Black Coin

[Chapter 7: The Guest Outside the Door]

[Chapter 7: The Guest Outside the Door]

Seven returned to his temporary fortress, locking the heavy iron door with a deafening Clang.

He didn't relax. He immediately grabbed a spray bottle filled with a high-concentration bleach solution. Hiss... Hiss... He misted the air around the entrance and the corridor, masking his scent.

In the apocalypse, smelling like a human was a death sentence.

Only then did he slide the security chain into place. Click.

Seven pulled out his phone. He opened the offline map cache and typed in the address Chen Sixuan had given him.

[ DESTINATION: YUSHUI GARDEN, BLOCK 3. ]

[ DISTANCE: 7.2 KILOMETERS. ]

Seven frowned. "Seven kilometers," he muttered. "In the old world, that's a ten-minute drive. Here, it's a marathon through a minefield."

The roads were choked with abandoned cars. The bridges were likely compromised. And the streets were crawling with "Walkers"—the shambling, rot-brained remains of the city's population.

But zombies were manageable. They were stupid. Predictable.

The real threat was the Night.

Rule #1: Be wary of the dark.

Rule #2: Never act rashly.

Seven had listened to enough radio chatter to know the truth. When the sun vanished, things came out that defied biology. Shadows that moved independently. Creatures that mimicked voices. Horrors that couldn't be killed with bullets.

"Teacher Chen," Seven whispered, staring at the red dot on the map. "You better have that map. If I die for nothing, I'm going to haunt you."

18:45.

The light outside the alloy shutters died. The city was swallowed by the void.

Seven didn't cook tonight. The smell of food traveled too far. He ate a cold ration bar, chewing mechanically in the dark.

He checked his inventory. Food was low. Water was scarce. But his scavenged tech pile was growing.

He lay down on the mattress, his hand gripping the hilt of his tactical knife. He closed his eyes, but his brain remained on standby, processing every creak and groan of the dying building.

...

02:42.

Scrape.

Seven’s eyes snapped open. He didn't gasp. He didn't move. He lay perfectly still, controlling his breathing, letting his heart rate drop to near-zero.

The sound came from the hallway. Just outside his door.

He rolled off the mattress silently, his socks making no noise on the concrete floor. He crept to the door, pressing his ear against the cold steel.

Thump... Thump.

Two slow, deliberate knocks.

Seven’s blood ran cold.

Zombies didn't knock. Zombies scratched. They pounded. They threw themselves against obstacles in a mindless hunger.

Knocking implied intelligence. It implied intent.

Seven shifted his grip on the knife. He leaned forward and put his eye to the peephole.

The corridor was pitch black, illuminated only by the sickly green glow of the emergency exit sign.

Seven squinted.

Hiss.

He recoiled instantly, his breath hitching in his throat.

Standing directly in front of his door, motionless as a statue, was an old man.

He wore a traditional black burial shroud. His skin was the color of wet ash. His eyes were milky white, devoid of pupils, staring unblinkingly into the peephole—as if he knew Seven was watching.

Seven recognized him.

"Uncle Li," Seven thought, a chill crawling down his spine. "The neighbor from downstairs. He died three weeks ago. I saw them carry his body out."

Why was a dead man knocking on his door?

Seven stepped back, his mind racing. "It's not a zombie. It's too still. Too quiet."

"Uncle Li," Seven thought cynically. "You should have stayed in your coffin. The rent here is too high for ghosts."

He waited. Five minutes passed. Ten.

The knocking didn't return.

Instead, a new sound began.

Scritch... Scritch... Scritch.

It wasn't coming from the door. It was coming from the wall.

Seven spun around, staring at the concrete wall beside the door. The sound was faint, rhythmic—like long fingernails dragging across the plaster from the other side.

"Fuck," Seven cursed silently. "It knows I'm here. It's trying to find a weak point."

He backed away slowly. If the wall breached, he had nowhere to run. He was on the 18th floor. The only exit was the door the monster was guarding.

The scratching continued for an hour. It sounded like a rat gnawing on bone.

Then, silence.

Seven waited another ten minutes before checking the peephole again.

The old man was gone.

But in his place, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, was a girl.

She looked young—maybe sixteen. She wore a trendy baseball jacket, short shorts, and expensive sneakers. A pair of wireless headphones hung around her neck. She looked like she had just walked out of a shopping mall, completely out of place in the apocalypse.

She raised a trembling, blood-stained hand toward the door.

"Help..." she whimpered. Her voice was weak, terrified. "Please... save me..."

Seven stared at her through the glass. His expression didn't soften.

"Nice try," Seven thought coldly.

First a dead neighbor. Now a helpless little girl?

"The Night is playing games," Seven analyzed. "It's testing my empathy. It wants me to open the door."

He didn't move. He had no relationship with this girl. Even if she was real, opening that door meant exposing himself to whatever had killed Uncle Li.

05:00.

Nine hours until daylight.

The girl had stopped moving. She lay pale and still on the concrete floor.

"Is she dead?" Seven wondered. "Or is she bait?"

He looked closer.

Suddenly, a shadow moved in the green light.

Uncle Li stepped back into the frame.

The dead old man shuffled toward the girl. He didn't attack her. He didn't eat her.

He sniffed her.

Seven watched, horrified, as the old man bent down.

And then Seven saw it.

Clinging to the old man’s back, hidden in the folds of the black shroud, was a creature.

It looked like a massive, black centipede. It had hundreds of thin, needle-like legs that dug deep into the old man's spine. It pulsed, throbbing like a parasitic heart.

"What the hell is that?" Seven gasped.

The centipede twitched.

Uncle Li’s body jerked in response, like a puppet on strings. His dead hands shot out, grabbing the unconscious girl by the hair.

[End of Chapter 7]