Dead Man Breathing

"There's what you expect from a corpse, and then there's what makes you start eyeing the tent flap and calculating how fast you can run."

The tent loomed ahead of us, its canvas walls flapping slightly in whatever breeze managed to find its way through the dunes. My arms were burning from the weight of dead legs, the muscles in my shoulders screaming for relief. Dead bodies are heavier than you'd expect — or maybe it just felt that way because every part of me was already running on empty.

"Put him on the mattress," Uncle Jamie said as we ducked through the entrance, his voice flat and hard in a way I'd never heard from him before.

But Glenda hesitated, her face tight with concern. "I don't think that's a good idea. We only have one mattress, and he could be infected."

The word landed in my gut like a punch. Infected. I hadn't even considered that. Hadn't thought about diseases or contamination or any of the practical realities of handling a corpse. I'd just grabbed the legs because someone needed to, because Glenda was struggling, because doing something felt better than standing around being useless.

Now I was wondering what the hell I'd exposed myself to.

"Bit late for that now," Uncle Jamie snapped, and there was venom in his voice — real anger, directed squarely at Luke. "If Joel is infected, then it's likely we are too."

The words hung in the air, heavy with accusation. I glanced between them, trying to read the subtext, but Uncle Jamie had already turned away, his jaw set in a hard line.

Glenda's expression flickered — resistance, maybe, or just exhaustion — but she didn't argue. Instead she moved to hold the tent flap open wider, giving us room to manoeuvre Joel’s body inside.

The interior was dim and close, the canvas filtering the harsh sunlight into something softer but also stuffier. Dust motes floated in the shafts of light that made it through the gaps. There was a mattress in one corner — just one, like Glenda had said — and a few scattered supplies that looked like they'd been dumped here in a hurry. Blankets, water bottles, some kind of first aid kit. The bare bones of survival.

We laid Joel down as gently as we could manage, which wasn't very gentle at all. His body hit the mattress with a soft thud, his head lolling to one side, those empty blue eyes still fixed on nothing. Someone had pulled the blankets aside to make room, and now they lay bunched at the foot of the mattress like shed skin.

I released my grip on his legs and stepped back, my arms hanging limp at my sides, my muscles twitching with residual strain. Luke did the same, moving to stand beside me. Uncle Jamie stayed closer to the body, his gaze fixed on Joel's face with an intensity I couldn't read.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Then Glenda knelt beside the mattress, her movements brisk and professional despite everything. Her hands moved over Joel's body with the confidence of someone who'd done this before — checking his neck, his chest, his limbs. Looking for something. Or trying to understand what she was looking at.

I watched her work, my eyes drifting back to Joel's face despite my best efforts to look anywhere else. His skin had that grey-white pallor I'd noticed at the river, waxy and wrong, like a mannequin left out in the rain. His lips were slightly parted, colourless. His eyes—

His eyes were still open. Still staring. And there was something about them that made my skin crawl, something that went beyond the obvious wrongness of a dead man's gaze. They looked almost... aware. Like there was still someone in there, trapped behind glass that wouldn't let them out.

I shook off the thought. Stupid. He was dead. His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and dead men didn't see anything.

But then I noticed his chest.

It was moving.

Barely — so subtle I thought I was imagining it at first. But no, there it was again. A tiny rise and fall, the faintest suggestion of breath. His lips weren't moving, no air seemed to be passing through that ruined throat, but his chest was definitely expanding and contracting in a rhythm that looked almost like breathing.

"What the fuck," I muttered, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

Glenda must have noticed it too, because she paused in her examination, her brow furrowing. Her fingers moved to Joel's wrist, pressing down, searching for a pulse. She held the position for a long moment, her expression growing more confused by the second.

Finally, she spoke. Her voice was careful, measured, like she was choosing each word with surgical precision.

"All the major arteries seem to have healed, assuming they were ever severed. Aside from the obvious slit across his throat and the bumps and bruises from his time in the river, he doesn't appear to have any other major physical wounds. I'm not sure how he could have lost all his blood if not through major arterial damage."

Lost all his blood.

The words bounced around inside my skull, refusing to settle into anything that made sense. I stared at Joel's body, at his grey skin and empty eyes and the ragged wound across his throat, and tried to process what Glenda was saying.

No blood. This bloke had no blood in him. His veins were empty, drained dry, and yet his chest was still moving like he was breathing. His eyes were still open like he was watching. He looked dead — Christ, he looked thoroughly dead — but something about him wasn't quite right. Wasn't quite finished.

The obvious word surfaced in my mind before I could stop it.

Zombie.

I'm standing in a tent with a bloody zombie.

The thought was ridiculous. Insane. The kind of thing you'd laugh about in a horror movie, not something that actually happened in real life. But this wasn't real life anymore, was it? This was Clivilius, wherever the hell that was, where portals existed and people got pushed through them and dead men breathed without blood in their veins.

Panic grabbed hold of my chest, squeezing tight. My feet were already moving, carrying me backward toward the tent entrance, desperate to put distance between myself and whatever Joel was. Whatever he was becoming.

"His throat was definitely slit. There was a lot of blood," Luke said, his voice steady and matter-of-fact. Like he was discussing the weather, not confirming that the man on the mattress had been murdered.

Glenda shrugged, her shoulders sagging. "It's not making much sense."

No kidding. Nothing about any of this made sense. I'd woken up this morning in bed with my pregnant fiancée, and now I was trapped in another dimension watching a Swiss doctor poke at a bloodless corpse that might or might not be breathing. If someone had told me yesterday that this was how my Thursday would go, I'd have suggested they lay off whatever they were smoking.

My eyes darted toward the tent flap, calculating the distance. Three steps, maybe four. I could be outside in seconds if I needed to be. Away from the body, away from the impossible, away from the growing certainty that things were about to get worse.

Uncle Jamie's voice cut through my spiralling thoughts, sharp as broken glass.

"What do you mean you know his throat was slit? And how the fuck would you know how much blood there was?"

The question was aimed at Luke, and there was no mistaking the accusation in it. Uncle Jamie's eyes had gone hard, his whole body tensed like a dog about to bite. I'd never seen him like this — not at family dinners, not at Christmas, not ever. The warm, easy-going uncle I'd known my whole life had been replaced by someone colder, angrier, someone who looked capable of violence.

My mind caught up a second later, the implication hitting me like a truck.

Oh my God. Luke did it.

The thought was immediate and absolute, a certainty that blazed through me with the force of revelation. Luke had pushed me through the portal. Luke had been evasive about Uncle Jamie's whereabouts. Luke had known about the blood, about the body, about things he shouldn't know unless—

Unless he was the one responsible.

I stared at his back, my gaze drilling into him, waiting for some reaction. Some tell. Some sign that would confirm what I was suddenly sure of. He's the one. The monster who did this. Who murdered this kid and dumped his body and dragged the rest of us into his nightmare.

But Luke didn't flinch. Didn't turn around. Just stood there with his shoulders slightly hunched, weathering Uncle Jamie's fury like a man who'd been expecting it.

"No signs of defensive wounds?" he asked, and his voice was still calm. Still controlled. Like they were having a theoretical discussion rather than standing over a murder victim.

Glenda shook her head, her brow creased with confusion. "No, none. Were you expecting there to be?"

"Not necessarily." Luke's tone was thoughtful, almost clinical. "I guess that means whatever happened to him, it happened quickly and likely took him by surprise."

Caught off guard.

The phrase echoed in my head, twisting into something uglier. Caught off guard because you made sure of it. Because you planned this. Because you're standing here playing innocent while some poor sod lies dead on the only mattress you've got.

I wanted to say something. Wanted to shout, to accuse, to grab Luke by the collar and shake the truth out of him. But the words stuck in my throat, jammed up against the fear and confusion that had been building since the moment I'd fallen through that portal.

So I just stood there, watching, waiting for someone else to make the first move.

Waiting for us to spiral deeper into hell.