Max Yang's hand went to the crowbar at her belt. Behind her, Hui Zhang appeared in the gateway, his face going pale as he took in the scene.
Twenty-seven zombies stood in silent formation behind me. Men, women, young, old—the grandmother in her housedress, the teenager in gym clothes, the police officer still clutching his service weapon. They didn't breathe. They didn't move. They simply waited.
My army.
"Wei," Max Yang said again, her voice carefully controlled. "Explain. Now."
I raised my hand, and the zombies took a synchronized step backward.
The movement was precise, mechanical—like watching a drill sergeant command troops. Twenty-seven bodies moving as one. No hesitation. No confusion.
Perfect obedience.
Hui Zhang made a sound that was half-gasp, half-whimper. He stumbled back from the gate, his face going from pale to gray.
"That's not—that shouldn't be—" He couldn't finish the sentence.
Liu Feng appeared behind him, took one look at my horde, and promptly vomited.
Max Yang didn't flinch. She just kept her eyes on me, waiting.
"I told you I was a time traveler," I said. "I didn't tell you everything. This—" I gestured at my horde "—is why I survived ten thousand years. This is my power."
"You control them." It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"How?"
"I reach out with my... call it energy. Death energy. I find what's left of them, and I fill it with my will." I met her eyes. "They're not people anymore. They're tools. And I can use them to protect us."
The five survivors I'd rescued were clustered behind me, as far from the zombies as they could get while still technically being in my group. Harold Chen was the only one who didn't look ready to bolt.
"You brought civilians," Max Yang said, her gaze shifting to them.
"Survivors. They were trapped in a convenience store three blocks east."
"And the zombies?"
"From the surrounding streets. Every one I control is one less that can threaten us."
Max Yang was quiet for a long moment. The morning light caught the gray in her hair, made the lines on her face deeper.
Then she stepped aside and opened the gate wider.
"Bring them in," she said. "All of them."
------------------------------
The next hour was controlled chaos of a different kind.
The new survivors were given space in the compound's secondary building—a smaller structure that had been used for storage until yesterday. Harold Chen immediately started assessing the electrical systems, muttering about generator capacity and power distribution.
The infected businessman—his name was Marcus, I learned—was isolated in a small room on the ground floor. We'd barred the window and reinforced the door. Not to keep zombies out, but to keep him in when the inevitable happened.
"You can't just leave him there," the mother—her name was Sarah—protested. "He needs medical attention. He needs—"
"He needs a bullet through his brain," Hui Zhang said bluntly. "Before he turns and kills us all."
Sarah flinched. Her son—Tommy, six years old, still clutching his stuffed rabbit—buried his face in her side.
"Hui Zhang is right," I said, cutting through the argument. "Marcus has approximately four to five hours before the virus finishes its work. At that point, he'll become aggressive and extremely dangerous. Our options are to kill him now, wait until he turns and then kill him, or let him bite someone else and compound the problem."
The other woman who'd come with them—she hadn't given a name, hadn't spoken at all—started crying quietly.
"This is barbaric," Sarah whispered.
A crash from outside cut off any response.
One of my zombies—the police officer—had suddenly lurched toward the gate. The others were shifting, their formation breaking.
I felt it through our bond: hunger. Raw, mindless hunger, bleeding through their connections like static on a radio.
"Wei?" Max Yang's hand went to her crowbar.
I raised my palm. "Wait."
I closed my eyes and pushed. Not commands this time, but will—pure, overwhelming will, pressing down on the twenty-seven minds I'd claimed. The hunger wasn't theirs. It was an echo, something bleeding in from outside my range. Other zombies, unfed, broadcasting their need like a beacon.
Still, I commanded. You are MINE. Not theirs.
The police officer stopped mid-step. The others snapped back into formation.
"What was that?" Liu Feng's voice cracked from the doorway.
"A reminder," I said, opening my eyes. "They're still zombies. The instincts don't disappear—they just get overwritten by my will. If something interferes with that connection, or if I lose focus..." I let the implication hang.
Max Yang nodded slowly. "Point taken. We'll need contingency plans."
"We'll need walls," I corrected. "Strong ones. And weapons. Because what just happened was a minor fluctuation. Imagine what would occur if I was knocked unconscious, or killed."
The room went very quiet.
"This is survival," Max Yang said finally, her voice harder now. She'd been watching the exchange with detached interest. "Wei's right. I've seen the news reports—or what's left of them. The emergency broadcasts are talking about a rabies-like infection, about quarantine zones, about military response. But they're not mentioning that the infected come back after they die. They're not prepared for that."
"Because they don't know," I said. "Not yet. By the time they figure it out, it'll be too late."
"So we're on our own."
"For now. Maybe for a long time." I looked around at the assembled group—my compound allies, my new rescues, my silent horde waiting in the courtyard. "Which is why we need to start thinking about expansion."
------------------------------
The zombies were the biggest point of contention.
Liu Feng couldn't be in the same room with them. Every time he had to pass through the courtyard, he pressed himself against the far wall, his face gray with fear.
Hui Zhang was more practical but no less uncomfortable. "They're just... standing there. Staring at nothing. It's unnatural."
"They're waiting for commands," I said. "Without my instructions, they default to stillness. Think of them as soldiers on standby."
"Soldiers don't eat people."
"These won't either. Not unless I tell them to."
That didn't seem to comfort him.
Max Yang, as always, cut to the heart of the matter. "How many can you control?"
I considered the question. "Right now? Twenty-seven feels comfortable. I could probably manage fifty before the strain became noticeable. Beyond that..." I shrugged. "I don't know yet. My power is growing. Yesterday I could only sense the dying. Today I can command the dead. Tomorrow, who knows?"
"And if your power fails? If you lose control?"
"Then we have twenty-seven hostile zombies in our compound and we all die." I met her eyes. "But that's a risk whether they're here or out there. At least here, I can keep them contained."
She considered this, then nodded slowly. "Fair enough. Where do you want to station them?"
"Perimeter. Two at each entrance, the rest in the courtyard. They don't need to sleep or eat, so they can maintain watch indefinitely. If anything approaches that I haven't already sensed, they'll deal with it."
"And during the day? When survivors might see them?"
"Anyone who gets close enough to see my zombies is either desperate enough to accept help from any source, or too stupid to survive anyway." I paused. "We're past the point of keeping secrets. The old rules don't apply anymore."
Max Yang was quiet for a moment.
"You've really done this before," she said. "Lived through... all of this."
"Ten thousand years," I confirmed. "Give or take."
"And how did it end? In your first life?"
I thought about the last days. The endless hordes. The final battle. The moment when even my power wasn't enough.
"Badly," I said. "For everyone."
"Including you."
"Especially me."
She studied my face, searching for something. Whatever she found, it seemed to satisfy her.
"All right," she said. "We do this your way. For now."
------------------------------
At noon, Marcus turned.
We were expecting it—I'd been tracking his vitals through my Death Aura, watching the slow decay of his life force—but the reality was still jarring.
He'd been quiet for the last hour. The fever had spiked around eleven. By eleven-thirty, he was barely conscious, muttering names I couldn't make out. Rachel. Someone named Ethan. His mother.
The people he'd never see again.
One moment he was alive, slumped against the wall of his makeshift cell, his breathing shallow and wet.
The next moment, he was dead.
The transition was almost peaceful. One final exhale. Then stillness.
And then he was something else entirely.
The change happened in stages. First the twitching, as damaged neurons fired randomly. Then the stillness, as the virus finished its work. And finally, the rising—that horrible, jerky movement as dead muscles responded to new impulses.
I was already reaching out with my Death Aura.
The void in Marcus's mind was fresh, raw, still tinged with the echoes of who he'd been. For just an instant, I felt something that might have been his last thought—confusion, fear, a desperate wish to see his wife again.
Then it was gone, and only emptiness remained.
Mine, I commanded.
Marcus stopped mid-snarl, his hands frozen inches from the barred window.
He turned to face me. His eyes—clouded now, like all the others—found mine.
And he waited.
"Number twenty-eight," I said quietly.
Through the wall, I heard Sarah crying. Her son was asking questions she couldn't answer. The unnamed woman had stopped making any sound at all.
"He's controlled?" Max Yang asked from beside me.
"Yes."
"Good." Her voice was flat, businesslike. "We should tell the others."
I nodded, but I didn't move immediately.
Instead, I studied Marcus—or what was left of him. In life, he'd been a businessman. A husband. Probably had a nice car and a retirement plan and season tickets to something. All of that was gone now, erased by a virus that didn't care about social status or bank accounts or the life he'd built.
In death, he was just another tool.
This is what the apocalypse does, I thought. It reduces us all to our most basic functions. Survive. Consume. Obey.
The difference between humans and zombies was becoming increasingly academic.
------------------------------
By late afternoon, I'd made a decision.
"I'm going back out," I announced. "The immediate area is clear, but there are still hundreds of zombies within a mile radius. Every one I don't claim is a potential threat."
"You're going to claim all of them?" Liu Feng's voice cracked slightly.
"As many as I can control. My limit is growing, but I won't know what it is until I reach it."
"And if you reach it while you're out there? Surrounded by zombies you can't control?"
I smiled thinly. "Then I'll stop claiming new ones."
"This is insane," the unnamed woman spoke for the first time. Her voice was rough, broken. "You're all insane. We should be running. Getting out of the city. Finding somewhere safe—"
"Where?" I cut her off. "The infection started simultaneously across multiple cities. If Seattle is this bad after less than twelve hours, every major urban center is the same. The roads will be clogged with refugees. The military will be overwhelmed. There is no 'somewhere safe.' There's only here, and what we can make of it."
She stared at me with hollow eyes. "Then we're already dead."
"Maybe." I turned toward the gate. "Or maybe we're the ones who survive. That's up to us."
Ghost padded to my side, ready to accompany me.
More hunting? she asked.
More harvesting, I corrected. And yes.
Max Yang followed me to the gate. "How many are you aiming for?"
I looked out at the city—the smoke plumes, the distant fires, the shambling figures visible on the horizon.
"As many as it takes," I said. "This is Day 0. By Day 7, I want an army large enough to control our entire neighborhood. By Day 14, our district. By Day 30..." I paused.
"By Day 30?"
I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the kind of smile that made Liu Feng take a step back. The kind that made even Max Yang's expression shift slightly—just a flicker, but I saw it.
Recognition. Understanding that the man she'd partnered with wasn't entirely human anymore.
"By Day 30, I want everyone to know my name," I said quietly. "The survivors. The other awakened. The things that are coming. I want them all to know that this city has a king."
And that king was no longer just a man.
I stepped through the gate, Ghost at my heels, and walked into the horde.