Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They buried Lara at sunrise.

The earth was too dry to dig deep, so they covered her body with stones beneath a withered tree behind the Crimson Motel. The wind carried dust across the dunes, and no birds sang.

Ryder didn't speak.

Tess wept quietly.

Milo carved her name into a plank from the motel's sign.

LARA V.

FIGHTER. FRIEND. FAITHFUL.

No one dared say what they were all thinking—this was the beginning of the end.

Twelve hours earlier, she had been alive.

Alive and laughing, despite the blood on her sleeve and the infection in her lungs. The firestorm that destroyed the supply truck had left her burned, broken. Still, she insisted on walking.

"Devotion keeps me upright," she had said, coughing, eyes alight with something fiercer than fever.

"To what?" Milo had asked.

"To you. To this. To surviving right."

That night, they gathered in Room 6, the only one with a working lock. Tess wrapped Lara's wounds, but everyone could see the veins darkening beneath her skin.

"I've seen that look before," Ryder said. "You're turning."

"Not yet," she whispered. "And I won't. Not here."

At midnight, she asked them to sit with her.

No running. No fighting. No sharpening blades.

Just… to sit.

She spoke of her husband, lost on Day One. Of the promise she made when she couldn't find his body: "I'll live for both of us."

She told them of the first child she saved. Of the second one she couldn't.

And she said something none of them would forget:

"Devotion isn't about who you love.

It's about what you're willing to keep loving,

even after it stops loving you back."

By morning, her breathing slowed.

Milo held her hand until it went cold.

Tess sang to her. A lullaby she didn't know she remembered.

And Ryder—he gave her the gift few get in the apocalypse:

A peaceful end.

No bite.

No bullet.

Just breath.

And then none.

Now, as they stood over her grave of stones, Ryder pulled something from his coat. A silver chain—burned and bent, but intact.

"Her wedding necklace," he said. "She wore it under her armor."

He laid it across the stones like a crown.

Milo whispered, "She didn't turn."

"No," Tess said. "She kept her vow. Even in decay."

They walked away slowly, the sun high, casting long shadows behind them.

The desert didn't care.

The dead didn't pause.

But somewhere in that silence, the air held the weight of devotion.

Not loud.

Not grand.

But real.

And though her body stayed buried beneath dust and stone, Lara's vow traveled with them—

A devotion stronger than death.