Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

We counted every bullet like they were seconds left to live.

At the start, I had twenty. Then fifteen. Then eight. Then three. Then just two.

Now, I had one.

And I gave it to her.

We were surrounded at the train depot. Ava and I had been running for two days without sleep. Our boots were soaked in rain and blood. Her shoulder was wrapped in a shirt sleeve—I didn't ask whose it had been.

The depot was supposed to be empty. But the groans echoing through the tunnel told us we were wrong. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Dead men in conductor hats. Broken women dragging wedding veils through ash.

Ava's breathing was shallow. She hadn't said much since we left the outpost. She hadn't eaten in over 36 hours. And I knew—I just knew—that she was running on memory now.

Memories of people we both didn't talk about anymore.

I had one bullet. And I gave it to her.

She stared at it in her palm like it was a ring, or a child, or something holy.

"What do you expect me to do with this?" she asked.

"Whatever you have to."

"You think I'm going to shoot myself?"

"No. I think… you're going to survive."

We barricaded the break room with overturned vending machines and metal cabinets. The moaning got closer. Slower. More determined.

I watched her clean the bullet with the inside of her sleeve. She was crying without sound, but I didn't mention it. The dead don't care about tears. They only care about blood.

She looked at me with that fierce, wounded look. The one she gave me back at the farmhouse when she pulled a knife from her boot and saved my life. The same look she had when she kissed me the first time in the freezer aisle of a broken store.

"You should've kept it," she whispered. "I'm not worth this."

I touched her face. Dirt. Dried sweat. A faint bruise near her temple.

"You're the only thing left that is."

We kissed. Not out of passion—but out of defiance. Against the infection. Against the odds. Against fate itself.

Then we heard the glass shatter.

I held the door. With my body. My fists. A wrench. I screamed until my throat tore. Until my arms were raw.

Until I couldn't scream anymore.

She stood behind me. Watching. Trembling.

Holding that bullet.

And then—just before I fell beneath the weight of all those hands—

She used it.

But not on herself.

Not on me.

She used it on them. A clean shot. One that gave her five seconds.

Five seconds to run.

Five seconds to live.

Five seconds to remember that someone gave her everything.

And now I wait.

Maybe she made it.

Maybe she didn't.

But if she did…

She still has that bullet casing.

And my name.