NATALIA blended with the crowd that surrounded the front of San Laurel Hospital. From where she stood, she could see the whitewashed building, shining because of the glaring sunlight reflected on the glass dome that covered Citadel. She blinked, ignoring the sensation that she was being stared at by the people around her as they slowly distanced from her because of her odor.

While staring at the building, she was still pondering how she could enter it without getting a lot of attention. She took note of her clothes which happened to be a vividly pink sweater and a pair of faded jeans and decided that these were not the ideal colors to camouflage.

How was she going to deal with this?

A newcomer passed her by and approached someone that they knew. "Is there a zombie in the hospital?" she overheard him ask.

"Yes, bro. I know because my brother is a nurse there."

She set aside her eavesdropping and focused her ears on any sound that would come from the hospital. Her poor attempt only resulted in a mild migraine.

'I am really not yet in my tip-top condition. I need more strength to regain my highly sensitive hearing ability.' She walked forward. 'Thankfully, I can still transform at will, whether I am in the condition or not.'

As she walked past more and more people, bumping them or brushing past their arms at times, Natalia's form began to morph. Her long, black hair pushed back like a curtain against the breeze. Small veins began embossing on both corners of her eyes, eyes that gradually turned into muddy whitish-gray like cataracts.

Her skin remained pale white. Her arms stretched longer along with her fingers and her sharpening nails. Her nails turned from flat to rounded, narrowing down to their pointy tips. Even her waist narrowed because her ribcage pushed higher, that part of the transformation made her huff in the next few minutes while walking. She raised her hands and dragged her nails at the side of her sweater, cutting it open to reveal the sides of her torso. Next, she tore off the sweater's sleeves.

Her legs stretched longer too, making her bend them lower until she walked swiftly in a hunched and squat-like position, staggering. The nails on her feet tore her shoes open, making her shake them off her feet to stop obstructing her every step.

Adrenaline raced through every vein in her body, turning her fast strides into running like a bolt. A goofy grin formed on her lips even if deep inside, she feared for her mission to fail.

The longer Natalia ran, the more she became one with the wind. Time slowed down, one puff of her breath was the equivalent of her speed against the movements of the people around her. The next thing she knew, her heels pushed her off the ground. She flung like a released overpulled rubber band and darted to the glass-covered sky. She was faster than a blink, faster than lightning. No eye could chase her at the height of her leap.

Natalia closed her eyes for a moment and felt the warmth of the light that touched her face. It felt so different to be in a place this high, with nothing to physically hold her in place in the middle of the air. The only thing that existed in this short moment was her, floating even just for a while. It felt so liberating!

When she opened her eyes, she found herself so close to the glass roof of Citadel's dome. This was when she discovered that there were tiny holes on the top glass of the dome.

She was breathless for a moment moment. She felt like a fish that was so close to kissing the surface but could not jump out of the water . . . because it was time to go back down.

Natalia could feel her body getting heavier, a sign that her flying momentum was starting to fade. This shifting rhythm of her momentum forced her to lower her head. She took a dive down to the direction of the hospital. As she fell lower, Natalia stretched out her body and extended her arms and hands. The skin beneath her arms down to her waist began to pull out like wings.

Natalia glided down smoothly. The cool air slapped her face harder as her acceleration grew. She shot like an arrow, like a meteor invisible to the naked eye.

Then she flinched as her head smashed against one of the hospital's glass window.

***

CJAY NARROWED HIS EYES. An hour had already passed. The one and only staff present at the sneaker's store was already sweating coldly as she waited for his assistant to arrive. She felt like a hostage, trapped in the store because a zombie like him wouldn't leave the place.

Sure, he still had his human consciousness in tact, but being a zombie was what people could see in him. That was why they still react so differently around him. They only saw him as a person on his billboards, on his magazine covers, fashion photos, and TV shows. But in person, he was still and only a zombie to them.

Akira caught Cjay stealing another glance at the glass door of the sneaker store. The guard also counted that it was the ninth time that Cjay did that.

The bratinello lost his patience.

"What's taking her so long?" he whined. "Fuck. I've never waited for a girl in my entire existence."

Well, he never did because he never had anyone special in his life, like a girlfriend or friends.

Before the epidemic, Cjay was absorbed in his hobby, playing online games. His world revolved around it aside from his studies which he was so lazy about that he haven't graduated, for the third time, from another college course which was Information Technology. This time though, he did not graduate because of the zombie virus.

Cjay was friendly online. He could hold a good conversation about ambush strategies, weapons and items, and game maps; but in person, he was picky about who he interacted with, giving the people around him the impression that he was a snob. He went to clubs every once in a while, but did not actively connected with the people he came there with because most of the time, he was forced to go out with his cousins by his parents.

Akira didn't know what to answer to Cjay's complaint but small panic could not be seen on his lifeless face. He was handsome but didn't seem to know how to show facial expressions. He always looked like he just woke up.

"Maybe, she got lost!" Cjay let go of the left shoe he was holding, dropping it on the counter table. "She must be really that stupid to get lost in a mall as small as this!"

While he wasn't looking, the store staff immediately sprayed alcohol on the left shoe that Cjay dropped. Then she shoved it back inside the shoe box. Her fingers almost knotted and twisted in her hurry to close the box without damaging it, scan the item's price, then push the box inside a shopping bag.

Cjay turned to Akira. "Can't you call or text—" he sheeshed and shook his head. 'Stupid! Why didn't that girl even give us her phone number? Does she have a cell phone? Well, she's already my assistant, so she should have one!'

Cjay groaned in frustration and faced the store staff. She offered him the shopping bag with a nervous smile. When she was about to tell him the price, Cjay got ahead of her and handed five thousand pesos. The store staff took it and tinkered with her cash register. She pulled out his change from its drawer before lifting her head to sneak a peek at Cjay. She froze from what she was doingt when she saw that he was already at the door of the shop, followed by his bodyguard who carried all the shopping bags and one long gun.

"There are a lot of toilets in this mall," Cjay continued. He didn't care if Akira was getting left behind. He just kept on walking in his signature limping and staggering manner. "And I won't check them one by one to find that Natalia."

Akira finally reached Cjay's side. He silently listened while he was oblivious of their new position.

"I am also aware that you can't search for her, because you cannot leave me on my own."

"That's why I am taking you to the car first, sir. At least, you'll get to be with one driver, one bodyguard, and the rest of the convoy. After that, I'll come back here for Natalia."

"What the heck, Akira? Do you want us to go back and forth?" he sneered. "It'll be much better if we go to the person who can talk through the speakers of this mall and make them announce that we are looking for Natalia."

"You mean, the pager, sir?" Akira asked for confirmation.

"Whatever," he replied dismissively. Cjay kept on walking until the soldier blocked his way.

"That's the way to the information desk, Sir Cjay." Because Akira was carrying a lot of shopping bags, he just leaned his head to his left to point the direction he was pertaining to. "That's where we will request to have Natalia paged."

Cjay looked up to the ceiling and groaned in protest before he slowly turned to the left wherer Akira was pointing for them to go.

"Let's just get this over with," he muttered as soon as Akira caught up with his pace and walked by his side.

***

'My goodness!' Natalia internally groaned as she slowly got up.

She just finished rolling over a carpet of broken glass that came from the window where she broke in. She blinked her eyes and was filled with dismay upon realizing that she landed at one of the stair landings of the hospital's emergency exit staircase.

The place was darkened by its heavy shadows, and the limited light only came from the sunlight that streamed through the hole she make from breaking a window.

Natalia looked around and sniffed as she slowly climbed the flight of stairs on her right. 'I am at risk of being discovered by humans, but at least, I'll get to eat something more fresh. I had to so that in no time, I can completely recover my disguising abilities as well.'

Natalia looked at the large painted number on the wall along the flight of stairs, number four. It meant she was at the fourth floor.

'I hope that my meal is here,' she wished before she pushed the heavy metal two-door open.

Natalia poked her head between the two doors to peek, looked to her left and right. She only found a hallway that looked endless. She was welcomed by the deafening silence, making her more cautious. Unfortunately, the two-doors groaned loud and long as she pressed herself between them to get inside. It made her cringe while shifting her eyes on high alert at her surroundings.

The door closed. It was a relief that nothing appeared from both turns at each ends of the hallway where she was standing at. Natalia braced herself then smelled her surroundings.

She still couldn't detect a corpse.

'Left or right?' She chose to go to her right.

When she reached a turn, she saw a line of doors for private hospital suites. The ends of her sharp nails lightly scratched against the waxed floor as she dragged herself step by step. Yes, she was dragging herself when she was walking slowly because it made it easier for her to move with a body like this, a monster's.

Every door that she walked past was closed. As she neared the end of the hall where an elevator awaits, she noticed something at the third to the last door.

It was slightly ajar.

Her chest throbbed in tension.

'Maybe, the patient already left that room that's why it's left open, or . . .'

She didn't want to think of the worse case scenario, but if there really was a roaming zombie in the hospital, there was a higher chance of a patient or two getting attacked by it even if there were inside the safety of ther expensive suites. They were lucky if they knew ahead of time about the zombie and managed to lock their doors and put up barricades on them when deemed necessary.

Natalia approached the door and scanned what was inside it, starting from its floor. There was no blood or any indication that it was walked on by a rotting corpse, but she had to make sure, because the flourescent lit room was too eerily quiet. Natalia opened the door wider and her eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when she heard someone chewing.

It was the kind of chewing that came from a set of teeth against a watery meat. It tickled her ears because it sounded like a scrumptious meal. The chewing also caused more blood to sprinkle and smear the hospital bed and its side table.

The eating zombie had a short hair and one eye sticking out, because it used to attempt to eat its own eye when its human consciousness was still in tact while locked up in the utility closet. When it could not bear the pain of plucking out its eye, it just left it hanging out its socket. He wore a torn green scrub suit, torn like some parts of its gray skin because they were bit off to satiate the hunger they experienced when they only had small amount of their human consciousness remaining. At this point, the zombie had completely lost it, so instead of self-mutilation and biting off its clothes, it gave in to its need to consume humans.

There were a few mutilated fingers, one cut off leg, and one cut off arm scattered in the room. The body of the victim was as lifeless as paper in the hands of the zombie who was in the middle of munching its upper arm when Natalia chanced upon it.

And at the very sight of the zombie, Natalia's mouth slowly stretched wide open as it started getting rimmed by her saliva. She bared her teeth—sharp and three-layered—while she slowly sneaked inside the room.

The zombie flicked up its head, a sign that it felt Natalia's presence.