“Fucking ZOMBIES? Really??”

I poured more into the skill and we started zipping along again, picking up speed. There was only so fast I could safely take us with the intermittent vehicles on the road, some parked logically to the side, some sitting in the middle of their lane, and still others completely wrecked across the highway. I was glad I hadn’t been driving when the apocalypse had begun.

“You’re surprised by this?” Bryan yelled over the air that whooshed past our ears.

“No, not even a bit! Which is why it’s so disappointing. Talk about a tired trope; I mean, zombies? In the apocalypse? At the least the Sand Witches were somewhat creative, if a little tacky.”

Dawn had fully broken now and we were making our way south toward the cityscape. It was late summer. Tall grass peeked up through occasional cracks at the edge of the pavement, crawling up like hair from sloped embarkments. Up ahead the grass gave way to more and more concrete as we approached the more urban center of town.

The sun was up, but the sky was dim. Not dark, but shaded in an odd way, like someone had rolled an enormous gray bedsheet over the sky.

“Let me guess,” I groaned. “Miasma.”

“What?” Bryan looked at me in alarm. “You have asthma this time??”

“No, no. This death energy soaking the area. Is this gonna fuck with the Cosmic Qi we’re supposed to be eating up?”

He visibly relaxed, though for him that basically meant he went from full-on panic to the parade awareness of a marine on duty. “Yes. No. Well, sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Like my facebook relationship status.”

As far as the zombies themselves, I both wished I’d never seen them, and also couldn’t stop gawking. Whenever I could tear my eyes from the road.

These were the freshly dead, you know? So it wasn’t like they were all gray flesh and exposed bone. They just looked like… people. Sure, a shard of windshield here, a bit of torn metal there, sticking out from foreheads and torsos, and blood, absolutely. But other than that they could have been goths out for a daywalk in their pale makeup.

What hit your stomach like a 3am $5 Classic Burrito Combo was the way they moved. They had no fucking idea how to, but they did it anyway. Slowly at first, with jerking, halting movements, they began to open car doors and climb out, shuffling out onto the road. They lacked the fine motor skill of your everyday human, and in that respect, resembled your usual Walking Dead zombie. But the more they moved, the more efficiency they discovered in their use of their dead limbs.

“Are they… getting faster?” I asked.

Just then, one of the walking corpses—a middle-aged woman in a sharp looking business suit with a red blouse—snapped her head around at an unnatural angle to watch us speed by. She began to follow, shuffling quickly at first. Others joined her, homing in on the sound we made as we passed. Just as we had created enough of a gap that I thought she might give up and wander off, she threw herself to the ground and began to bound after us on all fours in great, heaving leaps, like some sort of drugged-up gazelle. My mouth hung open in shock and disgust.

“They are,” Bryan said. “We should, too. Only more of them coming.”

“Fuck,” I spat. “Do they make zombies out of our dead wherever they invade?” I pushed the skill as far as I dared, then edged it just a bit more. The loping businesswoman kept following but fell further behind. So did the others but new zombies appeared to take their places, the highway being littered with plenty of corpses, apparently, due to the pileups.

He shook his head. “They are our dead.”

I gave him a quizzical look.

“These are the Shayathar. They are spirits. But yes, they bring a sort of death-energy, which bonds them to inanimate flesh. That they then animate.”

“Oh, god, bruh. So they’re like, body snatchers, but they only snatch dead bodies? That is seriously gross.”

“You’ve no idea.”

A car door just ahead of us swung open and I swerved, nearly losing my balance outright and cursing violently into the air. A dead body started to emerge from the dark sedan, but I was reeling, trying and failing to regain control. Then I bounced off a bright yellow Ford pickup, taking the hit hard and spinning even as my momentum kept me going. I somehow landed back on my wheels but I was having trouble. Bryan yelled something but my world was a blur of pain and motion and I couldn’t process whatever it was he said.

I came to before I realized I’d passed out. I was lying on my back staring up at the gray sky. Bryan’s face hovered over me like the sun.

“How’d you get up there?” I asked, my words slurred. “Hey. How’d I get down here?” This was confusing.

Bryan sighed, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out another potion.

That fucker.

A few seconds later I felt vibrant and aware and was on my feet again. “I thought you said you didn’t have any of those left,” I accused him.

“I don’t. Now. That was the last one.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Listen. We can’t survive if we stand and fight here right now.” He was pitching his voice low and even to project a sense of calm, but I could tell by the tension in his body that shit was serious. “We need to escape. The freeway was a dumb idea; my idea, my bad. Ok. Fine. But right now, we just need to get off it and find cover. Problem is, we’re about to swarmed by body-controlled zombie monsters. And all my skills right now are crafting shit from getting those potions ready. What’ve you got, Quart?”

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head. “Uhhh, let’s see…” I pulled up my list in my HUD. “I’ve got PB&J… Polysynthetic Fall, that’s a weird sounding one, huh, sounds like autumn-colored jogging wear… oh, how about—oh, you motherfucker. Look at this shit.”

With a thought I activated Knives Out. A trickle of spirit from my spirit pool was spent but immediately replenished from my Raw Cosmic Qi pool. Meanwhile a pair of sharpened kitchen knives had appeared, one in each hand, and these were not, in fact, grown from my actual fingers. I glared daggers at Bryan as I gripped the, ah, daggers.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He raised his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t know you had that skill. Here, give me one.”

For a second I thought about doubling down on his punk ass, but decided getting out of here before we were eaten or beaten or killed and invaded by spiritual parasites or whatever was maybe a better use of my energy. I handed him one of the knives.

“Good news is, it’s just like TV; no big mystery here.” We were camped out behind a red delivery van, blocking us from most of the rest of the highway, but we could hear them coming. Bryan dove out from behind the rear bumper and grabbed an incoming corpse wearing khakis and a polo by the shirt, pulled it toward him, and speared the knife deep into its temple. The body went slack with a gritty groan, Bryan removed his blade, and the zombie collapsed at his feet.

“Right,” I echoed. “Just like TV.”

A man came tumbling around the front of the van, spotted me, and threw his dead weight in my direction. I held up the knife, remembering my frantic first fight with the goblettes. It couldn’t be any harder than killing those leathery pigskin motherfuckers, I thought to myself.

I was wrong.

The problem was the eyes. They weren’t dead, lifeless eyes like you might imagine. Nor were they obviously alien in any way. They were just… people. Sure, their skin was a bit pallid and they trailed blood from the wounds that had killed them and they moved like those dog things in I Am Legend but when you got face-to-face with one, they were just, well.

The man had dark hair and skin. He was wearing a Cubs T-shirt and blue-jeans. Nice shoes, like running shoes but that hadn’t been really broken in yet. An Apple watch. His brown eyes weren’t bloodshot or milky. They were just eyes.

But he opened his mouth as he lunged at me, and I decided who I wanted to be, part one.

I wanted to be a survivor.

The knife went in through one of those perfectly normal eyes. The body twitched and fell, arms and legs coming in a bit like a cockroach.

I backed away, hand still gripping the knife. Then the muscles in my forearm spasmed and I dropped it. I felt dizzy, and short of breath, and I stood for a moment with my hands on my knees, just trying to stay upright.

That… that didn’t feel like shock. Or like disgust at having killed someone.

No. That was a far more familiar feeling.

A knot of concern—real, true concern—began to wind itself up in my stomach.

What the actual fuck?

“Quart! A little help!”

Bryan was showing an alarming amount of battle acumen with the kitchen knife, which, I supposed, made a lot of sense; even if he was beginning at square one with his stats, the retention of his memories probably meant he already had an innate sense of some advanced weaponry skills. Like in Reborn Apocalypse. God, that was a good book. I mean, weird, too, right? A little weird? But so, so satisfying. Just such a—

“QUART!”

“Uh, right! Sorry!”

He was fighting well, but there were just too many damn zombies. I scrolled back through my skill list and grabbed the first thing I saw, activating it in the direction of an approaching zombie salesman.

You have activated skill: Caged Beast!

Cosmic Qi condensed around the zombie in the form of an enclosed structure with what looked like blue plastic on top and transparent walls all around. It looked exactly like the little pet carrier Tommy the Tarantula had come in. The zombie thrashed at the walls and I felt its will clash against mine, so I sent a little more power into the construct; apparently I had plenty and to spare. The walls held.

“Well damn,” I said, “that’s too handy.”

Another zombie was coming toward us so I did the same thing, spinning the skill carousel and throwing out the first card it landed on.

You have activated skill: Candy Man!

I trickle of fruity-flavored tootsie rolls spilled out of my palm and fell to the ground between the zombie and I.

“Well that… the fuck?” I stared in disbelief. There weren’t even any blue ones; just pink and yellow and orange, and fucking hell! They were all good, but everyone knew the blue wrappers were the best (after regular tootsie rolls of course) because the blue were vanilla.

“Goddammit, Quart!” Bryan grunted, hitting one zombie hard with an elbow to the solar plexus as he yanked his knife free from another’s forehead.

I poured more spirit into the skill and watched in satisfaction as the trickle of candy thickened to a stream, then a veritable river, like fire-hydrant pressure, which I shot down the throat of my target. They slowed and stiffened, and I plunged my knife into their head.

“Hold on,” I shouted. Bryan knifed another zombie just as another three came around the van for us. “Am I the cat? Am I the fucking cat here?”

I yanked my knife free. “Bryan, catch!” I threw it, dart-style, into the face of the zombie closest to him. Then I activated Edward Breadknife Hands.

A small smile appeared on Bryan’s face. “That’s more like it.”

He yanked the second knife free and started double-fisting them, while I charged in, ten blades forward.

Fighting with the skill was… weird. Killing the goblettes, and then these first few zombies, had been an unsettling experience, sure. Even for a dream. They were intimate experiences, things I was acutely aware I alone had shared with the beings I had killed. But doing it with my own hands, the weapons nothing more than a literal extension of my own flesh and bone (even if shaped into knives through space magic), was a whole new level of intimacy.

I didn’t just feel the resistance of the dead flesh. I felt my knife, felt the length of it crack through bone and explore soft matter. I felt the pain of chips and dulled edges when I hit the bone wrong and didn’t score a kill.

Felt the release of tension in the zombies’ bodies through my fingertips when I did.

You have defeated Shayathar Vessel, level 4. +4 XP

You have defeated Shayathar Vessel, level 6. +6 XP

Kill notifications began to stack up and I felt a surge of pleasure at my growing XP. I swung a little harder, ducked a little faster, made that next kill happen just a little more quickly so I could get on to the next. And the next. I lost focus for just a moment of everything else, feeling my arms and legs carry me in a supreme ballet where I was the scythe-wielding angel of death, here to claim my rightful prey, the already-dead.

“Fall back!”

Bryan’s voice shook me out of my reverie. I caught sight of my reflection in the tinted van window and blanched at my own expression, then turned to see that Bryan had been strategically backing up, getting closer and closer to the shoulder and the guardrail behind it. We were on an overpass and I wasn’t sure if he’d picked this place to try to get off the freeway because it made any actual sense or if it was just because this was where I’d passed out when I’d crashed my scooter skill. But either way, I’d fucked up now.

Because instead of backing up with him, I’d rushed forward into the oncoming zombies, slashing and stabbing with abandon.

“Get out of there, Quart!”

Bryan lobbed one of his knives in the direction of a zombie making its way for me, but, bless him, he was no darts player. The blade deflected easily enough from the corpse’s body, hitting it with the flat, and clattering to the pavement.

“Fuck,” I growled. I tried activating Caged Beast again, but found it wouldn’t fire; evidently I could only construct one cage at a time.

Move, I said to myself. I needed to move!

My eyes snagged on Cart Collection and I activated it.

A long line of red plastic shopping carts all collapsed into each other sprouted out of my body, and before I could lose control I whipped it around so that it rested between me and most of the incoming zombies. I released them and they settled into place, rattling as the undead threw themselves into them like waves against a breaker.

But these things only got faster, and I bet smarter, too, with time. So I didn’t stick around to see what happened next.

“Hasta la muerte,” I muttered.

You have activated skill: Scoot On By!

I floored it.

A split second later I crashed into Bryan and roped him in with Ride-Along. Without sparing time for any second guesses, I crouched, leapt, and carried us over the guard-rail, into the air off the overpass.

You have activated skill: Polysynthetic Fall!

Just before we slammed hard into the pavement below, our bodies slowed to a feather-fall. Or, a polysynthetic blend… fall.

“Knew that getting a hypoallergenic comforter was the right choice,” I said.

Bryan nodded. “For all the many, many things we disagree on, Quart, this one thing will always have my support.”