Act III: The Broken Locket

The world seemed to slow to a crawl. Lilla turned around in horror. Isha was pinned beneath a section of the light shelf, completely exposed. Directly ahead, the infected stood towering over them. Because his vision was a blurred, bloody mess, he couldn't distinguish their faces, but he saw the distinct shapes of human beings.

Isha looked up at the monster. The terror in her chest was replaced by a profound, agonizing confusion. In a voice meant only for herself, a tiny whisper of a broken heart, she breathed, "...Daddy?"

Then, time snapped back into terrifying speed.

The infected lunged forward with a monstrous shriek. Lilla’s reflexes exploded into action. She dove for the fallen iron rod, her fingers sweeping around the cold metal, but before she could stand to swing it, the creature was already upon Isha.

Blood dripped from his shattered skull, matting his hair and splashing onto the floor. Half his head was a ruined mass of bone and brain tissue, yet the primitive urge to kill kept him moving with horrifying speed.

He opened his jaws wide, his teeth bared in a yellowed, snapping snarl, descending upon Isha’s exposed neck.

In a final, desperate act of strength, Lilla thrust the iron rod horizontally into the monster's open mouth. Catching both ends of the rod with her bare hands, she threw her entire body weight backward, pulling the snapping jaws away from the little girl.

The infected snarled, its putrid breath and dark, infected saliva spraying directly onto Isha’s face.

Lilla screamed with exertion, her muscles tearing as she pulled back against the dead weight of the creature. But the rod was slick with old blood and fresh fluids; her hands began to slide along the rusted iron, her grip failing millimeter by millimeter. She couldn't hold him forever.

"Run, Isha!" Lilla screamed, her voice cracking under the strain. "I can't... I can't hold him! Go!"

The words bounced off Isha’s ears, muffled and distant. The world was blurring at the edges.

Isha wasn't looking at the teeth. She wasn't looking at the blood. Her eyes were locked onto the monster’s neck.

Dangling from a frayed cord around his throat was a broken wooden locket, shaped like half a heart. Pasted onto the splintered wood was a tiny, faded piece of paper bearing a crude drawing of a smiley face, colored with childhood crayons.

The rest of the world faded into black and white; only that locket remained in sharp, vivid color. Fear, grief, anger, and a terrible, childlike awe collided within Isha's chest. She was just a normal girl who had lived a normal life until the world ended. She didn't know how to survive this. She didn't know how to fight. Her brain simply shut down, trapping her in a state of catatonic shock.

The horrific reality around her dissolved into a memory.

The air smelled like clean laundry and old paper. The living room of their house was warm, flooded with morning sunlight. A younger Isha sat on the carpet, carefully pressing a blue crayon against a wooden locket. She took a small piece of paper, drew a messy smiley face on it, and carefully glued it to the center of the heart.

When it was done, she scrambled to her feet and ran into the hall, shouting for her father. She held it up proudly.

Her father looked down, his eyes widening with mock astonishment before a massive, warm smile broke across his face. "Did you make this for me, sweetheart?"

Isha nodded her head so fast her pigtails bounced. "Uh-huh! For you!"

He knelt, letting her loop the cord around his neck, and pulled her into a tight hug that smelled of sawdust and safety. Isha had never been happier.

A violent flicker of the boutique's fluorescent light snapped the illusion. The warm living room vanished, replaced by the dark, rotting store and the snapping jaws of a corpse.

Driven by the memory, Isha slowly extended a trembling, vulnerable hand toward the broken locket dangling above her.

Lilla saw the movement. She didn't understand the psychological break happening within the child; all she saw was Isha trying to touch the monster that was trying to eat her. Gathering every remaining ounce of adrenaline in her body, Lilla stopped pulling back. Instead, she jammed the rod upward, using the leverage to twist the infected’s head sideways and hurl his upper body away from the child.