From the Valley of Zombies! By: Bahrullah Afridi In the simple courtyard of her home, Shandana stood by the mud stove, baking bread—an innocent young woman, recently a mother to two small children. From dawn till dusk, her life revolved around the stove, utensils, laundry, and her children... and perhaps, somewhere deep in her heart, a few silent dreams hidden away, dreams she herself probably never fully understood. Little did Shandana know that the sun of her life would set so suddenly—and at the hands of her own father-in-law. The threshold where she had once crossed as a daughter to become a daughter-in-law was not to be a home, but the graveyard of her dreams. The man who was merely her father-in-law by relation, one day stormed into the house carrying a Kalashnikov and, within the blink of an eye, riddled Shandana with bullets. That innocent mother, who had just been baking bread, now lay in a pool of blood. A few minutes earlier, that same old predator had gunned down a yo...