Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The tower's steel door groaned as Mira shoved it open, rust and ash grinding in the hinges. Inside, the air was damp and smelled faintly of ozone, as if a storm had been trapped here for years.

Her boots crunched on broken glass and scattered bolts. Somewhere above, the wind whistled through holes in the frame, producing a ghostly, almost human moan. The interior was a hollow skeleton of metal stairs, rusted platforms, and dangling cables swaying like vines in a forgotten jungle.

She didn't have much time.

The ash outside was falling faster now, swirling against the doorway like a living fog. It didn't need to enter—it only had to wait for her to fail.

At the base of the stairwell, she found the old generator room. Its heavy latch was corroded, but she threw her weight against it until it snapped. The generator squatted in the corner, massive and ancient, its once-yellow paint faded to a diseased brown. A line of dust-free space marked where something had been dragged recently.

Her stomach dropped.

Someone had been here.

She knelt by the fuel tank—empty. Her fingers tightened into fists. Without fuel, the lights wouldn't matter. But just as her hope faltered, she noticed something: a faint green glow from the control panel. It shouldn't have been possible; the main power was dead.

She pressed a button. The panel clicked, and for a split second, every cable in the room seemed to twitch.

The generator exhaled.

Not a mechanical hum. Not the sputter of an engine.

A low, wet breath.

She backed away. The green glow pulsed, not steady but like a heartbeat. The cables overhead shifted, curling toward her in lazy arcs, almost as if tasting the air.

You came to wake me, a voice rasped—not in her ears, but inside her skull.

Her vision blurred at the edges. She tasted copper.

Outside, Elena's voice cut through the air, echoing faintly up the tower's frame.

"Mira… come down. You don't want what's in there."

Mira clenched her teeth. "I don't want you in the streets either."

She hit another switch. A section of floodlights high on the tower sputtered and flared weakly, casting pale halos through the ash. The effect was immediate—the falling flakes hissed louder, curling away from the glow.

But the light wasn't entirely hers.

It shimmered with something darker, an oily shadow rippling at its edges.

The cables unwound from the ceiling, lowering like serpents, their black sheaths splitting to reveal cords of living tissue inside. One brushed against her shoulder—it was warm.

Feed me the sky, the tower breathed. I will burn it clean.

Mira realized with a shiver that she wasn't reviving a machine—she was bargaining with a thing older than the city itself.

Outside, Elena was climbing the fence.

Mira's hand hovered over the final ignition switch.

If she flipped it, the tower might destroy The Maw's ash.

Or it might become something worse.

She pressed it anyway.

The tower screamed.