one morning

the zombies were coming our way. they had overrun the entire city and there was nowhere left to run and no help in sight. we set up our last line of defence in the lobby of our apartment building. without any guns, all we had were knives and other makeshift weapons. what we could do was only to keep our barricades up and hope to last as long as possible.

i took my girlfriend aside and hugged her tightly in my arms. "no matter what happens, just know that i love you now." she seemed fine and pretty upbeat about our chances in this hell and it lifted my spirits a little too.

the horde was now closing in and the fast ones were already banging on the doors and windows, rattling our flimsy barricades. we rushed to the barricades and pushed against them, keeping as quiet as we could and hoping that the zombies would leave if they thought the place as empty.

it wasn't working and all the banging soon attracted an entire group of them. the barricades were falling and rotting zombie arms were finding their way through, grabbing at whatever they could get their hands on. some of our group got scared and ran away, allowing the barricades to fall and soon the zombies were climbing in.

we fought as hard as we could, slashing and bashing away but it hardly helped. more barricades fell as the men behind were swarmed by the zombies inside the building. the situation was hopeless and i gathered the remaining survivors into the lift and retreated to my apartment high up on the 21st floor. with any luck they'd leave before they found us, but otherwise it'll still give us some precious time to regroup.

from the look in her eyes, i could see that my girlfriend was losing hope and i felt worried for her. i held her and promised that everything would be fine, although in my heart i knew that our situation was dire. there was no way i'd let anything happen to her while i was still around and even if we died, at the very least i didn't want her last hours to be filled with such fear and dread.

the apartment didn't have a gate, just a lousy wooden door that was already falling apart. we started work immediately, looking for planks or whatever we could find to seal up the door. everything was going well. the top half of the door was done and i thought we were finally going to be safe when they came again.

it was much faster than we were expecting and it caught us all off-guard. they were banging at the door and i quickly sat against it to prevent them from pushing it open. i called out for them to bring more stuff to block the bottom part of the door but they were slow and the door was splintering.

hands reached in and were grabbing, clawing at my arms, my face. i couldn't move away because i knew that once they made their way through, we were all dead. i saw the horror in her eyes as my girlfriend watched helplessly. more hands snaked in and around my body...