From Dark Places by Emma Newman

thread around it as her husband began to sing in the fire.
    The ache in her chest lessened and she closed the box on her unwoven heart, walked to the kitchen to prepare the catch.
    The sunlight glinted from a bowl on the shelf, the mixing bowl her mother had left her. “Here Gwenny,” she could hear her mother’s voice, see the wooden spoon covered in batter. “You can lick the spoon if you like, but quick, before your Da sees it.”
    The memory tugged a smile from her lips. She saw another strand hanging from the bowl and quickly snagged it on her fingertip. Her love slipped a hand around her waist, the fire spitting and coughing back to life and planted a kiss on her forehead with his rough lips.
    Another strand.
    Outside, the morning sunlight burnt away all traces of the Devil, the birds sang hope back into the house. Slowly and patiently, strand by strand, she would weave her heart together again.
     
     
     
     
    AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
    “I think he was the last one.”
    “Oh God, I hope so,” he said, slipping his trigger finger out and flexing the cramp from it. “I don’t know how much more I could’ve taken.”
    She looked at him, frowning at his chattering teeth. “Don’t crap out on me.”
    “I’m fine.” He puffed out his chest, soothing his male pride. “No harm in being truthful. You’re just hanging on too, admit it.”
    She rolled her eyes and peered out from behind the post box. “I’m cool and the gang, granddad,” she couldn’t resist the dig. “I’ve been training for this day for two and a half years. The world finally makes sense.”
    His jaw dropped as he scanned the suburban street. “Makes sense?” He looked at the headless bodies, the smattering of small fires, the police car on its roof, siren broken and wailing like a deranged walrus. “Jesus, where did you grow up?”
    “Online,” she whispered back. “I was doing important things like learning how to kill them. You were busy making money and screwing everyone over.”
    “Shut up!” He put two new cartridges in and snapped the gun closed. “Bumming off the state to sit at home and play Left 4 Dead is not a worthy pursuit, don’t dress it up.”
    “Saved your ass though, didn’t it?” She winked at him, grinning at his grimy, ripped suit.
    “Now listen here young lady –” A mournful groaning interrupted his lecture. The bickering stopped.
    She pointed at a garden towards the end of the street and began to pick her way through the debris. He sighed, hefted the shotgun up and followed her.
    For once, he got there before her, having chosen a better route. He peered through the fence. The zombie, who looked like he was once a fireman, dashed a poor woman’s skull against the garden path. He would have vomited, but there was nothing left inside him. The fading blush on the woman’s cheeks suggested a recent kill.
    He could hear the girl, whose name he still didn’t know, swearing at a piece of car wreckage snagging her jeans. The zombie didn’t notice, too busy digging into the crack he’d made and parting the woman’s skull like it was nothing more than a stubborn walnut shell.
    Shotgun across his knees, he knelt there, fixated on the horror playing out before him. The zombie scooped out the brain, then contrary to everything he and his annoying fellow survivor had seen that day, didn’t just shove it straight into his mouth. He swayed back up onto his feet and lurched towards the house, holding the brain in outstretched hands ahead of him.
    “What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, almost crashing into him as she arrived. “Drop him!”
    “Wait!” He pushed the barrel of her shotgun to one side as she levelled it at the zombie. “He’s different; he’s taking the brain somewhere.”
    “So he’s a zombie and a weirdo with it? Big deal—still gotta die.”
    “For God’s sake,” he said, pushing the barrel again. “It might be important. I’m going to see where he takes it.”
    “Fine,