Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Milo's arm wouldn't stop shaking.

Not from fear—not exactly—but from heat.

From the burning crawling beneath his skin like wildfire in a locked room.

He'd been injured before. Shot. Scratched. Cut. But this—this wasn't pain. This was ignition.

Tess noticed it first. As they crossed the glass-dusted remains of an old gas station, she saw the red webbing pulsing under Milo's sleeve. His skin glowed faintly in the shade, like veins filled with ember instead of blood.

"Milo—your arm."

He tried to laugh it off. "Just road rash. Infection, maybe."

But Ryder saw it too. "No infection does that."

Tess grabbed his wrist. "What happened at the raider truck? You were near the blast. Were you hit with anything chemical?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "The canisters ruptured. Gas. Smoke. Something burned through my sleeve. It smelled... sweet."

"Bio-weapons?" Ryder muttered. "Or worse—fire mutagens. Stuff the government was testing during the first wave."

Tess's face darkened. "You could be turning. Not undead. Something new."

They made camp inside the wreckage of an overturned bus, the heat creeping in even after sunset. Milo sat in the back, his body pulsing with light like flickering embers through a paper body.

Tess stayed with him.

"I can feel it, Tess," he whispered. "Like something alive is swimming through me. Like lava."

"We'll fix it."

"What if I explode?" he joked.

She didn't smile.

He gritted his teeth. "It's not just my arm anymore. My chest. My heart. It's like my veins are on fire."

She reached for his hand.

"I won't let you burn alone."

The next morning, they found the real source.

Back near the gas station, buried under scorched concrete, was a ruptured military crate.

Inside: broken vials, burned documentation, and a half-melted label that read:

PROJECT PHOENIX-9

Combustion Accelerant. Cellular Ignition. Weaponized Flame Transfer.

Exposure Level: Lethal. Mutation Timeline: 72 Hours.

Milo had less than three days.

Ryder wanted to leave.

"We can't carry a live bomb."

Tess stood between them. "He's not a bomb. He's Milo."

"He could torch us in our sleep."

Milo spoke quietly, "Then don't sleep near me."

But Tess turned to him, fire in her eyes.

"You're not dying like this. We'll find a suppressant. A lab. Something."

Ryder laughed bitterly. "A lab? In this hellhole?"

Tess stared back. "Hope isn't dead, Ryder. You just buried it with Lara."

That shut him up.

That night, Milo sat alone, the fire in his veins now visible in his neck, glowing like cracks in porcelain.

He wrote something in a journal Lara had given him.

Tess watched from a distance, heart aching.

And as the desert winds howled, so did the pain inside him.

A storm was coming.

And Milo was becoming its spark.

He wasn't infected.

He was igniting.

And what burned inside him—wasn't death.

It was fury.