Ashes, Ashes

"Rule number one," the girl paused, leaning on her scythe pole in a way that, if she were to slip, the sharp blade would cut off her foot. Niall winced at the nonchalance she had with lethal weapons; especially now that a corpse was just as dangerous as an armed stranger, she ought to be more careful with her swords. "No wandering off alone. A loner is as good as dead. You got that, pretty boy?" She pointed her scythe right at Niall, and he swallowed. "Yes, ma'am. No wandering. Got it." The girl smiled, but it wasn't a pretty smile. "Good." She swung her scythe up on her shoulder in one liquid-fast motion, making the five teenagers that were dangerously close to the whistling blade jump. "Welcome to the apocalypse, boys." When you're living the dream, you don't expect everything you have to be ripped away from you. Niall Horan certainly didn't expect to be running for his life from what once were friends and people he knew, now hungry for his flesh, just four days before Christmas. Before now, he couldn't have imagined anything worse than forgetting his lines on stage or messing up a jump. Now his life, and those of his bandmates, are at stake. Surviving means teaming up with strangers that could switch sides or turn into a shambling corpse at any time. Surviving means becoming dependent on a trigger-happy farmer girl who may or may not want to gut Niall in his sleep. Surviving means learning to be a ruthless and emotionless killer. In a world where even your flesh and blood can turn out to be your foe, the five boys of One Direction might just make it. Or they might turn into slavering undead, you never know. But Niall really hopes it never comes to that. **Co-written with Sincerely_Courtney**