Loss

The Beat, you realised, was everything.

The rhythmic thumping of the door against it's boards, the rattling shake of the barricaded furniture, and the shuffling, scuffing footsteps beyond the wall had reached synchronisation with your own heartbeat.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

As you sit in silence, your shotgun cradled to your chest tenderly, you make another realisation... They are not dead.

Their own hearts may not beat, their own blood may not pump, but the horde is alive.

The endless thump of cold flesh against the door was it's pulse, their pitiful, longing moans were it's breath. As their lives were taken from them, they had become something more. In death, they had more power than they had ever dared take during life.

Your gaze slid lazily around the room, your imagination constructing theories and philosophy to keep your mind off the pain and the confusion... of the very unfairness of what had happened to you. Your bloodshot, stinging eyes fell upon the table, lit by a single glowing candle, nearly spent. A small box lay open on it's side upon the table, bloodied fingerprints smeared across the thin cardboard. It was empty. "Jefferson + Sons carpenters supplies Ltd. 4 1/2 inch steel Nails" were the words in green on one side. Beside it lay a short claw-hammer, it's head stained dark red with drying blood.

Your eyes slowly moved on, staring at the dark smears and handprints around the doorframe, and the black splash of gore across the wall... Beneath it, your eyes rested briefly upon the crumpled figure in white... Your little girl, your little Samantha, in her little white night gown... Your little girl without a head, nothing remaining but jagged bone and torn flesh above lax lower jaw, pearly white milk-teeth shining in the candle light, stained with the blood of her own mother, who lay beside her without a throat or a face, her fleshless skull mercifully hidden in shadow.

The candle light dimmed, flickered, and went out.

Your nose briefly took control of your senses, the corpses of your family beginning to degrade, filling your senses with the scent of rot, and death. You fought to ignore the smell, as your eyes adjusted to the darkness, allowing you to see once more.

You could not stop yourself... You now looked to the other side of the room, to the man on the sofa. Your brother's wide, unblinking eyes stared at you, glowing white in the moonlight, the occasional shadow passing the window, granting you blessed darkness. Those eyes bore into you, holding your gaze, threatening you, insulting you, accusing you...

His pale, stiff hand still held his gun, a chrome plated 9mm you had bought him for his eighteenth birthday... He had never fired it. You feared it. You feared he would fire it at you, just as your son had turned on you that evening. Your brother's shirt was stained with his blood, as was the upholstery beneath him, and in the ray of moonlight you could see the three, gaping wounds you had blasted into his chest after executing your little Sam. He would have turned on you, too. You knew it. He nailed up the door so that he could keep you to himself, to stop the others eating you first. It was so obvious.

His eyes still stared. Why wouldn't he blink?

You finally took your eyes from the body, glancing desperately around for an unsullied view... You settled for the moon, looking into it's wide, circular expanse... It's pure, clean, whiteness. Up in the sky. Was that Heaven?

You ignored the dark faces between the boards of the window, looking up, through a gap, at the moon.

Like a cancer eating away at it's perfection, a dark cloud slowly crawled across it, hiding it from you, and plunging the room into complete darkness. You listened, for a time, to the beating of the door, and the quiet moans of the beast.

You had lost everything that day...

Your family...

... Your love...

... Your sanity.


... And as a single, muffled bang echoed from the apartment...


... Your Life.