The last thing Zain remembered was the white, sterile ceiling of the hospital room. The constant beeping of the machines had become a lullaby, a rhythm that marked the slow, painful passage of time. The cancer had eaten away at him, leaving behind a shell of a man at only twenty years old. He remembered the weakness, the bone-deep ache that never faded, and the final, overwhelming tiredness.
Then, nothing.
Now, he felt… sore. Not the sharp, localized pain of his illness, but a deep, full-body ache, as if he'd been thrown down a flight of stairs. He groaned, the sound rough and foreign in his own ears. His eyes fluttered open.
He was staring at a sky the color of dull, grey lead. The air was cold and damp, carrying the scent of wet ash and something else, something sickly sweet and rotting. He tried to move, and his body protested, but it moved. It obeyed him. There was no weakness. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, looking down at himself.
It was his body. The same scar on his forearm from a childhood bike accident. The same fingers, long and thin. But it was… full. Healthy. He could feel the strength in his limbs, the solid thump of his heart in his chest. He was wearing the same thin hospital gown, now filthy and damp.
He was lying in the middle of a deserted street.
Broken asphalt stretched out before him, littered with overturned and burned-out cars. Their skeletons, blackened and twisted, sat like forgotten metal beasts. The windows of the buildings lining the street were dark, empty sockets. Some were shattered, others covered in grime. A few had dark, crusty stains spreading from their entrances.
A cold dread, colder than the air, settled in Zain's stomach. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't heaven or hell. This was a city. His city? It was hard to tell. Everything was so… ruined.
He climbed to his feet, his bare feet pressing against the gritty, cold asphalt. He took a shaky step, then another. The hospital gown flapped uselessly around his legs. He felt exposed, vulnerable.
A sound. A soft, dragging shuffle.
He froze. It came from behind a rusted delivery truck about twenty feet away. His heart, that healthy, strong heart he'd just been marveling over, began to hammer against his ribs. The sound came again, followed by a low, guttural moan that was full of nothing but despair and hunger.
A figure lurched out from behind the truck. It had once been a man, maybe in a suit. Now, the clothes were torn and filthy. Its skin was a waxy, pale grey, pulled tight over its bones. Its eyes were milky, unfocused. Its mouth hung open, and as it took another shuffling step toward Zain, a dark, thick fluid dripped from its chin.
Zain's breath hitched. He'd seen enough movies. Read enough books in the quiet hours between chemo sessions. He knew what that was. A zombie. A walker. A ghoul.
It saw him. Or sensed him. Its head tilted, and it let out another, more urgent moan. It started moving faster, its shambling gait somehow more horrifying than a full-on sprint.
Zain's survival instinct, buried for so long under sickness and hopelessness, roared to life. He looked around wildly. He couldn't fight that thing with his bare hands. He was in a paper-thin gown. He needed to move.
He ran.
He sprinted across the street, his bare feet slapping on the cold ground. The pain was a distant, unimportant signal. He ducked between two abandoned cars, scraping his hip on a broken mirror. He could hear the relentless shuffle-shuffle-shuffle behind him. He risked a glance back. The walker was still coming, and now two more had joined it, emerging from a shadowed doorway.
He ran down a side street, his lungs burning with the unfamiliar exertion of real, physical effort. He felt alive with terror. He spotted a fire escape ladder on a brick building, hanging low. With a burst of energy he didn't know he possessed, he jumped, his fingers catching the cold metal. He pulled himself up, his healthy muscles straining, and climbed.
He didn't stop until he was on the rooftop, three stories up. He collapsed onto the gravel, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Below, on the street, the three walkers had lost him. They shuffled in confused circles for a few moments before their attention was caught by something else down the block, and they slowly, mindlessly, shuffled away.
Zain lay on the rooftop, staring at the grey sky, his body trembling. He was alive. He was healthy. He was in a nightmare.
As his breathing slowed, he took in his new world from his high perch. Endless rows of crumbling buildings stretched in every direction. In the distance, he could see columns of black smoke rising. He heard a faint sound, carried on the wind. It wasn't a moan. It was a shout. A human shout, quickly cut off.
So, he wasn't alone. But other people, in a world like this, could be just as dangerous as the dead.
He pulled his thin gown tighter around himself, the cold finally starting to bite. The sun was a pale disc behind the clouds, beginning its slow descent toward the jagged horizon. Night was coming.
Zain, a man who had already died once, looked out at this broken, terrifying world and felt a new and unfamiliar emotion. It wasn't just fear. It was a grim, determined will to see the next sunrise. He had been given a second chance at life in the most impossible of places, and he wasn't going to waste it by dying again.