There's a strange comfort in walking down a long, empty road when you're technically dead.
No pulse to race. No lungs to burn. No sweat, no blisters.
Just me, a talking rat (okay, he squeaks, but I swear he's got opinions), and the weight of everything I don't remember dragging behind me like a corpse on a chain.
Victor sat on my shoulder, twitching every time a crow flew too close.
We were heading east.
Why east?
Because the first red "X" on that cursed map Vale gave me was in a town called Greystone — a place so small it probably didn't even have a McDonald's. Tragic.
Night fell like a sack of regrets.
Darkness in the countryside isn't like city darkness. It's thicker, older. The kind of dark that breathes.
But something was off.
The silence wasn't peaceful. It was watching me.
Then — snap.
A twig broke.
I wasn't alone.
"Show yourself," I said, because that always works in horror movies, right?
From the trees stepped… a kid. Maybe sixteen. Hoodie. Backpack. Holding a flashlight like it was a sword.
"Holy crap," he whispered. "You're real. You're really—"
"Rotting? Yes. You get used to it."
He stepped closer, eyes wide. "You're Mr. Zombie."
"…That's… not what I told people to call me."
He grinned. "Dude, you're like a legend on the dark web. The Undead Avenger. Zane the Revenant. Subject Zero. There's a whole subreddit."
A subreddit?
I wanted to crawl back into my grave.
His name was Theo.
Runaway. Hacker. Seemed to have an addiction to energy drinks and conspiracy theories.
He showed me his tablet.
On it: files. Footage. News clips.
Me.
From before I died.
From after I rose.
"You've been spotted in six states," Theo said. "And they're hunting you."
"They?"
He nodded. "The black vans. No plates. Always one step behind you."
I wasn't alone in this after all. I was being watched. Followed.
But not just by rats and kids with bad haircuts.
Someone knew I was awake.
We camped that night under a broken billboard that once advertised toothpaste. Irony.
Theo asked questions. Lots of them.
"Do you eat brains?"
"Can you die again?"
"Do you feel pain?"
I answered honestly.
"No. Maybe. And hell yes."
Before we slept, Theo said something that stuck with me:
"They tried to erase you. But you came back. That makes you dangerous… and kind of awesome."
Dangerous.
Awesome.
I didn't feel like either.
But I was tired of running blind.
So the next morning, I put on a pair of stolen sunglasses, looked east, and said:
"Let's find out why I died. And if I deserved it."
Victor squeaked.
Theo grinned.
The road ahead wasn't safe, but I was no longer walking it alone.