I stared into her cold, dead eyes--clouded over but still very much capable of sight--and felt the undead woman’s rank breath on my face. She was a few feet...inches...centimeters away from me now. I just squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the end.

But it never came.

Hands clutched the back of my sweatshirt and yanked me back, sending me sprawling on the ground. I looked up just in time to see Max swing a baseball bat and cave the woman’s skull in. Her chilling screech was abruptly cut off.

Laughing nervously at how close to death I was, I gripped the half-frozen dirt beneath me and nodded to Max. “Um...thank you. Again.”

He seemed pretty shaken up by the corpse, but managed a smirk. “I think the line is ‘we’ve gotta stop meeting like this’.” He held out a hand to me. It trembled ever so slightly.

I snickered and accepted his hand so he could help me up. Once back on my feet, I stared at the woman’s body and sniffled. Becoming a zombie didn’t do too much to your body. Unlike their portrayal by the media, they didn’t rot. At least, so far none of them had started to decompose. Instead, the ‘illness’ took hold in minute ways.

Leaning a little closer, I examined her milky eyes. Pale, grayish lines emanated from them, trailing down her cheeks to her throat. They disappeared under the collar of her shirt and the thick blood smeared everywhere, but I assumed they affected the entire body.

I took another sub-conscious step forward and felt something warm press against my chest. Glancing down, I saw that Max had stopped me with his arm. He blushed but didn’t remove the block. “We probably shouldn’t get too close.”

She was already dead, but I could sense Max’s discomfort. I hoped he didn’t feel like he’d done something wrong; however, we definitely weren’t close enough for me to feel comfortable with consoling him. I just accepted it and gestured to the bloodied bat in his other hand. “You psychic, or something?”

This time, his smile was a little more genuine. “I had a bad feeling. You just disappeared behind this creepy-ass building, there’s complete silence...it’s straight out of a horror film.” His hand snapped away when he realized it was still across my chest. “Anyway, we should probably get back on the road.”

“I, uh...still need to go to the bathroom.”

He nodded and tightened his hold on the bat. “Okay. I’ll stay out here, then.”

I carefully stepped around the corpse and ducked into the bathroom. When I was washing my hands, I gripped the sink and grimaced at how slimy it felt. My nose and cheeks were still pink from being sick, standing out against my pale skin, but now my green eyes were bright with fever and had heavy bags underneath. Even my hair was suffering--my normally gravity-defying, loose curls were limp and dark with sweat.

“Jesus,” I mumbled, plucking at one of the brown curls. “You look like shit.”