Some time ago.
“I’m sorry.”
An old man hid inside a destroyed shop.
“Please leave me alone.”
The old man held himself like a fetus, scared of leaving the womb.
“Please. Please. Please.”
He closed his eyes, trying to find comfort in the illusion of darkness.
Foolishly believing that closing his eyes, no one could see him.
Or at least, wanting to believe foolishly.
Tears rolled out of his eyes, as he couldn’t convince himself.
His tense hands dug his own body out of sheer terror.
But the pain didn’t make the monsters or reality go away.
His hands went up when he felt like screaming.
Strangling, not letting a single sound go out.
The screams that started in his heart ended in his hands.
Then he heard it.
They had arrived.
The nightmare begun again.
A clumsy scrambling up firmed his demise.
He bashed against debris and buildings.
His scared eyes could hardly see what was in front of him, rather than focusing on the danger behind.
The armor, as he told himself, made of nothing but layers and layers of cloth, was nothing more than shackles.
It was the main reason for the constant stumbling and crashing.
The armor couldn’t even stop his body from feeling the drop in temperature.
He ran out of breath from the first step.
The stress took a higher toll on his body than the running.
Sweat dripped all over his forehead and shot off.
But the sound of it hit the ground never came.
Even that was being consumed behind him.
He never turned around.
He knew better than that; they were behind.
Losing his reason, he lost his way.
Soon he went under a half collapsed building.
When felt teeth tear off part of his armor, he also felt his soul leaving his body.
He was at the end of his rationale.
And lady fortune sometimes smiles at the unfortunate.
As it is to say, a hopeful thought is to believe there’s a fortunate soul in such a world.
He slipped, a clumsy mistake, as much of others of his.
A clumsy and rough scene.
He rolled on the floor, spraining his ankle.
Yet, his mistake was also an opportunity.
The monster, which had reached him, missed and impacted a building.
It was a heavy hit for both of them.
The monster stunned itself, yet the old man wasn’t in a much better position.
He swallowed his pain and run at a slower pace than before.
On the other side, the monster was in a similar situation.
Result of the previous mistake, the monster was on the slower side.
Which caused a slow-moving but tense chase.
Whereas the first impact made the and surrounding buildings quake, the next close calls and centimeter-dodges only left marks.
Occasional crunches hit the old man.
They all landed at the edifices.
Their chase sequence left an obvious trail.
The old man, portraying an expression which represented the very definition of fear, ran without previous planning.
“...”
He tried to muster words, but ultimately failed.
Of all the places, he ended up in the worst possible one.
He had lost the monster.
No, he only got ahead of it.
He couldn’t go back because of it.
At the point of giving up, he found a suspicious individual observing the zone.
The sound of the monster complemented his appearance, getting near.
He jumped.
Because of the shock this part of the city caused me, I could not react to the physical assault I received.
A short old man tackled me.
He was underneath an impractical ball of clothes.
I believe I’m quite capable of sensing danger, and he wasn’t making me react.
My eyes went from the old man to what was behind him.
My arms went into a defensive position, covering my face and chest.
Fuck.
They shouldn’t be here.
That was the whole reason.
The old man’s nails drew blood through my sleeve. His breath came in whistles.
His mistake became my cage.
Getting rid of him wasn’t a hard task, however I didn’t have the time or luxury to do it in this context.
The best course of action in a case where you are stuck and attacked.
My shield activated.
Two large and profound rows of teeth penetrated the skin of my right arm.
An eyeless body hosted the teeth.
It had the general aspect of a fish, if a horrible mutation happened to one.
There was no semblance of a nose, ears, eyes, or practically anything.
It was best described as an enormous mouth at the end of a fishlike body.
Prolonged, twisted teeth—its sole feature—jutted from yellowed bases smeared with mud-toned stains.
That thing wasn’t different from a war veteran.
Unidentified spikes came out of every part of its body.
The teeth sank deeper into my muscles, grazing the bone.
My shield had correctly diminished the speed of the bite.
Sooner than later, I stopped feeling my arm.
After making sure the monster couldn’t escape, I snatched a small knife I felt in the old man’s clothes when he tackled me.
Using the pain from the wound, I stabbed the monster as hard as I could.
I’m not really sure if they can feel pain, but I really hope they do.
Admittedly, the knife didn’t damage it much.
I kept pushing it and the whole knife went in.
Anger bottled up inside me.
Feeling the knife wasn’t enough, I also bit the monster.
Two can play the same game, fucker.
With half my left arm inside its body, pushing down the knife and my bite, the monster finally recoiled.
Its grip slackened on the ruined remains of my right arm, and it recoiled with a wet, guttural shriek—the kind only a wounded animal makes.
Well, that about confirms it.
I was feeling better now that the gamble had worked.
Better to lose an arm rather than everything.
I got rid of the old man who was on the brink of passing out.
It felt wrong, but I punched him.
Fortunately, a single punch was enough to make him react.
I pulled him.
He got up and ran.
Rather than running, he awkwardly walked.
Yeah, we’re fucked.
I’m assuming he has a sprain at the very least.
There’s no way we’re escaping in these conditions.
We hid in a near demolished house.
It was disgusting.
I was squatting, and he sat down.
We were between putrid dead bodies and rubble.
I presume whatever happened here was a long time ago.
The smell was horrid, but it was manageable.
Decomposition had softened the corpses until they became just another part of the landscape.
At the end, surviving between bones was more preferable than relatively fresh corpses.
At least, all of this would buy us some time.
Yes, buy us time.
This isn’t a solution.
A lot of questions plagued my mind.
Yet, there was no time for them.
“I need you to tell me about that thing.”
The old man stayed silent.
I didn’t know if he didn’t hear, or was in his own world.
We didn’t have the time for this.
I slightly raised my voice, and any friendly tone I had left disappeared.
“Tell me about the monster.”
Perhaps he noticed the change, as this time he reacted.
He seemed reluctant to talk, but I couldn’t care less.
We were in a life or death scenario.
Consultation seemed pointless when the math was simple: ambush or death. I chose an ambush.
There was no way to flee in our condition.
And experience told me that hiding was only delaying the inevitable.
I’m not much of a fighter; no, I’m no fighter at all.
But given the current circumstances, an ambush was the best option.
I pushed further.
“It’s wounded, right?”
The monster was enormous.
In prime condition, it probably could have torn my arm in a single bite.
Yet I saw its sluggish movement and the lack of strength in its bite.
A timid response came after some time.
“... Yes.”
“Hey, look.”
I started feeling uncomfortable.
I hadn’t conversed this directly with someone.
The pain from my right arm woke me up.
“We need to kill it.”
The old man almost comically open his eyes.
He couldn’t believe what I had just said.
He went from sitting to an almost fetal position.
“No. No. No. No. It’s impossible. Impossible. I’m sorry.”
He stopped talking to me and murmured to himself.
Still, I was close and could hear him.
He hugged himself to the point of hurting.
I didn’t want to disrupt such a character, but I needed his direct aid to survive.
I tried to put my remaining hand on his shoulder, but I missed and put it on his head.
It was weird.
I guess this works too.
I waited for a bit until he calmed down.
I could understand his struggles.
Not that extreme, however, I also went through that giving up mentality.
“It’s wounded.”
A rasping whisper came from him.
“I know. I did it.”
“Not that.”
“Hmm… Wait, the spikes?”
“Yes.”
I was not a fighter.
I had no weapon on me.
Looking at our surroundings, rubble was the strongest weapon we could seize.
“Any ideas?”
He seemed to have given up.
“We’re all dead, anyway.”
“Anyway?”
He went silent.
Damn. Now’s not the time.
Think Kai. Think.
But not a single idea came.
I stood up.
I stopped feeling its presence some time ago.
Not that it was gone or anything, however, staying here would just stagnate my thought process.
I left the crawled old man and went to examine our vicinity.
I didn’t realize it when hiding, but there were scribblings all over the place.
Zone 7.
At least, that was my guess.
Most of the scribblings, probably every single one, were on top of some other text.
The scribblings didn’t look like the important part.
They were mostly incoherent stuff.
In places, dark splatters—blood, perhaps—eclipsed the scribblings entirely.
I heard a sound coming from behind me.
Oh no, I got distracted.
I looked for an escape route.
Behind me was the old man.
“Hey.”
A shy, almost self-pitying remark.
Ashamed, he avoided looking into my eyes.
“I thought of something.”
I wasn’t expecting it.
“Am, how about, we, drop something in it?”
A plausible solution.
There were a lot of hanging parts of buildings.
The problem is to position the monster itself and push the hanging building so that it falls.
The latter part is the hardest one.
“It’s not a bad idea, but how are we supposed to make something drop?”
He took a moment.
“It’s faster if I show you.”
He walked towards a building.
He touched a half destroyed rubble.
After a couple of seconds, the rubble starting becoming liquid.
Oh, I get it now.
“So, you want to do whatever you are doing to one of those hanging skyscrapers.”
He nodded.
It seemed possible, but there was a problem.
“Your ankle is injured. You won’t be able to climb like that.”
“I know of a place. I don’t need to climb there.”
It was a gamble, yet it was a better plan than anything I came up with.
“Sure, let’s do it.”
We didn’t mention another word.
We knew what each of our roles was.
I needed to distract the monster and hold its position while he melted the building.
He walked towards the location he mentioned.
“Hey, I need a signal or something.”
He continued walking.
There was something weird about him.
“Just scream or something.”
He paused for a second.
He nodded and continued his way.
I explored a bit more.
I couldn’t find the monster until I tried to go back the way we came.
It was cold.
I saw the monster looking for us.
Fuck.
I always thought of them as brainless, but I can’t deny this.
It was rounding the zone so that we couldn’t escape.
Why though?
It didn’t approach mindlessly.
If it thought it was enough to not let us escape, that means…
I realized I had lost the monster.
The temperature dropped even further while I was navigating the streets.
Cold was an understatement for the situation.
I went on my knees.
I could barely breathe.
It was hard to move.
Until I felt water running through my back.
Not again.