Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Room 3 wasn't supposed to be opened.

Not since the infection swept through Saint Verena's Sanitarium, where I'd been hiding for seventeen days. The staff were long gone, the halls deserted, and most of the other rooms had been stripped bare. But Room 3 was always locked. Always quiet.

Until last night.

I heard humming.

Soft. Off-key. Childlike.

I pressed my ear to the old wood, and something inside me went colder than the air.

There was someone—something—in there.

The key was still hanging in the matron's office. Rusted, marked "R3 – DO NOT DISTURB." I should've known better.

But starvation makes fools of us all.

So I turned the lock.

The girl inside looked…alive.

Barely.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by drawings taped to the walls—crude sketches of people with blacked-out eyes, of red-mouthed shadows, of hands reaching through floorboards.

Her hair was tangled. Her skin looked like parchment. But she smiled.

"You're late," she said, as if I were expected.

I didn't speak. Just stared.

She reached into a box by her side, pulled out a cracker, and held it up. "Want some? You'll get hungry soon."

I stepped in. My breath caught. The air was thick with the smell of antiseptic and rot.

"Who are you?" I finally asked.

She giggled. "I was someone's daughter. Now I'm just… Room 3."

I should have left. I should have locked the door again and run.

But she was a child. Or maybe a teenager. It was hard to tell. And she was alive.

I sat down across from her.

"You're not scared of me?" she asked.

"No."

"You should be."

Over the next few days, I returned. Brought food. Talked. She never gave me a name, but I started calling her "R." It seemed right. R for Room 3. R for the riddles she spoke in. R for the rage I saw in her eyes when she thought I wasn't looking.

She never left the room. Said the hallway hurt her skin. Said she could hear the dead calling louder when she stepped past the threshold.

"They're louder for me," she whispered. "Because I'm almost one of them."

One night, I found the nurse's old records.

Room 3: Subject Zero.

Initial signs of immunity. Later signs of mutation.

Capable of coherent speech and human empathy… until provoked.

Keep isolated. Never feed past day fourteen.

It had been seventeen.

When I returned, she wasn't on the floor.

She was standing. Still smiling. Blood on her lips that wasn't mine.

"You were late," she said again. "So I ate someone else."

I backed away. Locked the door.

It didn't matter.

She's not bound to Room 3 anymore.

Now I sleep with my back to a wall, the key around my neck, and the sound of humming always just out of reach.

Some nights I whisper to myself:

She's still a girl.

She's still in there.

She just needs help.

And then I remember the look in her eyes.

And I stop lying.