Sally

It was the end of the world as we knew it.
The virus had spread quickly, turning people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies. My family and I had been holed up in our house for weeks, living off of canned food, reduced to drinking stagnant water from the toilet tank.
One day, while I was out scavenging for supplies, I heard a faint noise coming from the direction of the park. It was a child's laughter, a sound so rare and precious in this new world of death and decay. I followed the noise, cautiously, my machete as ever at the ready.
As I entered the park, I saw a little girl, no more than eight years old, playing by herself on the swings. She was wearing a yellow sundress, her hair tied back in pigtails. I couldn't believe it: a survivor, and such a young one at that.
I approached her slowly, my machete still clutched in my hand. She looked up at me and smiled, completely unfazed by my presence, or by weapon.
"Hi there," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "What's your name?"
"Sally," she replied, jumping off the swing and running over to me.
I felt a surge of relief wash over me. This was a sign; a sign that maybe, just maybe, there was hope for humanity after all. I took Sally back to my family, and they were overjoyed to have her with us. She was a breath of fresh air, a ray of sunshine in the bleakness of our new reality.
But things took a dark turn as the days passed. Sally wasn't like any other survivor I had encountered before. She was always talking about "them": the ones who were coming for her... for us. Ever eerier, she had an uncanny ability to predict when the zombies were going to attack.
At first, we brushed it off as the imaginings of a child dealing with trauma, coincidence and nothing more. But as the days passed and her predictions proved to be accurate, we started to become more and more uneasy.
One night, as we were huddled together in the living room, Sally suddenly sat up, her eyes wide and unseeing.
"They're here," she said in a cold, emotionless voice.
And just like that, the zombies arrived. The smashed through the front door and swarmed into the room, their moans filling the air. But as I fought to protect my family, I noticed something strange: the zombies were all wearing tattered hospital gowns, their limbs strapped down with restraints.
In that moment, it all became clear. Sally wasn't just any survivor. She was a patient at the hospital where the virus had originated. And somehow, she had the ability to control the zombies.
Well, we managed to escape, but we were forever changed by our encounter with Sally. The world had already been turned upside down by the zombie apocalypse, but now we had to grapple with the reality that there were things far more sinister at play. We were never truly safe, not with her out there, pulling the strings of the undead horde.
Category:Beings
Category:Nature