Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition
Chapter 1244 - 1244: Story 1244: Siblings of Silence

The Siren Tower's scream had gone quiet.

But the silence it left behind was worse.

Juno crouched behind a broken security van, watching the street ahead. What used to be a group of survivors now moved in eerie unison—eyes vacant, footsteps synchronized, mouths shut tight. Not undead. Not alive. Something in between.

"They're called the Siblings," whispered a voice beside her.

She startled, then relaxed slightly. It was Shade, the masked scavenger who'd saved her once from a collapsed train tunnel.

"I thought they were just a story," Juno said.

"They were," Shade replied. "Until the tower found them."

The Siblings of Silence weren't turned by bites. They were claimed by signal. Victims of exposure to the wrong frequencies at the wrong time. Survivors caught in the tower's final transmission… rewritten.

"They hear the broadcast in their heads," Shade continued. "All the time. That's why they never speak. The voice speaks for them."

Juno watched as one of the Siblings approached a small child crying in the shadows. The child froze. The Sibling knelt and placed two fingers over the child's lips.

The crying stopped.

Mouth closed.

Eyes emptied.

The child joined them.

Juno's stomach turned. "So what now? We hide?"

Shade shook his head. "We cut the feed. At the root."

That meant the relay bunker—deep under the city, in the old substation beneath Graye Bridge. Rumors said it was where the original emergency response was coordinated… until it got repurposed.

They made their way through the dark ruins of Old Graye, alley by alley, dodging street patrols of the Siblings. Not one uttered a sound, but they felt their presence—like pressure in the skull. As if thinking too loud might draw them.

In one alley, Juno found graffiti painted in blood:

"THE QUIET ONES REMEMBER EVERYTHING."

By dusk, they reached the substation.

Or what was left of it.

The entrance was marked by two Siblings standing guard—motionless, eyes on nothing.

Juno reached for her radio to signal a decoy frequency.

Shade stopped her.

"No noise," he mouthed.

Instead, he tossed a mirror shard into the street. The sunlight caught it just long enough to flash against a rusted antenna.

The guards turned—synchronized—and walked toward it like moths.

Inside the substation, it was dark, tight, and humming. Juno powered on a handheld jammer and found the relay board.

Twelve lines active.

Only one glowed red.

"Found it," she said.

As she reached to sever it, a voice flooded the chamber—not over the speakers, but inside her mind.

"They were mine before the dark. They will be mine after."

Juno screamed silently, head pounding, blood leaking from her nose.

Shade pulled the breaker.

Darkness.

The feed died.

Above, on the streets of Blackout, the Siblings stopped walking.

Paused.

Then one by one, they opened their mouths and screamed.

No sound came out.

Only blood.