Chapter 5
It was eerily quiet when Lionel opened the door.
He stuck his head out, tensed and ready to jump back into the room if he needed to, but the hallway was completely empty.
He stepped out cautiously, grip tightening on Mads’ hand, who followed him without any hesitation.
Lionel paused, trying to listen past the thrumming beat of his own heart in his ears, for any sign of movement or even faraway screaming.
But there was nothing. The silence was almost as heavy as the moments of chaos he’d experienced before.
He glanced over his shoulder at Mads, who was waiting patiently, watching him with curious, round eyes. Lionel smiled tightly at him and loosened his bone-crunching grip on his fingers. “It’s clear,” he whispered.
“I can see well enough to know that, yes,” Mads said.
Lionel tugged Mads along, keeping them close to the wall as they made their way toward the stairwell.
His steps were quick but careful, each footfall placed lightly, though his heart hammered far too loudly.
He scanned the corridor constantly, eyes darting from shadow to shadow, half-expecting something to lurch out or crawl down from the ceiling.
They reached the stairwell without incident, and Lionel let out a shaky breath, relief flooding through him. He pushed open the door only to wince as it let out a drawn-out creak that seemed to echo down the stairwell like a scream. He froze, breath held, listening for any sign they’d been noticed.
Nothing stirred.
But when they stepped onto the metal stairs, their footsteps clanged far too loud in the hollow shaft, bouncing off the walls and disappearing into the air above and below.
Lionel swallowed hard. The fact that he didn’t see any monsters didn’t comfort him at all; he knew too well these things didn’t need normal paths to reach them.
Still, standing there waiting was worse.
He tightened his grip on Mads and hurried them down.
When they reached the fourth-floor landing, Lionel wasted no time pulling Mads through the door and into the hallway beyond.
Only then did he allow himself another breath, though it came thin and shallow, tension still coiled tight in his chest.
“Where are they?” he murmured, more to himself, when he took in the again empty hallway.
“Who?” Mads asked. Lionel flinched at the fact that he didn’t even try to keep his voice down. “Are we looking for someone?”
Lionel waved at him in annoyance and pressed a finger to his own lips. “Why are you talking so loudly?” he hissed. “There are literally zombies around. Shut up!”
“Who are we looking for?” Mads asked again as though Lionel hadn’t spoken at all.
“No one!” Lionel groaned, “I was wondering why there are no zombies!”
“Are they zombies?” Mads asked, looking as though he was truly pondering this. “They didn’t look like zombies, though.”
“I don’t know what else to call them,” Lionel whispered. “At least zombies make sense—these things don’t.”
“Zombies make sense?” Mads laughed.
“Yeah, sure. The science and stuff of how they’re made always makes sense in the movies,” Lionel grumbled. “But these things came out of nowhere. They look like something out of a horror game.”
“Sounds like you’re well prepared at least,” Mads hummed.
Lionel didn’t get a chance to respond before a door slammed open and a creature tumbled into the hallway only a few feet in front of them.
Lionel scrambled back and dropped Mads’ hand to be able to throw out an arm to push him backwards.
He stepped in front of him and pulled out the knife he had grabbed before they left.
Just as he was about to step forward, ready to stab the thing in the face, Lionel hesitated.
This creature looked strangely more human. It reminded him a bit of the one he had first found in the wall rather than the huge, writhing masses that were more similar to spiders than people.
But this one had a man’s face, its eyebrows heavy and pinched in a way Lionel had seen on so many people’s expressions as they walked to work.
Rather than a mishmash of random limbs, it had two arms and two legs.
The biggest thing that warned him it was a creature and not a human was its size, which required it to crouch to fit under the ceiling.
The longer he looked at it, the less human it looked—its eyes dead and soulless with pupils that took over the entire iris and into the whites. Its fingers and feet were warped and bent unnaturally, and its spine seemed to bend and twist with every movement.
Lionel stood rooted to the spot, breath shallow, the knife trembling in his grip.
His eyes locked on the creature’s face—and for one sickening heartbeat, it looked familiar.
The shape of its nose, the set of its brow, even the ghost of freckles across its ruined skin.
It was like staring at someone he might pass on the stairs or see in the laundry room, one of the dozens of neighbors he knew at least by their room number.
A cold dread curled through his gut. His mind spun, trying to place the features, to figure out who this thing might have been.
He didn’t snap out of it until fingers clamped around his wrist. Mads pried the knife from his unresisting hand with a sharp tug. Lionel watched, too stunned to move, as Mads stepped smoothly in front of him.
Without a flicker of hesitation, Mads drove the blade down into the creature’s leg.
The creature let out a shriek so piercing that Lionel’s ears instantly rang. Its whole body spasmed, collapsing under itself, clawed hands scrabbling against the floor in a grotesque dance. Mads wrenched the knife free, and dark fluid spattered across the ground.
Lionel braced, heart hammering, waiting for the thing to retaliate—to fling itself at them, jaws snapping, to force them into a desperate fight or flight.
But instead, impossibly, it began to drag itself backward.
Its many limbs scrambled against the floor, hauling its wounded body away with frantic urgency.
The mask of terror on its half-familiar face was almost worse than rage.
Its dark eyes locked on Lionel, wide and glistening with something that might have been fear—or might have been something far more alien.
“Shouldn’t we kill it?” Lionel asked quickly as he pulled himself out of his own mind. He came up beside Mads and looked down at the knife covered in dark, black blood. Mads was just watching it crawl away, watching as it moved back into the apartment it had come running out of.
Mads looked over at him and handed him the knife with a shrug. “Be my guest, if you’d like.” When Lionel looked at him in confusion, he continued, “I just didn’t want to waste the energy or potentially lose our weapon.”
Lionel weighed the weapon in his palm, debating whether or not Mads was right.
But, while he was considering it, the creature had pulled itself into the apartment, and slowly its body began to disappear into the floor.
“Hey!” Lionel gasped, lunging forward. He didn’t have time to bring the knife down in a final blow before the creature was gone entirely.
“I’m sure it’s just crawling somewhere to die,” Mads said as Lionel stood in the spot it had disappeared, jaw hanging open in awe.
“How the hell are we supposed to fight monsters that can phase through solid things?” Lionel whispered to himself. “They can just appear anywhere; this isn’t fair at all.”
He heard Mads chuckle under his breath before a warm palm was circling his wrist, tugging on him. “Let’s go, didn’t you say the ventilation system was somewhere around here?”
Lionel nodded quickly, glancing around. He’d been on the fourth floor countless times for various maintenance inquiries, but he hadn’t ever actually seen the opening that the map showed on it.
He pulled out his phone again, double-checking as he turned on his heel and retraced their steps back to where it showed it to be.
He frowned when he came to the entirely blank wall beside the stairwell. He triple-checked the map before squatting and placing a hand on the wall. “It’s supposed to be right here,” he murmured.
“Watch out.”
It was the only warning he got to pull his hand away before a foot landed directly where it had been.
Lionel gasped as he fell back, landing hard on his ass as Mads’s foot came down again and again on the wall until a hole slowly cracked in the plaster.
Mads stooped down, grabbing at the crumbling drywall and tugging it out from the hole until it was large enough to see inside.
“What?” Mads asked when he looked over at Lionel’s expression. “It’s not like people are going to care about a hole in the wall after all of this.”
Lionel kneeled beside him and looked into the hole, frowning when he saw nothing. “It’s supposed to be right here,” he said, voice low as he pulled out his phone again. Mads took it from his fingers, squinting as he held it close to his face.
“We could go kick in a few more holes around here,” Mads said, gaze raising to lock with Lionel’s, making him pause for a moment to just stare at the other.
“What if it’s not here?” Lionel asked. “Maybe this map is wrong, maybe it’s too old, and they actually did take it out.”
“Haven’t you been working here for a while?” Mads asked, tilting his head to one side. “Wouldn’t you have heard about something like that?”
“That’s true, but—”
A piercing howl interrupted him. Both their heads turned at once to look where it was coming from and saw another monster racing at them from further down the hall. Lionel saw Mads’ lips turn downward as he stood. “Give me the knife.”
“I can fight it, just—”
Mads looked at him, expression harder than it was before. Lionel put the hilt of the knife in his hand.