AFTER THE NIGHT...
THE DAWN...
AND THE DAY...
COMES THE
TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD.
SUMMARY: A young widowed father and his 8-year old son find themselves locked in a Mall with a bunch of stranger, with a zombie rampage outside.
AUTHOR: Marco (marcusstokes2000yahoo.it or It's a take on the movie, so don't be surprised if some things look similar.
RATING: A strong R.
TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD.
PART 1 - THEY'RE COMING BACK.
I thought it was going to be a normal morning, after all that happened to us, my wife and daughter dying in an accident and all, we deserved it. Just me and my son, together for the whole day. No work, no school. Just us. He is everything I've left, and I'll fight 'til my death for him.
That day I just understood how much I was willing to sacrifice myself for him.
I was woken up by two screams. A man's and a woman's, closely followed by a strange moaning.
A third made me run. It was my son's.
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
I ran to his room, feeling the cool floor against my bare feet. When I reached his door, he bolted to get a hold of me.
"Dad!" he screamed. "They're coming for me!"
"Who?" I asked while his tears soaked my white sleeveless t-shirt. "Who is coming for you?"
"Dead people." He said. "Dead people are. They will eat me. Help me , Dad."
"Sweetie," I said, ruffling his unruly dark brown hair which he inherited from me, as well as the questioning light brown eyes, "they're not gonna eat you 'til I'm alive. They will have to eat me first, and believe me Andy, I'm a tough nut to crack."
I heard the strange moaning again, and with Andy in my arms, I went and looked from his badroom's window.
What I saw made my blood run cold.
Our neighbours, the Wilsons, were walking down the street. But not as normal humans.
They looked like they were in trance. Mr. Wilson had his throat slashed and Ana, his wife, had a knife protruding from her chest, exactly where her now- non beating heart was.
"God." I murmured as I said, "Andy, get dressed, now."
I attempted to leave to take a pair of running shoes from my cabinet. I already was only clad in a white sleeveless t-shirt and gray pajama pants, at least I needed some shoes.
Andy was scared and pulled hard on my shirt, grabbing a handful of my chest hair with it. "Dad, don't go!"
"Andy," I said, wincing as he kept pulling, "I'm not gonna leave you, but" here I pointed to our four bare feet, "I think we're gonna need some shoes."
"Why?" he asked with all the simplicity an 8-year-old can have.
"Well, it's not easy to drive barefooted, you know."
Only then did he let me go, and my chest will be forever grateful for it.
I went and came very quickly, as neither I wanted to be alone now.
We shuffled our feet into shoes together, we grabbed some thing we thought we would need anywhere we would have to go - my laptop, documents , food and drinks, money, some toys and prized possessions, including family photographs - and put them in a bag, which I put in the car. Then we got in it as fast as we could.
"Andy," I said, "don't roll down the windows."
"I won't." he said as I put the car in gear and turned on the radio, hoping for some direction.
A monotone voice rang from the radio.
"Now we interrupt the usual programming to bring important news. People who have recently died are coming back to life, seeking human flesh. As horrible as it is, it's the truth. You can kill them through a shot to the head, or a blow to the skull, or beheading them. Don't let them bite you. If they do, you will become one of them in at most two days. If you are traveling now, find a secure place to lock yourself into as soon as possible, because these dead people can seem to be able to overthrow cars, buses and even big TIRS."
Then the man listed some rescue points, one of which was the Twilight Mall, defined by a lot of our now un-dead townspeople, "useless".
Not certainly now, I thought.
And then a question struck me.
If this continues, will death be our only choice of life?
I kept thinking about it during our silent and scared drive to the Mall.
END PART 1.