Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The black sky didn't fall—it surged.

It came down like a wave, swallowing light in a heartbeat. Mira's world shrank to the patch of cracked concrete beneath her feet and the cold, rattling chain slithering closer. Every instinct screamed at her to move, but her legs refused. It wasn't fear. It was gravity, thick and oppressive, pinning her like an insect beneath glass.

"Elena!" Mira's voice cracked in the void. "Fight it!"

A shape emerged from the dark. Elena's body—if it could still be called that—moved in slow, deliberate steps. Each footfall echoed as though it landed in a hollow world. Her face was pale, the faint human warmth drowned beneath the ember glow of her eyes.

There is no fight. There is only hunger.

The voice—The Maw's voice—slid into Mira's skull like a blade of ice. The chain writhed, its links glowing faintly with a dull, sickly red. When it lashed forward, the air hissed.

Mira threw herself sideways. The chain struck the ground where she'd stood, shattering the concrete like brittle glass. Shards flew, some cutting her cheek, but she kept moving. Her body ached from the unnatural pull of the void, but she forced herself into the alley ahead.

Behind her, Elena didn't run—she followed. Slow. Patient. Each step she took seemed to erase part of the alley, the brick walls paling, the graffiti fading like an old photograph. The Maw was consuming reality itself.

Mira's breath came ragged. She turned a corner and slammed through a warped metal door into what had once been a laundromat. Machines stood like rusted tombstones, their doors gaping. She ducked behind one, pressing her back to the wall.

Silence.

Then—clink.

The chain slid across tile. Mira's heart pounded in her throat. She spotted a broken pipe jutting from the wall, edges jagged. No weapon would be enough to kill The Maw, but maybe it could slow Elena… slow it.

When the chain struck again, Mira rolled forward. The tip cracked tile where she'd crouched, sending splinters skittering across the floor. She seized the pipe and swung. The metal caught Elena's arm, but instead of breaking bone, it sank—like striking thick mud. The pipe stuck.

Elena's gaze dropped to the wound. Shadows bled from it, curling upward.

"Mira," she said in her human voice again. "You can't run forever."

"I'm not running," Mira lied.

The shadows surged, and the pipe was ripped from her hands. Mira dove toward the back exit, bursting into the open. The sky here wasn't black—yet. Pale daylight filtered through the clouds, weak but real. She stumbled into it like a drowning swimmer reaching air.

Behind her, Elena stopped at the threshold. The blackness above writhed, unwilling—or unable—to spill into the light.

Mira realized the truth.

The Maw couldn't cross into unclaimed ground. Not yet.

Elena smiled—her real smile, faint and aching.

"Then I'll bring the dark to you."

The sky began to crack again.