Chapter 2: Outsider in the City of Ash (2)
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There was no time for thinking, no planning, and no room for fear in its traditional sense. There was only the primal instinct screaming in every cell of Kage Sora's body: Move or die.
The distance between his apartment door and the elevator at the end of the hall was no more than twenty meters, but in that moment, it felt like a marathon across a minefield. The monster behind him wasn't jogging; it was charging with the speed of an Olympic athlete, its dead body ignoring the limits of pain and muscle tearing.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Sora screamed internally, the sound of his sneakers squealing against the polished floor.
He reached the elevator panel. He slammed the button with his thumb with a force that nearly broke the bone. The down arrow lit up blood-red. The light seemed like a sarcastic eye blinking slowly.
Ding.
The sound was soft, polite, and completely contradictory to the monster closing the distance behind him at a terrifying speed. Sora heard the zombie's breathing, a wet rattle like the sound of someone drowning in their own blood. He twisted his head to see the nightmare approaching. The torn face, the slack lower jaw, and the hands extended like the talons of a predatory eagle. Only five meters separated them.
The metallic elevator door slid open agonizingly slowly, with a lethal technological composure. The silver door revealed a spacious cabin, its walls covered in mirrors.
It wasn't completely empty.
There were dried bloodstains smeared on the rear mirror, and the traces of a hand that had slid down, as if someone had tried to hold onto life in their final moments. But the cabin was devoid of corpses.
Sora threw himself inside, his shoulder striking the side wall hard. He immediately spun around, his hand frantically hitting the buttons on the inner panel.
"Close! Close!" he shouted audibly this time.
In that instant, he saw the zombie leap. It wasn't just running; it threw itself into the air toward the elevator door, which had begun to close slowly.
Sora hit the button for the tenth floor.
Why the tenth? His mind was racing amid the panic. The ground floor was a mass grave now; exiting the main door meant suicide. The tenth floor was in the middle, away from the roof and the entrance—a strategic point for reassessment.
The two metal doors began to meet. The gap narrowed.
But it didn't narrow enough.
BAM!
A pale, gray hand, with protruding finger bones, slammed against the edge of the moving door. The hand wedged itself into the remaining gap.
Sora froze.
He knew how these modern elevators worked. They were designed for "safety." Safety meant that if an object obstructed the door's path, the sensors would immediately command the door to open to avoid crushing the occupant.
What had been a blessing in the old world was now a fatal curse.
The door stopped closing. The elevator emitted a warning beep, and the door began to reverse, opening once more.
"No!"
Through the widening gap, the zombie's face appeared. Its white eyes stared directly into Sora's soul. It was trying to squeeze its shoulder in, its mouth snapping at the air, making a terrifying clicking sound of teeth.
Sora realized the cold truth: if this door opened completely, he was dead. The space was too tight, with no room to maneuver. He would be trapped in the corner and torn to shreds.
The knife in his right hand was shaking, not from weakness, but from an adrenaline flow reaching toxic levels.
"Kill or be killed. Now!"
Instead of stepping back, Sora took a step forward.
He decided to gamble. All the movies, all the stories, all the games agreed on one thing: the head. Destroy the brain, and the monster falls.
He raised his right hand, and with a desperate, unrefined move, stabbed the knife fiercely toward the face of the monster wedged between the doors.
Chkk!
The sound of metal piercing flesh was disgusting. But Sora missed.
Due to the zombie's erratic movement and the trembling of Sora's hand, the knife didn't sink into the forehead or temple. Instead, the blade plunged deep into the zombie's left eye socket.
Black fluid and a jelly-like substance burst from the eye, splashing Sora's hand and the sleeve of his leather jacket.
The zombie screamed. It wasn't a human cry of pain, but a savage howl of rage. The stab didn't kill it; it only increased its ferocity.
And due to the impact, the elevator door was now fully open.
The monster lunged inside, the knife still embedded in its eye, the handle dangling from its face like a demonic horn.
Sora stumbled back until his spine hit the cold mirror. The monster was right above him, its stench of death suffocating. The zombie raised its arms to grab Sora's neck, its blood-stained teeth nearing his face.
"Inventory!" Sora thought.
He didn't have time to pull the first knife from the monster's eye. His left hand was free.
Swiftly, he focused on Slot 1.
In a fraction of a second, the handle of another knife materialized in his left hand. The coldness of the metal was reassuring.
The monster was too close; its weight pressed against Sora, trying to push him down.
This time, there was no room for error. Zero distance.
Sora screamed, a mixture of fear and rage, and thrust the second knife up from beneath the zombie's lower jaw, aiming the blade upward, directly toward the brain.
Crunch!
He felt bone resistance for a moment, then the blade slid in as if cutting rotten butter. The knife penetrated the base of the skull and reached the center.
The zombie's body convulsed violently for a single moment, as if electrocuted. Its white eyes rolled up, and the hands that were trying to choke Sora froze in mid-air.
Then, like a puppet whose strings were cut, the heavy body collapsed entirely onto Sora.
Sora fell to his knees under the weight of the corpse, black blood dripping onto his jacket and trousers.
For a few seconds, the only sound in the elevator was Sora's rapid gasping and the sound of blood drops hitting the floor.
"Ah... hah... hah..."
He pushed the corpse off him with all his remaining strength, kicking it away to the other corner of the elevator.
Sora sat with his back against the wall, his chest heaving madly. He looked at his hands. They were shaking uncontrollably. He looked at the motionless corpse before him. Two knives protruded from its head, one in the eye and one beneath the chin. A gruesome sight, a tableau of violent death.
Suddenly, a laugh burst from his throat.
It wasn't a laugh of joy. It was a hysterical, broken laugh, closer to weeping than mirth.
"It's dead... it's really dead! Damn you! Damn this world!" he screamed in a hoarse voice, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jacket, uncaring of the blood he smeared on his face.
He slowly stood up, his legs feeling like jelly.
He approached the corpse cautiously, as if expecting it to rise again. But it was inert.
He reached out and yanked the first knife from the eye. The sound of the blade coming out made his stomach contract, but he fought the urge to vomit. Then he pulled the second one from the jaw.
He wiped the blades on the dead zombie's clothes with a coldness that was gradually creeping into his heart.
"Store."
The two knives vanished from his hands, returning to the safety of the digital realm in his inventory.
Then he frantically checked his body. He quickly stripped off the leather jacket, examining his arms, neck, and chest.
He searched for any scratch, any bite, any red mark.
Nothing.
The skin was intact. The thick leather jacket had done its job, and his reflexes—or perhaps his miraculous luck—had saved him.
He exhaled sharply, as if he had been holding his breath since leaving the apartment. "I'm safe. I'm alive."
He looked at the mutilated corpse fouling the elevator floor. He couldn't stay with this thing in an enclosed space.
He kicked the corpse with his foot and rolled it toward the open door.
"You're not paying the rent, buddy," he muttered sarcastically, and pushed the corpse out of the elevator to lie in the twentieth-floor corridor.
He pressed the tenth-floor button again, then mashed the "Door Close" button repeatedly and nervously.
The elevator finally responded. The doors closed on the scene of the corpse lying in the corridor, slightly muffling the smell of death.
The elevator moved. Sora felt that slight lurch in his stomach as the cabin began to descend.
Suddenly, calm music played from the ceiling speakers.
Soft jazz, the kind you hear in upscale hotels or waiting lounges. Gentle piano and smooth saxophone.
The contrast was striking to the point of absurdity.
Sora stood alone in a blood-stained metal box, listening to relaxation music, having just committed a brutal murder.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror. The red scarf was still in place, but his eyes... something was different about them. The fearful glint that was there minutes ago had been replaced by something darker.
"I hesitated," he whispered to himself, the scene of the hand blocking the door replaying in his head. "My hesitation to stab immediately almost killed me. I waited until the last moment. I waited until the door opened."
He clenched his hand, stained with small spots of dried blood.
"I won't hesitate again. Next time, I'll strike to kill before they even think to attack. This world has no mercy for the hesitant."
This was his first lesson, and its price was a horror that would haunt his nightmares, but it was a lesson he would not forget.
He looked at the digital screen above the door displaying the floor numbers.
20... 19... 18...
The descent was smooth. His pulse began to slow slightly. The tenth floor would be quiet, or so he hoped. He would find an empty apartment, maybe loot some extra supplies, and plan the next phase.
17... 16... 15...
Suddenly, without warning, he felt the elevator slow down.
It stopped.
The elevator stopped completely, but not on the tenth floor.
Sora looked at the screen in confusion. The number 15 was lit.
"What? Why did it stop?"
He pressed the tenth-floor button again. No response.
Then, horrifyingly, the direction arrow on the screen changed. Instead of the down arrow, the up arrow lit up.
The sound of the motor rose, and the elevator began to ascend slowly.
Only one floor.
From 15 to 16.
Sora froze in place. His hand automatically went to summon the knife from the inventory, but he stopped.
The elevator was ascending because someone had "called" it from outside.
Someone pressed the button on the sixteenth floor.
Do zombies know how to use elevators?
"Impossible," Sora quickly thought. "These creatures are only moved by instinct. They don't have the intelligence to press a call button."
So... a survivor?
Or perhaps something worse? An advanced type of mutant?
The elevator stopped.
Ding.
The same gentle sound, but this time it felt like a boxing bell starting a round.
Sora retreated to the back corner of the elevator, his back protected, and his hand ready to summon the weapon in a fraction of a second. He held his breath.
The door opened.
No monster lunged inside. Nor was there a horde of zombies waiting.
Instead, a single man stood in the middle of the doorway.
The scene was so strange that Sora blinked twice to make sure of what he was seeing.
The man looked to be in his early thirties. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a brightly colored, partially unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt that exposed a muscular chest, and carefully ripped jeans (not due to zombies, but as a fashion statement).
But two things caught Sora's attention:
First: The metal baseball bat he was resting casually on his shoulder. The bat was originally silver, but it was now coated in a thick layer of dark red blood and small chunks of... something viscous.
Second: The large black sunglasses he was wearing, despite being indoors, the lighting being dim, and the overall ambiance being the end of the world.
The man stood there with absolute confidence, slowly chewing gum in his mouth with provocative slowness.
He tilted his head slightly down and looked at Sora over the edge of his sunglasses. Sharp, intelligent eyes with a glint of playful madness.
The man looked at the bloodstains in the elevator, then looked at the tense Sora in the corner, then flashed a wide smile that revealed perfectly white teeth amidst the carnage.
"Yo!" the man said in a deep, cheerful voice, as if greeting a friend in a cafe and not a blood-stained stranger in a catastrophic elevator.
He raised his bat slightly in a salute and continued with a sarcastic tone:
"Hey there, kid. You look like you had a wild party upstairs."
Sora remained silent, his hand still suspended in the air, ready to summon the knife. This man... was dangerous. His aura was completely different from that of scared civilians. He looked like he belonged to this new world, as if he had been waiting for it.
"Going down?" the strange man asked, taking one step inside the elevator, imposing his presence in the confined space. "Because I'm headed downstairs to smash some skulls, and road company is always welcome."