Prologue - Lysinda

"You should surrender," Lysinda urged. She made an important note not to say we, as she had already surrendered. There was nothing to live for in this world, at least not in this place. And if not for the man she worked for, maybe she would have been on the other side of the war—with hot meals and of course a place to stay, a warm place to stay, with clean clothes. She would be dead, of course, eventually, but happy to be out of this misery.

The shell of the building she and her fellow workers occupied was once the country's parliamentary seat. Its very own type of white house. Though, all that came crashing down a few months after the war. Half of the building had been burnt as a defense against the undead. The other half stood frigid and dark, sometimes lit by the sun that lasted not more than six hours; sometimes seven if they were lucky enough.

Their clothes were torn and dirty with brown mold on them. Six months. Ten months. It was hard to tell how much time had passed since the war’s first phase. Nobody cared about anyone or anything anymore; it was the survival of the fittest. It didn't matter if you were injured, bruised, or sick considering they were all ravenous and cold. The ailing ones were mostly those bitten by the undead and slowly turning into them; unless the bitten part was quickly burnt, there was no hope. Most cases were thrown to the other side of the building and burnt. It was kill or be killed. Burn or be burnt. Lysinda had also been bitten, but she displayed no signs of the undead, so they left her.

Was it even 2030? Was she still Lysinda? Sometimes, she contemplated not being human. The "life" of an undead seemed so easy; they had fewer struggles and were never hungry, cold, or afraid. But she always dragged herself out of that hole. ‘You're human, act like one, and stop being stupid.’

The war was stretching them thin; physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the President wouldn't stop trying. He knew but failed to accept it, failed to accept the truth that even a blind man could see. They were no match for their enemies. Eventually, they would all die off by starvation and cold, or at the hands of the undead . It was only a matter of time, and which was faster. Lysinda hoped it was the latter.

‘A quick death would end my misery,’ she thought as she stared at the man waiting for his reply, but no sound issued except the crickets chirping and the moaning of the undead. She frowned; if she could, she would eat those crickets. Her tummy ached from the denial of food. Every moment her stomach felt like a black hole; there was never enough to quell the pain or even provide a hint of relief.

"Feed the hungry," that was the belief then. Treat everyone as if they were your own. Problem is, they were all hungry now. People didn't share, they hoarded, even if they couldn't eat it all. Everyone denied they had something but there was no way to tell if it was true.

Lucky crickets, no one gets to eat you. . .or kill you.

"The soldiers haven't returned," Lysinda pointed out. "It seems they never will either. We should go back inside; it's past midnight." She never liked the dark, and the war seemed to give her more reasons not to. Night meant trouble now, no more sleepovers or late night movies, just misery. The mornings were for sleeping and the nights for keeping the undead at bay. The undead was always strongest at night, with the cold wind blowing on their pale frozen bodies and inky black hands resembling the holes that would have been their eyes if they were still alive.

Every night was a dying wait. When she wasn't out in the cold trying to see life beyond the building, she would sit and watch a wall, listening for sounds, just like everyone did. No friends. No laughs. Just a few transitory allies of convenience figuring out the best way to double cross each other.

Her patner glanced uninterested at the sky. "You always say that every night. Are you afraid of the dark, Lysinda?"

Lysinda tightened her jaw, her anger barely suppressed in her eyes under the dark expression that now clouded her features, her fist clenching and unclenching. She was a twenty-one-year-old woman with striking features—auburn hair, big blue eyes, red lips—and had an aura of confidence. She was not one to be made a jest of, but it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, there was something else. You could almost taste it, a nervous tension that was too close to fear.

"It's also cold, unusually cold," she whispered. "Cold and dark. That's not good at all."

He blinked, the blonde hair of his snow-white neck sticking out. It was obvious he shared her unease; Lysinda had been his employee since the war. The first time they had sent her on the parliamentary house's terrace, all the horrible news had come rushing back, and she almost pissed her pants. She had a merry laugh about it afterward. She had been out here a million times now, and the endless darkness that the humans now called the undead's night no more frightened her as it used to, but it still gave her the chills.

Until tonight. Something was definitely different.. There was an edge to this darkness. For days they had been searching for signs of their soldiers on the terrace. They dared not go down in fear of what was lurking, waiting for them. Each day had been worse than the day before. The moans and groans of the undead were getting closer and louder.

Today was the worst of all. An icy wind was blowing out, like a beast tangled in a net and it made the trees rustle like living things. All-day, Lysinda had felt as though something or someone was watching her, something cold. And the undead did not help ease her at all. It seemed they had become immune to the sunlight now. Their moans were the loudest today.

The rest of the group had felt it too. Lysinda wanted nothing more than to escape this place, but that was not a feeling to share with your boss. Especially not someone like this. At times, Lysinda wondered why she'd taken this job, why she hadn't left this place, why she hadn't poisoned the man or that stupid President of theirs yet. It was all his fault. Like most presidents, he kept his pockets deep while people died and starved, always ignoring the matter at hand.

‘Now we're in a war that's not against flesh or blood. Maybe this war would be good, maybe the enemy with their undead could rule us better.’

No, we must stick together. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall. She always told herself the same thing. Remember. Remember. Besides, where and who would she go to if she left?

"The President said we should look for them, and we have," Lysinda said. "They're dead by now. They aren't coming back soon. I don't like this weather. If it snows, we could get trapped, and snow's the best we can hope for. Remember the ice storm, Will?"

Will pretended not to have heard her. He studied the thick darkness, half-bored, half-distracted. Lysinda had worked long enough with him to know it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that. "Tell me again what you saw, Lysinda. All the details. Leave nothing out."

Lysinda had been scouting for food like the soldiers they sent out, but she’d been on the lowest floor while the soldiers were outside. The soldiers were armed, not well armed but sufficiently, while she only had a necklace the shape of a lightning bolt.

She had been looking for a way out of this hellish dump. The undead had caught her behind a shelf at the research section on the floor. All while she was peering through a small hole. No one she knew could move as silent or swift as she could, but it wasn't enough to hide from the undead. They could smell the living, the warm blood of the living.

"I thought the emergency back door would be free," Lysinda said. "I tiptoed my way to the last floor, got as close as I dared. There were at least eight of them, men and women both. No children. Among them were familiar faces, people we've burnt, and those who never made it to this floor."

"Did you see any blood or burn scars?"

"Well, no," Lysinda admitted.

"Did you see any weapons?"

"No, they didn't have weapons either."

Will nodded knowingly. No, don't do it. Lysinda knew exactly what was going through his mind; it was what went through hers the day she went down there. ‘They don’t have weapons, and they're dead. They can’t be as harmful as we think they are.’ What a foolish thought that was, a thought that almost claimed her life. Never again would she dare take a risk like that, assuming she outlived them and the war. It was a wonder that she escaped, and more wonder how she wasn't one of them now. They all wanted a story when she came back, but she could barely remember how she escaped. It was all too unreal for her to absorb.

At the time, she was paralyzed when she returned to the floor and could barely talk without shaking. She had recovered...yes, but she was still traumatized. Any thought could send her back into those uncontrollable shakes.

The way the undead felt on her body, their presence, their look: the chalk bodies, ink dripping arms, empty eye sockets. The worst was their chapped pink lips that housed scissor-like teeth—long and sharp with pointy ends—they could tear anything they wanted to, which they gladly demonstrated with the bookshelves.

Their presence sucked everything warm around them, inside out. They filled all your happy moments with nothing but dread and despair. Just for a second, she felt like she had never known happiness or seen joy. It was that terrible, just like the war. Designed to wreck you physically and mentally.

The memory made her shiver more than the cold.

"You have a chill?" Will asked, his face still toward the darkness facing north. Lysinda was behind him, her arms wrapped around her, trying to warm herself as her blouse, and skirt, now just strips of fabrics, flapped in the wind.

"A little," she muttered. "The wind."

Will shrugged. "Dress more warmly then."

Lysinda glared at him, her cheeks and the tip of her nose now flushed with anger, adding to redness from the cold. "We'll see how warm you can dress when your clothes turn to rags."

Frost whispered past them while Will walked back and forth to stretch his legs. In this cold, you could get cramps if you stood in a position for too long. "What do you think can kill these...undead men?" Will asked casually. He fastened his thick jacket coat.

How she and almost everyone envied him of that coat. Warmth. It must be nice...warm.

"Dry ice," Lysinda said dryly. The only bit of her escape she could remember. "While I was escaping, they grabbed my left shoulder. I don't know how, but my necklace did something with dry ice. They shrieked as their arms melted like melting frozen ink. I think enough dry ice can do more than just melt their black arms. Everyone talks about fighting the cold and ice with fire, but the actual key is the cold itself. Anything worse than ice or fire is a combination of both. Double the power with fewer weaknesses."

"Smart," Will observed. "I never knew you had it in you."

Lysinda pressed her lips tightly, not wanting to provoke herself. The wind howled stronger, threatening a storm. It was now impossible to hear what was going on in the building while out here. A silence fell upon the two. Lysinda struggled to keep her yawn down, and her eyes open.

‘I want this shit to end, and soon too.’ She prayed, clutching the thunderbolt necklace as she closed her eyes. She opened them again to meet the black holes of an un-dead. Cold, stiff arms she thought she might never face again wrapped around her neck. They encircled her, gagging the life and little warmth she had left.

At the corner of her eyes, she could see Will was already undead. His pale blue eyes were rolling on the floor, where they had been now, just black holes. His arms were turning black too. Dripping and dripping inky substances.

‘This is what you want, Lysinda.’ She could hear them say in her head. ‘This is what you need.’

“No,”, she whispered.

‘Yes,’ it whispered back sweetly, persuading her to join their dark side.

She closed her eyes once more, letting the undead do their thing.

‘Yes, this is what I want.’ It took little to convince her to give up, to replace her almost dead warmness and happiness with a cold that could never cease and a mind that could never feel.

They sank their sharp teeth into her. She could feel her soul parting with her. Her skin turning white as chalk as the little happiness, hope, and warmth she had abandoned, wiped clean as snow. She couldn't feel pain anymore, she had already crossed the border. She heard a pop on the floor. One eye gone.

Though, that didn't mean her heart couldn't ache. The last thing she remembered feeling was her bare neck where her necklace was meant to be. ‘No, not that.’ Tears formed in her other eye then she heard another pop as she finally embraced the dark and the undead. Eye-less and bare-necked.

‘Yes, I surrender...so does Will. We all surrender.’