THE STORY

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I write through most of the night, but I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I know I’m waking up with my arms wrapped around my laptop and a cracking headache.
The house is still. There’s no noise coming from the kitchen, none at all. I wonder if the blonde is still out there.
I creep out into the kitchen. When I left the room last night, the zombie was pinned to the floor with a knife through her hand, the hand that she’d shoved through the cat flap. Now there’s just a pool of stagnant blood picked out my the morning sunshine.
‘She got out.’
I nearly jump out of my skin as the blonde walks into the room behind me.
‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘Well, I say she got out.’ The blonde goes on as though she hasn’t heard me. ‘In fact, she ripped her hand free.’
‘She did what?’
‘They’re like foxes, these Weepers. Try to trap them and they’ll gnaw their way free to get away before dawn. The sun, you know. It burns their eyes.’
‘Um, no, I didn’t know that. How do you?’
She opens the back door, and I shriek a little.
‘What are you doing? There are monsters out there!’
‘You’ll be safe until dark, as long as you stay out of the shadows. With the sun this bright, you’re safer out there than you are in here.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
She pauses in the doorway. The sun is rising behind her, silhouetting her against the light.
‘You can call me Alyssa,’ she says, picking up the oar. ‘Come with me if you want to live.’