John was dead.

Then he stopped being dead.

His heart started suddenly, kicking hard against his chest. It ached at first, making him want to scream. The most he could do was moan and curl into himself.

He was cold. And his body was numb. He could hardly feel the ground he was on. Every draft he breathed was hard to get down. His lungs were on fire.

Why did being undead hurt?

Why was he undead?

Or alive, specifically?

These questions flitted through his mind quickly. But they didn’t stick for long. The memories of his last moments at Washington High played on a highlight reel in his head.

There had been a bully.

Then John’s fist had bloodied the bully’s nose.

A cute mousy girl in square glasses. He’d made her laugh.

He’d looked like a hero. It hadn’t been a big deal to him.

Then a barrel filled with dark intent had appeared. A thunderous flash. The end. John’s end. A single bullet.

Bang.

Drifting back to the current moment, John shuddered from the sight of the last memory. He faintly remembered his hand pushing against something warm. And soft. He had pushed the girl. He’d saved her life. But the murderer had ended John’s.

I became another statistic, John thought darkly. Damn.

Turning over, John felt grit and reeds crunch under his back. Between the ground and his skin was a thick, wooly material. He patted his chest and felt over an unfamiliar top. After he blinked a few times to clear his vision, he looked down at himself.

He found a brown v-cut tunic covering his torso. Beneath that were trousers without pockets held up by a rope. It was tied into a knot at the front. Leather boots on his feet and an empty pouch on his rope belt completed the outfit.

“What the hell am I wearing?” John croaked.

And where the hell was he?

Getting past the bizarre change of outfit, John pushed up into a seat slowly. Foliage crinkled underneath him. When he patted behind his head, he found a couple of brown leaves sticking to his curly hair.

He himself hadn’t changed. He was still his broad-shouldered, lanky self. But his environment had changed a lot.

Towering trees loomed over him. A ceiling of green and brown covered the sky. The density of the canopy strangled the morning light, but what scant sunbeams made it through shone over clouds of eerie mists.

A morning fog surrounded him, the vapors twinkling when met with dawnlight. It was a ghostly sight for John. It was something he would’ve seen on a documentary following survivalists in a random place far from civilization.

“God, no,” John said. “Please don’t do this to me.”

Had he not died?

Was this someone’s prank?

Where he was from, you’d have to drive out far to see some decent greens covering the hills. He was a city guy through and through. He’d read about surviving in a forest. He’d seen videos, too. But all of that was hazy to him now. And he was just starting to warm up. His blood circulation worked out the tingles in his fingers and toes.

Now he wasn’t too numb. But he was still cold. This place was chilly. And it creeped him out.

There were no sounds. That’s weird. That’s definitely weird.

John strained his hearing to single out something. But the forest was preternaturally quiet all around him. As quiet as the dead.

It reminded him of being at a graveyard. A forest shouldn’t be like that. He didn’t know much, but a forest should have chirping birds. Maybe random animals rustling in the bushes.

I’ve watched too many scary movies to go through this right now. John gulped.

Carefully, John picked himself up. He tried to consider his situation deeper. He could faintly recall something or someone speaking to him in the darkness before coming back to life. It was a flicker of a moment. Rubbing against the back of his neck, John wondered what that voice that spoke to him was.

And what was he supposed to do now?

Ding!

A chime sounded between John’s ears.

Suddenly, a message appeared in front of his eyes. It was also in his head somehow. He had a hazy understanding of what was sent the instant it had appeared. It stamped itself into his brain within a millisecond. But John reread it just in case because having floating white text appearing in a dark see-through prompt was all sorts of bizarre.

By taking your first breath and getting back to your feet, you’ve shown persistence worthy of notice. Some outerhumans have failed where you’ve succeeded. Bonus experience and information have been rewarded since you’re in a heroic tutorial phase.

“What is this, a game?” John asked openly.

He waited for the prompt to answer his question. It stayed the exact same in front of his face.

Glancing away for a moment, he noticed the prompt vanishing. He looked back at the spot in the air where it had hovered. He saw no sign of it any longer.

Ahead of him, he saw mist wreathing around tree trunks like the grasping fingers of a ghost. He was glad there was some sunlight. It would’ve been terrible if he’d come back from the dead while it was night. Whatever was happening to him, he could spend the day trying to figure it out.

“Man, if this is like a game, I’m not the greatest player,” John murmured. “I only know a couple of things.”

He’d played a few. He had a good friend who shown him some fun RPGs to play. Those were the type of games where they could get together online and do quests and kill monsters. John always had to ask for help because the stats and powers confused him sometimes.

His boy, Reggie, had to drill him on it.

“Now that I think about it, didn’t I see a stat sheet in the darkness?” He asked.

Before he concentrated on the stats, a twig cracked somewhere behind him. Goosebumps covered John’s backside.

John spun around. About a hundred feet away stood a raggedy man in the shadow of a tree. He wore rustic clothes similar to what John had on. But they were torn up and old-looking.

John observed the strange man harder and noticed something weird about him. His skin didn’t look right. His face didn’t look right. Nothing about the stranger sat right with John.

“Yo, man, you alright?” John asked.

The man’s head jerked in John’s direction. Eyeless sockets stared at John. Then the man started to make a wheezy noise similar to what John made when he first stopped being dead. But this guy kept making the same sound. He sounded like he was somewhere between life and death, and his purplish-pale skin and open wounds reflected that.

John’s eyes widened, realization striking him. “Oh, fuck, you’re a zombie!”

Ding! You’ve been noticed by [Identifying…] Forest Shambler, Lvl 1! They tend to gather in groups and swarm their prey. A lone one can still threaten you. Beware of their necromantic empowered strength!