Going through the 'EMERGENCY EXIT', I hurriedly made my way down the stairwell. For now, this was our best hope of reaching the ground floor. The group followed close behind, a stream of kids funneled their way through the doorway and onto the stairwell, their footsteps layering over each other into a tapestry.
The doors swung shut after all the kids had managed to get through. Then it suddenly burst open again.
The sound the doors made as they slammed against the walls was not quiet. It rang through the entire stairwell, the echo bouncing between the floors above and below us, announcing exactly what had just followed us through. I cursed under my breath and kept moving. I wanted to look back. Some part of me felt the need to confirm it with my own eyes, to see it rather than just know it. But I wasn't afforded that luxury. Looking back meant slowing down, and slowing down now meant that the figure could… I didn't want to think about it.
So, I kept running.
The whole group of kids ran faster. Whatever fear or exhaustion each of us carried dissolved into a single shared purpose the moment those doors had opened behind us. We all knew who or what it was which had just come barreling through those doors. We now moved as a unit down the flights of stairs, one landing after another, we met the same cracked concrete repeating again in a way that made it feel like we weren't making progress at all.
But eventually the unit finally began to collapse as some kids couldn't keep up.
It was barely noticeable at first. Kids whose stamina had clearly ran out, those whose bodies had been pushed past the point where adrenaline alone could carry them. They were the first who slowed down, quickly falling behind the group. And then the figure, moving behind us with that same maddening patience, didn't need to hurry to reach them, almost as if he knew something we didn't.
The first scream began on the floor above but was cut as a squelch sound was heard.
My chest ached knowing I couldn't do anything about it.
I didn't look. I kept telling myself not to look back, and so I didn't look and I kept running, but I hated every step of it.
The second scream was closer. The third one even closer. Each time the same sequence occurred, the slowing, the falling behind, the shouts of pain, continued by the silence. I stopped counting after a while because the number was becoming something I didn't want to remember.
John was a tiny bit ahead of me, he held one of his hands grazing the railing while taking the stairs two at a time with a speed that I was doing my best to match. His breathing was steadier than mine. I could hear my own breathing draw quicker and grow more ruffled by the second, feeling the burn on the side of my ribcage and an ache spreading through my legs from something that had started as a small discomfort and was turning into a serious issue.
Then the building suddenly began to shake.
It started deep. Somewhere structural. The kind of sound that a building made when it was being demolished. The groan became a shudder, and the shudder became a full tremor that sent a crack racing up the wall beside me fast enough that I could follow it with my eyes.
Then the stairs simply weren't there anymore, and in their place stood a bull-like anomaly. It stopped, before looking up at us and letting out a fierce cry.
The three flights below us crumbled to dust, concrete and the railing giving way to where the bull had just charged. The kids at the front lurched to a stop, arms shooting out, grabbing at whoever was nearest. Dust rose from the gap in a slow pale cloud and debris flew by like shrapnel.
Nobody moved for a moment, shock evident on all of our faces.
I, having not seen anything like it before, stared both terrified and puzzled before catching my breath and spoke aloud.
"What the fuck is– "
"It's a gate creature!"
"Run!"
Some of the kids yelled in a demented sort of panic.
Going down was no longer an option.
"This way!"
John said as he had already turned to the door behind us. He pushed it open, and looked back at the group, the group quickly understood and followed behind.
We went through.
The floor we stumbled on was vast and dim just like the previous ones. Unlike the last floor, this one had tiled floors, some cracked but most still intact, but that wasn't the only thing different from the previous floor, this floor seemed to contain many more things sprawled around it. Long counters bolted to the walls, their surfaces stripped bare. Overturned trolleys frozen mid-roll with their wheels locked at odd angles. Doorframes with no doors left in them opening into smaller rooms beyond, each one swallowed in darkness. The ceiling was high and water-stained and in several places the ceiling had already come down entirely, leaving mounds of debris that broke the open space into a maze of partial cover.
Crates were sprawled around everywhere. Small ones were stacked like building blocks. Larger ones sitting alone in the middle of the floor as if left during delivery. Some had already split open, their contents long gone or scattered across the ground in pieces.
The group that came through the door was smaller than the one that had entered the stairwell.
I didn't let myself count, but it was visible at a glance that we were missing a large amount.
The energy that had carried us down through those flights was long gone now. Whatever desperate unity which had held us together had broken apart once we saw that gate creature, and what replaced it was something thinner and quieter. The kind of stillness that came from bodies that had been burning through fear and adrenaline for too long and were finally reaching the bottom of even that reserve.
Someone crumpled down against the wall near the entrance of the room and did not get back up, most likely too tired to continue.
Others scourged around, almost without meaning to. They delved deeper into the floor, hiding behind crates, into the dark of the doorless side rooms, under the long counters along the walls. Not a plan. Just instinct, they had the instinct to hide, knowing what was chasing right behind them.
John grabbed my arm and pulled me down behind one of the medium crates surrounded by a mound of smaller ones near the corner of one of the dark rooms. The crates were wide enough to cover both of us. We dropped to our knees on the cold floor and pressed our backs against the wood and for a moment the room was almost quiet.
Then the stairwell door opened. It was quiet like trying to sneak on a scared little rabbit.
The figure didn't rush in. That gave me a sense of déjà vu, which made me freak out internally. The figure stepped through the doorway at the same slow measured pace it had carried through when he used to drag us down that damned corridor. He paused in the entrance and simply looked at the room. Taking it in. Not searching frantically. Just looking, with the calmness of someone that already knew how this was going to end and had no particular feelings about the timeline of the occurrence.
I pressed my back harder against the crate and fixed my eyes on the floor, as if I could just teleport out of here if I just willed it enough. Of course, that didn't happen.
Beside me John had gone completely still. I could see the side of his face from where I was crouched. His jaw was set. His eyes tracked the gap between the bottom of the crate and the floor, watching the figure's feet through that thin sliver of space with an intensity that didn't waver.
The figure began to move through the room.
His steps were slow and methodical as if working his way through the floor. Walking between the crates. Pausing at intervals. Dragging a smaller crate aside here and there, pushing a toppled trolley out of the way there. It wasn't guessing. It was working through the space the same way it had worked through the corridor above, one piece at a time, with no wasted effort and no visible urgency.
Then the first scream came. It came from somewhere across the floor.
It was sudden. Cut short, like he had done to many others before.
John closed his eyes briefly before slowly opening them again.
A second sound came from one of the other doorless rooms along the far wall. Then silence. Then a third from somewhere noticeably closer than the second, and the silence after that one had a different quality to it. Settled.
My hands were flat against the floor. I noticed this without being able to do anything about it.
The footsteps started to inch closer.
I could see them through the gap under the crate now. Slow yet still even, stopping occasionally, resuming without hurry. The shadow the figure cast shifted as they moved between the light, stretching and shortening across the floor in a way that depicted its frame.
John shifted quietly besides me, he lowered himself into a crouch, one hand pressed flat against the side of the crate. Preparing for the worst.
The footsteps came to an abrupt stop.
This set my heart ablaze. My heart pumped at an unnatural speed, just as if it was about to come bursting out of my chest.
The figures shadow was falling across the floor directly in front of us, cast long and still through the barely lit dimming lights on the half-collapsed ceiling. A shape I had come to recognize by now. It was tall, and his shoulders were wide. The shadow stood completely motionless in the way of something that had already made its decision.
John turned his head and looked at me. It was just for a moment. His expression wasn't panicked, or at least he seemed. I could still see the slight tremble in his fingers as his eyes slightly dimmed.
The shadow shifted as the figure raised his arm.
And then, the machete came flying down towards us.