They filed in one at a time, and he dropped them in quick succession. If this was how the zombie apocalypse was going to be, it was a lot easier than in the movies. Victor almost laughed. When the last one tried to clamber over the bodies of its fallen comrades, he put one more bullet through its forehead. Five corpses, re-killed, were stacked against each other at the entrance to the hotel room. Time to find Clint and Lauren. He returned the gun to its place in his waistband, and climbed as carefully over the small pile of corpses as he could. When he’d cleared them, he stepped back out into the hallway.

Victor saw motion in his peripheral vision just before he felt teeth in the meat of his left shoulder. It was less the pain than the shock that led him to scream. Less the sudden eruption of blood from his shoulder muscle, than the fact that he hadn’t made it more than one day. He was so careless that, less than a full day after the dead began to rise, he’d already been bitten. He, Victor, was doomed. His scream twisted into a roar as pain and fear transformed into rage. He spun into the zombie, sent it reeling. When it had regained its balance, he saw that it had been an old man in its previous life. A frail, old man zombie, and it lunged for him again. This time he saw it coming – it was so slow; how could he have let such a thing get to him? – and he reached out with both hands. He grabbed it by the throat and smashed it into the wall, head first. Part of the skull caved in, but it was still struggling, and so he smashed it again. And again, and again. He hammered it into the wall, painting over the shitty pastel wallpaper with chunks of brain and blood and skull.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Victor was unsure how much time had passed, and a distant part of his conscious mind registered that the final zombie’s head had been turned to pulp. It was dead. But, with his vision blurred and his brain shutting down, he couldn’t seem to stop swinging it into the wall, all of his energy going into the task. He felt himself slowing down, but there was no impulse to stop. Eventually, he heard voices from far away. So far. They were saying his name, these voices, and he had the brief sensation that he was already beginning to die, that the dead were calling him over. Then he felt the hand on his shoulder.

He released what was left of the old man zombie, spun around, and found himself inches from smashing his blood-soaked fist into Lauren’s face. She grabbed it in her hand and put her other hand on his face. He saw her eyes flicker to his shoulder, his shirt and the flesh beneath, ragged and torn.

“Lauren,” he said, and smiled. “I was coming to rescue you. And Clint too. Where is he?”

Clint was pretty much right in front of him, just behind Lauren, and said so.

“Oh,” Victor said. And then suddenly he was tired. Very, very tired.

"Rescue us?” Clint asked. “We were waiting safely outside. You don’t go around slaughtering zombies, this isn’t a video game. You escape, you conserve ammo. Jesus, Victor, look at you. Bitten already.”

It was true. Victor nodded. He’d been bitten. There was an awful lot of blood. And suddenly the room was spinning and Victor was falling and everything went dark.