Hello again Aral Stein Story Club members.

I'm Ivy, your host with the most, and keeper of those strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R.L. Stein.

Today is another chilling tale.

This starstruck tale story club members might make you reach for the twinkling dots in the night

sky, or not.

It's one I call forever dead.

Marcella Pavia didn't move or even breathe, as several of the walking dead shuffled by.

She did not want the walkers to get her.

That's what the survivors called them, walkers.

And they were everywhere, it seemed.

More living dead around than living these days.

Rarely had she seen another human roaming through this hazardous landscape.

And when you did, you had to be careful.

Survivors were to be feared, too.

They might come off as being friendly, but they might steal your food and water or other life-sustaining

supplies, and they might turn you into the Walking Dead when your back was turned.

Yep.

The living had to be feared as much as the living dead.

This was a terrible place that she'd grown up in.

Now at 11, Marcella was pretty used to waking

up in a new place every day, someplace safe and hidden, like the inside of an abandoned car, or even

up in the crook of a tree. And then, there was the day-to-day struggle to find enough food

...