Winter Carnivore

Winter Carnivore
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 243

Frost layered the thick grass outside the window like a frigid blanket. In the odd place, the red Toowoomba dirt stained the white covering like a weeping wound.
Marty pulled the curtain back, covering the only window on the ground floor not bordered up completely. It was too small for anything to get in, or out of, so he kept it as a portal to the outside and gave at least one room in the house some semblance of normality.

Under the rising sun, the frost slowly began to melt, revealing a dozen lifeless bodies scattered across the front lawn. The sound of a tank coming up the street caused the bodies to stir.

Marty turned the radio down. The announcement over the last week told him his suburb was being evacuated today, and it looked like he would finally be safe.

“Time to go honey,” Marty called upstairs to his wife.

“Uuurrgghhh,” came the reply from the bedroom.

Marty walked slowly up the staircase.

“Aaarrggh,” said the voice as he came closer.

“We can go to safety now, love.”

Marty pulled on his leather gardening gloves and walked towards his wife, lying tied securely on the brass bed. She turned and faced him with yellow, lifeless eyes. She gnashed her teeth and snapped at him.

“You have to be good, dear,” Marty said. “We can go somewhere safe now. Somewhere where we can get help for you.”

Outside, gunfire signaled the arrival of the army and the quick dispatching of the zombies on the front lawn, and the end of a thirty year marraige.