Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Blackout City earned its name on the night the grid fell.

Miles of once-bustling streets lay silent now—no neon signs, no buzzing streetlamps, only darkness thick as fog. But for the survivors, it wasn't the absence of light that terrified them.

It was what moved within it.

Riley crept down 12th Avenue, her flashlight sputtering in her hand. She had two batteries left. That meant one more hour of vision before the dark swallowed her whole.

She pressed her back to a broken storefront, ears trained on the silence.

That's when she heard them.

Click-click-click. The unmistakable sound of bone on concrete. Not footsteps, not claws—something worse. Something deliberate.

She killed the light.

The clicking stopped.

For a moment, she hoped it had gone. That maybe the dark had exaggerated it. But then she felt it.

Breath. Hot and rancid, close to her ear.

She ran.

The flashlight sprang back to life in her hand, illuminating twisted streets, cracked signs, shattered windows—and shadows that twitched when she looked at them.

No lights, no mercy. That's what they said about the city now.

A siren screamed in the distance—a short burst, abrupt, then silence again.

She turned into an alley. And that's when she saw them.

Bodies lined the walls. Not fresh. Mummified. Each face frozen in the same expression—eyes wide, mouth agape, hands mid-reach. As though caught in motion before something stole their time.

She backed away. Her foot struck a can.

From the dark behind her, a voice rasped, "Found you."

She spun. Nothing there.

She ran again.

A flicker of light appeared ahead. A building. Generators humming. Steel-plated windows.

A safehouse?

She banged on the door. "Let me in!"

No response.

The flashlight dimmed.

Click-click-click.

She turned—and a figure emerged from the dark. Thin, elongated, its arms jointed wrong. Its head tilted as if studying her, the face split with jagged, twitching lines of teeth. No eyes. Just sockets.

It moved fast.

Riley screamed.

The door flung open. Arms grabbed her, yanked her inside just as the creature lunged.

Slam. Lock. Silence.

The lights inside buzzed. Dim. Red. The hallway ahead was lined with flickering monitors showing empty streets, static-choked footage, and heat signatures moving—fast.

She turned to the man who saved her.

"You're lucky," he said, handing her a broken walkie. "They don't like electricity. But the grid's failing more each day."

"What are those things?" she asked.

He looked at her, his eyes dark and sleepless. "They were once men who lived in the dark too long. Now they're part of it."

Outside, the creature howled—no voice, just vibration, like glass being crushed under weight.

The man added, "Keep your light on. The dark doesn't kill you... it turns you."

Riley gripped her flashlight tighter, unsure if the flickering bulb would last the night.

Because in Blackout City—

No lights meant no second chances.