I could see the underground parking garage of our apartment complex. Emergency lights flashed red against polished concrete. A dozen residents huddled behind the barricades, clutching suitcases and bags of supplies.

My sister stood among them.

Vivian Voss. Twenty-seven years old. Beautiful, intelligent, and apparently capable of watching her only sister die without blinking.

She looked at me through the glass.

For one beautiful, stupid second, I thought she was going to open the door.

Then she shook her head.

“I'm sorry, Mara.”

My mouth fell open.

“Are you serious?”

“They're right behind you.”

“Then open the fucking door!”

“There's no room.”

No room.

I stared at her.

There were at least twelve people behind her. Twelve people who had somehow managed to squeeze into a garage designed to accommodate forty cars.

And there was no room for me.

“Vivian, I'm your sister!”

“I know.”

Her voice cracked, but her hands remained firmly at her sides.

“I can't risk everyone in here for you.”

A laugh escaped me. It sounded so strange that, for a moment, I wondered if I'd actually made it.

“You can't risk everyone for me?” I repeated. “You've been stealing my money since we were teenagers, and now you're worried about risking something?”

“Don't make this harder than it has to be.”

“Harder?”

I hit the door again.

“YOU'RE LEAVING ME OUT HERE TO DIE!”

Several people behind Vivian flinched.

My sister didn't.

She simply turned away.

The lock clicked.

I stood there, staring at the door.

Then I heard the wet, hungry breathing behind me.

And I ran.

Thirty-seven minutes earlier, I had been having the worst Friday of my life.

My boyfriend, Daniel, had called to tell me he needed space.

Apparently, three years of dating hadn't been enough for him to figure out whether he wanted a future with me.

He'd needed space to think about it.

I had needed space to keep myself from throwing my phone through his windshield.

Then the emergency alerts started.

At first, I thought it was another terrorist attack. Manhattan had seen enough strange things that nobody paid much attention to the first sirens.

Then the screaming began.

A man attacked a woman outside a convenience store. Two police officers tried to restrain him, and he bit through one officer's cheek.

Within minutes, the street became a stampede.

I saw people trampled beneath running feet. Cars collided at intersections. A bus mounted the pavement and crashed into a restaurant, sending glass and screaming customers flying.

Then a man with blood running down his chin charged straight at me.

I moved before I could think.

He caught my jacket.

I struck him with my handbag.

He didn't even blink.

His teeth snapped inches from my face.

I shoved him away and ran.

That was when Daniel called again.

I answered because, despite everything, some stupid part of me still believed he might care enough to check whether I was alive.

“Mara, where are you?”

“Running for my life! What does it sound like?”

“Listen to me. I'm at the Hudson Towers shelter. They're letting residents in, but they're closing the entrance soon.”

“Then wait for me!”

Silence.

“Daniel?”

“I can't.”

Two words.

That was all it took to dismantle three years of my life.

“What do you mean, you can't?”

“My mother is here. My brother is here. There's no point in both of us getting killed trying to save you.”

Both of us.

As if I had asked him to die.

“Daniel, I'm five minutes away.”

“I'm sorry.”

The line went dead.

I called him back.

He declined.

I called again.

He blocked me.

I kept running.

By the time I reached the apartment complex, the city had become a nightmare of fire, blood, and abandoned vehicles. I thought Vivian would let me in. Whatever our problems, she was still my sister.

I had been wrong about Daniel.

I was wrong about her, too.

Now, with the security door locked behind me and the dead closing in, I finally understood something.

Being related to someone didn't mean they would choose you.

Loving someone didn't mean they would save you.

And sometimes, the only person you could count on was yourself.

Unfortunately, I was about to discover how useless that could be.

I made it three blocks before the first zombie caught me.

I was crossing an intersection when a taxi slammed into a streetlight, showering sparks across the road. I stumbled, and something grabbed my ankle.

I fell hard.

Pain exploded through my knee.

I twisted around.

The thing holding me had once been a middle-aged man. His shirt was soaked in blood, and one of his eyes hung loosely against his cheek.

He opened his mouth.

I kicked him in the face.

Once.

Twice.

On the third kick, he released me.

I scrambled upright and ran toward a narrow alley between two buildings.

A second figure emerged from the shadows.

I tried to stop.

My shoes slipped on something wet.

The figure lunged.

Its teeth sank into my forearm.

For a moment, I didn't feel anything.

I stared at the creature's mouth clamped around my skin, at the dark blood spreading across my sleeve, at the expression of mindless delight on its ruined face.

Then the pain arrived.

I screamed.

I struck its head against the brick wall until it let go. When it collapsed, I stumbled backward, clutching my arm.

Two crescent-shaped wounds stared back at me.

Blood dripped between my fingers.

“No.”

My breathing became shallow.

“No, no, no.”

Everyone knew what a bite meant.

We'd watched enough videos online. We'd heard the emergency broadcasts.

Bite victims were infected.

Infected people became violent.

Violent people became the things currently tearing apart Manhattan.

I pressed my other hand over the wounds as if I could somehow push the infection back out.

I had survived my sister's betrayal. I'd survived Daniel's cowardice. I'd survived the stampede, the streets, and the first monster that tried to eat me.

I refused to die because some ugly bastard couldn't keep his teeth to himself.

I ran again.

My legs grew heavier with every step.

The world tilted.

Streetlights stretched into long, golden streaks. My skin burned as though someone had poured boiling water into my veins.

I collapsed beside a parked car.

My phone slipped from my hand.

The screen lit up.

One new message.

From Daniel.

I'm sorry things ended this way.

I stared at the words.

Then I started laughing.

I laughed until my chest hurt. Until tears blurred the screen. Until the sound turned into something dangerously close to a sob.

Things ended this way.

As though the universe had simply misplaced me.

As though I hadn't spent three years loving a man who couldn't even be bothered to watch me die.

I thought about Vivian.

I thought about the door closing in my face.

I thought about all the times I'd defended her when people said she was selfish. All the times I'd covered her debts, lied for her, and convinced myself that family meant something even when she treated me like an inconvenience.

I wondered if she would attend my funeral.

Then I remembered there probably wouldn't be one.

A shadow fell across my face.

I looked up.

A tall man stood in the middle of the street, wearing a black tactical uniform. He held a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Unlike the others, he moved with purpose.

He wasn't stumbling.

He wasn't groaning.

He was looking directly at me.

Even through my fading vision, I noticed his face. Sharp jaw. Dark hair. Eyes so cold they seemed almost silver beneath the streetlights.

He looked like the kind of man who had never needed to beg anyone for anything.

He crouched beside me.

“What's your name?”

I swallowed.

“Mara.”

His expression changed.

Only slightly.

But I saw it.

Recognition.

Impossible, immediate recognition.

He looked at the bite on my arm, then back at my face.

“Of course,” he murmured.

I tried to focus on him.

“Do I… know you?”

He didn't answer.

Instead, he removed one glove and pressed two fingers against my throat.

His touch was warm.

Mine was becoming cold.

“Stay with me, Mara.”

I almost laughed again.

“Little late for that.”

His jaw tightened.

For the first time, something flickered in his eyes.

Not pity.

Something worse.

Regret.

“Not yet,” he said.

I wanted to ask him what he meant.

I wanted to ask why he looked at me as though he'd been waiting for me.

I wanted to ask why, in the middle of a city being devoured alive, he seemed more interested in me than in the monsters surrounding us.

But my lungs stopped cooperating.

The streetlights went dark.

The last thing I heard was his voice.

“Find her.”

Then everything disappeared.

I died on a Friday night in New York City.

At least, I thought I did.

The next thing I remember was hunger.

Not ordinary hunger.

Not the kind that made you crave a cheeseburger after skipping lunch.

This was a living thing inside my chest, clawing at my ribs, demanding something I couldn't name.

I tried to open my eyes.

Nothing happened.

I tried again.

My eyelids lifted.

Gray pavement filled my vision.

For several seconds, I lay perfectly still.

Then I remembered the bite.

The blood.

The man with silver eyes.

The fact that I had been dying.

I sat up so violently that my head struck the underside of a parked car.

“Ow!”

I rubbed my forehead.

Then I stopped.

My hand felt wrong.

The skin was grayish beneath the dirt. Dark veins branched across my wrist, spreading toward my elbow like ink beneath glass.

I stared at them.

“No.”

My voice came out hoarse.

I touched my face.

Cold skin. Cracked lips. A strange stiffness in my jaw.

I looked down at my clothes.

My white blouse was soaked in dried blood. One sleeve had been torn away, exposing the bite wound on my forearm.

Except the wound was gone.

In its place sat a dark, circular mark surrounded by black veins.

I scrambled backward until my shoulders struck the car.

“No, no, no. This isn't happening.”

I pressed my fingers against my neck.

Nothing.

I pressed harder.

Still nothing.

My heart wasn't beating.

I slapped my chest.

“Come on!”

Nothing.

A terrible silence settled over me.

I was dead.

I was actually, genuinely, medically dead.

And somehow, I was sitting upright, arguing with myself in an alley.

A sound came from the street.

Footsteps.

I froze.

Three figures wandered past the mouth of the alley. Their clothes were torn, and their bodies moved with the same unnatural stiffness I'd seen before.

Zombies.

One of them stopped.

Its head turned toward me.

I stopped breathing.

Not that I appeared to need breathing anymore.

The creature stared at me for several seconds.

Then, to my absolute horror, it lowered its head.

Almost like a bow.

My stomach lurched.

“What the hell?”

The zombie shuffled away.

I remained frozen until it disappeared around the corner.

Then a translucent blue screen appeared in front of my face.

I screamed.

The screen didn't move.

Neither did it care.

[INITIALIZING…]

[BIOLOGICAL STATUS: DECEASED]

[NEURAL ACTIVITY: ACTIVE]

[INFECTION LEVEL: 37.8%]

[HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS: STABLE]

I stared at the words.

Then I stared at my hands.

Then I looked at the screen again.

“I'm sorry. Biological status, what?”

A second window appeared.

[WELCOME, MARA VOSS.]

[THE EVOLUTION SYSTEM HAS SELECTED YOU AS A CANDIDATE.]

[SURVIVAL PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.]

I waited.

Nothing else appeared.

I waved a hand through the screen.

My fingers passed straight through it.

“Okay. Either I'm hallucinating, or death comes with a really shitty customer service department.”

Another notification flashed.

[TIME UNTIL INITIAL OUTBREAK: 00:37:00]

My mouth went dry.

I read it once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then I laughed.

It wasn't because anything was funny.

It was because the alternative was screaming until the end of time.

“That's impossible. The outbreak already happened.”

[CORRECTION: THE INITIAL OUTBREAK HAS NOT YET BEGUN.]

I stared at the screen.

The city was quiet.

Not peaceful. Not safe.

Just quiet in the unnatural way a room becomes quiet when everyone inside it knows something terrible is about to happen.

I crawled out from beneath the car.

The street looked different.

The taxi that had crashed into the streetlight was gone. The traffic lights worked. A couple walked past the alley entrance, arguing about dinner.

No blood.

No screaming.

No bodies.

I stumbled toward a shop window and looked at my reflection.

The woman staring back at me was pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes and veins that looked almost black beneath her skin.

But it was my face.

My body.

My clothes.

I had returned to a point before everything collapsed.

Thirty-seven minutes.

That was all I had.

Thirty-seven minutes to figure out why I was alive when I was supposed to be dead.

Thirty-seven minutes to find somewhere safe before the streets filled with monsters.

Thirty-seven minutes to decide whether I wanted to save the people who had abandoned me.

I didn't know how I'd returned.

I didn't know what the System wanted.

And I certainly didn't know why I was hungry enough to consider the couple walking past me as a potential meal.

I backed away from the window.

“No people,” I whispered to myself. “Absolutely no eating people.”

My stomach growled.

Except it wasn't my stomach.

It was something deeper, something that had no business existing inside a dead body.

A third notification appeared.

[WARNING: HOSTILE INSTINCTS DETECTED.]

[RECOMMENDATION: FEED BEFORE CONSCIOUSNESS DEGRADES.]

“Feed on what?”

The screen vanished.

Then reappeared.

[FIRST MISSION GENERATED.]

The letters turned red.

[FIRST MISSION: KILL VIVIAN VOSS.]

I stopped moving.

For several seconds, I couldn't even think.

Vivian.

My sister.

The woman who had looked me in the eyes and locked the door while monsters hunted me outside.

The woman whose betrayal I had been too busy surviving to properly hate.

I read the mission again.

Then I began to laugh.

Slowly at first.

Then harder.

Because apparently, the universe had given me a second chance.

Not to heal.

Not to start over.

Not even to become a better person.

It had brought me back as a monster and immediately handed me a murder assignment.

And the target was the one person I had spent my entire life trying to protect.

The System flashed again.

[MISSION DEADLINE: 02:00:00 AFTER OUTBREAK COMMENCEMENT.]

[FAILURE PENALTY: EVOLUTION LOCKDOWN.]

I wiped my face, though I wasn't sure why I was crying.

Then I looked toward the street where my sister's apartment building stood.

“Fine,” I whispered.

I didn't know whether I intended to kill Vivian.

I didn't know whether the System could punish me.

I didn't know whether I could survive another night, let alone an apocalypse.

But I knew one thing.

If I was going to be a monster, I would decide what kind.

I took my first step toward the building.

Then every zombie on the street turned toward me at once.

Dozens of ruined faces.

Dozens of dead eyes.

All staring.

All silent.

And one by one, they lowered their heads.

The System flickered.

For the first time, its blue letters distorted.

[UNREGISTERED RESPONSE DETECTED.]

[WARNING: SUBJECT RECOGNITION EXCEEDS EXPECTED PARAMETERS.]

A final line appeared.

[THE DEAD REMEMBER YOU.]

My blood ran cold.

Then a man's voice spoke from behind me.

“You took your time coming back.”

I turned.

The man with silver eyes stood at the end of the alley, his black tactical uniform immaculate, his rifle hanging loosely at his side.

Adrian Cross.

I didn't know his name yet.

I didn't know why he had been waiting for me.

But I recognized the expression on his face.

It was the same one he'd worn when I was dying.

Regret.

Only now, beneath it, there was something far more frightening.

Relief.

He took one step toward me.

“Welcome back, Mara.”