[Kao – Lake Edge – 5:15 p.m.]
The water is laping at the rocks like it's trying to whisper some secrets but all I can hear is Lin's laugh, that sharp, unfiltered and the kind that cut through school chatter like a blade through fog. It's louder here, by the lake, where the dusk is bleeding purple into the treeline and turning everything soft and wrong.
I balance my axe across my knees as i sit flat on the stone. I can see my reflection staring back from the river. Scar on the cheek from that rooftop scrape. Eyes too clear, too full in search of someone for someone who's supposed to feel nothing.
But I do. God, I do. The ache in my chest isn't the gouge on my leg or the bruises from Namtan's shove. It's.... it's her. Lin. Her hand in mine during that stolen moment on the roof, her breath warm against my skin, her lips tasting like salt and stolen hope. "I loved you," she'd said, past tense like she was already gone.
And now she is gone. For us. For me. Because I couldn't save her. Couldn't tell her what I was sooner, couldn't stop the turn that stole her light.
I dip a finger into the water, watching the ripples chase my reflection away and ask to myself Why me?
The question's been gnawing since the fall, since the zombies circled but didn't bite. Why do I walk when they drag? Why do I remember her laugh when they forget how to speak? Why am I a Naïve? Why do I have memory of my sister? Why are my memories so hazy?
The labs I half-remember in nightmares with cold tables, needles and voices promising "stability" while something inside me screamed. I was made for this, weren't I? To outlast the rot, to feel the edge of human without tipping over. But Lin tipped me. Made cracks in the glass. Now it's shattering, and I don't know if I can even put it back.
While collecting my thoughts I hear a twig snaps behind me but it's not the lazy shuffle of a Basic instead deliberate boots on gravel. I tighten my hand on the axe. I rise slow, turning toward the sound.
Shadows shift in the reeds and it's three figures emerging from the treeline: a woman in leather, gun in her hand low and ready; a guy with a camera slung over his shoulder, wide-eyed and grinning like this is a game; a girl with pink-streaked hair, her phone out and filming like the world's her stage.
The tall woman with scarred cheek and eyes like polished steel steps forward first, she lowers her gun but loose in her grip, the kind that says she doesn't need to aim to hit.
"Easy with the axe, kid," she says in low voice like she's talked down bigger threats than a bloodied schoolgirl. "We're not here for trouble."
The guylifts his camera with light flickering on. "Yo, check it. We found a lake survivor, axe edition. Class Z realness."
The girl elbows him,"Shut up, Jay. She's not smiling for the lens."
I don't lower the axe. Trouble's what I am now, isn't it? A Naïve with a dead girl's ghost in her veins, running from truths that bite harder than any zombie.
"Then why are you here?"
My voice comes out flat, colder than the water at my feet. No tremor. No fear. Just the quiet edge that's kept me alive this long, I'm not biologically living but that's a conversation I'm still not ready for yet.
"We heard movement. We thought it was one of them. But you're not shambling and those things..." The woman jerks her chin toward the distant moans, faint but circling. "They're not attacking you."
We exchange names and introductions. This boss type lady is Vitcha, a mafia boss surviving with her sharp instincts. The guy and girl are influencer partners Jay and Jane who came here to record this hell and got stuck here.
They're not infected. Not turned. But they're not normal either because they're too calm in the chaos, too quick with weapons that aren't scavenged junk.
"You're from the school right?," Vitcha says, not a question. "We saw the smoke. They bombed it off hours ago. How did you get out?"
I nod and reply with minimal information no details, we can't trust anyone. "You?"
"We were running on the streets when MOTHER saved us" Jay scoops in.
Vitcha shoots them a look that could curdle milk, and they quiet. "They're loud," she says to me. "But useful. They keep their eyes everywhere. I know there's more to your story then you say but ofcourse it's upto you to trust us or not."
Should I believe someone else again? After what happened with Best's group? Fuck it let's just do it. Lin would be proud of me for trying to be human.
I tell them everything from start, the class, the canteen, group of 4; Me,Lin,Win and Palm. Our run towards the rooftop, my shared kiss with Lin, Lin luring the horde, me getting pushed from helicopter, Win and Palm getting seprated from us and me coming here to riverside. I tell they everything except for the fact that I'm a Naïve[1].
Jane tilts her head and takes her phone out again. "But you're not infected right?. No gross veins, no shakes. You're... clean right?"
The lie sticks in my throat.
"Clean enough but they didn't wait to find out."
I saw in flat voice.
Vitcha nods slowly like she's relating to it. "People turn faster than the dead sometimes. Seen it in this life, fear makes monsters out of survivors."
"I don't have time for all this. I need to find Lin,find answers to my question. I need to move."
Jane's phone buzzes, it's low battery warning. But outside, the moans shift. Not distant. Closer.
[1] Naïves are the zombies who have intact consciousness and are stable. They can think like humans.