Chapter 19
Mads’ fingers wound into Lionel’s hair, nails digging into his scalp as he tugged hard on the strand with every moan. Lionel held down Mads’ hips, keeping him from moving, as he licked up his shaft before taking the head of his cock into his mouth again.
“Ah—” Mads choked out as Lionel took him into his throat. He swallowed around him, feeling how Mads trembled from the feeling of it. One of his hands slipped from Mads’ hip to his ass, squeezing the flesh there and pulling his hips up slightly to be able to take him deeper. “Fuck— Lionel—”
Lionel let his hand slide to Mads’ entrance, pressing on the tender skin there that was already soft and wet from their previous round only a few hours ago. Mads bucked his hips up at the feeling of Lionel’s finger sliding inside of him.
Mads cried out as he came, the hot, salty liquid sliding down Lionel’s throat. Even as Mads tried to push his head away, tugging hard on his hair, Lionel stayed put. He swallowed over and over again until Mads was shaking, breaths short and shaky as he tried to inhale.
Lionel smiled as he finally pulled away, leaning up to lock their lips together. Mads shivered as Lionel’s tongue slid into his mouth, his hands coming up to grip Lionel’s shoulders. “I’ve gotten pretty good at that,” Lionel grinned as Mads laughed.
“Don’t get too confident,” Mads hummed, wrapping a hand around Lionel’s neck to drag him back down.
Lionel let Mads kiss him for as long as he wanted, their mouths molding together lazily until Mads sighed and relaxed back against the mattress.
He carded his fingers through Lionel’s dark hair, smoothing out where he had tugged too hard.
“Well, maybe if—”
Lionel’s words were cut off by a sound that made his blood run cold.
A loud, terrified wail pierced through the silence.
It was raw and human, and so full of panic that it sent a jolt straight through his chest. Both he and Mads froze, the air in the room shifting, tightening.
Mads’ arms instinctively locked around him, protective and tense as they both turned toward the door.
That scream wasn’t just fear. It was desperation.
Lionel barely had time to react before Mads shoved him back. The warmth of his body disappeared all at once, replaced by cold air and a burst of motion.
“Mads— wait—!” Lionel hissed, stumbling as Mads pulled on his clothes with lightning speed. His movements were sharp, practiced, like he wasn’t even thinking. Lionel fumbled to throw on his own sweatpants, chasing after him. “Don’t open the—!”
Before he could even finish the words, Mads had already yanked the door wide open.
For a split second, Lionel just stood there, the urge to scream caught in his throat.
What the fuck are you doing? His hand reached out uselessly as Mads stepped over the threshold and into the hall like it was nothing.
Lionel bolted forward, catching him around the waist from behind and yanking him back. “Are you insane?” he whispered fiercely. “What if it’s a trap—?”
“Let go,” Mads snapped, shoving at Lionel’s hands. Lionel hesitated, startled not by the force of the push but the tone of his voice. It wasn’t panic or fear. It was annoyed, almost frustrated, even.
He blinked, searching Mads’ face—his sharp jaw tight, his lips drawn down in a grim line. There was no fear there. Just focused irritation, like he was being interrupted in the middle of something important.
Before Lionel could demand an explanation, another scream shattered the moment. It came from the left, closer now, another high, keening cry of terror. They both turned in unison, and Lionel felt his stomach lurch.
A woman was sprinting toward them down the hallway.
Her face was frozen in a grimace of horror, her mouth open around an endless scream.
Her entire body was drenched in blood, so much of it that for a second Lionel thought she was missing half her skin.
It clung to her clothes, her hair, and streamed down her arms and legs like a bucket of it had been turned over on top of her head.
He couldn’t tell if any of it was hers. She didn’t appear wounded—she was running fast, legs pumping, arms swinging—but the fear in her eyes was so stark it was almost inhuman.
Lionel felt like he’d been pulled backward in time, thrown back to the first days of the outbreak: the shrieks, the wet crunch of bone, the creature tearing people apart. But nothing in those first few days looked like this.
Behind the woman—long and slow and relentless—was a single black limb following her down the hall.
It wasn’t a humanoid monster; it was just one impossibly long, segmented leg, sharp at the end like a scythe.
It skittered as it moved, bending at unnatural joints, stretching impossibly far down the corridor.
Lionel couldn’t even see the creature it belonged to. It was as if the rest of the body was still turning the corner, still making its way forward, and this single leg was only the beginning of it.
“What the fuck,” Lionel whispered, breath catching in his throat.
The woman kept running, her screams bouncing off the walls. And the spider-leg kept coming.
“Help!” she screamed, and the way she reached out, flinging her hand toward them, reminded Lionel of the man he had closed the linen closet door on. The look of desperation and the desire to live were the same as well.
Lionel could tell already that she wasn’t going to be able to get to them quickly enough. He tightened his hold on Mads’ waist, trying to pull him back into the apartment again, but he struggled against Lionel’s hands. “Let me go,” Mads ordered again.
“She’s too far away, we can’t save her—”
“She’s not what I’m concerned about,” Mads said, voice low, his eyes narrowed as he watched the woman running toward them.
It was then that the spider-like leg caught up to her.
There was no ceremony to it, just a wet, ripping sound and the sickening crack of bone.
The leg pierced straight through her torso like it was butter, jutting out the other side of her body with such force that her feet briefly left the ground.
For a second, she didn’t even seem to realize she was dead.
Her legs kept moving like they still remembered how to run, and her arms pumped once, twice, before they started to droop.
Her eyes bugged out wide and glassy. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp.
Lionel could only watch as she kept stumbling forward, like her body hadn’t caught up with the fact that it was already split in half. It wasn’t until she slowed, staggered, and finally began to collapse that she seemed real again.
Her jaw hung slack, and then her mouth opened wider—too wide—and blood came pouring out in a thick, syrupy torrent. It spilled over her chin and soaked her shirt, splattering in great red gouts across the floor.
Lionel took a step back without thinking.
His back hit the wall, and his lungs forgot how to pull in air.
Mads moved in front of him. Shielded him, like that would do anything against a monster that could run a human through like a skewer.
But the thing—whatever that leg was connected to—didn’t even seem to notice them.
The leg twitched, and the first joint bent with a sickening, insectoid jerk. It hooked into what was left of her torso like a claw, and then she was gone.
The woman's body was yanked backward with terrifying speed, her limbs flailing as she was flung down the hall like a rag doll. Lionel’s eyes tracked her arc through the air, limp and bleeding, until she vanished through the open door of an apartment halfway down the corridor.
The sickening thump as she hit the wall echoed faintly, followed by a metallic crash as something inside the unit overturned.
Then nothing; no screaming, no sounds, no more movement from that impossible spider leg.
Lionel realized he was still pressing back against the wall, fists clenched tight at his sides, the tang of blood thick in his mouth even though it wasn’t his.
“What the fuck,” Lionel repeated, breaking the quiet.
“That… I think that was the thing I saw.” Mads turned to him with a raised eyebrow.
“The next thing, the creature there— it was so huge— and the man I saw was covered in blood in the same way. Maybe it’s the same— maybe they’re growing—”
“I think this one is an anomaly,” Mads said, sounding so sure of himself that Lionel almost didn’t argue with him.
“How can we know?” He asked. “What if there are more of them? What if they—”
Mads reached to grab Lionel’s hand, squeezing it gently. “I really doubt it. Weren’t they starting to look more and more human recently?” Lionel frowned but nodded. “Then maybe this one is just an outlier that didn’t learn how to adapt.”
Lionel nodded, lips pursed as he turned the idea over in his head.
Then it hit him all at once. His eyes flew wide, and he grabbed Mads’ hands in both of his.
“That must be the thing that’s controlling the building!
” he blurted, far louder than he meant to.
His voice echoed off the hallway walls, and he immediately winced, glancing in both directions before dragging Mads back into the apartment.
He slammed the door shut and locked it with every single bolt and chain before spinning back around.
“Think about it,” he said, breathless. “It’s huge.
Way bigger than anything else we’ve seen.
It’s got this whole… nest thing where it’s eating people.
And maybe it’s, like, laying eggs or something in there and making more creatures.
It honestly looked kind of alien. Maybe it’s what pulled the building into space to begin with! ”
Mads blinked slowly, his face unreadable as he tried to process Lionel’s rush of words. He reached out and rested a hand on Lionel’s shoulder, grounding him. “Yeah,” he said, giving a slow nod. “Maybe it is. What did it look like?”