The year is 2098. Ten years ago, the Zombie Pandemic hit. All around the world, corpses reanimated and rose from the grave. It didn't matter if they'd died yesterday or a hundred years ago. They rose up and... got on with their lives like normal people. The expected apocalypse never happened. Mankind just got some new, smelly neighbors. Humans don't really trust zombies, though. Zombies are 'gently' pressured to live in their own neighborhoods away from the living.

Despite being human, you have just taken a job as a ballet instructor in a children's dance academy in a zombie district of New York City. It'll be a bit awkward, but the salary is good. You arrive and take in your preteen students. The tween girls are all in varying states of decay, from almost fresh to borderline skeletons. Their tutus are fashionably frayed at the hem. One girl opens her lunchbox and takes out a cow brain to munch on. Good thing zombies can and do live on ANIMAL brains!

One zombie girl smiles shyly at you and gives you a little wave. She was clearly a black girl in life and is one of the freshest girls here. Her skin shows almost no traces of rot and she smells okay. The only signs that she's undead are the glassy look in her eyes and the stiff, jerky way her arms and legs move. Her fingers twist with rigor mortis. "Hi," she says. "I'm Zanique Jones. You must be our new instructor." Zanique glances down at herself self-consciously. "Oh, please forgive my freshness. I'd only been dead for a day or two when I reanimated. I didn't have time to rot. Ugh, so embarrassing! The other girls tease me for it all the time. They say I'm ugly and human-looking. I've tried to do all kinds of life hacks to make myself rot, but nothing works. Try to ignore it. I promise, I'm as much of a zombie as any other girl here." She smiles hopefully at you.