Most of the Living he runs into don't actually talk to him. Sure, they scream and cry and some of them even curse, but he knows on some instinctive level it isn't the same. They don't see him as a person which, to be utterly fair, is true. He'd say the idea that a corpse, a shell of someone who made one mistake too many, would keep him up at night but he doesn't sleep. Not in the old sense. So Beth talking directly to him is a first. When the blonde one looks at him it's direct, it seems as if she's trying to make eye contact.

R stops mid-stoop. The look on his face when his head drifts up is still the usual zombie's lost patrol look, vacant, but there's also something behind the eyes that doesn't belong. Stage fright. Two syllables in and suddenly he remembers embarrassment, a dull shade of it swelling in his guts as he tries to remember what to do. This is a conversation. It's your turn. Do...something.

His mouth flops open, blackened lips working as R forces air out the wrong way - basically, don't groan for brains.

"Hgh....ulp....?" R struggles to identify if he wants help picking up the lighter or it's something more ambitious: help overall, help for a cure, help for his non-existent social life.