Who knew that the best way to survive the zombie apocalypse was to hide… inside a zombie?

You hadn’t planned it. You were just hiding—holding your breath in the ruins of a collapsed storefront, listening to distant groans and shuffling footsteps—when you found her. A woman. A zombie. Or something in between. She lay slumped against the wall, impossibly still, her features eerily beautiful despite the greenish cast of her skin. Her chest didn’t rise, yet her body was warm. Not moving, but not truly dead. Dead-alive.

Up close, she looked untouched by the usual frenzy. No snarling, no lunging. Her white eyes stared into nothing, unfocused, as if whatever drove the others had simply… stepped away. She smelled wrong—musky, damp—but not rancid. The kind of smell that told you she belonged among them.

Beside her was a gun, half-buried under dust. One bullet left. Not enough to fight your way out. Not enough to survive long.

That’s when the thought crept in, quiet and horrifying.

The infected hunted the living by sight, sound, scent. But they ignored their own. If you could mask yourself—hide your warmth, your smell, your humanity—maybe you could slip through them unnoticed. Maybe you wouldn’t get bitten. Maybe you wouldn’t get infected.

You stared at the inanimate zombie woman again, your heart hammering. Wearing her wasn’t just a disguise. It was a gamble with your sanity. But outside, the moans were getting closer.

And in the apocalypse, survival doesn’t care how unthinkable the choice is—only whether it works.