'An explosion… a desert-like environment… a lab coat?'
Li Na stood still, the wind now only a whisper in the distance, her mind racing faster than her heartbeat.
She began connecting the dots, not emotionally, but logically, methodically, like a detective piecing together the crime scene of her own fate.
Her thoughts flicked from detail to detail like flipping pages in a familiar book.
She had transmigrated.
That much was clear.
The environment, arid, scorched, hostile.
Her outfit, a black shirt, black jeans, and a lab coat, of all things.
The explosion in the distance.
The unknown...
There was no sense in panicking now.
If there was one thing all those novel protagonists had taught her, it was to not waste your reincarnation having a breakdown.
She had to figure out where she was.
So she did what any obsessive reader would do, she consulted her internal archive of fiction.
'In transmigration stories,' she thought, 'The character always ends up inside a world they've read before, either their favorite or the most recent one.'
That logic had never failed in fiction.
So she closed her eyes, took a breath, and flipped through the mental library of everything she'd ever read, the fluffy romance manhwas, the slice-of-life dramas, the magical academies, the villainess revenge stories… all the way to---
Her eyes suddenly snapped open.
"Fck!*" she blurted, panic cutting through her like a blade.
This scene didn't belong to any of her favorite novels.
Not a single one.
She strained to remember if she'd seen anything like this before, a desert, an explosion, the military-grade lab coat, even that strange feeling in the air.
Nothing matched.
At least not from the ones she remembered fondly.
But then the obvious slapped her across the face.
She hadn't transmigrated into her favorite fiction.
She had transmigrated into her last read.
And that made everything click into place like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
"Of course," she whispered, almost laughing, though there was no humor in her voice. "Attack on Zombie."
It wasn't a classic, not even something she'd recommend.
Just something she'd stumbled on that afternoon.
She hadn't finished it, passed out before she could flip to the next chapter.
But she remembered the beginning vividly.
A post-apocalyptic wasteland.
An unknown virus.
Scientists in underground labs.
Civilian survivors and military resistance.
Zombies with evolving intelligence...
Her heart sank.
"This is stupid," she muttered, dragging her hand down her face. "How the hell am I going to survive here?"
She wasn't a fighter.
She wasn't a genius scientist.
She didn't have a system window floating in front of her or magical powers to save her from death.
All she had was a sharp tongue, an addiction to fiction, medical knowledge, and apparently, green hair and a lab coat.
And this world… was not a kind one.
Suddenly she heard it.
A sound.
Distant, but drawing closer.
It hummed steadily in the sky, chopping through the air with rhythmic force.
At first, it was hard to identify.
But as the wind picked up again, and the dust parted, she recognized the sound immediately.
'A helicopter?' she thought, squinting against the haze.
The thudding grew louder, closer, until the source broke through the veil of sand.
Two helicopters, sleek and black, roared overhead.
Their rotors beat the air into submission as they cut across the sky, flying right above her.
Li Na instinctively ducked, shielding her face with her arms as the turbulence stirred up a cloud of grit.
She turned quickly, watching them disappear into the horizon.
They were heading toward the same direction the explosion had come from.
'Were they military? Rescue? A scouting party? A squad hunting infected?'
The possibilities twisted inside her mind like a tornado.
And though she wanted to believe that they meant safety… she couldn't be sure.
She didn't know the plot well enough.
That was the terrifying part.
She had only read the beginning of Attack on Zombie.
She had died before she could finish the rest.
And now, thrown into a world built on chaos and decay, she was left with fragments of knowledge, enough to realize she was in danger, but not enough to prepare for it.
Then the ground rumbled again.
A low, uneven tremor.
Not like the earlier explosion, this was different.
Her breath caught.
It wasn't the earth shaking.
It was footsteps.
Dozens.
No, hundreds.
Uneven.
Dragging.
Inhuman.
She turned her head slowly toward the sound, her entire body locking up as her ears caught the growing chorus of snarls, groans, and the shuffling of what sounded like dead weight scraping against sand.
Then, growls.
So many.
Layered and monstrous.
Close.
"Zombies," she whispered.
The word felt like acid in her mouth.
She began to back away slowly, scanning the area for shelter, for anything that could give her cover.
But there was nothing, just flatland and ruin.
They were coming.
She could feel it.
Smell it.
The air grew thick with the scent of death and rot.
Her instincts screamed at her to run, but her legs wouldn't move yet.
She was frozen by the sheer weight of what she was facing.
Li Na had laughed at fictional characters who made dumb decisions in horror stories.
Now, she was in one.
And she had no idea what came next.