When we arrived back at City Hall, Dad was fuming. Liam and I had filled him in on the evening’s events and he was decidedly unhappy about his only daughter getting caught up in a zombie outbreak.

“We should have been better prepared Dad. I know.” I tried to placate him. But as we parked the truck in almost the same spot we’d been in before, Dad saw the carnage left over from our retreat.

There were several bodies strewn across the grounds. Each one in various stages of mutilation. A throat torn out in one, blood pooling beneath it as the heart pumped the last of it out. Another body’s head was bashed in and the brain was nowhere to be seen. Probably eaten.

We spread out and began the gruesome task of accounting for the dead. The zombies who had done this had disappeared – probably off looking for live food – but we remained watchful.

“This one’s still alive!” Dad called out to us.

I ran over to him and looked down. Staring up at me with a pained, bloody smile was my best friend, Simone. The vampire.