It makes sense now why Bert hadn't taken the muzzle seriously at first - like more and more of the people R ran into these days, he probably didn't know what a zombie was. By some miracle he hadn't gotten himself bitten first thing in the Arena. He catches himself wondering what kind of zombie Bert would've made. His hat trick days would been over, at the very least. Bert would've been a shadow of himself, if even that.

"Dead," R says. He points at his mouth, then his heart, then his stomach. "In...fected...like me...zombies."

He prefers "zombies" or "Dead" over corpse, though. It's all the same in the end. Still. R watches Bert over the edge of his muzzle gleaming in the light, noticing the change in his posture, the way his shoulders are squared forward instead of relaxed. The little something behind his eyes - a spark of amusement or whatever it was that made Bert friendly to a Dead boy - is walled off. R wonders how many bridges he burned by being true to nature out there.