Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The dead are cold.

Every survivor knows this.

It's how we tell the difference.

A body with warmth might still be human.

A body without it?

Too late.

I didn't know her name.

Not really.

She told me once, but I was half-conscious from blood loss, and she whispered it like a secret she no longer trusted.

All I remembered was how her hands felt.

Warm.

She found me outside an overturned bus, legs pinned, ribs cracked, the sound of growling too close for comfort.

I was ready to let go.

Then came her hands.

Strong. Soft. Human.

"Don't move," she said, and her voice wasn't afraid. Find the translation on MV&LEMPYR.

She killed two biters with an axe before she even looked me in the eye.

For the next three nights, I faded in and out.

Fever. Pain.

Delirium.

And always—her hand on my forehead, her palm on my chest, her fingers brushing my cheek.

In a world of frost and ruin, she radiated heat like a fire I didn't deserve.

I never saw her cry.

But I felt her tremble when she thought I was asleep.

When I was strong enough to walk, she taught me how to scavenge without making noise.

How to breathe through the fear.

How to let the wind speak before I did.

But she never stayed too close.

Never slept near me.

She kept her warmth guarded.

Like it cost her something to give it.

One night, we found a tent city turned graveyard.

Blankets, cots, pots still warm with spoiled soup.

No living thing in sight.

I saw her kneel by a child's shoe.

She didn't speak for hours.

That was the night she let me hold her hand.

It wasn't romance.

It was remembrance.

Of what we were before.

I asked her why she saved me.

She said:

"Your eyes were still fighting."

Then she added, almost ashamed:

"And your hand... it reminded me of his."

"His?"

"My husband."

"Oh."

"He died trying to keep me warm."

A week later, she was gone.

No note.

No goodbye.

Just a campfire still glowing faintly.

And the ghost of her heat in my sleeping bag.

I should've chased her.

But I knew better.

Sometimes warmth is just passing through.

Now, every time I lie down in the cold, I press my palm to my chest and close my eyes.

I try to remember how it felt.

Her hand.

That warmth.

That impossible reminder that we were once creatures of love—not survival.

I never asked for her name again.

Didn't need to.

She became warmth itself.

And warmth…

is the rarest thing in this world.