The Last Stand of Donnie and Megan
I must preface this story with a couple disclaimers. First of all, I’m not a zombie story writer, so please forgive my attempt here.
To set the stage, my very close friend Marty is absolutely crazy about zombie stories. In fact, he has a fantastic screenplay written that has won many awards, and will hopefully make it to the big screen one day soon. Anyway, Marty thought it would be fun to extend a challenge to many of us in the zombie genre. The challenge was to write five pages, double-spaced, of a survival of a zombie encounter. You were allowed to create as many characters as you wished, but only one could survive at the end. The name he gave to the challenge was “The Last Stand”.
Here is the short story I wrote in response to the challenge.
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The scream had finally stopped long enough for Donnie to let his hands drop from his little sister Megan’s ears. Her oval face was still upturned, looking up at him with anxious, scared eyes, searching through the gloom and dust for reassurance from him. A long groan pierced the silence for a moment, prompting Megan to grab at Donnie’s hand and hold tightly.
“We can’t stay here anymore, Megan. We’ve gotta get out,” Donnie leaned over and whispered urgently into her tiny ear.
“But mommy said wait for her.” Donnie figured the the half whine in his sister’s voice was justified for once. But she couldn’t start snivelling… she just couldn’t.
He’d hear. He’d come. And Uncle Billy wouldn’t look any better than he had when mommy had pushed them into the gloomy bedroom.
“Mommy won’t be making it back, Meg.” Donny whispered harshly, thinking of the way the scream had trailed off. Then, seeing his little sister’s face start to crumble, he quickly added “we’re gonna have to be strong and go get her.”
Megan’s brows furrowed, but she seemed to accept this and calmed a bit. Her grip on Donnie’s hand tightened, pushing the blood from her knuckles, but her mouth was set, and she was ready to follow her brother’s lead. He moved towards the door, tugging Megan behind him. With his free hand, Donnie carefully turned the knob and eased the door open a sliver, just enough to peek through if he turned his head just right.
Getting Megan through the carelessly strewn chunks of flesh and blood spattered walls wasn’t a possibility. Besides, Uncle Billy didn’t look like he would appreciate being interrupted during dinner.
A large hard lump rose from the pit of Donnie’s stomach into his throat, making it impossible to breath for a second. The ripped apart mass of bloody meat in front of Uncle Billy had half of his mother’s face perched at an impossible angle on the remaining morsel of her torn out neck. Her remaining eye bulged, like Aunt Sally’s always did when she got mad, and seemed to be rotating wildly in the socket, trying to see where the rest of her was. She would still be screaming if there was anything left of her throat.
Donnie pushed the door closed again quickly, then leaned against it, fighting the urge to either throw up, or cry. He was all Megan had now, and he had to get her somewhere safe. It was only a matter of time before Uncle Billy finished what he was doing and came looking for them.