The sudden, inky blackness swallowed Owen and Lisa whole. One moment, they were bickering good-naturedly over a board game, the next, the familiar hum of their Summerside home was replaced by a suffocating, unnatural silence.
"Great," Owen grumbled, fumbling for his phone. "Power's out."
Lisa sighed, lighting a few candles. Their flickering glow cast long, dancing shadows that made the familiar living room stretch and distort. Outside, the rain lashed against the windows—a relentless, deafening drumming that seemed designed to drown out the rest of the world.
They tried to laugh it off, but the air in the house grew rapidly cold. They had no way of knowing that beyond their small, illuminated bubble, humanity was ending. The date, May 30th, 2025, was already being etched in blood as the night the dead walked.
The Sounds on the Porch
It began with a sound that made the hair on Owen’s arms stand up. Not a scream, but a wet, heavy thud on the front porch. Like a sack of wet meat dropping onto the wood.
Then came the scratching. It wasn't an animal. It was the sound of splitting fingernails dragging across the door frame, followed by a low, rattling wheeze that sounded like a punctured lung trying to draw breath.
"Owen?" Lisa whispered, her face turning a sickly, translucent white in the candlelight.
Owen gripped a baseball bat, his knuckles turning white. Lisa clutched a heavy ceramic vase. The scratching intensified, joined by a chorus of guttural, wet moans coming from all directions. It wasn't just their porch. The sounds were echoing from the driveway, the backyard, the neighbor's lawn.
A shadow smeared against the living room window. A face pressed against the glass. Through the rain-streaked gloom, they saw skin the color of bruised slate, lips peeled back from rotting gums, and eyes—milky, ruptured, and utterly vacant.
Lisa dropped the vase. It shattered on the hardwood with a deafening clatter.
The glass in the window didn't just shatter; it exploded inward.
The Horde Breaks In
They didn’t feel pain, and they didn't stop for the glass tearing their grey flesh. Pale, rotting hands clawed through the broken frame. The front door groaned under immense weight, the dead piling against it until the deadbolt tore out of the wood with a violent crack.
"Kitchen! Go!" Owen roared.
The house was flooded with the unbearable stench of a sun-baked gravesite. Owen fought with a desperate, animal ferocity. He abandoned the bat for his grandfather's old rifle, using the heavy steel barrel to smash jawbones and cave in skulls. But it was like trying to hold back the ocean. For every one he dropped, three more squeezed through the doors, their teeth clicking in a frantic, hungry rhythm.
The kitchen floor became a slick, horrific slip-and-slide of black blood and decaying tissue. Owen was drowning in them. He was blind with sweat and foul water, swinging wildly until a wall of meat fifteen feet deep blocked the hallway.
"Owen! Get up here! We need to get on the roof!" Lisa’s scream from the top of the stairs was raw, shrill, and laced with absolute terror.
He didn't walk up the stairs; he crawled and scrambled over a rising ramp of grasping, groaning bodies. Cold, dead fingers snatched at his ankles, tearing his jeans, scraping his skin. He kicked himself free, bursting into the bedroom and slamming the door.
Together, he and Lisa dragged the heavy oak dresser, the nightstand, and the bedframe against the door.
No Escape
Owen collapsed against the wall, chest heaving, covered from head to toe in the foul fluids of the dead. His mind was fracturing. The adrenaline was draining, leaving a hollow, shaking exhaustion. Outside the bedroom window, the storm raged on, but beneath the rain, Summerside was screaming. The unmistakable sound of tearing flesh and human agony echoed down the street.
The banging on the bedroom door began. Heavy. Rhythmic. Relentless.
The wood began to bow inward under the pressure of dozens of bodies packing the hallway.
"Owen," Lisa wept, clutching his arm. Her grip was tight, but her fingers felt oddly cold.
Owen looked down at her. In the dim light of the dying candles, he saw it. A ragged, dark tear in the sleeve of her shirt. Beneath it, the flesh of her forearm was torn away, a deep, jagged bite mark oozing dark, sluggish blood.
The splintering of the bedroom door cracked like gunfire.
Lisa looked up at him, her eyes wide with a terrifying mixture of love and growing, unnatural hunger. "Owen... I'm so cold."
There was no waking up. The nightmare was real, the door was breaking, and the infection was already inside the room.
The Infection Takes Hold
The oak dresser groaned as the weight of a dozen dead bodies pressed against the other side of the bedroom door. Splinters flew into the dark room like shrapnel.
"Owen..." Lisa whispered again, her voice dropping an octave, losing its warmth.
Owen backed away until his spine hit the windowpane. The cold glass offered no comfort. He stared at her arm. The blood oozing from the jagged tear in her flesh wasn't bright red anymore; it was thick, dark, and clotting into a foul, purplish black.
"Lisa, when did that happen?" his voice cracked, the rifle shaking violently in his slick hands. "Downstairs? When the window broke?"
She didn't answer. She was shivering violently, her teeth chattering so hard a hairline crack formed on her front tooth. Her skin was changing right before his eyes, turning the color of curdled milk. The vibrant green of her eyes was drowning in a rapidly spreading milky film.
"I tried to tell you," she whimpered, but the words were becoming slurred, her tongue heavy and clumsy. "The window... a hand caught me. Owen, it hurts. It burns so bad."
Trapped on All Sides
A massive crash echoed from the doorway. The top hinge of the bedroom door snapped, tilting the heavy wood inward. A pale, skinless arm thrust through the gap, blindly clawing the air, its fingers snapping like twigs against the barricade.
Owen looked out the window behind him, desperately searching for a way onto the roof.
The rain had stopped, leaving a heavy, suffocating fog over Summerside. In the eerie moonlight, he could see their backyard. It was a shifting carpet of gray flesh. Dozens of them were standing in the mud, their faces upturned toward the bedroom window, waiting. If he jumped, he wouldn't hit the ground; he would hit a dozen pairs of waiting teeth.
There was no roof escape. There was no rescue coming. The entire town was a slaughterhouse.
"Owen..."
The voice didn't sound like Lisa anymore. It was a dry, hollow scrape of a sound.
The Ultimate Choice
He turned back to her. She was on her knees, but she wasn't weeping anymore. Her head was tilted at an unnatural angle, her spine stiffening. When she looked up, the woman he loved was gone. Her jaw unhinged, dropping open in a silent, hungry yawn.
With a wet, tearing sound, the bedroom door split completely in two. The heavy dresser overturned, crashing to the floor. The horde poured into the room like a dam breaking—a writhing mass of snapping teeth, torn clothes, and decayed faces.
At the front of the pack was their next-door neighbor, Mr. Henderson, his throat torn out, his dead eyes locked onto Owen.
Lisa stood up, her movements sudden and jerky. She didn't look at the monsters breaking into the room. She only looked at Owen's throat. She took a step toward him, a low, predatory growl rattling in her chest.
Owen raised the rifle, his vision blurring with tears. He had one bullet left in the chamber.
As the horde lunged over the ruined barricade and Lisa sprang forward, teeth bared, Owen made his choice. He didn't point the gun at the monsters. He tucked the cold steel barrel under his own chin, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
The deafening CRACK of the rifle exploded inside Owen’s skull.
For a microsecond, there was searing heat, followed by an absolute, blinding whiteout. The screams of the horde, the wet tearing of wood, and the terrifying growl of what used to be Lisa all vanished into a vacuum of total silence.
Then came the gasp.
Owen’s chest heaved violently as his eyes flew open. He threw himself upright, his hands instantly flying to his throat and chin, desperately searching for a wound, for blood, for anything.
There was nothing. Just sweat.
The air was thick, but it didn't smell like decay. It smelled like clean laundry and old paper. The deafening roar of the storm was gone, replaced by the soft, rhythmic patter of a gentle morning rain against the windowpane. Sunlight, bright and golden, was cutting through the blinds of the living room, illuminating dust motes dancing peacefully in the air.
Owen was sitting on the living room sofa, a fleece blanket tangled around his legs. On the coffee table in front of him sat the unfinished board game, the dice still resting where they had fallen the night before. Next to it was the TV remote, and on the screen, the credits of a Walking Dead marathon were silently rolling by.
A rhythmic, heavy thudding echoed through the house.
Owen froze, his heart hammering against his ribs as a cold spike of adrenaline shot through his veins. The door.
"Owen? Are you ever going to open this door? I'm exhausted!"
The voice was clear, sharp, and beautifully alive.
Owen practically threw himself off the sofa, tripping over the blanket before scrambling to the front door. His hands shook as he unlocked the deadbolt and yanked it open.
Standing on the porch was Lisa. She was wearing her raincoat, holding a grocery bag in one hand and her keys in the other. She looked tired from a long shift, but her skin was warm, her eyes were bright and green, and she was completely whole.
Owen didn't say a word. He just lunged forward, wrapping his arms around her so tightly the grocery bag crinkled between them. He buried his face in her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her shampoo and the fresh rain.
Lisa blinked in surprise, laughing a little as she managed to balance the groceries. "Whoa! Good morning to you too. What’s all this for?"
Owen pulled back just enough to look at her, a weak, incredibly relieved smile spreading across his face. "I am just... really, really glad you're home."
Lisa smiled, stepping past him into the warmth of the house and kicking off her shoes. She glanced at the TV screen, then at the tangled blankets on the couch, and shook her head with a wry grin.
"Rough night?" she asked.
Owen rubbed his face, letting out a long, shaky breath as the last remnants of the nightmare finally faded away. "You have no idea. I think I had a little too much Walking Dead before passing out."
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