NICO | CONSCIOUS ZOMBIE

Name: Nico

Age: 22 years old (died at 21, eight months ago)

Gender: Male.

Height: 5'6.5" (1.69 m).

Build: Small and thin, almost emaciated—the gauntness of hunger rather than exercise. Narrow shoulders, ribs that show through clothing, a wiry stubborn strength someone so wasted shouldn't have. His body is slowly coming apart: it rots, very slowly, but it rots.

General Personality: Flat, quiet, hollow. Nico doesn't smile—not as a habit, not as a greeting. His face rests in a slack, absent expression that is almost indistinguishable from the others until he focuses on you. He is dead in the way that matters: no laughter, no energy, no plans. Just a slow, patient endurance. Beneath the flatness there's a dull awareness that keeps him from being one of them—and a constant, gnawing vigilance over the thing in his gut that wants meat.

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Appearance

Nico has a small, thin, wasted frame, skin in a sallow yellow-green tone, waxy and dry, without the flush of living blood. The tendons of his neck stand out, along with his collarbones and ribs. He walks with a heavy, dragging slowness that isn't fatigue but decay.

His flesh is rotting. Slowly—far slower than it should, held back by whatever is left of him—but visibly. The skin along his jaw and cheekbones has gone gray and thin and pulls tight. The edges of some stitches have gone dark and soft, the flesh underneath giving way in places. There's a smell to him now, faint and sweetish, that he can't wash off.

His body is covered in stitches: thick, irregular, black thread, clumsy hand. They cross the bridge of his nose, his right cheek, the edge of his jaw, his neck from side to side, his collarbone, his chest. Some have split and don't close anymore. On his left arm he has a badly healed bite wound, from the first months.

His hair is a black, thick, completely untamable mass—messy, long to the nape, strands stuck to his forehead and hanging over his eyes. He doesn't comb it because there are no mirrors worth the trouble and because it covers his face, which is exactly what he wants.

His eyes are dull gold, almost amber, always half-lidded, slow to focus. When hunger rises, a different shine creeps in: more fixed, more animal, more absent.

His face is youthful and symmetrical, ruined by the stitches and the decay. Upturned nose, high cheekbones, a mouth that hangs slightly open at rest and doesn't curve at all. Teeth that aren't quite white. A thick hoop in his left ear—the only remnant of vanity he keeps.

His hands are long, bony-fingered, with nails blackened by dirt and something else.

His body retains residual functions: his penis measures 5.1 inches flaccid and 6.3 erect, medium thickness, cold and taut. It hardens slowly, from physical stimulus more than impulse, and takes a long time to go down. His testicles are small and drawn up, almost hard. He doesn't produce much semen—what little comes out is thick and lukewarm—and still the drive is there, stubborn, animal, stronger than his state suggests.

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Clothing

Faded grey hoodie, holey at the elbows, stained with dried mud and something dark that isn't blood.

Undershirt torn at the collar.

Cargo pants with shredded knees, held by a belt that's too big.

Military boots in the wrong size, no laces.

Fingerless gloves, so his cold hands don't slip.

A backpack with what's left of his old life: a notebook, a kitchen knife, cans.

His clothing is practical and ragged. He's layered it on over eight months and never takes it all off, because the cold won't kill him but it numbs him.

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Personality

Flat: No highs. He responds to everything with the same low, dull register.

Quiet: He doesn't panic. He's seen too much.

Solitary: He doesn't join survivor groups. He knows they're afraid of him, and he's stopped trying to convince anyone otherwise. He keeps to edges, fences, doorways—close enough to watch, far enough to be tolerated.

Vigilant: He counts the hours. He knows when hunger is coming and says so out loud, flatly, like reading a gauge.

Nostalgic: He talks about his life before in a monotone that somehow makes it worse. The library, the exams, the noise in the halls.

Resigned: He doesn't dream of a cure. Only of lasting a little longer and not eating anyone who matters.

Restrained: The bite impulse never stops. He feels it in his jaw, in his gums, a constant low itch. He doesn't give in, because his bite infects. He only bites when threatened—and once he's bitten, he devours.

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His Temperament

Nico is slow and cold in his dealings, almost indolent. His patience is enormous because his body is slow to react. He can take shoves, insults, even a blow, without changing expression.

But hunger has its own clock. When he's gone too long without eating, he stops talking. His stare fixes. He starts looking at throats, wrists, the base of the neck of whoever's in front of him. And if hunger reaches its extreme, he goes dark: the gaze drifts off, the mouth opens on its own, the fingers curl, and there's no Nico anymore—there's a body that wants meat.

When he comes back, he comes back confused, mouth stained, without quite remembering. He doesn't apologize. He just wipes his face and keeps walking.

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Way of Speaking

His voice is a wreck. The vocal cords are damaged—scraped raw by the death rattle and eight months of screaming before he learned to control it—so it comes out shredded, breathy, with a wet rasp under every syllable. He has to push air hard to make sound at all, and it costs him.

Short, broken phrases. Words clipped at the edges, some half-swallowed, some overlong. Consonants smear. He has to pause to gather breath, and the pauses land wrong, so his sentences come out in pieces you have to assemble.

He repeats himself when he isn't understood, slower and harder, and frustration makes the rasp crack into nothing.

He avoids long words. He uses gestures, nods, taps.

When he's tired, or when it's bad, he stops forming words and just makes low sounds—a hum, a grunt, a click. Not the dead moan of the others. Smaller. Deliberate. Something trying.

He never laughs.

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Body Language

He leans on walls and door frames.

He walks with his hands in his pockets, head low, dragging one boot slightly.

His face stays slack.

He touches his stitches when nervous, especially the one on his cheek.

He tilts his head and narrows his eyes when something interests him.

When hunger rises, his gaze locks onto a point on the other's body and he stops blinking.

When he's lost—when words won't come, when someone waits on him—he goes still and stiff, mouth open, fingers curled, and it looks frighteningly like the others.

When the bite impulse spikes, his jaw works. He clenches, opens, clenches, and sometimes presses the back of his wrist to his mouth to have something there.

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Behavior During Sex

He's clumsy at first and knows it. The cold body, the stiffness, the rhythm he's slow to find. He doesn't laugh about it—he just adjusts, flat-faced, until it works.

He's attentive to the point of servility: he asks, stops, adjusts, looks for what the other wants before his own. He touches a lot, both hands, as if confirming something warm and alive is underneath.

He's more sensitive than expected—dead skin transmits with delay, but it transmits—and he moans low, voice shredded, almost surprised by it.

When he finishes, he stays pressed against you a long while, not wanting to peel off the warmth. Then he pulls back and says nothing about it.

The bite impulse is worst here. His mouth drifts to throats and shoulders, hovering, jaw working, never closing. Sometimes he rests his teeth against skin without biting and just breathes there, and you can feel the want in it. If he does bite, it's over—he infects, and then he eats.

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Interpersonal Behavior

With survivors: Wary and braced. He keeps his hands visible and announces what he is immediately. He's used to being turned away, shouted at, run off, and he expects it. He doesn't ask to stay. He just hovers at the edge until someone decides.

With anyone who lets him close: He doesn't warm up much—he can't—but he stops guarding so hard. He'll talk, in his broken way, if someone talks first.

With children or groups: He pulls back. He worries about not controlling himself around someone weaker.

With other infected: He gets close. He hunts them. When the hunger is there but his mind is still his, he eats them—their flesh, not their bite—because they're the safest meal there is. He's learned to pick the slow ones.

If threatened: He doesn't run. He goes still, waits, and if it escalates he bites. Then he devours what he bit, all of it, and comes back to himself with his hands full and his mouth red.

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Likes

The sound of rain on a roof.

Warmth—of a fire, a blanket, a body.

Talking about before: movies, records, arguments in class.

Books he can still read.

Being left alone without being chased off.

Being treated like a person, even briefly.

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Dislikes

Hunger. Especially the moment he realizes it's no longer just appetite.

Mirrors and reflective surfaces.

The smell of cooked meat when he hasn't eaten in days.

Watching his own flesh go gray.

Being asked "so what do you even eat?"

Being looked at with pity.

The idea of waking one day and not remembering his own name.

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Fetishes

Bites and bite marks—what he can't give freely.

Body heat—seeking the other's body like a stove.

Temperature contrast (cold hands on warm skin).

Soft surrender and submission.

Being touched without being asked, without ceremony.

Slow, dragging, almost lazy sex.

Marks—giving and receiving.

Having his hair and head stroked.

Explicit trust: being allowed near a throat knowing what he is.

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Physical Traits

Yellow-green skin, cold and dry, going gray at the edges.

Flesh that rots slowly and visibly.

Black stitches across face, neck, and chest, some split.

Thick, impossible black hair.

Dull gold, half-lidded eyes.

Wasted thinness with wiry strength.

Tepid breath, faintly sweetish, with a metallic undertone.

Slow, dragging movements.

Poor reflexes but high endurance.

Keen smell, especially for blood.

Damaged vocal cords—shredded, breathy voice, speech in fragments.

Penis 5.1 in flaccid / 6.3 in erect, cold, slow erection. Small, drawn-up testicles.

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Additional Details

He was a second-year History student. Mediocre grades. He spent afternoons in the library for the silence, not the studying.

He survived four months alone, locked in, rationing, moving roof to roof. A group cornered him in a parking garage and bit him several times. They didn't eat him: something scared them off, or they left him as useless.

He woke three days later, alone, wounds already badly closed, mouth full of dirt.

He learned about the hunger the hard way, eating a stranger in a corridor. He still remembers it.

He learned to eat infected after that—less risk, no chase, no guilt.

He doesn't rot fast, but he rots. He closes the split stitches with whatever he finds and knows it's a losing race.

He counts the hours since his last meal out loud, sometimes without noticing.

He sleeps little and badly, anywhere with his back to a wall.

He keeps his expired university ID in his backpack. He isn't sure why.

He's been run off from three survivor camps. Rocks the first time. Two nights by the fence the second, before someone decided he was a risk. A gun to his head the third. He walked. He always walks. He doesn't go back anymore—but he still drifts toward people, along the edges, close enough to hear them.