Corpse Roads

What would you give to save the ones you loved?

Marie clenched her eyes shut as she pressed her forehead against David’s back, choking back her own tears as she listened to her husband cry.

The sound clawed a pit in her stomach beneath the place where hunger had taken up permanent residence.

David had always been the strong one. He was the one who’d held their family together as the world burned. He’d fought for them, stolen for them…killed for them.

He’d torn himself apart, casting aside the bookish personality that Marie had fallen in love with. In the place of that David, he’d grown a man who stared the horrors of their new world in the eye and didn’t flinch, so to hear him now, to watch him stifle his own fears and sorrow for their family.

It broke Marie’s heart.

She’d thought that she’d long ran out of tears to cry but the wetness lingering on her cheek said otherwise.

Her stomach rumbled and David flinched but when Marie kept her breathing slow and even, he settled once again.

This life was killing them just as surely as the re-animated were trying to.

It had changed them all. Chivalry and kindness were things of the past, unable to thrive in a world where their very existence forced them to kill their humanity.

It was what had brought them to this place where David broke in the silence of the night.

Marie knew what he was planning, she’d watched him set up his bag and weapons.

She also knew that it was a suicide mission.

Re-animated swarms took up to a month to move on and this new one had only been there for two weeks.

If David went on a supply run, he wouldn’t come back.

Marie knew it and David knew it but she also knew that for their family, for their kids, David was more than willing to die and she couldn’t let that happen.

They couldn’t survive without David.

That was why she’d come up with her own plan.

It was a good thing that she was an early riser because at least she’d get the chance to see the sunrise one last time.

The thought almost tore a sob from Marie’s throat but she dug her nails into her palms, setting her teeth against her inner lip until iron coated her tongue.

She had to do this.

Her family needed food and she could at least give them that, if nothing else.

They’d never survive without David but they could survive without her.

They’d survive because of her.

Inspired by the song Corpse Roads by Keaton Henson