Liam Hall

Wednesday, April 20th, 2022 (29 days after the Shutdown)

His laughs were hollow; a feeble attempt to cloak his overwhelming sense of despair, threatening to consume him.

I should’ve never left my old neighborhood.

David, Carter, and the rest of his life had been there. He’d moved because it had been his parents’ dream but nothing had gone right after that point.

He’d lost his parents to a fire he couldn’t stop.

He’d been ostracized from the rest of his community in Half-Moon Bay because of his ramblings and screams at night, caused by nightmares inflicted upon him by an unknown entity.

He’d been shot during the scavenging mission that at first glance was harmless, and then after being abandoned by the people who dragged him here, he’d been taken a hold by a fever.

Things were finally starting to look up after finding the abandoned store and the food, even with the mounds of dead rats. Even after all his sufferings, the glimmer of hope he’d so desperately craved disintegrated. Everything had returned to square one.

There were 3 of them waiting directly below him, their body of living shadows stirring up the leaves around them. They’d sealed off his escape route.

He was trapped… on a roof… with no food or water. He wouldn’t last long and he didn’t want to stick around to find out the hard way what other abilities the monsters had.

Heart pounding, senses heightened, he confronted a crucial decision: try to outrun actual monsters, or stay and find out how much the gods loved him. Seeing another monster approach, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Liam ran like hell.

Jumping across the rooftops, his heels slammed into the concrete. Repeating it over and over again down the street of one story buildings, he let his momentum carry him across the gaps. Seeing a two story building, he cursed under his breath and looked to see how much time he had. The creatures were following him, their vaporous bodies growing more frantic and they began to scream.

His vision wavered.

Ah— Crashing onto his knees, his rush of adrenaline extinguished.

Monster. Monster. Shit, get the hell up, Liam, he yelled at himself, but he’d lost authority over his muscles.

The monsters drew closer, their forms becoming more discernible and their aura permeated the air until fear shackled his body. This can’t be how it ends.

Clenching his jaw, he struggled to the edge of the building and rolled off. Miraculously landing on his feet, he teetered forward, hobbling as the rest of his body fought him. At the end of the street he faced another dilemma: where should he go?

Returning back to his hideout would be stupid. If there were monsters along the way, he would inevitably attract them and lead them right to his front door. More importantly was whether he could make it or not.

Liam's body was already giving up on him and despite them being relatively slow, their screams felt like someone was drilling inside his head. Making an impromptu gamble, the brick wall that ran behind the shops became his only hope. Struggling to find a foothold on a dumpster, he scrambled to the top in time to see the creatures engulfing the lid his foot had been on seconds ago.

Escaping over the top, their forms exploded outwards nearly nicking his elbow.

“Holy… shit,” he gasped at a safe distance away, clutching his chest. With the adrenaline receding once more, exhaustion seeped into his muscles. The monsters, relentless in their pursuit, finally met their biggest adversary — a regular wall. Unable to climb over the gorgeous marvel of human engineering, Liam’s eyes didn’t lose sight of the wall until the last of their smoke disappeared.

They're probably going to find some other poor sucker to hunt, right? It's not like they're going to be so hellbent on hunting me that they would go around the wall, he hoped, waiting for the sounds of renewed wails to prove him wrong.

“Cool… now where the fuck am I this time?”

At least with the Industrial District he'd visited some of the places with his father when he brought Liam to meet some of his friends, always talking about how nice it would be to own a warehouse. Here… hell, at least half the buildings looked the exact same as if modern architecture didn't get the chance to visit this part of the city.

Just like his value mart and the Industrial District, this place had no human life though there were signs of activity after the Blackout. A few stalled cars had their windows smashed in and their contents dispersed in the street. In shops that had bars protecting their window, duct tape sealed cracked glass and cardboard boxes were used like blinds.

Liam had half a mind to check them in case there were other people but he'd gained a weariness for covered windows. His stomach throbbed thinking about it. Sticking to the center of the street, he surveyed the area around him, weary of the monsters coming through the alleyway.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The place was filled with hair boutiques, garden statues (which was unnerving after what he’d just seen) and random real estate offices that were out of place. But meters away, he found his golden ticket.

“Frank’s Deli”, sat unassumingly with none of its windows cracked or covered, and garbage bags clogging its front steps. How responsible. Everything is going to shit but at least we have one guy who remembers to put out the trash… maybe he’s still in there.

Deciding to execute the same plan as he'd done for the store on Maitland and Saugen, he found a roof and started to stake out the place.

***

I’m going to shoot myself, he swore, rolling over onto his stomach to spare his back from the sun’s harsh rays. No one had shown up… again.

Maybe people had already seen the monsters and weren’t keen on visiting the local deli, or there were people inside that deli, or everyone was already dead and he was the only human left on Earth. The last one was a stretch but it felt like that. Aside from the people executed, stoned, or otherwise kidnapped in front of him, it’d been days since his last human interaction and it had slowly started to eat away at him.

There hadn’t been much motivation to survive to begin with and with monsters floating through the streets… Liam was mentally exhausted.

Around 3 hours later something finally happened.

A motorcycle revved through the street waking Liam from his nap. Startled by the noise, Liam accidentally rested his weight on his sun-kissed arms, receiving a painful sting in return. Grunting in pain, his eyes widened and his face twitched in annoyance realizing he had gasped aloud. Peeking over the edge, the rider was nowhere to be seen.

Instinctively ducking down, his shoulders tensed as he tried to shove himself until the corner of the roof, hoping he went unnoticed. Time ticked by like his life was moving in limbo. There weren’t sounds from the street but he was too exhausted to think further than “no bullet means safe”.

Where’s my knife?

Reaching for the sheath, his hands grabbed at thin air.

I strapped it around my waist. Did it fall off?

Lifting himself to see if it was under him, he saw a face smiling at him on the other side of the roof, Liam’s knife being twiddled through his fingers.

“What are you? Some kind of pervert?”

Ah.

“Were you stroking yourself as you thought about me? Is that why you got no shirt on? I’m flattered but maybe keep it in your pants,” the man chuckled, setting the knife aside.

Scrambling to his feet, Liam stared apprehensively as the man drew nearer.

“Relax, man. I just wanted to talk. First, why were you stalking me? Second, where did your shirt go? And, lastly, where’s your hideout?”

“... I have no–”

“Mmm,” the man hummed loudly in disapproval. “Let’s try that again and really take the time to think about your answers.”

Casting a glance to where the knife lay, the man followed his gaze. “You know what, I’ll give you a tenner if you can grab it.”

Liam watched the man’s hand reach for something tucked in his waistband. “I’m… I’m good.”

“Are you really?” he smirked, dropping his leather jacket. “So let’s hear the answers.”

He’s going to shoot me, he’s gonna shoot me— Looking below him, if Liam risked it and jumped into the street, the fall might take his knees at which point the man could easily pick him off.

Sighing, the man sat down and raised his hands above his head.

“Pal, you’re making this so much harder than it needs to be. See, I’m not hiding anything. No reason to be alarmed. Why. Were. You. Watching me?”

“I wasn’t watching you. I was staking out the deli across the street,” Liam finally folded, realizing there was no situation in which he won. He had to play for time until he found a way to get off this roof intact.

“Frank’s? Why? You thinking of robbing it? You don’t look much like a robber,” the biker noted, scratching his neatly trimmed beard.

Amidst Liam’s surge of anxiety, he realized that the man in front of him was almost his age. Examining him within renewed interest, not a hint of grime clung to him and his hair was meticulously groomed. He was striking, not in a whimsical fantasy way, but Liam knew his type. He’d seen them before in courtrooms, winning cases through flowery words and letting their presence do the rest.

“I was planning on seeing if I could borrow some.”

Raising an eyebrow, the man’s grin widened. “Right. So what about the shirt?”

“I puked on it.”

“And then your hideout?”

“I don’t have one.”

His smile faltered. An ominous chill enveloped the man, signaling to every fiber of Liam’s body of an oncoming threat but he broke into a good-natured smile and it dissipated.

“Remember what I said about thinking about your answers? There’s no way anyone can survive out here without a hideout. It's just a basic human necessity. So think about your answer again.”

I can’t lead anyone back to the hideout.

“... I’m from the city,” he started, searching his memory for names and places that put him out of suspicion. “Near the place with soldiers.”

“Hmm… and what’s the place called?”

“Dunrobin Boulevard,” he said, picking a random name without hesitation. Shit, did I say that too fast?

“Dunrobin Boulevard… never heard of it. Is that to the north or the south of Laurier Avenue?”

“South.”

Inspecting Liam for a second, he shrugged nonchalantly and stuck out his hand. “I’ll have to check that out sometime. I’m Thaddeus by the way.”

“I’m… Liam,” Liam responded, gingerly taking the man’s hand. Gesturing to the bike in the middle of the street, he asked, “Where did you get that bike from?”

“Let’s just say… I stole it from its previous owner,” Thaddeus chuckled. “So, do you want to eat some meat? I’m friends with Frank and I’m sure he’s fine if we take a bit.”

Liam didn’t want to get into a closed room with the man, but his stomach grumbled before he could refuse.

“Yeah,” Liam said awkwardly, internally cursing his stomach for betraying him. “I could use a bite.”