text: She could hear them downstairs. Slow, dragging footsteps over mouldering carpet. Ragged, gasping breath, even more tortured than her own. And a low keening moan, somewhere between sobbing and growling, mutilated by a hundred different throats. Was it a hundred? She couldn't tell anymore, the one that had stalked her had brought more. A lot more. There was nothing. Not a single thing she could use. The windows were too high up in this stupid wreck of a house. Narrow slits of dying sunlight, too far away for her to reach. The walls were brick not soft plaster like she'd hoped, and even if she could get through, it was a long drop with a seething sea of shamblers on the other side. She couldn't fight her way out. Even more had come, and whoever lived here before obviously didn't feel the need to stock up on heavy weapons. All she'd found was a pencil. And it was blunt. They were coming. Usually shamblers were mindless; staggering around and biting on reflex, but when they got together they got smarter. Scientists, while there *were* scientists, had suggested a kind of collective mind. The virus working as a whole to problem solve. She didn't care, she just knew that they were smart enough to start building a ramp to get past the stairs she'd burnt. The moans sounded more purposeful now. Less lost and more hungry. She could hear the brittle scraping of lighter furniture being dragged into a pile for the fresher ones to climb. Shamblers might get smarter in groups, but they didn't stop decaying. Those without tendons or muscles would have to wait for whatever scraps of her were thrown back down. There was *nothing.* She threw herself furiously on the rotted sofa she'd used to barricade the door. No worries about being heard now. They knew where she was, the shuffling below sounded almost eager. Who kept a room this clean anyway? It looked like it was slowly being converted into a bedroom when she rushed in, but now it was obvious how little progress had been made. Any furniture and boxes of flat-pack crap waiting to be built had been shoved against the door, which itself wasn't going to be much of an obstacle judging by how rotten it was. As for the rest, there *was* no rest. No boxes of junk, no hardware kits, no *anything.* She'd thought about taking the easy way out, once she realised how screwed she was, but she couldn't even find anything for that, unless you counted death by splinters or hitting her head against a wall as an easy way out. She was going to die. She was going to be *torn apart* by rotted hands and broken teeth, and there was nothing she could do about it, except hyperventilate on spore-filled air. There was nothing she could do. She'd already done everything. Thought of every way to escape, used every scrap of furniture to bar the door, thought of everything she could have done to avoid this. She was done. She sat watching her breath form plumes and storms in the fragile, dusty air. The light was dimmer now, the last dying glow of the day. It painted lines of dusty gold across her barricade. She listened to the creaks and occasional brittle crashes as the shamblers grew closer to successfully scaling their mountain of junk. Closer to her. She would have sung if she could, like a musician on a sinking ship, but she never learnt to sing well. What was the point? it wouldn't have kept her alive, not that anything else had. Maybe she would have written on the walls, a last farewell, if anyone had left her a proper pencil. But they hadn't. So she listened and she waited. *Th-thum, th-thum*. Her heartbeat thuds in her ears, her chest, her fingertips. *Th-thum, th-thum*. Every frantic beat one she'll never get back. Slipping into oblivion, pulling her towards her end. *Th-thum, th-thum*. It can't happen, it just *can't.* She can't imagine what comes next, nothing comes next. She recoils from the thought, squirming in time. *Th-thum, th-thum*. They're here. Broken fingernails scraping at the door. The soggy wood splinters, clawing deep gashes into a pale arm that can't bleed. It squirms through the gap, leading with snapping jaws. The rest of it's body follows like a diseased afterthought. She stands frozen. She thought she'd be brave or defiant, but there's no room for it. She just watches, frozen, as it lurches towards her. Withered jaws latch onto her arm. Mutilated hands quickly following to hold her still. The head flicks back, pulling a thick ribbon of flesh with it. She stares, looking at torn muscle, a flash of bone, before the blood quickly pools, then sprays. Her startled face laced with constallations of blood. Then the pain sets in. White fire gnawing into her, burrowing through every vein, burning away her vision from the edges. More join it. They launch at her, toppling her over, tearing more strips from her spasming body. The pain feels more distant, like it's happening to someone else. Her vision tunneling onto the last patches of dappled patches of sunlight. She watches the dust spiral fitfully. She hears her own bones splintering before- Below, the restless hoard of old shamblers look up. Drops of blood seep through the boards and patter on hungry faces. They stand, catching the red rain on withered tongues.