Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They said the tunnels were sealed.

That nothing human could survive down there.

But we weren't looking for humans.

We were looking for her.

The catacombs under Old Town were once burial chambers—then a resistance base, then just legend.

Now, they were just rot and echoes.

But someone had seen her.

A silhouette with red ribbons in her hair. Carrying a candle that never went out.

I knew it was Alma.

I had to believe it was Alma.

The descent was like sinking into a throat—damp, suffocating, too quiet to be dead.

My boots slid on moss-coated stairs.

Isa followed behind me, shotgun in hand, eyes scanning the walls covered in bones.

We walked for hours.

Every few turns, a melted candle.

Every few corners, a whisper.

Isa wanted to turn back.

I didn't.

"She's gone, Lark," she said.

I shook my head. "No. She promised she'd wait."

We found the first body near the crypt junction.

A walker, head twisted completely backward.

Dead again.

Neck broken clean.

Alma's style.

The deeper we went, the stranger the tunnels became.

Piles of candles. Hundreds of them.

All lit.

All fresh.

And at the center, a chapel carved into the bones of the earth.

She stood there.

Alma.

Thin, pale, eyes hollow with months of hiding, but still her. Cha.pte$r s@o&ur@ce$:% My Virtual& L+i+brar.y Em^p@i%r&e (M|V&|!L4EM$PY%R#).@

Still beautiful in that terrible, flickering light.

She didn't speak right away.

Just walked to me.

Touched my face like she didn't believe it was real.

Then she kissed me.

It was cold.

Then warm.

Then broken.

"I didn't want you to find me," she said.

"I had to."

Isa lowered her shotgun. "This place smells like death."

Alma nodded. "It is."

She gestured around. "They come here. Drawn to the light. To the heat. I've been luring them. Ending them. One by one."

It wasn't survival.

It was penance.

I noticed then—her hands.

Burned.

Blistered from wax and flame.

"You've been lighting all of these?" I asked.

She nodded.

Isa stepped forward. "You can't stay down here."

Alma looked at her. "You think I haven't turned yet because I'm lucky?"

"What do you mean?" I whispered.

She lifted her sleeve.

Veins like black vines, crawling up her arm.

"It's in me."

I couldn't breathe.

"I came down here so I wouldn't hurt you," she said. "I wanted you to remember me with candlelight, not blood."

I dropped to my knees.

Isa looked away.

"Just stay with me," Alma whispered. "One night. One last night."

We did.

We lit every candle.

We held her.

We cried.

We kissed.

And in the morning, the final one went out.

We left her there.

At her request.

Among the wax.

Among the silence.

The catacombs collapsed a week later in a quake.

Her tomb sealed itself.

But sometimes, when I pass Old Town, I see a flicker through the grates.

And I know her flame still burns.