Swallow.

Inhale. The air felt sticky and warm now, too warm like an allergic reaction. My ears started ringing.

So...the zombie queen was amongst the foresters.

I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be mouthy. I wanted to be Scrappy Doo levels of annoying. I wanted to box the air and say "Why I oughta, why I oughta, let me at 'em, let me at 'em."

Instead I was gripped in terror.

I couldn't look at the world around me as a tv show, anymore.

It had never been a tv show. There had been no scripted content. Hawthorn hadn't magically known everything. Or he had known the danger and used me as a lure. Or the situation was too large and no one could understand all the moving parts. I was either crazy on my dorm, or I had been teleported here to another world, and I was surrounded by a looming zombie virus and oncoming dinosaurs.

Everything I had ever learned had not prepared me for this moment. I was helpless, hapless, and the very air tried to smother me.

This was a creature. It looked like a woman. But it wasn't one. And it despised me for actually being alive.

I was caught between the gaze of something that wanted to kill me, and the open air of the forest below.

I may have whimpered as my hands started shaking.

The zombie queen smiled at my fear, mouth growing wider and wider with too many little needles for teeth.

"Do you see me, little red flower?" it asked. "Do you see me?"

I recoiled, shaking, pulling my eyes closed as it reached toward me.

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The fear was the enemy. I felt like the fear was smoldering me, compressing me. Tearing me apart and dissolving me.

Was this how I got turned into a zombie? How pathetic. All my talk, all my daydreams...

All my life plans.

I had studied a lot to get where I was. My GPA was impeccable. I had sacrificed going to theme parks to study. I had missed parties to study. I had lost time with my family and friends while I holed myself away in a little room to study.

For the sake of my grades, I could not die here, on this unremarkable steampunk world. I had to live. I had to do something, anything, to defy that nonalive nonhuman thing.

I whimpered some noises.

"What?" It said, pulling back. "Is that your name?"

I shook my head. My parents loved me enough not to name me something like that...

"Say that again, little girl. I didn't hear you." It felt like it's breath was on my neck.

"Dead Coil." I whimpered again.

"That is not a Name." It thundered at me. "What is that?"

All the terrifying compulsions to share my name where now switched to sharing this.

So, as everyone knows, I aim to please.

"Dead Coil. Accounting is done in a double entry system, so that when everything is completel everything is balanced. There are two sides, a debit side and a credit side. Some accounts have debits as their normal balance, and some have credit as their normal balance."

"What is Dead Coil? What secret is that?" That pressure came on. The outrage in the creatures voice.

I peeked at it. It was doing a very poor job of keeping it's eyes together. The other two foresters were looking pale, and had taken visible steps away from the zombie creature.

"Dead Coil is a mnemonic device used to help one remember an account's normal balance. Expenses, Assets, and Drawings have a normal balance of a debit..."

"That is non sense!" It moved to hit me, but couldn't.

"I wasn't finished!" I roared back. All the sleepless nights practicing and completing homework problems of balance sheets, income statements, the cash flow statement, and the statement of owner's equity. It was not nonsense.

"I don't care. Tell me your name!"

"Accounts with a normal credit balance, which are increased when numbers are added to the right credit column and decreased when debited are Owner's Equity, Income, and Liabilities. Dead Coil."

"Why is that more important to you than your name?"

"Dead Coil. A help little mnemonic to remember whether an account's normal balance is a debit or credit." I glared at it.

"Tell me your name."

But I found that the terrible stickiness of the air was gone.

Was that the trick?

I was shacking, my breath jagged. But...

I met it's terrible eyes. "I don't think I will."

"Speak."

"What big eyes you have, grandmother." I said, as I was planning my next more