A YEAR LIKE NO OTHER- DAY 359

SHORT STORY BY MAGGIE L

I exhale sharply as the man stumbles toward me, snarling and bloodshot eyes focused on me. It was a shame he was dead, I wondered when he had been infected by another zombie. His dark hair is oily and falls in front of his eyes, and drool foams at the corners of his mouth. My hand tightens on my bow and I reach behind my back to retrieve another arrow.

It snags a bit on the collar of my jacket, but I tug it free. My brows furrow and drops of sweat form on the back of my neck. I hate that I always have second thoughts when I’m about to kill one of them; it reminds me so much of how my mother did the very same, all those years ago. The night she got herself killed.

The night the mysterious man came knocking at our door. Mother had told me to run and seek refuge at our neighbor’s house, but I was defiant and instead hid behind a door.

He was tall and had a horribly friendly grin, dark eyes that looked like menacing shadows. If my memory served me right, he was asking her if she had someone that he wanted. “Someone who will prevent the world’s untimely end.” From my spot I could see that the muscles in her back had tensed, but she still waved him away almost immediately. The man’s lip twitched and a flash of outrage washed over his face, but was masked as quickly as it had come. Then I noticed a spider skittering down the wall and had looked away to take a second of admiring it.

BANG!

It took everything in me not to scream as her body struck the floor, hard. Blood pooled at the man’s feet and he laughed. “Wrong answer.”

The sound of heavy footsteps behind me snaps me back to reality; I almost spin around until I recognize them. Ashveer. I glance at him, and he opens his mouth to say something. But he shuts it and lets me focus. I turn back to the zombie and pull the bowstring back, exhaling quickly and letting go.

The arrow whizzes past the zombie’s head, barely an inch off. I stare in disbelief; I missed. I hear Ash take a sharp intake of breath, and the zombie makes a sound that resembles an extremely hoarse laugh.

It’s mocking me. I grit my teeth and go for another arrow; my fingers grasp empty air, and that’s when I begin to panic. The man is about twenty feet away from us, staggering forward at a leisurely pace. Its eyes bulge once it notices that I’m weaponless, and stalks towards us faster.

I look at Ash desperately, and he hesitates before presenting to me the one thing he’s armed with: a rifle. The only weapon I’m not fully trained in. After questioning my life choices, I curse and snatch it from his hands.

I grip it tightly, looking at the undead man through the front sight. I take a deep breath, and let it out slowly; I feel Ash place a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I narrow my eyes. “I’ll see you in hell,” I whisper, and pull the trigger. The bullet flies and plants itself in the zombie’s forehead. It screeches, falls and writhes for a moment before finally going still. I lower the gun and smirk. It’s almost been a year since this started, and I can’t wait for it to end. One day, maybe.

END.