Zaria was still standing at the window, her eyes unfocused and thoughts turned inward, when a light tap sounded from the door.

"Are you alright?" The cool and calm voice of Gu Cheng interrupted her thoughts. Zaria blinked twice, trying to dispel the lingering mental image of bisected faces that were once human.

"Mm," she responded. Her eyes flicked across his body, but his belt was on and his clothing did not look disturbed at all. Surely the nurse, Saito Rika, had made him undress as well. Had she made him take it all off completely? Zaria knew why it bothered her that someone else could see him, but she was still angry that it did. No, she was angry at him, not at herself. He was so certain that Zaria was the one for him and yet he was okay with another woman looking at his flesh? What kind of freaking double standard nonsense-

"Joseph Zaria, why do you look like you are angry at me?"

Her thoughts were interrupted once more. "I'm not," she snapped. "Are you all clear? Everything looked over REALLY close and your body is approved?" She knew that her words were childish and she rubbed her hands vigorously across her face. "I'm sorry, it's been a rough day already."

"I understand. You performed very well out there." Gu Cheng stood stiffly in the doorway, hands pushed deep into his black fatigue pants.

"Thank you. You did well yourself, not getting eaten." She decided to be hospitable and act like a big kid by gesturing toward the couch to let Gu Cheng know he could come in and take a seat. He did so hesitantly, his hands still in his pockets as he lowered his backside to meet leather. Zaria sat at the other end and stared at the bookcases full of multilingual books as though they were the most interesting thing she had ever seen.

"This room is very small."

Zaria nodded and hummed in agreement. The room that had been cozy and warm before did seem to be rather cramped suddenly. "Have you seen your room?"

"Yes, it is much larger, down at the other end of the hall. There is plenty of room for both of us there."

She could feel him staring at her. Like two icy little needles poking into the side of her face. "Do you think that the people here can't be trusted? Should I be more wary?"

"No, I-" At some point his hands must have come out of his pockets because he was steepling them outward, his wrists balanced on his thighs. Long, trim legs stuck out in front of him, feet nearly touching the bookshelves opposite the couch. Zaria glanced at him from the corner of his eye, watching as his lips pressed together in a thin line."I thought you would be more comfortable sharing a room."

"Are you still angry at me?" Zaria grew weary of trying to figure out what he was thinking. Since arriving in the new world he had been distant, treating her politely but not casually, at least when he was not speaking coldly. "I would really rather you just tell me that you are angry instead of..." No words came to mind to explain how she felt he was behaving that didn't sound as though she were being petulant. "Whatever. I am sorry that I made decisions unilaterally in the last universe. I thought it was for the best. I would really rather not be left behind in this world, but if you don't want to travel with me anymore or don't trust me, I would understand."

By the end of her statement Zaria was turned sideways on the couch, looking at the side of Gu Cheng's face and waiting for a response. A minute passed, and then two. Then, without a word, he stood up and walked out of the room. Stunned, Zaria sat on the couch and listened as his footsteps grew quieter and then disappeared with the closing of a door several rooms away.

"Dammit," she muttered, pulling her knees up to her chest and leaning against the back of the couch. "Just say you are angry with me. Stupid."

When Yamashita came to fetch her for dinner, she was still in the same position. She gave him a polite smile and accepted the items they talked about earlier, listening as he explained that she could have another pack of wipes in two weeks if she ran out of that one. They walked together toward the stairs, the boy chatting happily and Zaria listening with a polite smile. Gu Cheng passed in front of them, not looking at either of them before descending first. Yamashita glanced at her in concern,but she smiled and shrugged.

Everyone was gathered in a large, formal dining room near the rear of the first floor. She recognized the four teenagers from the trip over, plus the nurse and her room neighbor who came in with her. Two other people were present as well. A middle aged woman with strands of silver shooting through her hair, which was pulled into a low bun at the back of her neck. She wore a flowery, button up shirt with long sleeves buttoned at the wrist, and sat at the table to one side of Saito Rika. The other was an elderly gentleman in a light grey yukata, his thinning hair combed neatly to the side. Everyone stared at Zaria and Yamashita as they entered the room, conversation dying as surely as adding pesticide to an anthill.

Once they were seated everyone began to serve their selves from communal bowls set in the middle of the table. Yamashita offered to make her a plate so she didn't have to lean so far and she thanked him gratefully. Having everyone stare was bad enough, but she didn't want to make some kind of faux pas while serving herself. She watched him closely to see how he took food from each bowl, and how much so that she could do it herself at the next meal. Seeing Gu Cheng clenching his jaw from down the length of the table she wondered if she had created another type of mistake or a misunderstanding. She couldn't think of how to ask Yamashita about it so she just let things go and swore to be more standoffish in the future.

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Nobody spoke as they ate. When plates were empty it was as though there were some invisible signal and conversations started up. The boys from the gathering group began to talk animatedly with Gu Cheng, and the women bent their heads closer to each other to talk quietly. The elderly gentleman made up a plate and walked out of the room. Zaria assumed he was taking food out to the gate guard.

"Right now, Ito and his group is telling your friend that you and he should join their gathering party. They are going on about how amazing you were chopping heads off zombies. Did you really use that sword you are wearing?"

Gu Cheng interrupted the boys, silencing them with a few words. When Yamashita started to translate, the cold man growled "Don't translate what I say. If she wants to know she can ask me later."

Yamashita nodded his head hesitantly, then dropped his eyes to the table when the other teens started laughing. They didn't know what was said but seeing someone yell at the bookish boy entertained them.

"Hey, thanks for trying to help," Zaria offered, shooting Gu Cheng a frozen look of her own. "It is great that you don't want me to feel isolated as the only one who can't speak the language."

This seemed to cheer the boy up. "You are welcome."

"Would you mind if I asked you some questions that may seem a little strange?" At his slow nod she continued, "I am obviously not from here, how did all this happen?"

"All what?"

"This? Dinosaurs and zombies? It seems like something out of a cheesy low budget horror movie." She took a long drink from her bottle of water, wondering if it was one of the ones that she helped to carry.

"It wasn't much different from any of the other times." Yamashita looked at her in confusion. "Wasn't it in all the papers? We saw news reports from around the world for a few days before the stations all stopped broadcasting here."

"Assume I have no idea about anything, and I have been living in a hole in the ground, and have never heard about zombies. How would you explain all of this?"

He pursed his lips as he thought, then scratched the back of his neck and smile sheepishly. "So, you want me to explain everything? Or just from this outbreak?"

Well, she thought to herself, that answers one question. There was no way to know how many universes had something resembling a zombie outbreak going right at this moment in time. But even if a thousand universes had little holes in the barriers separating them from her own, there couldn't be that many that were going through dead people walking around. This situation was obviously less than a year old, but zombie stories went back in her world for dozens of years, farther if you took old mythology into account. What if they were all inspired by the same universe? "From the beginning. I am a young child waiting to be taught the history for the first time."

"Okay, I will try." The polite boy nodded his head decisively. "The original strain that killed the body but kept it walking was a natural one. It developed hundreds of years ago. The location of its origin was lost with time, if anyone ever knew it. But it was not easily spread, and as long as the brains of the affected were damaged then the outbreak was over and everyone went on with their lives. It popped up every twenty years or so but was usually dealt with quickly. About fifty years ago there was a huge outbreak in...China, I think it was. A crowded city is where it showed up, and it spread like fire throughout the population. The city ended up being quarantined, and when infected began to escape they bombed the whole area to kill it."

He paused to take a sip of water, smacking his lips together loudly after. "Whether it worked or not I don't know, because it was no longer such long gaps of time between outbreaks after that. Maybe one escaped and slowly made it's way to another city. If anyone knows for sure, they are likely not talking so they don't end up missing. That happens sometimes when people talk about stuff relating to the sickness freely."

"That sounds pretty awful. How can they keep it from spreading or starting over if they don't tell anyone anything?"

He raised his hands up to shoulder height as if to say 'beats me'.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "Please continue."

"Anyway, it was thought to be gone for good about a decade ago. Scientists developed a vaccine for it, just like you would get for the flu. Some people refused to get the shot, but they had to make the choice to either get it or quarantine until they did. Not being able to pay bills changed a lot of minds and the sickness disappeared. It couldn't pass to animals, and with all humans protected it was over."

"Okay, so that sounds all neat and tidy, if horrible. But it is clearly a problem right now. And, dinosaurs?!? You haven't said anything about that yet..."

He chuckled at her animated gestures. "You are right, I haven't. Around a year ago, a group of scientists announced that they had managed to clone dinosaurs using some method they would not explain for copyright purposes. Or trademark, I don't know. I get those two mixed up. So they opened up a park with a few of the most famous of the dinosaur species. Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, a couple of others. It was like a zoo, sort of. Most people assumed they were animatronic. The scientists even hinted that they might be. Nobody cared. It was cool. But one day, one of them got free. The one with the big club on it's tail? Whatever it was called, it made it to a small bridge crossing the Arakawa river. The bridge was for passengers,people panicked, and the dinosaur ended up going over the side and drowning. Horrible, right?"

Zaria nodded, entranced. What kid from her generation wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs after that famous movie series?

"Well it was worse than anyone could have guessed. What was pieced together and announced on the news before the stations shut down was that the scientists had made real living dinosaurs, not robots, by altering the original virus that turned humans into zombies so that it would reanimate long dead cells. They basically worked magic and reanimated things that were dead for 65 million years and then used that DNA to make dino babies that didn't look like monsters. But the new virus strain was still in the babies. It didn't affect them like it does humans. When the club tailed one fell into the river, the river that supplies the water treatment facilities for all of Tokyo..."

"No...way..." Zaria gasped, turning sideways in her chair. "That is completely...did they really? I mean..."

"I wish that I was making it up," he said with a sad smile. "But the results are all around us."