The Zombies, that were her blood relatives

Anu was woken up by the scratching sounds that came from above. It felt as if someone was dragging something upstairs.

Her body was burning, and the hunger made it worse. Taking deep breaths, she tried to focus and erase the memory that she saw before falling unconscious.

She felt like throwing up. Her head felt heavy and her line of vision was blurry.

No matter how she thought about that, she struggled to imagine the situation. During the pandemic, many joked about it turning into a zombie apocalypse, but now that the imagination was turning into a reality she was having a hard time dealing with it.

Once again, letting out a shaky breath, she tried to stand up, only to find that her legs could not support her.

Hot tears flooded her eyes as she put strength in them, supporting herself against the wall as she stood up.

'Now is not the time to be scared. Your life's on the line. GET UP!' thinking to herself, she finally stood up.

Opening the bathroom, she entered the former bedroom, the electricity connection was not cut off.

The bedroom with pink and yellow walls was the same as it was before, if not for the sounds of dogs barking in the distance and the flames that were arising from the gas station, she would have thought of everything as her phantasms.

After checking the room's security, she plopped down on the bed, spacing out for a moment.

Every single thing felt unreal. For Anu, everything went wrong from the instant her parents fell ill. She showed kindness to the wrong people and learnt her lesson the hard way. Even revenge was impossible. 'I can't possibly take revenge on dead people, anyway.'

Anu, who was in her deep reverie of thoughts, did not notice that her body was heating up at an unbelievable pace and simply dismissed it as a normal fever from the shock she experienced.

She laid down on the bed and planned to take a nap. She had no plans to go out and face the zombies. The room was locked from the inside, Anu was not the least bit fearful but the noises coming from outside were extremely vexatious.

As Anu was thinking of covering herself with the blankets, her right hand twisted painfully, her pupils dilated and contracted rapidly as her forehead was drenched with perspiration.

She stared at her hand in utter horror, as her hand moved like it had a mind of its own. She wanted to scream her lungs out, but it felt as if someone was strangling her and pushing her down heavily. The torture lasted for over fifteen minutes.

Just as Anu thought she was going to die, the pain suddenly vanished, as if it was never there. She felt as if her blood turned cold and she wondered whether she, too, became a zombie.

Staring at her limbs, she found them normal except because there were weird patterns on her right hand. She stared at her legs and slowly climbed down the bed. Her tired body moved towards the dressing table that was in the corner of her room.

Anu stared at herself for a long time as she confirmed she was still human and a long sigh escaped her mouth.

On the back of her right hand's palm, there was a pattern similar to the Mehendi girls were fond of, apparently drawn with red ink. Whereas, her middle finger had a ring-shaped pattern coloured in navy blue and white.

She was completely soaked with sweat as if she climbed out of a water body, turning her clothes translucent.

Her black, shoulder-length hair stuck to her face as her dusky skin glowed under the white light. She found herself taller than the last time she checked.

Anu was standing in a daze when she heard a scratching sound from the door.

The smell of rotten flesh invaded her nose as the forgotten zombie resurfaced her mind. She couldn't believe that she was supposed to kill those things to escape her own house.

Currently, there were two zombies at her door.

Anu couldn't bring herself to imagine killing those zombies who were her blood relatives. Even though their behaviour towards her was harsh and nasty, sometimes she wanted to kill them all with her own two hands. The problem was that thinking of killing someone and actually killing them, in reality, was worlds apart.

Hunger had made her weak and the bone-crushing incident was a bonus to her anguish.

Anu saw the cobweb cleaner that was lying on the ground and picked it up in a hurry.

She had trained in silambam when she was young. A martial art originating from ancient times, it is roughly over 5,000 years old, her father was a martial art enthusiast who enrolled her in every summer camp he could.

So, instead of going somewhere cool, she spent her childhood summer holidays sweating in the blistering sun, practising various ancient warfare practices.

Holding the metal cobweb cleaner as a kambu in her hands, she went into defense mode. Anu was a green belt and was confident in her abilities that she could handle three grown men on her own, much less some walking corpses.

Holding her position for the next three minutes, she noticed that the locked door was making it hard for the zombies to enter.

They growled in frustration as they scratched the door with their broken nails, trying to break in.

Discerning that they could not breach, Anu relaxed, dropped the weapon, and the first thing she did was open her cupboard.

She took out her mobile phone and laptop and put them to charge. Even if there was an apocalypse, the world would not shut down in an instant. The living proof was the electric connection that was not yet cut off.