The tip of his nose caught the scent of different corpses, the odors released by varying degrees of decay, the smell of blood, the smell of gunpowder...

Muscles swelled and throbbed, wildly twitching beneath his clothes like a frenzied heartbeat, trembling.

His heightened senses brought him pain magnified dozens of times, and the unleashed muscles gave him the illusion that his body was about to be torn apart—yet he had never felt so exhilarated.

He sensed it: the simple outlines moving slowly through the air. Though not even a vague shape, he could feel it.

After decades of blindness, for the first time he perceived the world so clearly, even if this clarity was crude and imperfect.

He smelled the scents, heard the sounds, felt sensations on his skin, and finally, combined them with blurred intuition and experience.

It allowed him to detect the decaying zombies slowly moving from both ends of the corridor.

He pressed his aching brow, then suddenly flipped Grace Brooks's body around. The two of them embraced face to face. Grace Brooks could feel his body temperature boiling, saw his bluish face, wanted to say something, but was stunned by his manic grin.

"Let's dance, miss," Henry Clark whispered softly in Grace Brooks's ear, slowly taking her gun-wielding hand. The two of them gripped the pistol together, the black handgun held tightly in their palms, while his other hand picked up an abandoned assault rifle from the ground.

"Together..."

"Survive!"

Henry Clark's heart pounded like a drum, almost leaping out of his chest. Grace Brooks could even clearly hear the rhythm so close by.

She heard the indistinct sounds from Henry Clark's throat, blending with the pounding rhythm, and then their bodies suddenly began to move in a dance.

Almost instantly, she was swept uncontrollably into this frenzied beat.

When the first zombie appeared at the edge of the corridor, it was chewing flesh, hunched over as it emerged from the corner, then opened its moldy mouth wide and let out a howl full of hunger and bloodlust.

The moment it opened its mouth, the black barrel of the gun swung in time with the heartbeat. The two rotating arms suddenly stopped, turning in perfect sync after a beat. The trigger was pulled, and under Henry Clark's blurred perception and Grace Brooks's correction, a silver bullet drilled into the zombie's throat, blowing off its skull.

The prelude, still brewing, began. As the first zombie fell to the ground, dozens of black-gray decaying bodies appeared at both ends of the corridor. Amid the intense rhythm and Henry Clark's indistinct melody, the waltz slowly built toward its climax.

The mad mist began to swirl, the two figures spinning rapidly, stepping in time with Henry Clark's heartbeat.

As their arms swung, they pulled the trigger as if playing an instrument, silver bullets spinning out from the muzzle.

Continuous thunderous blasts erupted from between their fingers. As Henry Clark spun, he sensed the sudden increase of blood in the air, and the sound of heavy bodies falling.

The ravenous zombies kept advancing. Those not shot in the head continued to move closer, some still chewing shattered flesh, their bodies streaked with crimson.

They were pitiful things, devouring others' vitality to fill their own hunger—hateful things. No matter how tragic their pasts, now that they had fallen so far, right or wrong no longer mattered. In Henry Clark's eyes, tearing apart anything that blocked his path was the only right thing to do.

Whatever they are, let them all die!

The furious gunfire finally paused for a moment. Scorching shell casings fell to the ground, producing a series of crisp sounds. The magazine dropped from the gun, and as they spun, a fresh magazine from the girl's waist was loaded in, the steel-on-steel click ringing out.

After a brief pause, the climax surged again.

On Henry Clark's cold face, as if by miracle, zombies spewed foul ichor one after another, struggling and collapsing, losing their last ugly spark of life.

At last, as the dance neared its end, the remaining zombies slowly approached, finally about to reach Henry Clark and Grace Brooks.

Henry Clark's hand slipped from Grace Brooks's grasp, drew the short knife from his waist, and with his left hand pulled Grace Brooks to his side. Without a moment's hesitation, listening to the wind and the ever-closer stench, he raised the blade high, and after a flash in the air, plunged it into a zombie's forehead.

With all his strength, he twisted the blade, grinding a large hole in the hard skull. The last zombie crashed to the ground.

Grace Brooks clutched Henry Clark's hand, breathing hard, thinking she must have gone mad just now—how could it be possible...

She finally sensed something was wrong. The hand she held was trembling, like a broken vibrator. In the battle beyond his limits, every ounce of Henry Clark's strength had been drained from his muscles, until at last, he trembled weakly, like a candle about to go out.