Demise of the Living by Iain McKinnon

but it
wouldn't budge. Grabbing the key from her pocket, she unlocked the
door and dashed inside.
    “Hello?!” Karen shouted,
running along the hallway.
    “Karen?!”a woman replied.
    “Where are you?!” Karen called,
trying to locate where the voice had came from.
    “In here,” came the trembling
reply.
    Karen bolted into the kitchen.
There was blood all over the floor.
    “Dad?” Karen said, looking
down.
    “ I don’t know what to
do,” her mother sobbed.
    There was a ripped
tablecloth discarded on the floor, soaking up blood, and lying in
the centre of the pool of blood was her father. Her mother had
swathed her husband in the makeshift bandages, but hadn’t yet
finished her task. There were still large areas of her father’s
left side thick with blood and chewed-up pink tissue.
    Her mother was sitting next to
him, her hands covered in blood. On one side of her were strips of
torn linen, on the other were shards of blood-stained glass.
    “What happened?” Karen
asked.
    “ There was an explosion.
Your dad was in the home office by the window,” she said, shaking
her head. “The windows just shattered.”
    Karen knelt down beside her
mother. “Dad?”
    She stretched out a hand and
touched her father on the shoulder.
    “Dad?” Karen said more
forcibly, but the only sound was her mother crying.
    It was clear that she had
stopped trying to bandage the wounds when she realized her husband
was dead.
    Karen took in a deep breath,
but it caught halfway. It came tumbling back out on a sob. Her
whole chest shuddered under the pressure of her tears. She felt
herself weeping, her chest heaving as if she was going to be
sick.
    Between sobs she panted, “Oh
God.”
    She felt an arm around her.
Karen jerked back in surprise before she realised it was her mother
embracing her in a hug.
    She let her mother pull
her in close as if she were a little girl again. She buried her
face deep into her mother’s shoulder, letting the tears soak into
her blouse. The strangest thing was that she could feel her mother
weeping, too. Just like her she was sobbing, snatching in breaths
in between the tears. Never before had she felt such raw emotion in
her mother. Karen couldn’t remember the last time she had been held
like this, so vulnerable and so childlike, but never before had she
felt her mother’s pain so attuned to her own.
    She heard footsteps behind her
in the hallway. She turned, expecting to see Shan entering the
house, but it wasn’t Shan.
    Two dark figures pushed
their way in through the open door. The burnt people stumbled
forward, fighting against their own charred skin with every step.
The closest charcoal figure raised its arms to Karen. As it did,
the skin down its bicep split, revealing glistening red muscle
beneath.
    “ Oh God!” Karen uttered,
voice trembling.
    She pulled back to leave, but
her mother still held her close.
    Karen pushed away. “We
need to leave.”
    “We can’t. We can’t leave your
father,” Karen’s mother said, still kneeling on the floor.
    Karen broke free of her
mother’s embrace and stood up.
    “We need to leave now!”
    The two creatures in the
hallway started moaning, drawn in by the vitality of their prey and
the scent of fresh blood.
    “They’re going to attack us!”
Karen barked.
    “ Who are, dear?” her
mother asked.
    Then she spotted the two
intruders.
    She stood up and walked to the
kitchen door.
    “ Who are you and what do
you think you’re doing in my home?!” she demanded, seemingly not
noticing their hideous injuries.
    Karen tugged at her mother’s
arm. “We have to run.”
    “ Get out or I’ll phone
the police!” her mother said sternly.
    “Get away from them!” Karen
cried.
    ”Let go of me.”
    For a moment Karen thought her
mother was talking to her, but then she felt the jerk.
    Her mother shuddered as the
first zombie grabbed hold of her.
    “ Get off of me!” she
shouted, her voice shrill.
    Then she screamed.
    The two zombies tussled