The old man's face flushed the moment he heard her question, like someone had just slapped him across the mouth. Then he exploded, jerking his wooden cane up and stabbing it toward Natalia with a hand that trembled with rage.
"You've got the nerve to ask who I am? After everything you've done?!" he shouted.
His voice carried down the frozen street, bouncing off the surrounding buildings, and off the dead zombie bodies littered around them like grotesque markers.
For a brief moment, Natalia stood perfectly still, genuinely thrown by the reaction. Her mind searched, fast, precise, trying to pull up anything. A face, a memory, a name. There was nothing. No connection. No trace.
The longer she searched, the more certain she became.
She had never seen this man before in her life.
