The first crack of wood snapping made Tanya flinch. A crack of blue light behind the planks dispersed from the window. Tanya clenched the knife, bending her knees to strike.
The second one sent a spike of adrenaline straight through her chest. The beast forced its snout through the door, shredding its flesh against the nails and splinters. The teeth marks were an inch across each, each beast crunching the wood up to its gums whenever it found the hole in the scuffle. Tanya lunged forward, thumb touching her chest as she backhanded the creature with her blade. The knife slew through soft skin, no cartilage, no bone.
It’s so alien.
Howling and struggling was the only resistance she could feel. The door frame creaked, forced outwards into a side bend. She flipped her knife sideways before the beast could free itself and cut its snout clean off. It slopped to the floor, melting into a pool of clotted black. Another monster filled the hole, then another, each one losing whatever body part Tanya could reach. Behind her, she heard the skid of metal, and she glanced backwards,
Mrs Eceer slid a wok across the floor towards her. She was saying something and pointing to it, but Tanya was too close to the door to hear anything but the squealing and howling. Its cries were something between a pig and a wolf.
Tanya reached down to grab it, ready to use it as a shield. She was too late. The door exploded inward.
The hound-like monster burst through the wreckage, Tanya looking up at its black dripping maw stretched wide, claws scraping deep trenches into the floorboards as it lunged. All she could do was stare as it barrelled into her chest. She hit the ground for the second time that day, air forced out of her lungs, black spots governing her vision. Every thud pounded her further into the floor. Each one sent painful vibrations through her head and back, like a throbbing toothache all over her body.
Then, a flash of blue light and the weight lifted. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees and crouched, unable to stand in this strange dome of fractals. It was beautiful and sparkling, and for a moment in her stupor, she wondered if she was already dead. Beyond it, the hounds morphed and wriggled like a funhouse mirror or like looking through the eyes of a fly. Wetness was dripping down her forehead. She wiped it out of her stinging eye. Her whole body dripped with a mixture of her blood and theirs. She looked over her shoulder. Mrs Eceer was straining her face, her arm outstretched and other arm cradling it to help it stay up. She stamped her foot to keep the dome up, grey hairs escaping her braids. It began flickering. With each flicker, the crowd roared to life again before vanishing into silence once more.
She grabbed the wok, lugging it to her chest and nodding at Mrs Eceer. The sound was deafening, three creatures up in her face, one half on top of the others as it forced its way through the door.
Tanya flailed, leaning around the wok to take potshots at the mob. Every time one of them hit her with full force, she staggered backwards, opening more space for them to file through. The wok was getting heavier and heavier with each bash, she leant it against her shoulder for more balance.
“We gotta go!” Tanya yelled.
“Not yet!” Yelled Mrs Eceer.
Pulling herself to her full height, Mrs Eceer shot off another barrier, this time in the middle of the creatures. They struggled over and over, moving their front ends to bite her and kicking each other to free themselves from this paralysis down their middle. Tanya dropped the wok and darted towards them, holding the knife down the rectangle of magic and slicing down it. She made quick work of the four monsters it had trapped, culling two at the waist, one at the chest and another halfway through its head.
Tanya saw a brain for the first time, black and completely smooth, more like a pebble than the human brains she’d seen in textbooks. It reminded her more of a liver. She cut and cut, never being stopped by a single bone or hard surface. It was like slicing through wrapping paper with sharp scissors.
“Mrs Eceer!” Tanya yelled again.
She looked back to see Mrs Eceer's shoulders deep in her cupboards, bundling up food, tools and notebooks into a makeshift bedsheet sack. The barrier vanished, and the halves of the monsters shrieked and stumbled into the walls and each other. It was much longer than something living ever should have been alive in two halves.
Other monsters scrambled over them, slowed slightly by their headless kin. With each lash of her knife, Tanya took a step backwards, unable to hold her position as the monsters in the room multiplied. Mrs Eceer shoved the sack into Tanya’s arms and dived in front of her with her arms outstretched. Tanya’s mouth dropped open as she yelled for Mrs Eceer to get out of the way. The doorframe had snapped by now, Tanya hadn’t even heard it happen, and they were coming through faster, swiping claws around the side of the wok. Soon, they’d be surrounded.
Mrs Eceer’s guttural scream snapped Tanya’s head back forward. Sparkling blue light pulsed around them as she charged, struggling through the room to the doorway, cocooned in a semi-circle of protective light. The floor creaked with every step, violently shuddering from the constant jumping of masses of heavy bodies as she forced them back out.
Tanya didn’t have the breath to argue further. She turned back to the cupboard, shovelling everything she could carry. Tanya tied the near-bursting bedding into a knot at the top and turned just in time to see the shield pop one of the monsters. It struggled as the forcefield pushed it towards the wall, ripping at the paper to escape this corner and pulling itself around into the doorway to escape. If it had bones, the force would have shattered them into an unrecognisable shape, but as it didn’t, it simply exploded in black goop, no longer able to hold its shape against the force.
“Get to the window,” Tanya yelled.
She had no idea if Mrs Eceer could hear her. The broad woman was hunching over more and more, pushing the barrier like a large boulder with every muscle engaged. She turned and hobbled back to Tanya and the window. The forcefield lasted another couple of seconds before vanishing.
Hounds filled the room, the creaking floor growing louder and louder. There was no flooring anymore, just black liquid everywhere, coating their bodies and everything in the room.
The floor groaned beneath them, boards bowing under the weight of too many bodies, too much movement. Tanya felt it before it happened—an awful, lurching shift, like the whole world had just taken a breath in.
Stolen novel; please report.
Then it collapsed.
The sound was a crack, then thud after thud as the debris hit the shop below, the floor splitting like wet paper. This wasn’t just broken, it was disintegrated. Tanya’s stomach dropped as gravity seized her, black sludge-slick limbs flailing in freefall. Above her, she saw the black goop was everywhere, filling every crack in the floorboards and raining down on the room below.
She hit something hard and unsteady—a counter, maybe a shelf—before rolling off, crashing onto the cold, tiled floor below. Pain bloomed up her spine. Wood, plaster, and writhing, snarling bodies rained down around her.
A hound slammed into the floor, inches from her head, its twisted legs bending at sickening angles. Another crashed through what was left of the counter, sending glass and debris spraying.
Tanya gasped, trying to push herself up, but her hands slid in the same black slick as before. The shop stank—soured milk from the scattered pastries lingering with the rotting meat, something bitter and wrong.
Mrs.. Eceer groaned somewhere to her left. The counter and glass shelves shattered under her fall, and shards of glass punctured everywhere Tanya could see. Some of them even went straight through her arm, bloodied glass sticking out the other side like a voodoo doll. Mrs Eceer's shield flickered weakly around her before sputtering out.
The monsters were already moving.
The nearest hound shuddered, its snapped limbs knitting back together in jerks and spasms.
Is it fixin’ itself?
None of the fallen monsters were on their feet yet, howling in pain and anguish. They had time.
Tanya grabbed for her knife—only to see it halfway across the room, lodged in the claw of a monster.
She gave up on it, sliding down the rubble beneath her until she could stagger to standing. A couple more monsters fell in, pushed by unaware members of the horde, but for the most part, they just stared and squeal-howled down at them. Even the best of fallers had broken limbs, seeming less constituted than a human would be. She was sure they could heal in some way now, though. They were moving more and more, each snap bringing them closer to their original stature.
Tanya limped to Mrs Eceer, stumbling over and over again. The tins of food and rope and everything they’d wasted precious seconds to grab were scattered over the shop floor. She left it alone, only focused on the lady in front of her. Her dark skin was pasty with dust from the ceiling. Tanya prayed it was just the ceiling tiles, she wouldn’t dare think of the alternative. Stumbling over and over, barely able to see the floor through the smog-like dust, Tanya reached the body. Her breaths turned to wheezing and coughing as the dust settled closer to the floor. She couldn’t see Mrs Eceer breathing at all.
“Mrs Eceer, we need to go. Mrs Eceer. Mrs Eceer!” Tanya shook her over and over, starting quietly and growing more frantic. With a firm shake, Mrs Eceer’s body rolled over, and Tanya saw the hand beneath her, or what was left of it. The metal till and half of the cabinet had fallen on it. Tanya lifted it off as best as she could with one leg, still somehow thinking lift with your legs, not with your back despite it being not at all the time.
Sod that. Lift it quick as ya can—get out.
Tears were pouring down Tanya’s cheeks now.
She can’t be dead. She was just here.
Tanya was wasting precious seconds, glancing between the door and Mrs Eceer. She had moments until the monsters inside the room could move again and not much longer until the frenzy outside managed to break the glass. There was no way she survived that.
A wheezing cough snapped her attention down to Mrs Eceer. She thought she imagined it, but then another cough rang out. Her chest began a pained rise and fall.
“Help me up before I regret surviving,” Mrs Eceer uttered.
Tanya decided quicker was better and pulled Mrs Eceer to her feet in one jumpy motion. She whimpered. Tanya wrapped an arm around her shoulder and directed them both to the back door. Without Mrs Eceer’s magic, there was no chance of taking the front.
Halfway to the door, Tanya felt a crunch underfoot. She glanced down and saw a hand. No, a person.
Stumbling backwards, her eyes naturally followed it up to the shoulder and then the face. She’d seen this lady before, the daughter of the owner of this Vietnamese bakery. Her eyes were wide and lifeless, and her mouth drooped open. Tanya felt the churning in her stomach and pressed onwards. Mrs Eceer was drifting in and out of consciousness, her head lulling on her shoulder.
The lady down there is dead, but we aren’t yet. Move.
The corpse’s fingers stretched toward something—keys, just inches away. Tanya forced herself towards it, her body rebelling against every step. She bent down, heaving Mrs Eceer onto her side as she snatched up the keys, her fingers slick with sweat and someone else’s blood.
The wreckage grew denser near the door. Further from the hole in the ceiling, furniture was in fewer pieces. Cupboards, toppled and splintered, forced her to her hands and knees as she dragged herself and Mrs Eceer over the mess. The older woman grunted, grabbing for handholds where she could, dead weight where she couldn’t.
Tanya’s foot caught a broken table leg—a misstep, a pulling of pain. Her ankle twisted, fire racing up her calf. She choked on a scream and kept moving. Blood and fluids oozed out of the bite marks on one leg and her ankle throbbed with each step. Mrs Eceer was growing heavier on her shoulder, and Tanya had to lean to one side to drag her along.
Tanya’s hand clamped the cool metal of the doorknob, she thrust the key into the lock, momentarily filled with thankfulness that she didn’t need to shoulder the door down.
A growl. A thud. It was so close she could almost feel the stench of its breath on the back of her neck.
She twisted, wrenching Mrs Eceer with her. Mrs.. Eceer’s crushed arm whipped against the doorframe as she spun.
So many teeth…
She had a split second to close her eyes, but it never hit her. Instead, it slammed against something—a flickering blue forcefield, a breath away from her face.
“Go!” Mrs Eceer croaked. Blood dripped from her nose, running down Tanya’s arm.
The door swung open, and Tanya stumbled out into the cold, slamming it behind her right as the forcefield phased out of existence. The monster's face was etched into her memory, its snout cut clean off and blackness dripping down its mouth and chest, leaving its rows of teeth black and dripping.
She took a shaky breath and gagged. Once. Twice. The sound of bone shattering under her boot looped in her skull, the feel of it still buzzing through her foot.
Tanya’s body shook. She didn’t know if it was from the air, the pain, or the adrenaline finally catching up.
The sob ripped out of her; ugly, raw, and loud.
She gagged and then gagged again, the crutch of the hand underfoot replaying in her head. Tanya didn’t know if she was shivering from the air or the adrenaline. Her body devolved into shaking. Before she even knew what she was doing, she wailed, sobbing louder than she had in a long time.
Mrs Eceer wrenched away from Tanya, leaning most of her weight against the fence.
“Stop it,” Mrs Eceer hissed.
Tanya’s breath hitched. She froze, turning to look at her. The tears kept streaming, but no sound came out.
Mrs Eceer met her stare with lidded eyes, voice low and sharp. “You want to break down? Do it somewhere where we won’t die.” She wiped blood from her chin, smearing it across her pristine hanky. “Crying is a privilege of the living.”