Every step down the staircase felt like a temporary victory. Paulo felt a fleeting sense of relief with each step, simply because he hadn’t run into any of those monsters yet. However, that relief quickly faded as his eyes were forced to confront the absolute horror that consumed every floor of the building. The carnage was inescapable. Fortunately for him, living on the fourth floor limited his exposure to those macabre scenes.
Upon reaching the ground floor, he saw what was left of the door, shattered and scattered across the ground. The doubt about whether his barricade would’ve really held up against an attack from those creatures lingered in his mind, but it was irrelevant now. The past didn’t matter anymore; the future was his only focus—and that was at the police station.
After hearing Davi’s final screams, Paulo decided his stomach had endured enough for one night. The mere thought of peeking into the guardhouse made his entire body tense up. “I definitely don’t need another image of destruction for my nightmare collection,” he thought, forcing himself to ignore the urge to look. Moving through the shadows like a rookie ghost, he hugged the corners of the walls, trying to make as little noise as possible—which, considering his luck, wasn’t all that quiet. Every snap of a twig or thud of his own foot had his mind conjuring up a new monster, ready to leap from the darkness. He chuckled briefly, a bitter laugh. “I’m probably going to end up killing myself before these creatures get the chance.”
Finally, he exited the building. The street, cloaked in darkness, felt both liberating and terrifying at the same time. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the thick air, and felt a brief wave of relief. "Freedom"—if that’s what it could even be called—was quickly replaced by a strong urge to gag as the metallic and acidic stench, now almost familiar, flooded his nostrils. He coughed lightly, trying to suppress the growing nausea. Somehow, the smell seemed worse than inside the building, where mangled bodies littered every corner.
“What kind of hellish stink is this?” he thought, wrinkling his nose. Initially, he had attributed the smell to blood—which made sense, given the circumstances. But now, after having seen and smelled so much blood up close, he knew this stench was different. It was something deeper, as if the air itself was rotting. "Great, on top of monsters, now we’ve got radioactive air. Because, of course, that’s just what we needed," he muttered, feeling like the smell had lodged itself not just in his nose but in his mouth and eyes, as if his skin was being invaded by that decay with every breath.
“I’ll think about this later, when I’m either safe or dead. Whichever comes first,” he muttered to himself, trying to push the discomfort aside. Time seemed distorted as he made his way toward the police station. The route, so familiar on normal days, now felt like an endless journey. Every corner he turned seemed longer than the last. “Who knew a fifteen-minute walk would turn into an apocalyptic marathon?” he thought, trying not to lose hope.
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Normally, Paulo would take this path to his gym, which was nearby. Now, his mind conjured up a bizarre image of an alternate reality: him running on a treadmill, trying to keep pace while monsters ran alongside him, like some twisted group workout. “What I wouldn’t give for a good leg press session right now. Or maybe a tank,” he pondered, laughing at himself, trying to keep his sanity intact.
As he continued through the streets, one truth became increasingly clear: the world, like his city, would never be the same. The number of bodies scattered along the way made Paulo reflect on the global impact of whatever the hell this was. “If what happened here is repeating elsewhere, overpopulation won’t be an issue anymore,” he thought bitterly.
“How the hell did all of this happen in one single night?” The question echoed in Paulo’s mind as he kept going, forcing himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other. “Just one night. It’s like all of hell decided to pull an all-nighter here.” But the strangest thing of all wasn’t the carnage or the eternal darkness—it was the fact that, amid all the chaos, there wasn’t a single body from those creatures. “Not one dead monster… Nothing. Like they were ghosts or, worse, doing their own recycling.”
He frowned, unsettled by the realization. “No one managed to take one down? In a city full of people with weapons, both legal and illegal?” Thinking about it just made everything more absurd.
This was one of the biggest cities in the state, not some hole in the middle of nowhere. “Where are the cops or the army when we actually need them?” He tried to smirk, but the weight of the thought hit him like a rock in his gut. Their absence—or rather, the glaring absence—wasn’t just some inconvenient coincidence.
In fact, Paulo realized that ever since the comet passed, he hadn’t seen a single police officer. “Did they bolt first? Or were they the first to die?” Quick flashes of uniformed officers running in panic through dark streets began to invade his mind, some still trying to use their radios, not knowing they were talking to no one. The idea was both funny and terrifying. “Imagine the guy on night duty. One second he’s sipping coffee, the next he’s being ripped apart. A typical night in Brazil,” he laughed nervously, but the unease quickly returned. Whatever was happening was bigger than he could comprehend, and the more he thought about it, the more questions piled up.
“Maybe the monsters gave the cops a break. That’s gotta be it, right? Forced vacation courtesy of the apocalypse. Everyone needs a break now and then,” he quipped, trying to distract himself from the questions that truly bothered him. If the police weren’t around to help, if no one had managed to bring down one of these monsters yet, then what did that mean for him? “Or am I gonna have to be the first idiot to try?”
After nearly an hour of walking, crossing streets littered with bodies, Paulo finally reached the police station. He didn’t know exactly what he expected, but the sight that greeted him when he opened the doors of the public building was far worse than any scenario his already disturbed imagination could’ve come up with.