Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The alpha turned, and the Hunters melted into the ruins around them.

Mira followed without thinking. The tether wasn't a pull anymore — it was a current, and she was drifting in it.

They entered a boulevard littered with skeletal cars, their windows clouded with moss. The streetlights leaned like drunk sentinels, their dead bulbs catching the occasional flash of lightning. Above, the rain softened, replaced by the muffled hush of enclosed stone.

A building loomed ahead. Once a courthouse, its facade was cracked but still imposing, marble pillars scarred by claw marks. The alpha pushed the heavy doors open with a single hand.

Inside, the air was warmer but thick with the scent of damp earth and something metallic. The chamber beyond had been gutted — no benches, no judge's podium. Instead, the floor was covered in a circle of bones, arranged with unsettling symmetry.

Dozens of Hunters lined the walls, silent and still. Their pale eyes glimmered faintly in the dimness, fixed on Mira.

The alpha stepped into the bone circle and turned to her. One long claw traced the air, gesturing for her to join.

Her legs carried her forward.

The tether in her chest pulsed harder, syncing with something else in the room — a heartbeat that wasn't hers.

Elena's voice tried to claw through her mind. Don't give in. Don't let them have you.

Mira's gaze swept the room. The Hunters didn't breathe, didn't sway, didn't twitch. They were waiting. Not for her death. For… something else.

The alpha began to click, but this time it was slower, more deliberate. Between the clicks came low hums, almost like chanting. From the walls, the other Hunters answered in a perfect rhythm.

And then Mira realized — the words weren't for her.

They were for whatever was inside her.

Her wrist ached. The black lines beneath her skin were darker now, spreading up her forearm like roots. She felt heat, not on her skin, but in her veins. It was alive.

The alpha stopped clicking. It stepped closer, until its shadow swallowed hers. Its hand rose, claws extended, and pressed two fingertips to her chest.

The tether surged.

Her knees buckled. Her vision doubled — the room stayed the same, but layered over it she saw something else: a wasteland bathed in red light, a sky crawling with shadowed shapes, and herself standing among them… not human.

When her eyes refocused, the Hunters were bowing. All of them.

The alpha's voice broke the silence with another word in that low, hollow tone.

"Chosen."

The bone circle shifted — bones rearranging themselves as if moved by unseen hands — forming a path deeper into the building.

The alpha stepped aside, gesturing for her to walk it.

Mira didn't move.

From somewhere far behind, beyond the courthouse walls, she thought she heard Elena calling her name.

But the tether only pulled harder.