The Zombie Girl

The world ended not with a bang, but with a cough.

It started like any other illness. Headaches, fevers, fatigue. People brushed it off as another seasonal bug—until the second wave hit. Hospitals overflowed. Streets emptied. Then came the footage: grainy, shaky videos of pale people rising from their deathbeds, their eyes vacant, jaws unhinged, tearing through anything that moved.

They called it Hollow Fever. Some called it Judgment Day.

By the time the outbreak reached the quiet farming village of Dallow’s Edge, the cities were already gone. The internet was gone. Electricity failed. And hope—hope was a word that only lived in stories.

Lena Corwin was sixteen when it arrived.

She had never been far from the village. Her life was made of gardens, sunrises, and schoolbooks that smelled like dust. Her hands were always stained with soil. She loved growing things. Her dream was to be a botanist, someone who would one day make medicine from flowers. She didn’t believe in zombies. She believed in daisies.

Then she saw her best friend turn.

Sophie had been coughing for days. On a cold morning, her mother found her stiff in bed. Lena helped carry the body to the shed behind the church—where the sick were being kept “just in case.” Hours later, screams echoed from the shed. The door had burst open. Sophie walked again—but not as Sophie.

Her eyes were gone. Not blind—gone. White, hollow orbs stared at nothing as she lunged toward the children who once braided her hair. It took five grown men and an axe to stop her.

That night, Lena’s family argued about what to do. Her mother wanted to leave. Her father said they had nowhere to go. Her brother, Tom, insisted the army would come.

But the army never came.

When Lena was bitten, it wasn’t dramatic. It happened in the garden, of all places. Her little sister, Nia, was playing with sticks, pretending to fight the monsters. One of them had wandered into the orchard. Lena shouted for Nia to run. The thing tackled her before she could scream.

It clawed her shoulder. Bit her collarbone. But she stabbed it with her gardening shears.

Too late.

Lena bled out in her mother’s arms, clutching a flower she had been tending that morning. A bright orange marigold.

Her final words were, “Don’t let Nia forget the flowers.”

Three days passed.

Then Lena opened her eyes.

She awoke under the willow tree near the garden. Her body felt cold. Her skin cracked and dry, like bark. Her heartbeat was gone. Her mouth tasted like earth and blood. And something inside her—something primal—ached with hunger.

She staggered to her feet. Her limbs moved strangely, like they belonged to someone else. Her head hurt. Her eyes burned. The world was too loud.

She saw a squirrel scurry by and felt a twitch in her jaw.

But she didn’t chase it.

Instead, she stared at the marigold by the tree. It had grown taller. Bloomed brighter.

A memory flickered. A name.

Lena.

She remembered who she was.

The villagers never found her body, only blood in the garden. They buried a patch of earth and left a stone marker. They didn’t know that Lena wandered the empty village at night, her shadow gliding along rooftops and cracked windows.

She never approached anyone.

Not at first.

She watched.

She listened.

She learned what she was. The others—zombies—were driven only by hunger. They didn’t think, didn’t remember. But Lena did. Maybe it was the garden. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was the marigold she died holding. No one knew. Not even her.

When strangers came into the village looking for supplies, she followed them silently. One man tried to steal food and was swarmed by the undead. Lena dragged his body away before he could be eaten. He awoke later, alive but stunned, with a bundle of dried herbs next to him. He told his people there was a ghost in the village. A protector.

Over the years, stories spread.

They called her the Zombie Girl.

The one who saved children.

The one who cried without tears.

The one who planted flowers in graves.

One cold autumn, a group of survivors entered Dallow’s Edge. Among them was a scientist named Dr. Elin Reyes, part of a scattered network of researchers trying to understand the virus. She had heard the stories. She didn’t believe them. Not until she saw Lena.

Lena stood by the church, her hands folded, her empty eyes fixed on the flowers blooming through the cracked stone steps. A girl with moss in her hair and dirt on her skin. A zombie—yes. But she did not attack.

Elin stepped forward, heart pounding. “Do you… understand me?”

Lena tilted her head.

“You’re not like the others.”

Lena blinked slowly, like an old owl.

Elin stepped closer. “You saved people. Why?”

Lena raised a brittle hand and pointed to the marigolds.

Elin frowned. “Flowers?”

Lena bent down, touched one, and held it gently to her own chest. Then she opened her mouth.

No sound came. Just a dry, rustling breath. A whisper without voice:

“Life.”

It wasn’t much. But it was enough.

Elin knelt. “We can study you. We can help you.”

Lena shook her head slowly.

Then she touched Elin’s hand, placed a dried seed in her palm, and turned away.

She disappeared among the vines.

Years later, children still speak of the Zombie Girl who walks where daisies grow through concrete. Who plants marigolds where the dead once lay. Who doesn’t feed on the living—but feeds something else instead.

Hope.

If you ever find yourself near Dallow’s Edge, leave a flower at the old well.

If it’s gone the next morning, you’ll know she’s still there.

Not a monster. Not a girl.

Something in between.

Still remembering.

Still guarding.

Still growing.