Shane Walker had always been the kind of guy who laughed at the end of the world.
Not because he was brave. Mostly because the end of the world looked so stupidly cinematic in every webnovel he binged at 3 a.m. He would sprawl on his creaking dorm bed back in the real world, phone screen glowing like a dying star, muttering commentary to no one.
"Bro really just pulled a gun out of his ass and called it a 'spatial inventory'? Ten points for horniness, minus fifteen for physics."
He'd snort, swipe to the next chapter, and keep reading until his eyes burned. Harem protagonists collecting waifus like Pokémon cards. System voices droning EXP notifications. Incest tags hidden in the summary like landmines. He judged them all with the smugness of someone who'd never once been punched in the face.
That Thursday night, or whatever night it was when time stopped mattering, he was deep in a particularly depraved run: My Sister Became My First Zombie Queen. The protagonist had just creampied his blood-related little sister on the roof of a Walmart while Level-3 biters scratched at the skylight. Shane was cackling so hard he almost dropped his phone.
"Peak fiction," he wheezed, wiping tears. "Absolute cinema."
Then the screen glitched.
Not the normal lag. The pixels tore like wet paper. Black veins spiderwebbed across the glass. A sound like a thousand wet throats trying to scream at once poured out of the speaker, even though his phone was on silent.
Shane blinked once, and everything slid —
not the room, though it seemed to, but something deeper: his soul itself, quietly capsizing.
It felt like someone had hooked a tow chain through his sternum and floored the gas. His vision smeared into streaks of red and gray. His last coherent thought was:
Wait, is this the isekai truck? Where's my Truck-kun? This feels more like Truck-chan got replaced with a meat grinder—
Then nothing.
When awareness returned, it came with pain.
A dull, throbbing ache behind the eyes. Dry mouth. The coppery aftertaste of old blood on his tongue. His body felt wrong: taller, heavier in the shoulders, skin too tight across the knuckles like he'd been clenching fists for days.
Shane opened his eyes to find himself sprawled on a stained carpet in a living room that looked like Pottery Barn had been hit by a bomb. The coffee table lay overturned. Picture frames lay shattered. A couch sagged, one cushion gone, dark rusty smears crusting the upholstery. Boarded windows admitted thin, filthy bars of daylight. Somewhere close, a refrigerator hummed impossibly, and stubbornly alive.
He jerked upright, too fast.
The world slewed drunkenly. Pain spiked behind his eyes and bile burned the back of his throat. Everything, the wreckage, the humming fridge, and the thin bars of light, spun like bad whiskey.
"What the actual fu—"
His voice cracked. Deeper than he remembered. Younger, but rougher. Like someone who'd been yelling for hours every day.
He looked down.
Jeans. Black hoodie. Sneakers caked in something that might have been mud. Might have been worse. Hands bigger than his used to be. Calloused. A fresh scab across the knuckles of his right hand.
He scrambled to his feet and nearly tripped over a baseball bat lying on the floor. The grip tape was coming loose, stained almost black at the thick end.
A mirror hung crooked on the wall.
And Shane stared in it.
The face looking back wasn't his.
Twenty-two, maybe. Dark brown hair falling into hazel eyes that looked too wide, too wild. Sharp jaw, faint stubble, a small scar cutting through his left eyebrow. Handsome in that careless, almost cruel way college athletes sometimes were before life beat the shine off them.
"Shane Walker," he whispered, reading the name stitched in white thread on the hoodie pocket like it was a brand label.
He laughed once, sharp and ugly.
"Okay. Okay. Classic possession trope. I get it. I'm in the body. Cool. Very cool. Very not having a panic attack."
He wasn't panicking.
He was vibrating.
He spun in place, taking stock like, he was speedrunning a survival game tutorial.
Living room. Kitchen visible through an archway, cabinets open, cans missing. Staircase leading up. Front door barricaded with a dining table and duct tape. Windows all boarded. No power except that weirdly persistent fridge.
And the smell.
Under the dust and mildew, something sweet-rotten. Meat left too long. Flies droning lazily against the boards.
One month, his memory supplied unhelpfully. One month after the outbreak. That was the setting of half the stories he'd read. Day thirty-one. Supplies low. Society already a memory.
He pressed both palms to his face and dragged them down.
"Alright, universe. You cheeky bitch. You really did it. Dropped me into the zombie smut-fest. Do I at least get a system? Blue box? Lewd status screen? Come on. Throw me a bone."
Nothing.
No ding. No translucent panel. No sultry female voice purring Welcome, Host.
Just silence, and the faint thump-thump-thump of something heavy dragging itself against the outside of the house.
Shane froze.
The sound circled. Slow and patient.
Then it stopped.
He exhaled through his nose.
"False alarm. Probably just a branch. Or a really dedicated raccoon."
He took one step toward the boarded front window.
The board directly in front of him exploded inward.
Wood shards flew like shrapnel. A gray, mottled forearm shot through the gap, fingers curled into claws, nails split and black. The thing on the other side snarled, a wet gargling sound that vibrated in Shane's chest.
Its face pressed against the splintered hole.
One eye milky-white. The other burst and leaking black fluid. Jaw unhinged far too wide. Teeth jagged, pink with old blood and shreds of something that used to be human.
It saw him.
It lunged.
Shane yelped, high-pitched and undignified, and dove sideways as the zombie tore the rest of the board away and half-crawled, half-fell into the living room.
He hit the carpet rolling, snatched the baseball bat on instinct, and came up swinging before he even realized he'd moved.
The aluminum connected with the side of the creature's skull.
Clang.
Bone cracked. Brain matter splattered the wall in a wet arc.
The zombie staggered but didn't drop.
It turned and smiled, lips peeling back in a lipless grin.
Shane's heart slammed against his ribs so hard he tasted copper again.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me," he wheezed, bat trembling in both hands. "First day on the job and I already have to fight the tutorial boss?!"
The zombie lunged again, faster this time.
Shane screamed something incoherent, planted his feet, and swung for the fences.
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