[T: 3 Days 21 Hours]

Lights seem to shine from a central force, high above at the cavern ceiling where a crystal of some kind, shining with a pale bluish-snow light illuminates the entirety of the cavern with artificial light.

The passage they had come from exits into an area where the walls are enclosed around them, most likely to protect those behind the walls from those exiting from the passage. The gate that should normally be there when walls are present is not there, instead looking as if it had been forcibly removed and carried off somewhere, since no remains of the gate after its destruction can be seen anywhere. There doesn’t seem to be anyone manning the walls and the group cautiously approaches the opening where the gate should be.

As they enter through the opening they see the inside of a large building with rows of stone benches and rows of booths next to each other lining against the walls. “Looks like an airport”, La Fonte comments.

“Or a train station”, Jose adds. Frank doesn’t say anything as he sweeps some dust on the ground with his feet. Lucas is examining within the booths. Jose slowly walks to the rows of benches, goes past them, to the front of the building and looks left and right towards the sides of the building. “Doesn’t look like anyone is here”, he raises his voice a bit, echoing it, his eyes raised towards the second floor, where he checks for any sound or movement, responding to the echo of his voice. He sees no movement, or hears any sound, from the direction of above, towards the bannister railings of the second landing and slowly looks back towards the front of him, always shifting the direction he is facing and turning his neck left and right.

La Fonte is doing the same behavior Jose is, being inquisitive of his surroundings. They both head down the same corridor, La Fonte raising both his mouth and eyebrows and thrusting his head in the direction of another corridor, Frank nodding and leading Lucas to check the corridor La Fonte and Jose are not checking.

They check each of the rooms along the corridor, all of them dark without light, the darkness even more dark with the shadow and sliver of light that penetrates from outside. Unable to adjust their eyes to the darkness they head deeper into the rooms, to further be certain that nothing of harm hides within them. All they find are stone tables and dust.They continue this process until they reach the end of the corridor, and here they find a flight of stairs, leading to the very floor that holds the very same barrister railings that Jose was wary of.

Frank and Lucas find La Fonte and Jose at the very far end of the other side, Jose entering a room with La Fonte glancing towards them before standing outside the doorway Jose entered and looking into the room. Frank and Lucas give a glance at La Fonte as well before entering a room as well. Needless to say, none of the rooms hold anything of merit. They are empty, except the stone tables within, and pitch-black in darkness. They both meet in the middle and without a word they relate that there was nothing found with shaking of the heads and shrugging of the shoulders. La Fonte indicates with his thumb, “So we check outside now?” Frank nods. They both head down back to the first floor of the customs or station building. They head towards the arched doorway that leads to the outside, to the rest of the cavern.

Jose decides to take a glance outside the opening, that seemed to serve the purpose of a window, they just passed. He pauses as he frowns. Lucas is at the front of the group and the first to approach the arched doorway.

A shadow rises from the outside, a silhouette in the face of the light shining from above the cavern. And as fast as the shadow rises, a naked skeleton enters the building, right in front of Lucas, its fleshless face grinning with teeth.

Lucas stops, his eyes wide open. The skeleton has not noticed him, just looking straight ahead, paused right at the entrance, taking in the sight of the station in front of it. La Fonte is equally surprised but is able to react, pulling Lucas back and raising his rifle.

“Hold fire, hold fire”, Jose hisses in a low voice, as he rushes forward, “ Drag it into one of the rooms.” He rushes towards the skeleton, jumps it unaware and they fall to the ground, the clatter of bones and the thud of muscle sounding at the impact. Before the skeleton can fully be aware of the fact that it is being attacked, Jose pushes himself off the skeleton and gets up, as the skeleton attempts to ward itself from whatever is accosting it. Jose quickly circles around, grabs the skeleton by the chin and neck, and quickly walking backwards drags it along the floor, towards the nearest room. The skeleton has one bony hand on one of Jose’s hands and the other hand on the floor being dragged along with it, attempting to grasp anything it could. Its legs are flailing as it gets dragged along.

The skeleton gets dragged into one of the rooms along the corridor, La Fonte and Frank quickly following after it. Lucas is slower to follow as he seems to still process the fact that he saw a moving skeleton. Inside the room Jose has the skeleton in a body lock, both of his legs bent on top and folded around the skeletons own legs, preventing the legs from kicking free. Jose’s arms are tucked under the armpits and winds back up around the neck preventing the skeleton from using its upper body and losing a portion of mobility for its arms. The skeleton doesn’t really know what to do except to continue to use its never ending supply of energy to continue to resist. Jose doesn’t know what to do either other than keep it in a body lock and maintain his position of power. But the skeleton is getting more and more used to its position and is succeeding in wrestling more and more power away from Jose and his position of power. “Help me”, Jose hisses. La Fonte puts on the safety for his rifle, leaves on the ground and joins in to put his own weight onto the skeleton.

“How the fuck am I supposed to really help?”, he demands, “ All I can do is put more pressure on it.”

Jose: Kill it.

La Fonte: (grunts as he gets into a more dominant position) It’s already dead. How the fuck am I supposed to kill something that’s already dead?

Jose: Break it, do something.

La Fonte: Fuck

Frank is watching from the entrance of the doorway, light spilling from one of the openings of the customs building spilling even further into the room behind him. As Jose and La Fontes situation gets more and more desperate with no way Frank can help as far as he can see, he just watches. Eventually he just grabs La Fontes combat knife from somewhere on La Fontes body and he kneels to the right side of the struggling skeleton. He pushes the skeletons right arm away with his right elbow, positions his left hand with one pointed index finger somewhere at one of the ligaments connecting the bones located at the front of the neck. He squeezes in the combat knife and starts digging. Jose doesn’t understand what Frank is doing. La Fonte doesn’t understand what Frank is doing. The skeleton doesn’t understand what Frank is doing.

La Fonte: (in a strained and judgemental tone) What are you doing?

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Frank: I think I saw something like a piano string. I’m going to cut it.

La Fonte: A piano string?

Jose: (in a controlled pants as he struggles) Why would a piano string be there?

Frank: I don’t know. I just saw something shine when it shouldn’t shine. Give me a second, it’s not like we have anything we can do anyways. Me and Lucas will start trying to smash the skeleton if this doesn’t work.

Jose: I don’t see Lucas

Lucas: (somewhere outside the room) I’m… here.

La Fonte and Jose don’t notice the oddity in Lucas’s voice, in his tone, the distance of emotion as if his words are a spectral lingering of their meaning. Frank is too busy, with the string he seemingly can see, to care. The skeleton doesn’t know what Frank is doing, but he carries out his actions with purpose and the skeleton can see that. The skeleton struggles even harder. Right when Lucas stands in front of the doorway, the light behind him, casting a shadow into the room, Frank succeeds, the combat knife snapping out and whatever resistance the knife had gone. The skeleton stops all actions and all its limbs collapse, its skull quickly lowering, held on only by the vertebrates of its neck. Some parts of the skeleton disconnect from the main body, one of its knees is not connected, rolling the leg to the side. Several finger bones have fallen off. Whatever “string” Frank had cut seemed to also be keeping several of the bones connected to the main body.

Frank gets up and takes a step back. Jose gives a great sigh and leans back his arms holding him up. La Fonte pushes himself off the skeleton, scoots to the wall and sits.

La Fonte: So… let’s talk about this.

Jose: That was a bitch. Who would have thought that the undead roamed down here.

Frank: No one did.

Jose: (sighs) So what now? What do we do now? What do we do about this? (He indicates to the skeleton lying between his legs)

Frank: We leave it here. And we leave. For now at least.

Jose: Should we tell the others?

La Fonte: Naw, naw. No. It’ll induce panic. We don’t need panic. If we have to leave, then we leave. But I don’t want to leave unless necessary. This is too good a place for us to leave, just because a bunch of pussies are scared of a dead body. I say we don’t tell anyone. We don’t tell anyone and we case this place out ourselves. We take care of the issues if they are small enough. If they are too much? Then we just leave. We leave then. Just like that. We just leave.

Frank thinks about it and he slowly gives his thoughts on the matter.

Frank: I’m… (he pauses thinking some more) I’m in agreement. But I think we should tell a few of the others and rope them in the matter.

La Fonte: Why?

Frank: Several reasons. One is that if people in the guard know to expect something they would and could be more vigilant and ready to notify us as soon as anything happens. Look at Lucas. He’s white as a ghost. We’ll all die if our guards react like him. Second. (he pauses again) It took three of us to take one of them. It was the same with the Pikas out there. (La Fonte and Jose don’t respond or react to the word “Pika”) I am suggesting that we grab a few more people to help, for the sake of helping, in order to ensure that the group survives. If we fail, in this, or anything else, the group fails. That is irresponsible. The group needs to succeed in surviving. There is no point in keeping the group alive if we are the only ones keeping it alive. We might as well live only for ourselves, if that is the case. The group needs to give a helping hand for their own sake. We can’t keep them all alive with only us. We don’t want to be the only thing keeping them alive.

Nobody speaks as each person computes this reasoning, including Lucas.

Jose: Ok, so who do we tell?

Frank: We tell everyone in the guard. At least that way we won’t be surprised. Then we have some of them witness and experience this new threat personally. Maybe further down the line we tell the others. Either after we can assure them that we are safe or when we feel that they aren’t so timid enough to shit their pants from every living– or dead thing out there.

Lucas, still white in the face and obviously in shock, speaks at this point.

Lucas: Aren’t we forgetting something here?

Everyone turns their attention to him

Lucas: We aren’t putting into consideration that the dead person we just killed- (he pauses trying to say the right words) the dead person we just killed could have been an actual person we could have talked to. I mean we just used an extreme form of violence on him for no reason at all. The yellow monsters – the Pikas – those are definitely not our friends. This – skeleton – did nothing to us. Why are we talking as if we are going to exterminate them when we don’t even know if we even have to exterminate them?

Jose and La Fonte glance at each other, then they look at Frank, then back to Lucas.

Jose: You’re right. We don’t know if they are friendly or not.

La Fonte: But are you willing to risk them not being friendly? I don’t want to risk them. Like your father said Lucas, the moment we fail right now is the moment the entire group's death becomes an inevitable thing. (La Fonte thinks deeply about this) We don’t have the heroes to lose for something like this. None of us are heroes. And none of them – the group – are heroes. We’re just normal people living in an awful world that shows no signs of civility to us. So how can we be civil to them? We can’t afford it. We’ll die.

Jose: You can only afford to be civil when you can afford to take the losses and when you are certain the other party has the ability to and will to be civil. Until then you need to show a strength in arms, until the other party has acknowledged you as equal to them; equal enough, respectable enough, and strong enough that diplomacy is warranted. That diplomacy is needed. That diplomacy and negotiations are required. Until then, we just keep living and surviving the best we can, and that entails us to kill everyone who isn’t us and potentially harmful to us. We are no longer on Earth. We are somewhere else. There is no civilization or any nation to keep us safe. There are no laws to keep us or them civil. In this world, without civility, they, and us, are animals by rights. And animals may have no choice but to be savage. We may only have the choice to be savage, until we or they, or both of us become civilized.

Frank doesn’t say anything sensing that whatever he says Lucas will reject simply because he was the one who said it.

Jose: So Lucas. If I said that the ultimate goal of our savage actions was to create stability for our group. If I said the ultimate goal was to become civilized, would you believe that? That if we continue to be savage, only for the sake of living, that we will eventually become civilized by simply surviving? That eventually we would be able to stand on our own two feet, strong and stable enough to negotiate with those parties that are sentient and capable of negotiating? Do you think then that our actions are and were acceptable?

Lucas: Yes… (as the shock recedes and as he computes this new wave of thought color starts to return to Lucas’s face)

Jose: And would you agree that we may need to continue to act in violent ways until violence becomes no longer necessary? And NO violence unless necessary?

Lucas: Yes

Jose: And that sometimes we may need to make violence, more violence than needed, necessary?

Lucas thinks a little about this.

Lucas: Yes.

Jose: Is there anything we did, or doing, or planning on doing that you are still in disagreement about?

Lucas: No.

Jose nods.

La Fonte puffs out through his nose. He and Jose relax. Frank is as still as a stone, more deeper in thought than ever.