The door slammed shut, and in that single, heavy thud, everything finally clicked.I threw my fist against the metal anyway. Once. Twice. The sting was nothing compared to the warmth of blood smearing across the surface."Lilly!" My voice broke, sounding small and pathetic. "Lilly, open the door!"Silence. Only the sound of my own ragged, frantic breathing filled the space, and then, from somewhere behind me, closer than before, the sound of them. The dragging of feet. The wet, guttural noises coming from throats that shouldn't have been capable of making them.I turned around slowly. I felt like if I moved too fast, I’d break the reality of what I was seeing.Six of them. Maybe seven. They were shuffling down the hallway, squeezed shoulder to shoulder in a corridor that should have only fit two people. The overhead lights flickered, and for one terrifying heartbeat, I saw clearly what was left of their faces, and I immediately wished I hadn't.I hammered on the door again. "Kyle! It'

The board came away from the window much easier than it should have.I froze, holding my breath, waiting for the noise to draw someone toward me. But nothing happened. There was just the distant, low hum of a streetlight a few blocks over and the sound of the wind pushing an empty cart across the parking lot, its wheels squealing against the cracked concrete.Ten at night. I’d told Lilly I was just going for a drive to clear my head after the strange morning I'd had. She had kissed my cheek and told me not to stay out too late, treating me like a guy heading to a bar rather than someone crawling through a boarded-up window into a dead grocery store.[Distance to anomaly: 40 meters.]The system's text hovered steadily in the corner of my eye as I dropped down onto the broken tile inside. The smell hit me first: a mix of mildew, rot, and a sour, underlying stench that made the hair on my arms stand up. Further in, shelves lay overturned, and beyond them, the darkness pooled so thick tha

I beat Lilly home by twenty minutes.That was just enough time to scrub the stench of that alley off my skin, and just enough time to sit at the kitchen table and stare into space until the shaking in my hands finally subsided. When she finally walked through the door, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold, she kissed my cheek just like she did every other night. Then she asked what I felt like eating for dinner."Kyle's coming over," I told her. "Let's make it something special."She gave me a smile a real one, warm and effortless, as if the last six hours hadn't even happened. "Yeah," she said. "Let's make it nice."As I watched her hang up her coat, the word guilt felt like it was branded into the back of my mind, but I forced myself to smile back.If they wanted to play normal, fine. I could play, too.-------------------------------Kyle arrived at seven sharp, clutching a bottle of wine and wearing that same easygoing grin. I knew better now; I'd seen that smile crack in the mid

It happened so fast.Too fast for Kyle. Too fast for the guy who used to lounge on my couch eating pizza and nodding off halfway through movies. I threw myself sideways over the kitchen counter, plates shattering beneath me, as I felt the rush of air from its claws, now where his fingers used to be, raking just an inch from my spine.[Threat Sense: Active.][Hostile approaching. Angle: rear-left.]I rolled off the counter just as it slammed into the cabinets behind me. Wood splintered everywhere, and red light spilled across the kitchen floor like blood."Kyle!" I yelled. I don't even know why I said it. Some stupid, stubborn part of me was still holding out hope that there was enough of him left to hear me. "Kyle, fight it!"The thing turned those glowing eyes toward me and laughed with his voice low, distorted, and completely wrong. "He's still in here," it said. "Screaming, actually. Want to hear?"Its jaw unhinged wider than any human mouth should, and the sound that followed wasn

Kyle woke up crying.It wasn't loud. It was just these quiet, fractured sounds. He was curled up on what was left of our kitchen floor, Lilly’s hand wrapped tightly around his, his whole body shivering as if the cold had settled deep into his bones and refused to leave.I stood over them, blood still crusting on my forearm, feeling absolutely nothing that resembled relief."Jay." His voice was wrecked, barely a whisper. "Jay, I saw…I saw things. In my head. It felt like it was going to wear me like a suit.""You're okay now," I said. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded flat.Lilly looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot, silently begging me to be gentler. But I didn't have any gentleness left in me tonight. I’d spent it all on a version of Kyle that didn't exist anymore: the guy from three years of takeout, bad movies, and making rent. Not the man who had stood in a dark alley an hour ago telling Lilly they couldn't keep doing this.I helped him up anyway. I sat him at the remains of th