Zomromcom

by Olivia Dade

She’d seen their startling, terrifying speed for herself almost exactly twenty years before, back when she was eighteen,

A small group of militants who’d underestimated the zombies’ menace after several years of safe containment had dynamited holes in Wall One and broken down the access door through Wall Two before being overrun by the very creatures they were attempting to free from captivity.

Why let people live in the zones? Like why not fill those zones with explosives and moats and trenches so the zombies cannot get out? I don’t understand…

Over the last twenty years, a mere handful of newcomers desperate for affordable housing—as well as criminals bearing forged documents, eager to take advantage of abandoned buildings and limited governmental oversight—had been permitted to join the few Zone residents too foolish, too stubborn, too poor, or too sentimental to leave. How many of those descriptors applied to Edie, she couldn’t say. Most of them, probably. Maybe all of them.

“It’s going to be dangerous,” she said slowly. “Are you sure you want to risk your life for—” “Oh for fuck’s sake, come on.”

If it was her last hug on this earth, it was a good one.