Reborn as the Zombie King

Chase Ryder's eyes snapped open to a world crawling with the infected.

A scream tore up his throat and came out as a broken hiss.

What happened to my voice? His throat felt like sandpaper. He couldn't even shout.

Then he saw his own arm mottled blue, blotched with dark spots and the truth hit him like a fist.

He was dead. Or he had been.

The virus had ripped through New York eight weeks ago, and the city had folded in on itself within days. Chase had been lucky. His parents were gone, but they'd left him their house out in Westchester high walls, a locked gate, a pantry stocked for a war. For a while, that had been enough.

Then Vanessa Cole called him, crying.

Her family's apartment was in a packed building in Queens, she said. The infected were everywhere. Food was almost gone. Her voice cracked over the phone, and something in Chase's chest cracked with it.

So he drove into the city for her. Alone. Because that's what you did for the person you loved.

When he finally hauled her parents out and got them back to Westchester, there was a fourth person waiting in the car a stranger named Liam Hunt.

"My cousin," Vanessa said. "He was staying with us when everything fell apart."

Chase didn't love it. But it was her family, so he swallowed the unease and let the man in through his gate.

For a few days, things were almost peaceful.

Then Chase started noticing the way Vanessa leaned into Liam's shoulder when she laughed. The way their voices dropped low when they thought no one was listening.

"You're overthinking it," Vanessa told him, waving a hand. "We grew up together. That's all this is."

Chase wanted to believe her.

That night, the moon turned the color of blood, and the sky seemed to hold its breath.

By morning, everyone had changed. Everyone except Chase.

The emergency broadcast still looped on every screen in the house: All surviving humans have awakened abilities of varying strength. There is hope. Hold the line.

Vanessa could summon water like it answered to her. Liam's body now moved with twice the strength it used to. Even Vanessa's parents had scraped together some small gift between them.

Chase had nothing.

It took less than a day for that to become a problem.

Liam grabbed him by the collar before Chase even understood what was happening.

"How exactly," Liam said, almost lazily, "does a man with nothing deserve someone like Vanessa?"

"People with water powers are going to run this new world," her father added, not even looking up. "Don't waste our food on dead weight."

Chase looked at Vanessa. Pleaded with his eyes. Say something.

"Chase." Her voice was flat, already somewhere else. "I got you out of Queens myself, remember? With my own hands, my own power. If you weren't rich, if you didn't have that empty house would I have ever looked at you twice? Liam and I go back years. He's just... better for me now."

Liam smiled thin, satisfied and threw Chase over the estate's stone wall like he was tossing out the trash.

Chase hit the ground hard. Pain lit up every nerve in his body, but some animal part of his brain was already screaming move.

He forced himself up. In the distance, drawn by the noise, shapes were already turning toward him.

His ankle screamed with every step Liam's throw had wrecked it but Chase kept moving, dragging his swelling leg toward the only shelter close enough to matter: the community gym near the front gate.

The infected closed the distance behind him. He threw himself through the door and slammed it shut just as they reached it.

Fists and bodies began hammering the other side. Chase pressed his back to the door, chest heaving, sweat stinging his eyes, his ankle throbbing like a second heartbeat.

He hooked a mop with his foot, trying to drag it close enough to bar the door but it was just out of reach. Moving to grab it meant letting the door slip, even for a second.

He had no choice.

Chase leaned his weight into one side of the door, straining to hold the other shut with his arms alone, and stretched for the mop with his foot.

He caught it. Wedged it across the handles just in time.

He never saw the door gap widen while he was bent over. Never saw the hand shoot through the crack until claws raked across his forearm.

The pain was distant now, almost unreal, like it belonged to someone else. Chase laughed short, bitter, disbelieving as the edges of his vision went black.

So this is it.

Heat. Agony. Then nothing.

When Chase opened his eyes again, he understood two things immediately.

He was a zombie.

And he was still himself.

The infected shuffling nearby didn't so much as glance at him. He tried to stand, tried to walk toward the door and collapsed instantly, his balance gone.

"What the" He looked down. "Who ate my leg?"

Half of his left leg was simply gone, the wound already blackened and cauterized in some way he didn't understand.

Lucky, or cursed? Chase thought grimly. Either way I'm still thinking. I still want revenge. That has to count for something.

Then reality set back in. One leg. A corpse's body. How am I supposed to get revenge on anyone like this? I probably can't even outrun Vanessa's mother.

Something caught his eye across the gym floor another infected, but wrong. Different. Its skull pulsed faintly with green light, like something was glowing beneath the bone.

Curiosity outweighed caution. Chase dragged himself toward it, using his arms more than his one good leg, and found that the other infected paid him no mind at all. Not one flicker of interest.

Small mercies.

Up close, he realized it wasn't the skull glowing it was something inside it. A crystal, faceted, pulsing soft green like a heartbeat.

The pull he felt toward it wasn't hunger. It was something closer to instinct, ancient and certain. He wanted that crystal more than he'd ever wanted anything.

He found a barbell abandoned near the free weights, hauled himself upright against a rack, and swung it at the creature's skull with everything he had left.

It dropped without resistance. Chase swung again. And again. Until there was nothing recognizable left of its head.

He expected to feel sick. He didn't. Killing, in this body, barely registered as wrong.

He knelt, dug the crystal free with shaking fingers, and following instinct rather than logic swallowed it whole.

Power flooded through him immediately, sinking into muscle and bone like it belonged there.

And then, finally, Chase understood.

Everyone had awakened a power that night. His had simply been waiting locked behind a door that only opened once he died.

[System: Zombie King ability detected. Crystal cores may be sensed and consumed to grow in strength.]