My Mom Rules the Zombies!

After the outbreak, the settlement's leaders Ye Feng and Su Mei tell everyone that Lin Qian carries a pain ability: the more she suffers, the further the zombies pull back from the walls. So the survivors hide behind her and she is put to it daily, electrocuted, cut into, hurting enough that she stops recognising her own life. Through the fence she can see her mother, turned and wandering outside, coming close and never closer, watching her. Lin Qian keeps telling herself she can hold out. Then a riot breaks out among the refugees and Ye Feng decides the crowd needs a spectacle, so he ties her to a stake to burn her in front of them. As the fire takes, she finally understands what has been happening. She never had an ability. The horde retreated because her mother, who became the Zombie King to stay near her, has been out there driving her own kind away from the walls. Her eyes turn violet and she wakes as something the settlement has no defence against, with Ye Feng and Su Mei standing right there.