"Thiefffff..." the zombie rasped, its voice like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed vigorously together. "Thieffff."
"I'm not a thief, pal," Emmit said stupidly, still gradually distancing himself. The adrenaline coursing through him made him oblivious to the cold, and his small muscles felt ready to run a marathon. The man-thing in front of him lifted its arm, slowly curling the stiff, frozen sausages of its hand into a fist. Then it jutted out one accusatory finger, the nail bed blackened and sunken. It pointed drunkenly at Emmit as it staggered forward, its one bright eye staring through him and filling him with raw, animalistic fear.
"Thiefffffff," it grated again hoarsely, the ripped flesh of its lips trembling as it spoke just as its tie had in the wind. Emmit shot glances all around him, looking for the path, an escape route, anything, anyone. There was nothing but trees, wind, and snow. He was alone with it.
"Whatever you say," he mumbled to it, turning to run in the opposite direction.
"Robberrrrr," said the emaciated husk of a woman who had been stealthily approaching behind him. It was dressed only in a tight black leather thong, exposed breasts deflated and blackened, swaying with each lurching step. Frost glistened in the scraggly black hair that hung in clumps from its skull, twinkling like stars in a nightmare sky. The dead woman’s eyes were wide and faded, full of hunger. A crystalline film of mucus had dried over its upper lip and chin like an amber beard. "Gunmannnnn," it hissed, the muscles in the skeletal face working as it graced him with a vacuous smile.
"Thieffff," the first creature repeated, closer now. Emmit spun to face it and found that it was smiling as well, a jolly, maniacal grin that was widening the cracks in its face.
"Guiltyyyyyy," came the hiss of yet another zombified person, stumbling through the trees and swatting at the snowy branches. This corpse had once been a policeman, its dark uniform stained and hanging loosely from a sickly body. Behind the reanimated cop, Emmit could see the swaying silhouettes of countless others emerging from the blinding brilliance. Fifty or more. Maybe a hundred more. There was a new sound rising with the wind, a sound like a strange language spoken in a loud whisper. It was a chorus of dead voices, all of them accusing him of being a thief or a robber or saying he was guilty. He had never done anything wrong in his life.
Or have you?
His mind was still a wall of locked gears; for all he knew he could be Jack the Ripper.
They're swarming you. You need to move.
It was too late. The topless thing was on him, its idiot grin spreading as it stretched out hooked hands and snatched his right forearm. Its grip was iron, vice-like. Emmit thought his bones might snap into shattered glass before it let him go.
"Get the fuck off me!" He bellowed into its face, his vapor cloud disintegrating over the corpse’s discolored features. It grinned on, squeezing so hard that his skin was puffing up between its gnarled fingers. He jerked his arm with all the strength he could muster, but the fierce grip did not falter. Emmit drove his left fist into the semisolid meat of its chest, right between the pair of melted breasts, desperately trying to shove it off of him. It was like punching a side of beef hanging in a butcher's freezer.
Suddenly his forearm felt like it had been dipped in corrosive acid. It was a pain the likes of which he had never felt before, like a swarm of oversized bees had lighted on his arm and were stinging him in unison. As the groaning, rasping crowd of frozen corpses closed in around him, he watched as the mounds of skin between the zombified woman’s fingers began to discolor and darken. They went purple, then muddy brown, and finally a necrotic black. He could see the discoloration beginning to travel up his arm like shadowy vines, and everywhere the darkness went, the pain followed. He shoved and punched at the zombie, making its half-naked body jerk violently. It went on smiling that vacant, idiot smile, oblivious to the pain.
It's a dream it's a dream it's a dream it's a bad dream it's a dream—
Emmit's eyes were shut tight as he tried to wake himself up. Abruptly he heard a sound like two heavy pieces of firewood being knocked together, and he felt something thick and liquid hit his face. He also felt the venomous grip on his arm let go.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the topless dead woman spinning away from him, as if it were doing some sort of bizarre waltz. Its head was almost completely backwards, the fractured bones of the freshly neck and jaw jutting through its mottled skin like tent stakes. The creature fell to its hands and knees, crawling through the snow like a humanoid spider crab.
Emmit stared down at the woman in shock, its backwards head beginning to twitch and nod as it tried to move it, keeping those blank eyes on him as it crawled toward his legs. The smile had not left its face although a flap of leathery skin had been scraped from its skull, exposing a set of broken teeth beneath. There was no blood; just a thick, syrupy ooze that coated its teeth and turned them pink.
"Move your fucking ass numbnuts, there's Links everywhere!" Came a thunderous voice that hit him like a slap to the face. After the prolonged silence of the forest, the voice of someone else sounded much too loud and foreign. Emmit couldn't think. He was still locked in a deep state
