This city has layers. On the surface, there are gleaming skyscrapers, bustling campuses, and cafes playing pop music. But if you peel away that layer like peeling off a scab that hasn't dried you'll find rotting flesh beneath.
Rocky Brown now walked upon that rotting flesh.
He was in the Old Industrial District, a region on the city's outskirts that had been forgotten by development maps. Here, the sky was never truly blue; always covered by a haze of sulfurous smoke belched out by factory chimneys that still operated half-heartedly. But Rocky's destination wasn't the factories still alive.
His feet, moving as if controlled by an invisible magnet, brought him to Sector, the dead sector.
The warehouse buildings here stood like skeletal remains of prehistoric giants made of concrete and rusted steel. Broken windows stared emptily at cracked streets, overgrown with wild weeds of strange colors green too old, almost black, as if the plants absorbed poison from the soil instead of nutrients.
"Why am I here?" Rocky whispered.
His voice was swallowed by wind whistling through gaps in the zinc walls. His logic screamed at him to turn back, go home, and take sleeping pills. But his instinct said otherwise.
It smells the same here, whispered that instinct. The smell from that alley.
And it was true. The air here smelled of metal, used oil, and… something sweet. A disgusting sweet smell, like the smell of a rat carcass hidden behind a closet for weeks.
Rocky stepped into the area of a fish cannery that had closed ten years ago. Its tall gate had partially collapsed, its chain broken not by cutting, but as if forcibly pulled until the steel stretched like taffy.
He slipped between shadows, hiding behind piles of rotting wooden pallets. His heart pounded fast, a rhythm of fear that had become the only soundtrack to his life.
In the middle of the vast, rubble-filled factory yard, a police patrol car was parked at an angle.
Its rotating lights were off, but the engine was still running, emitting thin smoke from the exhaust. The driver's door stood wide open.
Rocky held his breath. He crawled closer, hiding behind the carcass of a rusted forklift. From his position, he could see two figures in dark blue uniforms standing in front of the main warehouse's gaping dark entrance.
"Dispatch, this is Unit 2-Alpha," one officer's voice crackled through the radio on his shoulder. "We're at the location. Report of noise disturbance and missing person. There are signs of a homeless encampment, but… the condition is chaotic. Over."
The officer, a middle-aged man with a potbelly and thick mustache, looked uneasy. His hand kept touching the gun holster at his waist. His partner, a much younger female officer, was shining a flashlight into the warehouse darkness.
"There's blood here, sir," said the female officer. Her voice trembled. "Lots of blood. But. . . the color is strange."
"Probably paint, Sergeant," replied the older officer, trying to sound authoritative though his voice betrayed doubt. "Punk kids often make a mess here."
Rocky wanted to scream. He wanted to warn them. Run! Don't go in there! That's not paint!
But his throat was locked. He could only watch, staring at everything in silence.
Both officers stepped inside. Their flashlight beams cut through the warehouse's thick darkness, revealing dust dancing in the air.
And then, that sound came.
Not a growl. Not a roar.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The sound of heavy footsteps. The concrete floor vibrated. Dust fell from the warehouse ceiling. The sound was rhythmic, slow, and weighted, as if something very dense was dragging its body closer.
"Who's there?!" shouted the older officer, drawing his pistol. "Come out with your hands up!"
From behind the shadows of a giant grinding machine inside the warehouse, something emerged.
Rocky covered his own mouth with both hands to hold back a scream.
The creature stood nearly three meters tall. Its skin was moss-green, but not a healthy leaf green. It was the green of gangrene the color of rotting, festering flesh. Its skin texture was rough, covered with fist-sized warts that pulsed.
Its basic form was humanoid, but its proportions were a nightmare. Its arms were too long, dangling down to touch its knees. Its muscles weren't formed naturally, but looked like tumor masses forced together. Its face. . . Strange. Its nose was flat as if pressed, its eyes small and glowing red without eyelids, and its mouth was filled with yellow teeth protruding from torn lips.
In its right hand, the creature dragged a large iron pipe. The pipe was rusted, covered with dark brown stains that Rocky knew wasn't rust. And most horrifyingly, the pipe seemed to grow into its palm, green flesh fusing with iron, creating a symbiosis between biology and industry.
Hobgoblin.
The word appeared in Rocky's head, a term from RPG games he used to play. But this reality's version was far more disgusting than any pixels on a computer screen.
"Back off!" the female officer shouted. She stepped back, her flashlight shaking wildly.
The monster tilted its head. It stared at both small humans with cold curiosity, like a child watching panicked ants.
"Shoot!!" ordered the older officer.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The gunshots were deafening, echoing off the warehouse's zinc walls. Muzzle flashes burst from their pistols.
Rocky saw the bullets hit their target. Small holes appeared in the creature's broad chest, spurting thick black fluid.
But the creature didn't fall. It didn't even step back.
It just. . . scratched its chest, as if the bullet bites were no more than annoying mosquito bites.
The monster grinned. A laughing sound came from its throat a sound like a drainage pipe clogged with mud.
Then, it moved.
Its speed was absurd for a creature that size. In one lunge, it was already in front of the older officer. The giant iron pipe in its hand swung horizontally.
CRACK.
The impact sound was wet and crunchy. The older officer's body was thrown sideways like a rag doll kicked by a child. He hit the concrete wall ten meters away, and his body slid down, leaving a wide red trail on the wall. He didn't move again. His body shape no longer resembled human, his bones had become powder inside his uniform.
"Sergeant Miller!!" the female officer screamed.
She kept shooting, but now with blind panic. Bullets hit the creature's shoulder, cheek, neck. But the monster just kept walking forward, pushing through the rain of lead.
It didn't strike the female officer. Instead, it extended its large left hand its thick fingers tipped with black claws grasped the female officer's head.
Rocky closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to watch.
But he couldn't turn off his hearing.
He heard the woman's scream a pure scream of terror suddenly cut off by the sound of SQUELCH. Like a watermelon being squeezed until it burst.
Silence. . .
Only the creature's heavy breathing could be heard, and the sound of liquid dripping onto the concrete floor.
Rocky trembled violently behind his hiding place. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks. His jeans were wet with urine. The smell of death in the air was so thick it could be tasted on the tongue.
They're dead, he thought. Police, guns, law. . . none of it matters.
The monster turned, casually dragging the female officer's body toward the deeper warehouse darkness, as if carrying groceries. The creature began to hum a low, off key, disharmonious note that made Rocky's head ache.
As the creature disappeared into the shadows, Rocky felt something strange.
In the midst of that paralyzing terror, there was another feeling growing in his chest. A feeling colder than fear.
Validation.
He wasn't crazy. He wasn't hallucinating. His professor was wrong. His best friend was wrong. The entire world pretending to be normal was wrong.
The monster was real.
And for the first time in two weeks, Rocky felt. . . calm. A strange calm. The calm that comes from knowing your terminal diagnosis.
He waited ten minutes, twenty minutes, until the creature's humming sound completely disappeared. With legs that still felt like rubber, Rocky crawled backward, away from the warehouse, away from the now-empty police car, away from that smell of death.
When he finally managed to exit the factory area and return to the asphalt road, the sun was beginning to set. The sky was blood red.
Rocky looked at his hands, dirty with factory dust. He clenched them slowly.
"This world has ended," he whispered to the red sky. "No one has just realized it yet."
He walked home, not with the stumbling steps of a frightened student, but with the careful steps of a survivor who had just escaped a battlefield.
He had to prepare. He didn't know for what, or how. But he knew one thing, the food chain had changed, and humans were no longer at the top.