"Oh my god, dude, you weigh like a
truck
," I grunt, stumbling backward as the door
explodes
inward with the force of hungry corpses.
I run.
With Pretty Boy slung half over my shoulder like an overgrown sack of potatoes, I make a mad dash for the only available room left. My legs scream, my balance is atrocious, and the damn guy keeps
slipping.
"I swear to God, if you wake up right now and start complaining..."
I kick the door open,
throw
us both inside, and
slam
it shut behind us just as the undead swarm into the living room.
A second later
BAM!
Something hits the door
hard.
I slap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
Outside, the zombies screech and growl, slamming against the walls, the floor, and
the doors.
The wet, slapping sounds of decaying flesh
hit
the walls, sending a shudder down my spine. Well, metaphorically. I don’t think my undead nerves
can
still shudder properly, but my brain sure as hell
knows fear
.
Pretty Boy
stirs
beside me, his fevered breaths hot against my shoulder. I
clamp
a hand over his mouth before he
makes
a sound.
"Shhh," I
hiss
. "Unless you want our room service to be a horde of walking corpses, you need to shut up."
He’s too out of it to protest. His skin
burns
under my palm, and I
curse
under my breath. If I have any luck left in my sexy-looking rotten body, his infection
won’t
turn septic.
He
needs
rest, but rest
isn’t
exactly an option when we’re one door away from death.
I
reach
for the stash of painkillers the girls gave me earlier,
pop
one out of its foil packaging, and
press
it to his lips. "Alright, handsome, open up," I
murmur
.
He
groans
, but is slowly getting back his consciousness.
"Look, if you die, that makes my life harder. So be a good boy and swallow."
With some coaxing, he
takes
the pill. I
follow up
with another dose of antibiotics,
wiping
his sweat-drenched forehead with the cleanest rag I
can
find.
Not that cleanliness really
matters
when our air supply
consists
of rotting meat fumes and the whiff of burning trash.
I
lean
back against the cold floor, exhausted but unwilling to sleep. The zombies outside
won’t
eat me, but they
can
still trample me like a sack of meat. And I
have
no intention of getting my bones
crushed
just because my undead brethren
are
too stupid to differentiate between a human meal and an unappetizing corpse like myself.
The tension eats at me. I
can
literally
hear
the hunger in their moans because I feel it too. I can
feel
the weight of their bodies pressing against the walls. It’s only a matter of time before one of them
gets
curious enough to dip their hands inside the wood.
And then...
Ding!
[
New task issued.
]
Oh, great. Because things
aren’t
bad enough already.
I
pull up
the glowing blue interface, hoping it
won’t
demand something completely unreasonable, like wrestling a zombie barehanded or starting an apocalypse inside an already apocalyptic world.
Of course, I’m just being dramatic, but could I really be blamed considering the deep shit I’m currently in?!
[Survival Task: Ensure the human stays alive for the next 24 hours.]
Failure Consequence: The system will forcibly eject your current attractiveness and reset your progress.
I blink. My undead heart, had it still been beating, would stop.
Oh, wait... It is still beating after that major reset from the System. But now, is it saying I’ll go back to looking like a rotten corpse and nothing like this crazily sexy Goddess body I’m currently in?!
"You... what?!" I whisper-screech. "You’re threatening to make me look disgusting again if I don’t babysit this guy properly?!"
There is no response.
Of course.
I groan, facepalming. "Fine. Whatever. I needed a purpose in life anyway."
The walls rattle and I go rigid.
A thick thud reverberates through the room. It sounds like something heavy has collapsed against the door... maybe multiple somethings.
I hold my breath, staring at the only thing standing between us and a very messy demise.
Then, come another thud. Then another.
And...
CRACK.
The wood splinters.
"Oh, come on," I mutter. "Can we get a break? Just one?"
The moaning outside grows more frenzied, like they can sense the weakness in the door.
I grab the nearest thing I can use as a weapon which is an old, rusted crowbar. Not ideal, but better than my fists.
Pretty Boy groans again. His fever is bad. Too bad for me to carry him out of here.
Plan A: Fight like hell and hope I don’t get stomped into the ground.
Plan B: Uh... There is no Plan B.
The door lets out another sickening crack. A rotted hand forces its way through the gap.
I take a steadying breath. "Alright, motherf..."
Then the door explodes inward.
And the room floods with the dead.
The moment the door explodes inward, the stench of decay slams into me like a punch to the face. Not that I can complain much since I’m technically part of the walking corpse club myself—but there’s something uniquely revolting about freshly rotting zombies.
𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
The kind that has been marinating in the sun, their flesh soft and bloated and their insides liquefied and sloshing inside sagging skin with black worms swirling in their blood like kids in a pool.
Anyway, they don’t notice me. They don’t care much for me.
Their milky and unfocused eyes sweep over the room, sniffing, moaning, shuffling forward like a barrage of death. But their hunger isn’t for me.
It’s for Pretty Boy.
He groans softly, stirring weakly beside me and completely oblivious to the absolute shitstorm unfolding around him.
Nope. Not on my watch.
I move fast, grabbing him by the collar and half-dragging, half-throwing him toward the only cover available ... the small, dingy bathroom in the corner of the room.
I kick the door open, shove him inside, and slam it shut before he can so much as blink.
"Stay put, sweetheart," I murmur, locking the door. Not that it’ll hold if they decide to get smart.
But zombies aren’t known for their intelligence, just their persistence.
Which means I need to be faster than them.
I’m weak, but I need to try.