He came to confused as he stumbled forward on wobbly legs. He bent down and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. What was happening? Where was he? How did he get here?
Vertigo hit him, his sight going blurry and the room spinning as he tried to stand up straight and gain his bearing. His vision swirled, his stomach lurched, and his head pounded. He faced the floor and took deep breaths as the blurry world around him swayed to and fro slowly coming into focus.
After a few seconds, it passed, and he began to take in his surroundings. He stood in a large foyer. The building had three floors, and the floors were carpeted. The railings were glass and metal, and the rooms around him were a mix of glass and wood paneling. He wasn’t sure if this was a hotel, a mall, or some kind of college campus.
What he did know was that the situation wasn’t normal. For one, he had no recollection of how he’d gotten there; he came to on his feet, and the place was in chaos around him. There was debris all over, broken glass, computers, books, paper, and the like.
In addition, there were others all over, some in running or walking posses, others lying on the ground. He couldn’t quite tell if they were real or maybe made of wax or plastic since they were all completely still and had a bit of a sheen to the skin. There was a pervasive silence and stillness in the air, this all felt surreal, as if he was having some type of fever dream or hallucination.
Walking up to the nearest figure, he waved his hand in their face. “Hello?” He asked. Feeling silly after receiving no answer, he reached out to touch their shoulder, wondering if he was talking to an inanimate object. He couldn’t quite place why, but there was a churning in his stomach as he did, a consuming fear that wasn’t grounded in anything specific just the eariness of the situation.
“Ah!” He screamed, jumping back as he touched the person. His heart hammered in his chest as he froze, unable to process what was happening. There was no doubt that it was a person. The skin was cold to the touch but also soft and mushy, as only skin could be.
His finger left a depression where he had touched them, the skin having sunken in, and black lines began radiating out from the depression. The skin began peeling off as the lines got farther, curling, breaking, and turning dark as if it were paper burning away. Like that, the entire body crumpled and turned to ash before his very eyes.
He stood there frozen in horror, not understanding what had just happened. His head was swimming, unable to make sense of what he was seeing. How could a person simply turn to ash like that? He’d heard mention of internal combustion, though he’d never seen it in real life or even on TV, so he thought of it as an urban myth. Was this it, or was something else happening?
His heart quickened, beating in his chest as if it were a trapped animal trying to escape. He was breathing hard from fear, adrenaline, and confusion. The horror of a regular person just burning away like that and turning to ash before his very eyes was just too unreal to accept, though he’d seen it with his own eyes
As he tried to make sense of it, he could hear something in the background… Someone was calling out to him, in the distance he could hear a muffled voice. He wanted to turn and see who it was, but the horror of the scene he’d just witnessed left him in shock, his muscles frozen and unresponsive.
Suddenly, someone gently shook him out of it. “Hello?! Can you hear me!? Do you know what the hell this is!? What is happening here, why are people turning to ashes!?”
He turned to find a young man shaking his shoulder, yelling questions at him.
“I… I don’t know,” he whispered as he snapped back to reality, he’d been frozen with fear.
“Shit, this is crazy, you’re the only other living, breathing person I’ve seen so far.” Said the young man with urgency and trepidation.
“Ok, ok, just… Just calm down. I don’t know what the hell is happening either… Maybe, maybe, we should look around for other survivors. Where did you come from? What direction?” The man asked.
It surprised him, the way he was behaving. His entire life, he’d prided himself in being decisive and steadfast in the face of danger and uncertain circumstances. But here he was unable to gain his footing or wrap his head around what was happening.
The young man took several deep breaths to steady himself and pointed to the stairs behind him. “I was on the second floor when I came to. It’s only been about a minute since I… I woke up, I guess? But can’t quite remember how or why I lost consciousness to begin with. What about you?”
Agitated and disoriented, he was starting to see a pattern. Like the others around him, he and this young man had been frozen in time, and some catalyst had woken them from that state. So the question was, why had others not woken up yet?
“Same, I can’t remember anything yet either and have also been up for only a minute or so. - Did you see what happened just now? I touched this person, and they turned to ashes.” The man stated.
“Yeah, I bumped into someone when I got up, and they turned to ashes right in front of me too. I freaked out and ran.” Answered the younger man.
‘So touching another person who was still frozen in time, for lack of a better term, would turn them to ash,’ the older man thought.
“AAAAHH!!”
There was a loud-pitched scream from around the corner on their left. It was followed by running, and a second later, a woman stumbled out of the hallway into the main lobby where they were standing.
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She came to a dead stop when she saw them and screamed at the top of her lungs. “What the fuck is happening!!? Are we dead!? Is this hell!? Are… Are all these people dead!?”
They both went to respond in unison in an attempt to calm her. But again, before they could get a word out, a loud, this time deep, scream was uttered from the hall behind them.
They turned to see a young man running around the corner and up the corridor holding his left hand up with his right. It seemed as if his ring and middle fingers had been cut or yanked off. Blood was pouring everywhere from the missing digits as he ran, a deep-set look of pain and horror across his face.
The next few seconds felt as if they had happened in slow motion.
A sickly pale-gray-looking woman came running behind the newcomer, blood dripping out her mouth and down her chin as she chewed on, what one could only assume, were his missing digits. She cackled like a maniac as she ran him down.
Five other people in the lobby suddenly began coming to life. They all dropped their arms by their sides and stood up straight as if released from a spell. Their skin took on a pale gray look as black veins became visible along their necks and faces, and their eyes turned black.
The newly awakened tilted their heads up sniffing the air and, in unison, turned in the direction of the young man who was running for his life. Then, a scene straight out of a horror movie took place right before their very eyes.
Without warning, they burst into a dead run toward him, knocking over and trampling some of the other stationary people turning them to ash as they did. A tall older man with grey hair reached the young man first and slammed into him like a linebacker, propelling them forward as they slid and tumbled on the floor.
The moment they’d come to a stop, the large man bit into his neck and ripped out a large chunk of flesh, then sat up on top of the young man to eat said flesh. The young man let out a horrifying scream, which quickly turned into a gurgled whine as he tried desperately to hold his wound and keep it from bleeding out.
The large man began chewing on the flesh with his head tilted up looking at the ceiling. He laughed and cackled maniacally with a disturbingly manic stare in his eyes while he ate. The woman who was originally chasing him caught up and joined the others as they reached into the open wound and ripped out gouges of flesh with their bare hands.
A horrifying scream rang out from the young man every time a new gouge of flesh was taken. Until either his heart or brain gave out, and his last scream tapered out.
The monsters all began eating and cackling in the same maniacal way as the first one. By this time, the young man was already dead.
The older man’s skin felt clammy, sweat rolled down his face, and he shivered from shock, fear, and adrenaline. Having grown up in a bad area he’d seen mindless violence plenty of times before, but this, this was so much more than that. It was madness on an unreal level; it was violence and derangement blended together in an abhorrent way.
It was unsettling to the extreme watching these people commit cannibalism as they ripped flesh from the now-dead young man’s body with inhuman strength. Naseua began creeping up as they voraciously chewed and swallowed down the bloody flesh as if they were enjoying a freshly cooked steak.
He was brought back to the moment by the young woman next to him grabbing his arm to steady herself. She let out a blood-curdling scream as the reality of what they were witnessing caught up with her. Startled, both men turned to look at her, she froze, staring forward as they did, forcing them to turn back to the others before them. When they did, they saw that what they were now sure were monsters, had all stopped eating and laughing and were looking right at them.
“Huh?” The monsters all uttered in unison as they tilted their heads sideways like puppies, regarding them as if they had done something strange.
The older man instinctually grabbed the woman by her shoulder and shoved her toward the exit while turning and pulling the younger man with his other arm. He wasn’t sure if the monsters would also attack them next, but he didn’t plan on waiting around to find out. “RUN!” He yelled, and they made for the door in a deadpan run.
The older man wasn’t the fittest person in his age group, but once upon a time he’d been in track and field, and he’d always been sturdy. So when he noticed the automatic doors were not opening as they approached, he acted without a second thought or reservation.
Reaching the doors, he jumped into them, knees high and elbows out protecting his face. He barrelled through what was left of the large glass doors, stumbled as he hit the floor, dove, and tucked into a forward roll, then continued running after he came up from the roll.
“Follow me I live across the street!” Yelled the younger man over his shoulder taking the lead once they were outside. They burst into the door to the apartment building, slamming it shut and locking it behind them. “I live on the second floor. Come on!” The young man yelled while heading for the stairs.
They made their way up the stairs and down the corridor to his apartment. The young man froze when he reached the end of the hall and crossed the T section. Immediately, he raised his hands to stop the others before they made it across as his breath caught in his throat. To his right was a gruesome scene.
Lying on the floor was the body of a heavy-set man, an old lady sat on the floor next to him. She had the same pale-gray skin as the others and was ripping chunks out of the man’s flesh with inhuman strength. He tried to quietly and slowly reach for his keys to unlock the apartment, but he was shaking and sweating profusely, and the keys slipped from his hands.
The wind was knocked out of them all as the keys hit the floor noisily. They could hear the old monster utter the same “huh?” as the others had when she stopped eating. The older man and the woman slowly hugged the wall cutting them off from the monster’s line of sight. The young man dared not move, but he could see the monster sitting there, just staring at him in that weird puppy-like manner from his peripheral.
She only stared at him for a few seconds, then thankfully returned to her meal and cackling. He allowed himself a slow, agonizing breath while he, very slowly, bent at the knees and tried to quietly pick up the keys. Every little noise he made was as loud as a gunshot to his ears, giving him pause. Luckily, the monster paid him no mind and continued her meal.
It felt like hours had passed before the young man picked up the keys and opened the apartment, though in truth, it was only seconds. Once the door was open he slowly crept in and waved the others in behind him. The older man began moving slowly, but the woman couldn’t stand to be near the unsettling scene for another second and loudly ran across the hall and into the apartment.
The monstrous old lady burst into raucous laughter as she rushed over to investigate. The older man bolted into the apartment and slammed the door in its face, locked it, and sat against it hoping it would go away.
They tried to control their exhausted breathing as they heard the monster out in the hallway while she sniffed the door and then made some rustling and dragging sounds. The older man looked under the door crack to find, to his horror, she had dragged her meal to the door and sat down in front of it.
The young man put a finger to his lips, signaling them to quietly follow him as he led them to the other side of the apartment. It was easier said than done, moving quietly, they were breathing heavily from all the running and adrenaline pumping through their systems. And the older man was starting to feel the pain from hitting the sturdy glass doors earlier.