There was movement ahead of him. Through the vortexes and wisps of snow wafting up from the frozen ground, he could just make out the gray silhouette of something moving. It was moving slowly, much too slowly to be a deer or some other animal that would be at home in these conditions. It also appeared to be walking upright, swaying in the wind, staggering against the snowdrifts.
It had to be another survivor of whatever catastrophe had happened.
"H... Hey..." Emmit attempted, his voice box feeling parched and weak. He tried to lick his cracked lips, and his tongue immediately went dry and lost all sense of taste. He began to clumsily jog, trying not to lose sight of the shadowy person. The mysterious figure lumbered on, hunching forward with one step, leaning back with the next. Emmit could just make out the motion of the person's arms, dangling and swinging lazily from his sides like hung criminals.
Injured. Frozen. Dying like me.
"Hey! Over here!" He managed to scream, cupping his ice cube hands over his mouth. It hurt to scream so loud, but it had gotten the job done. He heard his words echo through the woods for what felt like miles, reverberating off the watchful trees and coming back to him like ripples in a puddle.
The figure stopped, hesitated for a moment or two, then turned and began to slowly amble toward him. Emmit didn't know what he planned to do once he met the person, but he figured two heads were better than one. Maybe he would have a lighter and was just too delirious to use it.
Or, he thought, feeling awkward despite the circumstances, we could huddle together and share warmth until the storm passes.
Emmit waved his arms as hard as he could manage.
The silhouette didn't respond. Didn't look up. Didn't acknowledge him. It just kept up the slow, lumbering path towards him, lurching and lolling, occasionally lifting and swiping one hand in front of it as if trying to open the blowing snow like a shower curtain.
"I'm friendly!" Emmit shouted, running to meet the person. By the time he was close enough to notice that there were no clouds of breath coming from the thing that marched toward him like an automaton, it was too late.
Chapter 2: Dead Men Walking
Emmit got close enough to the stranger to get a clear view of his body and stopped jogging towards him so suddenly that his slick shoes skidded in the snow.
The man was mostly bald, a few patches of dark hair clinging to his thin scalp like growths in a sparse wheat field. He walked like a drunk or a sleepwalker, head hanging down and his steps unsteady and clumsy. His arms swung slowly from side to side, occasionally stretching out in front of him to maintain his balance. Each footstep caused his limp head to sway like a sock full of quarters.
He was dressed in a tattered blue business suit, the threads sun-faded to a light gray in sporadic spots. The shredded remains of a striped tie flapped from his chest in the icy wind like a leftover streamer, trailing loose strings that waved and fluttered like tentacles. He wore a heavy black overcoat that extended down to his calves, blowing and wrapping around the slender muscles, but it was becoming frighteningly obvious to Emmit that this man did not need any protection from the cold. As he took another shaky step forward, Emmit saw that he was missing one shiny dress shoe— and the dried, wrinkly skin of his exposed foot, like the rest of his body, was a bruised purple intermixed with splotches of crimson and brown. He looked like freezer burnt hamburger meat, and yet he was upright and walking toward Emmit with slow but determined progress. Emmit could hear the man grunting and groaning, but there were no clouds of vapor exiting his mouth.
That's because he's not 98 degrees on the inside like a living person. He's room temperature like a piece of sirloin.
Emmit took a step back, raising his own frozen hands defensively in front of him. One word seemed to flash before his eyes, a ridiculous word straight out of the horror movies. An impossible word. A word that belonged in the same realm as Dracula and Frankenstein and Pennywise, horror fiction from the ripped and yellowed pages of classic books. Not standing right in front of him. Not reaching for him.
Zombie.
The thing lifted its face to meet Emmit's, and as he stared into it, seeing it clearly for the first time, all doubt was clawed out of his mind with one swift stroke. This man was dead, frozen to death, and yet somehow, he was upright and walking towards Emmit.
The corpse's face had been mummified by the cold, the purplish flesh around its cheek bones pinched and tight like rotten plums. One eye was either missing or frozen shut, the skin of its eyelid matted shut and drawn down into a sad-looking fold. The other eye was wide open and unblinking, pale blue and shining dully in the bright winter light like a scuffed marble. The stranger began to open its mouth wide, as if it meant to try to bite Emmit. Its lips were partially frozen shut, and the flesh between them stretched into ribbons before snapping, pulling apart like chewed bubble gum. The mouth hung open in a breathless scream, stretching the cheek muscles and dehydrated flesh to the point that deep cracks began to form in the dead thing's face, branching out
