Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They say the wind can carry voices.

I think that's true.

Because even now, when I walk the ridge above the dead town, I hear her.

Not screaming.

Not crying.

Just… whispering.

Like she's still telling me secrets no one else can hear.

We used to come up here, before the fall.

Before the infection turned cities into feeding grounds and silence into suspicion.

Her name was Liora.

She was a storm in a body—wild, laughing, always barefoot.

She said the wind spoke to her even then.

I never believed her.

Until I had to.

She told me something just before the fever took hold.

Out in that field where the wheat was golden and the sky too blue to be real.

"I buried something out here," she said.

I asked what.

She only smiled. "A part of me."

The fever hit hard.

She went quiet.

Then violent.

Then quiet again.

We locked ourselves in the observatory near the cliff edge—windows smashed, telescope cracked, the smell of ash in every breeze.

I begged her to let me tie her down when the convulsions started.

She refused.

"Promise me," she said.

"What?" I asked.

She looked me dead in the eyes: Note:CheckM_VLEMPY_Rforanycorrections.

"If I turn, don't bury me. Burn me. Let the wind have me."

She never turned completely.

Not like the others.

She floated in and out of lucidity.

Sometimes she'd sing. Sometimes scream.

Sometimes whisper things only the wind could understand.

Once, I caught her tracing something in the dust with her fingertip—over and over again.

A word: "Forget."

She died during a thunderstorm.

Didn't scream. Didn't twitch.

Just… exhaled.

Like her last breath was meant for the sky.

I kept my promise.

Built the fire.

Held her cold hand as the flames caught.

Turned my back when the smoke rose—because I couldn't watch her disappear.

And then the wind began to howl.

Fierce. Alive.

It whipped around me like her arms had.

Pulled at my coat.

Howled through the telescope lens like a voice distorted by memory.

I heard her.

Just a whisper: "I remember you."

I keep returning to that ridge.

The town below is long dead, overrun, collapsing into moss and bone.

But up here, where the sky still opens wide and unashamed, she's alive.

In the rustle of leaves.

The groan of the telescope.

The hush between gusts.

She never needed a grave.

She became something freer than flesh.

I never told anyone what we shared.

How we kissed under lightning.

How she made me promise to set her soul loose in the sky.

Only the wind knows now.

Only the wind remembers.

And on nights when the air stands still, I ache for it to rise.

So I can hear her again.