Reborn as the Zombie King

Chapter 3: A Short-Lived Partnership

Chase spun around and stormed out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.

The bang drew every infected within earshot straight to the house and straight into Chase's fists. A few solid hits later, they scattered back the way they'd come, uninterested in a fight they clearly weren't winning.

Chloe stood frozen in her kitchen, staring at the closed door.

Was he... angry?

She replayed the last few minutes. He'd brought her an entire suitcase of food. He'd just personally beaten off a small crowd of zombies outside her house. That wasn't the behavior of something that wanted to eat her.

Is he... a good zombie?

Her stomach growled, loud and insistent, cutting the thought short. She dropped to the floor beside the suitcase and ate like she hadn't eaten in days because she hadn't, not really, not a full meal. Tears blurred her vision halfway through, and she let them fall without bothering to wipe them away.

Chase headed back toward the Westchester estate on foot. Driving straight up would announce him instantly, and right now four fully awakened people against one half-healed zombie were not odds he liked.

He still didn't understand the full shape of what he was up against. Vanessa's water ability clearly went beyond party tricks. Liam's doubled strength alone made him dangerous in a straight fight. Her parents were the softer targets one had a flame no bigger than a lit match, the other could barely stir up a light breeze.

Useless powers, useless people. Except now they've got numbers and a wall on their side.

Chase climbed onto the roof of the dark, empty house next door no lights meant no one home, which meant a clean vantage point and settled in to watch.

Two cores glowed faintly through the estate's windows. Blue. Green.

A blue core. First one I've seen.His mind turned it over. That has to be Vanessa's. Water ability, and a core color I haven't come across yet maybe that means her power runs deeper than elementary level.

But her parents had no visible glow at all. No cores.

Chase filed the pattern away. Maybe cores only form from strong abilities. Maybe every zombie carrying one used to be somebody powerful, before they died and turned.

It made sense, in a grim way. The outbreak had hit too fast plenty of people had turned before the Red Moon ever gave them a chance to awaken anything at all. This early in the collapse, most survivors were still hunkered down, unwilling to risk the street. And the ones who did have real power weren't dying easily enough to become one of the infected.

That'll change, Chase thought. Supplies run out. Everyone runs out eventually. And when they do, they'll have to come outside powers or not.

For one dark moment he genuinely considered luring every infected in the area straight to the estate's front gate. But the walls were solid, and Vanessa could put out any fire he started before it did real damage.

More than that he didn't want them dying to some nameless zombie in the street.

He wanted to be the one standing over them when it happened.

His fists curled tight enough to shake, just thinking about their faces.

Back at Chloe's, she'd barely finished savoring her first real meal in days when the gate rattled again.

Chase walked straight into the yard, opened her car door, drove off and, somehow, managed to lock the gate behind himself on the way out.

"What a strange zombie," Chloe muttered, staring after the taillights. "Acting like this is his own garage."

She'd honestly been planning to go looking for food herself tonight. Since her undead neighbor had apparently taken that job over for her unsolicited, but effective she figured there wasn't much harm in letting him borrow the car. Somewhere in the last hour, her fear of him had quietly downgraded to bemused tolerance.

The real reason Chase kept borrowing her car had nothing to do with charm and everything to do with logistics: it was the only car he had access to. Keys were scattered across a hundred empty houses he had no way of tracking down, and nobody but the infected dared walk the streets long enough to go car-hunting themselves.

Still, in his own head, Chase had decided the food counted as rent. A gentleman's arrangement.

The city at night was eerily quiet. Chase drove without any real destination, just scanning rooftops and windows for a telltale glow.

He had no idea that, three blocks over, someone had filmed him through a window a pink car cruising down an empty avenue like it owned the place, infected on either side not sparing it a glance and posted it online.

The comments were already spiraling by the time he passed the next intersection.

"Zombies just don't like pink, apparently."

"Bro your organs are basically confetti at this point, they've picked through half of them already."

"Are zombies actually less active at night? Someone confirm."

"Braver soul than me. They're way faster after dark, I've seen it myself try it and report back."

"Pink car = female driver. Even zombies know better than to bother."

"Statistically, female drivers cause a fraction of the accidents male drivers do. Maybe rethink that one."

"Can we NOT turn a zombie apocalypse into a gender war in the replies."

Chase, blissfully unaware he'd become a minor viral mystery, kept driving eyes fixed on the horizon, hunting for any flicker of crystal light.

Eventually he found it: two faint glows, moving slowly through a stretch of trees ahead.

He parked and approached on foot, expecting more of the infected.

He was wrong.

As he got closer, it became obvious the two lights belonged to living people, not corpses. His hearing had sharpened considerably since the change, sharp enough now to catch their conversation from a distance.

"Nathan, I'm scared... I think there's something over there..."

"Don't worry. I've got you covered. You've got fire you don't need to be scared of a couple of zombies."

"What's your power again? You never actually told me."

"It's an air wall. Defensive stuff. Didn't bring it up because it's nothing next to yours."

"Really? How much further? You're sure that store across from the complex is still stocked?"

"Positive. Bought cigarettes there myself before all this. Better move now if we wait, there won't be anything left."

"...Okay."

Chase had already decided to turn back. He had no interest in killing people who hadn't done anything to him, and from the sound of it, these two were carrying real power rushing them blind could get him killed twice in one night.

He was halfway turned around when a scream cut through the trees.

"Nathan's a ZOMBIE!"

"Don't shout, are you insane"

Too late. One of the infected had drifted close enough for the girl to get a good look, and the sight of that face up close her first time seeing one that near ripped the scream out of her before she could stop it.

She clapped both hands over her mouth immediately. It didn't matter. Every infected within earshot was already moving.

"RUN!"

Nathan bolted first, cutting through the green belt to dodge the thickening crowd smart, since it was the same route they'd used coming in, and it had been clear then.

"Nathan, wait wait for me!"

The girl's legs had gone to jelly, but she forced them to move, chasing after him. She had fire. She'd never actually used it on anything living. And stopping to aim meant giving the infected the half-second they needed to close the gap.

The infected moved faster at night their earlier shouting had dragged half the block's worth of them into the trees, and now the woods around the pair were filling in fast from every direction.

"Oh, come on"

Nathan spotted the blocked retreat and swore under his breath, scanning for another way out.

"Burn them! NOW!"

He rounded on her, furious. The whole reason he'd brought her along in the first place was the fire otherwise why split his supplies with anyone? He hadn't planned on dead weight.

"Nathan, I can't if I stop to aim, they'll be on me before I even"

She was panicking now, truly desperate. The man who'd sworn to protect her was outrunning her by a full body length and widening the gap with every stride. If he got caught, she was dead. If she got caught, apparently that was fine.

The infected were closing from three sides. Nathan skidded to a stop.

He turned back to face her.

"...I'm sorry."

"...Nathan?"

Before she could process the words, he thrust his hand toward her and released a burst of blinding light directly into her face.

No air wall. Never had one. Just a flare bright, useless against anything that hunts by smell and sound, which is exactly what these things do.

He'd brought her for two reasons: her fire made her useful in a pinch, and if things went sideways, a flash to the eyes would buy him exactly the head start he needed.

She screamed pain and betrayal tangled into one raw sound already understanding what came next.

Nathan didn't look back once. Somewhere behind him, the infected had a meal waiting.

Nobody chases the man who just left dinner on the table.