Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The ballroom was drowning in silence.

Once a grand venue, the hall now stood broken—its chandelier shattered across the floor like frozen starlight, its marble tiles cracked beneath muddy footprints, and the air thick with the ghosts of music long stopped.

But in that place, where death had danced first, Lara walked in with blood on her boots and fire in her heart.

Milo sat on the steps outside, weapon in hand. "Are you sure about this?"

She nodded. "We found it for a reason."

Ryder glanced back at the main doors. "It's not secure."

"No," Lara said. "But it's meaningful."

Earlier that day, they'd ambushed a raider convoy. It wasn't out of vengeance—it was necessity. The raiders had medicine, fuel, and food. And they'd stolen it from families barely holding on.

The fight wasn't clean.

Tess killed two with her bare hands. Milo almost didn't come back.

But they won.

Blood soaked their packs. Their skin. Their conscience.

And with it came a strange urge—not to celebrate, but to feel something human again.

That's why Lara insisted they stop at the ruins of Riverside Hall, a place once famous for elite weddings and high-society dances.

She remembered seeing it in a magazine before the world fell.

Now, it was dust and death.

And perfect.

Lara lit candles along the cracked piano.

Ryder, surprisingly, found a portable speaker in the raider haul. The battery was low, but it still worked.

A song crackled to life.

Old jazz. Soft. Dreamlike.

Tess entered, wearing her scorched wedding dress. "I don't know how to dance anymore."

"You don't need to," Lara said. "Just move like you're still alive."

And so they danced.

Ryder spun Tess once, a slow turn beneath beams of orange light from the broken roof.

Milo and Lara took hands hesitantly, then moved with quiet rhythm—limping, laughing, holding on.

The ballroom became a sanctuary.

For a few minutes, the blood dried on their clothes didn't matter. The burns didn't sting. The weight of survival lifted just enough for them to sway under fractured moonlight.

Then the music stopped.

A shadow moved by the entrance.

One of the raiders wasn't dead.

He staggered in—bleeding, furious, teeth bared.

He raised his gun.

A single shot echoed.

Lara fired first.

Blood sprayed the floor.

He fell where the dance had begun.

They didn't speak after that.

They just stood in a hall now painted in a fresh shade of red.

"Ironic," Milo whispered.

"What?" Tess asked.

He pointed at the dusty sign by the entrance.

"Riverside Hall: Where Memories Begin."

Lara walked to the center of the floor and dipped her fingers in the blood. She smeared a line across her chest.

"Let it be known," she said, voice low, "we danced in blood. Not because we had to—but because we chose to live."

And for a flicker of time in that ruined place, their hearts beat like music.

Not perfect.

Not pure.

But present.

The last dance in blood—was theirs.