Z 2134

real.
    And yet, it was.
    Chloe, Keb, and Marcus — all dead seconds before — had risen as zombies, snarling as they clomped through the snow, looking to devour them.
    Liam had seen plenty of undead raging their way across The Barrens, through a lifetime of staring at the ubiquitous screens inside The City, yet he’d never seen players — those who’d not been been bitten, anyway — rise as the undead.
    While his former teammates’ flesh had not yet started decaying or reeking of the putrified stench that the undead carried with them, there was no mistaking that Chloe, Keb, and Marcus were turned into zombies. They had that familiar haunted white horror in their vacant eyes. Their mouths were open, with awful, elongated moans stretching from their lips, kissing the air with garbled bits of nothing.
    And they appeared singular in their purpose — to feast on the living.
    Why are they zombies, and how the hell did they get infected?
    While it was possible that one of the three he’d briefly teamed with had been hiding a bite wound, there was no way all three could have concealed such injuries.
    No way in hell.
    Liam couldn’t help but feel he was witnessing something new taking place, something with horrifying implications, yet he couldn’t quite put his finger on what those implications were just yet. First he had to figure out how the hell they were going to kill these zombies.
    Liam leaped to his feet, head still throbbing from Chloe’s attack, trying to find his balance and assess the situation. Zombie Chloe was closest, with the other two zombies on the way. He grabbed the sword he’d been forced to drop.
    Before he could take a step, however, Ana sprang into action, racing past Chloe, then grabbing hold of the sword still impaled in her back. As Ana pulled at the sword, she stumbled back and seemed as if she’d surely fall to the ground. Somehow she managed to stay upright as Zombie Chloe growled and turned to Ana, taking a swipe at her.
    Ana pulled the sword back and swung in a wide arc, lopping Chloe’s head off in one sickening thunk.
    Chloe’s head smacked the ground, and her body hit it a second later. Liam’s eyes zoomed in on the dead woman’s splayed fingers, opening and closing as if she were searching for her head. Ana and Liam’s eyes met, frozen for a moment.
    Just behind Ana there was movement, which Liam didn’t pick up on at first. Once he did, and realized it was Zombie Marcus rushing at her, he tried to scream to warn her.
    He was too late.
    The giant’s tree trunk of a left arm swung, hitting Ana hard in the back of the head and knocking her forward, toward Liam’s sword.
    Liam pulled the sword back and leaped sideways, barely avoiding Ana.
    Zombie Marcus barreled forward, his dead eyes set on Ana, mouth open and growling. Liam, without thinking of a strategy, ran shoulder first into the behemoth in an attempt to knock him down. It was Liam who fell backward, however, pain splintering through his shoulder as if he’d run into a brick wall. He fell back in the snow and stared up as Zombie Marcus let out a loud bellow. The undead man’s rock-like teeth seemed all the more menacing now that they promised to tear the skin from their bones if given the chance.
    Liam scrambled backward, trying to gain space as Zombie Marcus reached down with both hands, pawing through empty air. The monster misjudged his timing, either not expecting Liam to move so fast or too broken in brain and thought to calculate his moves. The zombie swiped hard at nothing, then fell forward with an angry groan.
    Liam jumped back to his feet and thrust the sword through the fallen zombie’s guts, opening them and releasing their steaming contents to the snow below.
    Ana screamed, pulling Liam’s attention to her.
    She was on the ground, Zombie Keb on top of her, his chomping jaws barely held at bay by Ana’s skinny fingers gripping the zombie’s larynx.
    Liam ran to help her, sword drawn. Ana’s panicked eyes caught Liam from the corner and seemed to indicate relief before going wide as she glanced past him.
    Liam felt the thunder behind him, too late to recognize the threat.
    Shit!
    Pain erupted in his right ear, tearing through his skull as Zombie Marcus’s fist clobbered him hard, sending Liam sideways to the snow and spilling the sword from his hand. He hit the ground rolling, trying to gain distance from the goliath. If the zombie’s full weight fell on Liam, its jagged maw would surely tear