Beyond the Grave - original story

Chapter 3 - Fresh flesh

❝M U E R T O S  V I V I E N T E S - The undead, walking, rotting corpses wandering the land in search for a fresh, human flesh. ❞

The next day, as the sun rose and its rays began to creep into the Blackburn family's big house, the pleasant silence was broken by a gunshot. And then another. When the third shot rang out, everyone was immediately on their feet. Slowly, everyone came out of their rooms, shock, horror, and even concern on every face.

"Dad?" Goldie called out, rubbing her sleepy eyes with her hands.

When no one spoke, the girl moved first toward her father's room, followed by her older sister, and slowly followed by Jenny. As Goldie pushed the handle of the snow-white door and entered her father's room, her brow furrowed as she saw the balcony open wide and her father pointing his double-barreled shotgun at something below. As the younger girl joined her father on the balcony, her mouth dropped slightly at the sight before her eyes.

On the main road behind their house was an overturned passenger car that had accidentally hit a tree, and behind the wheel was a person who looked terribly strange, growling and snarling.

"Dad, what are you doing? This person needs help..." The girl began, putting her hand on her father's shoulder as he shook his head.

"No, this... thing doesn't need our help. I have to kill it before it gets out and kills us." The man protested, aiming again at the man in the crashed car.

Unfortunately, the older man's eyes were no longer the same, so when he pulled the trigger, he missed again. Again by a few inches. Seeing what was happening on the balcony, Joan nodded for Goldie to go inside, while she stood beside her father, her eyebrows furrowed. He was acting strangely, so inhuman.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Joan asked a little uncertainly, her eyes darting between the wrecked car in the street and her father.

The older, black-haired man looked at his older daughter and after a moment handed her his gun, motioning for her to look through the peephole. The woman sighed, but did as he asked. When she finally closed her left eye and put her right eye to the viewfinder, her mouth opened slightly in shock at what she saw. The man, or what they thought was a man, in the car had been pierced in the abdomen by one of the tree branches, and although he should have been dead by now, he was growling and waving his arms as if trying to grab something. His jaws opened and closed and his eyes seemed to be blank. After a moment, when Joan handed the gun back to her father, she looked at him and her face said that she didn't understand anything.

"Los muertos vivientes." The man muttered, his eyes fixed on the wrecked car. "I knew this would happen one day... That the dead would start walking the earth." He added a little more quietly, not wanting Jenny or Goldie, who were still standing in his bedroom, to hear him.

At first, Joan wanted to laugh in her father's face and tell him he was crazy, but she saw for herself the state the man was in. This man who should be dead. However, when her father finally struck, shooting straight into the head of said living corpse, it finally stopped moving, indicating that it was finally dead. Joan let the air from between her lips, which she had held in her lungs for too long, and looked at her father again.

"We need to do something about this." The dark-haired woman began, and her father laughed softly at her words.

"Do something? Think about it, we're a few dozen kilometers from a small town that's probably already full of these corpses. Walking corpses." The man replied, this time not afraid to say it normally.