The world turned gray as a cloud of dust swallowed the hallway.

“Serena!” Russell called out, coughing. Dust choked the air. He pressed his eyes into tiny slits and covered his mouth with the crook of his arm. He heard nothing but the rumbling of the earth and tumbling of concrete, the intensity of the noise ebbing away.

Only to be replaced by multiple songs.

His breath caught. The songs came from behind him, growing stronger, closer…but very much different from the monster’s heartbeat.

They were normal heartbeats. Human heartbeats.

Similar to the ones standing near him.

“What happened here?” a voice asked beyond the grayish haze.

Russell ignored the newcomers for now. He squinted against the dark, fanning his flashlight around to clear the air. Soon, the dust settled, the gray cloud thinning, becoming translucent. The veil blocking his view dissipated until he could see again.

The path forward was gone.

A wall of rubble lay before him. Like the aftermath of an avalanche, debris clogged the hallway, leaving part of the ceiling open all the way to the sky. The side of the corridor the monsters had taken down must have been a load-bearing wall, and the entire structure from the ground floor to the roof had collapsed from the earthquake.

The few unlucky enough to have run back toward his direction looked on with trepidation, covered in dust and stuck on the wrong side of the cave-in. They must be hating themselves now, including Justin. His friend couldn’t tear his blank gaze away from the rubble.

Clayton was nowhere to be seen.

“Clay?” Russell shouted, spitting the grit coating his tongue and brushing off the dust covering him from head to toe.

“I’m good!” Clayton shouted back, his voice muffled. “Serena’s fine too!”

Tension eased away from Russell’s chest, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“R-Russell?” Justin stared at him, his eyes lost and confused. “What do we do now?”

“Wait, is that Flynn?!” a voice exclaimed.

Russell frowned over his shoulder. A small group met his gaze, Caleb and a few familiar faces among them. They numbered more than a dozen, most of them his former teammates, all of them wielding makeshift weapons. Volunteers. The last ones who had left the lobby.

“Yo! What the hell?” Caleb asked, eyeing the wall of debris. “Did you do this?”

Russell rolled his eyes. He approached one of the few intact French doors while others took the initiative to clear a path through the rubble. They lifted one piece at a time, hardly making any dent. Shaking his head, Russell peered through the glass and cursed under his breath.

Only one of monsters remained unconscious outside. The second one stumbled through the bushes of the sprawling garden. The last one was…missing.

So much for going around the roadblock.

Russell eyed the newcomers. “Where did you guys come from?”

“We got separated from Tommy and the others,” Caleb said, resting a thick table leg on his shoulder. “We had to hop between rooms, playing hide and seek with them monsters, but we’ve made it work so far. You?”

“Got our escape route cut off.” Russell pointed at the rubble behind him. The tense silence that followed was thick with apprehension.

“What’s the plan?” one of their old teammates asked, looking back where they came from. “We still have one of those monsters on our tail.”

Caleb groaned and stomped his foot. “Fuck, we’re screwed!”

“Russ? You still there?” Clayton called out. “I…I think Justin didn’t make it.”

“He’s here!” Russell shouted back, joining Justin and the rest with the effort. “We’re going to clear the debris!” If what his old teammate had said was true, they needed to get to the other side of this mess. Fast.

“Can you do it?” Serena asked.

Russell shot Caleb’s group a look, and the new arrivals took the hint and joined in. Others could only carry away smaller pieces at a time. Russell moved the larger chunks himself, flipping one rubble the size of his torso from the pile and sending it crashing on the floor. Around a hundred more to go.

“We’re trying our best here,” Clayton said. “The damn thing won’t budge!”

Russell gritted his teeth. He struggled to pry an even bigger debris from the pile when the entire hill of rubble shuddered.

He dropped the chunk back into its original position. They all jumped away from the pile as sections at the top pitched and slid, sending concrete tumbling down the pile before coming to a rest on the floor.

As if hearing the commotion, a howl echoed down the hallway behind them.

“Russ?” Serena called out. “Can you clear it from your end?”

The rubble was too unstable to climb, too unstable to clear out. They would only endanger themselves if they tried, wasting time they don’t even have.

“Russ?” Serena asked again.

“It’s no use…” Russell muttered, shaking his head in dismay.

Another howl bellowed, closer now.

A shadow raced down the corridor, its dark scales glinting against the brightening red light outside.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

[Scaletooth Savage]

“We need to get inside a room!” one of his old teammates cried out.

“To hell with this!” A middle-aged man who came with the jocks threw away the bar stool he was holding. He picked up the fire extinguisher tucked behind a side table. The others asked what he planned to do as he charged back the way they came from.

The guy pulled the pin, aimed the nozzle in front of him, and squeezed the lever. A stream of white foam spat out of the nozzle, spraying the hallway and covering everything in white, blocking the monster’s view.

If it had a view.

Russell’s eyes widened. “Stop! That won’t—”

The monster tore through the misty white haze and ripped the poor guy apart. It skidded past their group, smearing a bloody trail across the carpet as it cut down another unlucky victim who failed to jump out of the way.

It crashed into the rubble behind them, sending debris tumbling down from above and burying it alive.

The rest of the words died in Russell’s mouth. His stomach dropped in horror at how quickly it went down, how two more lives were snuffed out in a single breath.

How lucky he was that it hadn’t been him.

“W-What now?” asked one of the jocks, his back against the wall.

“Flynn?” Caleb asked as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You good man? You hurt?”

Russell stared at his old teammate, surprised he’d even asked. Caleb had been acting friendlier than usual, but Russell’s attention was focused on the pile of rubble next to towering heap. He didn’t even catch the monster’s level. Maybe the beast was dead. But where was the notification? Did he have to kill it directly for the kill to count, or was it still—

A deep groan jolted the mound of rubble.

Of course, it wasn’t dead.

“W-We should go back,” Justin muttered across from him, quivering. “There’s…There’s no other way…”

“Dude? What happened over there?” Clayton asked from the other side.

For some reason, everyone stared at Russell, waiting for his decision. He examined the obstruction again, cursing their luck. Clearing the rubble wasn’t an option, nor was going outside to bypass it altogether.

They could only turn back.

“We’re gonna look for another way,” he shouted through the rubble, earning nods and resolute expressions.

“Fuck it! Let’s do this!” Caleb said, hefting the spent fire extinguisher dripping with blood.

“Wait!” Clayton called out. “I’m still trying to get the sledgehammer free from the rubble.”

Another thunder boomed outside—followed by a nearby roar.

Beyond the patio doors, the Scaletooth left behind finally woke from its sleep.

Of course, that one wasn’t dead as well; there hadn’t been any notification.

“Leave it,” Russell said, panic creeping into his voice as he waved the rest to escape.

The mound of rubble jerked, the nap of the monster underneath cut short.

“I just need to—”

“Leave it, Clay!” Russell took a step back as everyone else ran away. They had run out of time.

“Russ? What about you guys?” Serena’s soft voice trickled through the wall of rubble.

“You need to go!” Russell shouted as the debris atop the monster shifted. “Leave the weapon, Clay! Help protect Serena and the rest instead!”

“Russ…?” Serena asked again, a hitch in her voice.

“Don’t worry about us,” Russell said, shuffling backward. “We’ll find another way.”

“You promise?” Serena asked.

Turning his back, Russell ran to catch up with the others. He couldn’t even mutter a reply; he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

“You promise?!” Serena’s voice echoed behind him, drowned out by the roar of the monster rising from the rubble.

In mere seconds, the silhouettes of the others reappeared ahead of him. Instead of discovering another way around the rubble, they stood around a closed door, one of them sticking the back of an armchair under its doorknob.

“They’re everywhere, Flynn!” Caleb said as the door rocked against the chair.

“Keep moving!” Russell blew past them without slowing down.

Dark figures prowled beyond the French doors to their left. Hidden dangers lurked behind the closed doors to their right, as if all the rooms in the clubhouse had already been compromised. They had no other choice but stick to the hallway.

But to what end?

And go where?

The song returned, sending his heart rate spiking, only for him to realize they weren’t the alien heartbeats of another monster. He stumbled to a halt when one of the doors to his right swung open, nearly catching him in the face.

“What the—” He stepped back as someone rammed into him, and he caught them before they fell back through the doorway.

A young woman looked up at him. “Mr. Flynn?”

Russell cocked his head, examining the woman’s features, her black her tied into a bun, the white top and black slacks of her staff uniform. It was the same young employee who had been following Serena around. “You’re…Hallie, right?”

“C’mon!” Another staff member passed them by, followed by more people running out of the room as they headed down the hallway.

To where Russell and his own group had come from.

“No! Stop!” Russell called out. “You can’t go there!”

“What? Why not?” Hallie asked.

“T-That way is a dead end,” Justin said, standing flush against the wall. He must have been expecting a monster to pop out from the room, not other people. “T-The ceiling collapsed. Brought down the entire building with it.”

The doorway Hallie had come out of remained open, and Russell peered inside. Identical office chairs surrounded a large table in the middle of the small space, and a wall of windows on the far side illuminated the room.

Large silhouettes prowled beyond them.

No wonder the monsters had broken inside, flooding the clubhouse. The lobby, the hallways, the rooms—the entire freakin’ building was lined with glass.

The first guy pounded his golf club against the carpeted floor a few times, shouting out curses after hearing Justin’s stilted explanation of what had happened. “What now?!”

“We need to get out of here, Rex” Hallie said, trying to calm the guy down.

“No. We need to get to higher ground,” another colleague said.

“We’re not going outside?” Hallie asked. “But we need to—”

“Useless trailer trash!” Rex barked. ”Are you always this stupid? We need to get away from those monsters, not toward them. That means going up to the second floor.”

“But what if there’s another earthquake?” Hallie asked, her voice rising.

“Then you better pray there isn’t another one.” One of her coworkers grimaced at the thought as Rex led the employees down the hallway in the opposite direction.

“But what about the others? The rest of the staff?” Hallie called out after them. “What about Ms. Serena?”

“C’mon.” Russell tugged her forward, going along with the others. “We’ll find some other way.”

The club staff rushed past one door after another, heading in the direction of the lobby. Worry clenched Russell’s heart at the thought, but Rex cut to the right only seconds later, disappearing behind a corner Russell had missed earlier.

The rest followed after the guy’s lead before shouts erupted from behind the corner. They reappeared in the hallway, backpedaling from the wall.

“It…It got Rex!” one of the staff workers with a ponytail cried out.

“Get back! Get back!” another hissed.

Russell shouldered his way through and took a peek. Tucked away from the corridor was a stairway hidden in the dark. A flight of steps led up to a landing without any windows, the dimness cloaking it in an eerie black veil.

No prompt flashed across his vision, but the glinting of scales told him of the presence of another monster.

The dark liquid trickling down the steps told him of Rex’s demise.

“Can we take it?” Caleb whispered, the fire extinguisher raised high over his head.

“Why don’t you use your fucking head, Cal.” One of his teammates pushed his arms down and knocked him on the head.

Caleb cussed under his breath. “You come up with a better idea, then.”

Hallie squeezed her way past the jocks, took one look at the dark staircase, and snorted in derision before sprinting down the hallway.

“Hal!” Ponytail cried out. “Where are you going? What about Rex?!”

“Just follow me!”

Justin tugged Russell’s sleeve. “W-What do we do, Russell?”

Russell blew out an exasperated breath. “Let’s go.” With no other options, their group trailed after her, their footsteps drumming along the hallway.

After a dozen strides, Russell caught up to Hallie. “Are we going back to the lobby?”

“What?!” someone exclaimed behind them. “It’s a deathtrap back there!”

“We’re not heading there,” Hallie said between breaths.

“Then where the fuck are we going?” Caleb asked.

“We’re leaving this place.” Hallie kept her steady gaze forward. “I know another way out.”