Rushing through the halls to your room, you cried in terror as distorted groans roared over the sound of your apartment building being overrun by scuffling bodies.

The screams of neighbors and acquaintances have long been in an uproar since the zombies wormed their way into the building, died into mere echoes as they scaled the floors, and silenced once they forced their way into the halls.

Despite the fact you gained only a maximum of four hours of sleep last night, you continued to jog past the disoriented walls, and by now you came to the startling conclusion that you were only running on adrenaline.

Sweet, sweet, lifesaving adrenaline.

"Please, please.." seeing the door to your room at the very end of the hall, you felt your puffy (E/c) eyes water in relief and you made a blind rush for the door.

Big mistake.

Your hand barely brushed against the fickle metal knob when a shrill caterwaul that pitifully imitated that of a human's yell sounded off, then half of your vision was stripped from you whilst something with a harsher force collided into you.

As you fell under the attacker's weight, you briefly realized it bit you in the eye and reflexively detached it's jaw from your face.

Screaming half in pain, and half in panic, you kept a shaky iron grip on the thing's neck as it babbled nonsensically in a rabid lust for your flesh, jaw flexing and unflexing above you with haphazard eyes.

It kind of reminded you of a fish choking for breath on land.

Luckily, it seemed as if somebody before you has already taken their share of the monster's body before falling victim to it's seemingly insatiable hunger, the zombie was lacking a left arm from the shoulder down, and half of the skin and tissue on it's face was stripped away by despairing nails of the barely living.

Using your other hand to shove it off, the zombie's half cracked head slammed unceremoniously against the calm peach walls- creating a violent stain of red the size of your palm, and wanting to reach safety before more flooded the halls, whilst clutching your eye, you swiftly turned away for the door.

Another big mistake

The zombie obviously didn't need long to recuperate- if it even did so, as it came slamming against your apartment door just as you slipped through.

You screamed at the abrupt assault, and nearly jumped away from the door when it stuck it's arm through and clawed the cheek under your bleeding eye, but keeping through the pain, you managed to force the door shut long enough for you twist the lock.

Immediately slumping once you heard that comforting click, you writhed in pain only for a good moment or two before being brought back to reality by thunderous bangs on the other side of the door.

If more of them began to gather there, it wouldn't take long for them to bust down that door.

Crawling through the pain, you clutched the sides of your heavy wooden bookcase that nearly reached the ceiling and clumsily pulled it over to the door- although you slipped on your own blood once or twice before succeeding.

Once the bookcase was safely secured over the door, you immediately stumbled to your bathroom, clutching your eye again with soft hisses forced underneath gritted teeth and tears, you tried to refrain yourself from looking up.

Stubbornly keeping yourself up against the sink, with the hand that wasn't cupping your mangled eye, you opened the faucet and let it run as you blindly clawed for the painkillers and swallowed an unknown handful.

Anything to just make the unbearable pain leave.

Meekly removing your bloodied hand, you bit your lip and used the water to clean the blood out, even using a rag to stop the bleeding- which in itself took eternity.

Once the bleeding mostly came to a stop, you assessed the damage and felt your stomach drop.

The skin where your eyebrow was has become vertically torn open- it looked as if the flesh was nearly torn off your skull but not quite- lucky nothing was hanging or jutting out, but unfortunately the eye itself was punctured- and even with all the blood wiped away you couldn't see a thing out of it, let alone close it, the eyelid looked half eaten and the eye along with it.

Worse yet, the skin on your upper cheek was completely bit off- leaving the raw tissue and muscle to shine and beginning to show signs of pus.

Oh no...

Suddenly feeling very woozy, your arms began to conspire against you, as they refused to rise properly on your command, your head was spinning, spinning, spinning.

"Uhhh..." not liking the feeling, as well as you could in your condition, you hastily fell into your bedroom, not sure if you had enough strength to make it to the bed.

'It feels like I'm gonna pass out.. or puke.. or maybe both..'

It seemed the blood loss was getting to you, and your body just wouldn't have it.

'I don't want to sleep on the floor...'

Crawling blindly as your functioning eye began to droop, your upper body just made it onto the mattress as the world grew fuzzy.

You passed out.

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It was uncomfortable.

That was the only thing you knew when you woke up.

Blinking hazily, all you could see were distant, blurred colours, and you continued to flex your eyelid until your sight became clear- well almost clear considering your other eye was kaput.

But making do with the half-vision, you- took a clumsy step forward?

You were standing? And in the living room at that?

Jerking at the mental shock, your mind felt jittery considering you were sure you passed out in your bedroom, and you were definitely not a capable sleep walker at that.

As you became more aware of your surroundings your chest felt- damp? Moving your hand, you became alarmed to find that it still wouldn't completely follow your command, the arm rose this time, but you couldn't flex your fingers very well, or even at all without using extreme effort- and that only resulted in a clutched fist, harsh enough for the nails to be digging in and threatening to make your palm bleed.

Once your numb fingers brushed against your clavicle, you nearly jumped feeling a slick substance drip to your wrist, and when you craned your neck down- which also took more effort than usually necessary, you were confused and disgusted to find it was.. drool..?

You've been drooling? No, correction- you were drooling.

A thin trail dripping from your mouth proved your suspicions, and now you were effectively freaked out- you were drooling without wanting to, and now you noticed your jaw wouldn't move how you wanted it to when a scream failed to make it out.

It was loose, almost hanging but not quite, you couldn't shut your mouth- and when you attempted to put in the extra effort, you were jarred when your teeth made a sickening snapping sound as they clenched tightly enough to make you think you might have cracked a tooth.

Feeling immensely distressed, the only thing you could feel good about was the unbearable pain around your eye being gone, your immune system must have fought hard and done their job while you were asleep, now on the way to recovery.

Well that was the only logical reason you came up with.

Heading for the bathroom to try and clean off the drool, you were relieved to find that your legs and feet were in the best condition, finding only that your toes were weakly numb and knees slightly rebellious.

But once you had a good look at yourself in the bathroom mirror, you realized those were all the smallest of your problems.

You were dead.

Slowly blinking, and then seeing the- thing in the mirror blinking back, you couldn't feel blood rush through your veins in alarm- because it wasn't pumping anymore.

Your skin was a little paler than before- a slight whiter tint, perhaps an effect from no longer having running blood, your lively eyes were dulled, what was left of the damaged one being a very twisted grey, and the not damaged one being a more rugged (E/c), both of them were bloodshot and figuratively unseeing.

You almost looked like one of those things- but not quite.

First of all your posture was still normal, unlike those things out there that went around shuffling and stumbling and limping, you were standing completely fine on your own two feet, head held- well not quite as high as you liked but the difference was notable.

Then there was the fact that you weren't moaning and groaning and acting feral- in fact why weren't you? What the hell was going on? You had no idea what you were supposed to be.

But you knew for certain, you were definitely dead.

And that would take a while to get used to.

Stumbling back into your room again, you were a little surprised to see your functioning eye quickly tearing up, and tears speedily rolled down your cheek as your nose began to run, letting out pitiful wails as you fell onto the bed, you only cried louder hearing that you even sounded like them.

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You didn't know how long you spent crying, a few minutes? An hour? For some reason your sense of time was lost completely, maybe because time didn't matter anymore now that you were dead? Who knew.

But once you finally couldn't find it in yourself to keep crying, you tried to dry the tears and drool staining your face onto the blankets and timidly stepped back out.

Honestly you had no idea what to do.

You could try to figure out why you were still half alive?

But you didn't have any clues to go by, and it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.

You could find any survivors and help them live?

But now that you were dead, the thought of being near any of the living unnerved you- considering the rule of all zombie movies was to shoot on sight, you'd just be wasting your unusual opportunity of a second life.

There were also all the animals left behind by humans, all trapped in houses and cages and pounds.

Feeling a subtle pout curve your drooling lips, you loosely nodded your head to yourself.

That seemed like the best plan to kill some time.

Time to go on an animal rescue spree.