Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition
Chapter 1230 - 1230: Story 1230: Mother’s Hunger

They called her Mother.

But what the cult worshipped wasn't a woman.

It was something older. Rooted beneath the ruined Virex facility, deeper than the sewers, deeper even than the grave tunnels Lena had crawled through.

She stood now on the edge of a subterranean chasm—one she hadn't found, but been led to. The green glow had turned crimson. The fungal veins around her throbbed, leaking ichor that reeked of blood and milk.

The whispering returned, all voices layered:

"Offer. Feed. Become."

Behind her, the tunnel collapsed. No way back.

Before her, the edge of a living pit.

From its depths, something stirred.

Lena's breath hitched.

Mother was waking.

At first, she thought it was a mass of roots. Then she saw the hands. Dozens—maybe hundreds—fused into a single torso that pulsed like a beating heart. Fingers stretched outward, blindly seeking. From the center, a toothless, yawning mouth let out a wet moan.

And the hunger hit.

It wasn't emotional or psychological.

It was in her.

She dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach as the ache twisted her inside out. She hadn't eaten in days—but this was different. This hunger wasn't hers. It was the Mother's.

She was being connected. Fed into the hive.

The cult's plan was never just to worship—it was to fuse.

Lena looked at her arm.

Her veins pulsed black.

"No," she whispered. "I'm not your vessel."

The pit answered with a groan, and a thick tendril shot up toward her—faster than she could run.

But Lena had waited.

She raised the bone shard she'd kept hidden beneath her sleeve and stabbed it into her thigh.

The pain snapped her back to her body.

The hunger faltered.

She grabbed the flare gun from her boot. One shot left. Old and rusted—but she'd saved it for this.

She aimed it directly into the Mother's heart—the gaping mound in the center of the pit—and pulled the trigger.

BOOM.

Fire exploded into the chasm.

The roots howled. The flesh walls convulsed. The entire cavern began to collapse.

Lena ran.

She didn't know where the tunnel led—only that it led up.

She emerged into the blinding morning light, coated in soot, blood, and spores. The forest around her was burning. Cultists screamed in the distance. The earth itself cracked and hissed.

Mother's hunger had been interrupted.

Not ended.

But delayed.

She looked back only once.

The ground where Virex had once stood was now a crater, glowing faintly.

And beneath it… something still writhed.

Lena tightened her grip on her broken knife, swallowed her fear, and walked into the smoke.

The next battle had already begun.