***
Yesterday, when she walked into Refuge for the first time, she was impressed by the gate, the walls, and the guards. The sheer number of people was almost overwhelming, even though there were no more than she might have seen in the street on a normal day, before the rising.
Now, after months in which she had seen less than a hundred living humans, total, even twenty together at one time seemed like a huge crowd. And the guards at the entrance claimed that there were hundreds living in Refuge.
There was a problem, though. A single blood-red aura within Refuge. She paused at the gate, looking at that aura and debating what to do.
"Something wrong?" The man who spoke to her sported the stereotypical white coat of a scientist or doctor, and he looked incongruously cheerful.
She looked at him, then at the aura, then back at him. She knew she had to try at least. "You have a zombie in the compound," she said bluntly.
"Really?" If anything, he looked more cheerful. "And how can you detect it?"
She scowled at him, wondering why he was reacting so strangely, and whether she would be able to get away if it turned out that Refuge was a trap instead.
"Do you smell it? Hear its thoughts? Feel a grating on your nerves?" He paused, looking excited. "See it? Can you see it?" He stared at her, as if willing her to say yes.
She complied, still feeling very puzzled. "Yes."
"Yes!" He shouted and pumped his fist in the air, drawing annoyed looks from the guards, and puzzled looks from everyone else. "Excellent," he continued, tugging at her arm and moving away. "Come along, you're exactly who we've been waiting for."
"But the zombie!" She resisted, pulling her arm out of his grasp.
He raised his eyebrows, then smiled and shook his head. "Not to worry, my dear. It's immobilized, guarded and imprisoned outside the main wall. We keep it there, as a quick way of finding useful people like yourself. Perfectly safe. Unless you see more than one?"
She shook her head, baffled, and let him pull her deeper into the complex.
The strange man introduced himself as Dr. Harding, head of the Institute for Zombie Studies. He babbled on about their work as he dragged her through a dizzying maze of streets, then inside through equally extensive corridors, but she felt like she only understood one word in five. Finally, though, he led her into a large lounge and stopped, clapping his hands for attention.
He introduced her to the staff of the Institute then, a dizzying parade of people whose names she forgot almost as soon as he said them, including almost a dozen people like her, people who had survived because they had more than the normal five senses to warn them of zombies.
One of them was Ananda. The first thing Jill noticed was that she was tall, with a thin but muscular build. She moved with the sort of smooth confidence that Jill associated with dancers or gymnasts, and her smile was so warm and sincere that Jill felt an answering smile spread across her face, for the first time in months.
"Ananda is like you, my dear; she actually sees the auras of the undead. And the living, but of course that's neither here nor there. Sight seems to be both the most precise and the most rare of zombie senses. Until you, Ananda was the only seer we had, which limited our more ambitious efforts quite a bit, I'm afraid. Tell me, Jill, do you know yoga?"
She stared at him, wondering if the question was a non-sequitur or actually relevant. He was obviously waiting for an answer, though. "Um. My mom had a couple of yoga videos… before… but I've never taken a class or anything."
He frowned, then shrugged. "You were going to be on running duty to start with anyway. This just means it'll take you a little longer to get up to speed on the rest of it. Now, you should eat and rest, and tomorrow we'll send you out on your first assignment."
Ananda smiled and waved, while Dr. Harding led Jill away to first the kitchen and then a tiny, dorm-style room. He babbled the whole time, but not about anything she actually wanted to know, like what running duty involved or why he thought he had the right to give her any sort of assignment.
Before she could interrupt him long enough to ask, he was gone, leaving her alone with food and bed. She ate, washed up in the bathroom next door, then locked and barricaded her door before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.