Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Mira woke in silence.

Not quiet—silence. The kind that seemed to press against her skull, deafening in its absence of sound. She was lying on something soft but shifting, like sand that breathed. Her eyes adjusted slowly to a pale twilight, where the horizon bent in impossible curves, as if the world itself had been folded.

"Elena?" she called, but her voice was muffled, as though spoken underwater.

A shadow stirred a few steps away. Elena emerged, but she wasn't the same. Her skin had taken on the pale translucence of the Maw's creatures, faint lines of bone visible beneath. Her eyes, once warm brown, were now gray and deep, reflecting that strange endless ash-light.

"You followed the tether," Elena said, her voice oddly layered, one tone human, one… not.

"I didn't choose," Mira replied. "The light—"

"The Maw chose for you." Elena stepped closer, the ground shifting in ripples beneath her bare feet. "And it never chooses without a cost."

The air ahead shimmered. Shapes formed—figures Mira recognized. The scavenger boy from the ruins. The woman who had given her shelter on the second night. A soldier with the burnt half-mask from the barricades. All of them stood in a line, still, eyes empty.

"They're dead," Mira whispered.

"They're waiting," Elena corrected.

The ground shuddered, and the sky above them cracked open—not like clouds parting, but like glass breaking. Through the fissures, Mira glimpsed the ash plain from before, the ribcage, the darkness. And beyond that… the living world.

The voice returned, curling through her mind like smoke:

One bound, one unbound. The tether cannot hold two.

Mira turned to Elena. "What does that mean?"

Elena's expression softened for just a moment. "It means only one of us gets to leave."

The waiting figures stepped forward in perfect unison. Their faces didn't change, but Mira felt a pull—like the tether inside her was unraveling. Her heartbeat quickened. She realized that each step they took made her body feel heavier, like they were walking into her and replacing pieces of her existence.

"Fight them," Elena urged, "or you'll fade."

Mira's hands curled into fists, but the moment she tried to move, the ground became sticky, holding her in place.

"They're not attacking," Mira said, panic flaring. "They're taking me apart."

Elena glanced up at the cracked sky, then back to Mira. "You can survive this… if you give the Maw what it wants."

"And what's that?"

Elena's gray eyes locked on hers. "Me."

The fissures above widened. The ash plain's wind roared through, breaking the silence. The line of dead souls halted inches from Mira. The tether inside her thrummed violently, vibrating between her and Elena like a pulled wire ready to snap.

"Say it," Elena urged. "Say my name, and I'll stay here. You'll wake up. You'll live."

Mira's throat tightened.

The Maw's voice thundered:

Choose.

Mira opened her mouth—

—And the world broke in half.