Running 
   Wailing sirens echo in the wind. The flashing of lights can be seen faintly through the tree line. Armed men stalk through the trees, creeping towards their target. An old farmhouse, its rickety old frame creaking eerily. Thorny shrubs overgrown, sprawling across its face. Even the men armed to the teeth, fearless in the face of horror, falter. Something is wrong here, very, very wrong. 
   Still creeping nearer, they approach. Over the rabid thorns. Over the peculiar overturned lumps in the lawn. The house beckoning; beckoning them ever closer. Closer, closer, closer. Until finally they are doomed. 
   Bursting from the ground, hands. Grey, decaying hands, limbs, feet. Fast as lightning; horrid and gruesome. As if climbing up from the depths of the underworld. The zombies rise as one. Then running. Running toward the farm house. Surrounding the men until they are pushed inside, or dead. The wave of  monsters overwhelms. It’s is clear now. This is no farmhouse. It’s a prison. A place where the slaughtered do not rest.  
   Of course, they must have had some idea of what this place is. For years now, zombies have clashed with the living. The zombies vying for the touch of life. While the living kill them as much as you can kill something that does not die. It is a fight that has continued for a long time. The most recent battle being  quite costly. With dozens dead and still more wounded. All of them turning into the very thing that the living resent.  
   So the living decided that enough was enough. The only way to end this fight is to go straight to the source. Straight to the farmhouse where it is believed that the zombies come from. That’s why the men were there. To put an end to this fight.  
Unfortunately, that’s not what this story is about. This is a story where death triumphs. Where we learn what happens when one loses their soul but does not die. What happens when a human loses their humanity. 
   The remaining men, now pushed into the farmhouse scramble away from the entrance. Going deeper into the house, hoping to find refuge from the zombies surely pouring in. There are only three left, Running for their lives. The dim hallways seem too small. Closing in around them, crushing. But still they run desperate to live. 
   Two men turn a corner, the third turns and finds himself alone. He turns in circles looking for his comrades. They are no where to be found. Panic builds in his chest. This man doesn’t want to die. The shadows twist and turn. His mind creates monsters from nothingness.  
All at once silence falls over him. The only sound; that of the man's shallow breaths. His terror amplified tenfold, by the silence. Out of the corner of his eye, there is movement. The man twists around trying to keep it in sight. He comes face to face with a Zombie. Grotesque and decaying it stares into his eyes. The man looks back and he sees nothing in the zombies' cold dead eyes. No rage or fear, No emotion. Nothing that would indicate that this was once a human being.  
   The zombie lunges faster than the man can blink. In seconds he’s dead. Blood paints the floor where the body falls. The sound of flesh tearing, bones crunching fills empty ears. His insides splatter across the room as the zombie consumes him. One down, two to go. 
The other two men, unaware of the others fate continue to run. Faster, now they can hear the patter of the undead. Twisting corridors, a maze with no end, hopelessly turned around, and still, they keep running. 
   Two men turn to one as the other trips over a board, falling with a thud. The last man keeps going; he rounds a corner. The second man rises and tries to follow. He cannot, the other is nowhere to be found. He is alone.  
   The room he finds himself in is bathed in ominous red light from the windows. Dissonant lullabies play, though there is no noticeable source. The man turns to leave, only to find that the door is locked. Fearful, he rattles the knob trying to get free. This man doesn’t want to die. 
   Backing away from the door, in hopes of using the window to escape. His back hits a cold wall. Turning he finds two zombies staring back. The man scrambles away, the zombies follow with slow jerky motions. Like puppets on a string they approach, inching closer, and closer and closer. The man has nowhere to run. Falling to the ground, he cowers from the prowling zombies. Soon he too knows no more. His blood matches the room quite well, as do his final screams. Which join the cacophonic lullaby as its final ending ring. Two down one to go. 
The last man still runs. Running still because his life depends on it. It is only now that he notices that he is alone. But this man doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t look back. He keeps running. Running through this maze of halls, only one goal in mind; getting out of this farmhouse. 
   Soon enough the final man’s hope starts to build, he can see a door. And through that door the outside, freedom, life. If he can only make it to that door. And so, he runs. He reaches the door, throws it open, thinking that he has escaped this horror.  
   He’s only 10 steps out when he feels cold hands on his shoulders. Grasping, and pulling him away. But this man doesn’t want to die, so he fights. Twisting away, punching, and kicking. He struggles to get away. However, he didn’t account for one thing. One crucial thing, he has something that these zombies want. He has a soul, he has his humanity, but they have lost theirs. So, the zombies fight just as hard. For they too want to live. In the end, the zombies are just too many, too invulnerable to the resistance of a mere human.  
The final man dies, just moments away from escape.

All three are dead.