Episode 17 —The Short Walk: This Ain’t a Scene It’s an Arms Race

The walk wasn’t long—but it felt like miles.

The buildings had changed. The neat rebuilds from earlier were now half-collapsed shells, windows shattered, and roofs caved in. The ground was even worse; you would think the cleaners had neglected their work. Shredded, headless, organless, armless and legless, all macabre decorations left to rot.

Robin and Kovac led the way, weapons raised, their steps deliberate and silent. Kovac nudged aside a severed head with his boot, the wet scrape of bone on stone echoing too loudly in the still air. His eyes swept the ruins, every shadow a potential threat.

The trees along the narrow street bent inward like skeletal hands clutching at the moonlight. Branches scraped one another in the wind like an unsettling chorus.

The sound was so ominous that Anya clung to Tania so tightly. Tania winced but said nothing, her gaze locked on the path ahead. She kept both knives drawn since Anya kept dropping hers, trembling.

Jasmine kept glancing back at the house where her grandfather was hiding, her grip on a metal bat white-knuckled. Every few steps, she half-turned, ready to sprint back at the first sign of a Suit.

“Are you sure they’re gone?” Anya whispered, voice shaking.

Tania’s jaw tightened. “So far, so good.”

They rounded the corner onto the main road—

And froze.

“Oh my God…” Robin breathed, lowering her shotgun.

A body lay sprawled in the gutter like a discarded puppet, headless. A single vertebra protruded from the torn neck, clean as if sliced by a surgeon’s blade. The arms were charred black, skin fused to muscle like molten iron had seared it from the inside out.

Jasmine staggered toward the corner of a building. In the shadows, resting on the cracked cobblestones, was a head. She knelt, trembling, and lifted it carefully, as if touching it too roughly might wake it. She placed it near the body without meeting its lifeless eyes.

“Mr. Kawasaki?” Anya’s voice cracked, tears streaming freely. “How…when…”

Jasmine’s lips quivered, words tumbling out like she didn’t believe them herself. 

“Grandpa and I… saw it happen. We just… we couldn’t do anything. We just hid.”

Robin knelt and touched Jasmine’s shoulder gently. “It’s not your fault,” she said softly. “You did what you had to do.”

“Hon,” Kovac called. His voice carried a grim weight.

Robin stood and crossed to him. Lying at his feet was another corpse—limbs severed, blood pooled thick and dark around the stumps like tar. But Robin recognized the face instantly.

“Jacob,” she whispered.

Kovac crouched and pressed a hand to her back. Without a word, the two of them lifted the two bodies and carried them to the base of a tree on the sidewalk. They laid them down side by side, arranging them carefully, the way you’d tuck children in for their final sleep.

Robin wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and clenched her jaw. She grabbed her shotgun and moved on.

It didn’t take long before they saw it.

The church loomed in the distance, its charred spire a blackened spear against the night. But it wasn’t the building that froze their blood.

It was the Suits.

Hundreds of them.

They circled the church like vultures around a corpse, twitching in jagged, unnatural rhythms. Their elongated heads were tilted skyward, faces fixed on some unseen signal. Anyone who stumbled too close was immediately sliced apart, burned or shredded. The ground around them was littered with fresh carnage.

The flames licking the church’s roof had begun to die down, leaving only glowing embers.

“Wait… there!” Jasmine whispered, pointing toward the broken road.

Two figures bolted from the burning building, moving at impossible speed, weaving through the Suits like they weren’t even there.

“It’s Michael and Sasha!” Anya cried.

Tania stepped forward, knives clenched in both hands.

Robin grabbed her shoulder. “Wait! We can’t just rush in....”

Tania shook her off, her nose flaring. “I’m not letting them take her. Not while I can still fight.”

Robin didn’t argue. Her voice was quiet but urgent. “I know. But let’s be smart. We’ll go around the back.”

They slipped into the alley that curved behind the church, the air thick with smoke and soot. The orange glow of fire spilled from the shattered steeple above but the Suits were nowhere to be seen on this side.

Kovac moved in a low crouch, his axe raised. “They’re all at the front.”

“Maybe,” Robin whispered, scanning the darkness. “But stay low. We don’t know how many made it inside.”

Up above, a faint window flickered with light. Shadows moved behind the curtains—voices too muffled to make out.

Kovac grunted and bent down. Robin stepped onto his hands, letting him boost her up. Her boots scraped against the wall as she grabbed the rusted sill and hauled herself over, slipping through the narrow window in one clean motion. She landed below aiming her weapon immediately, followed by a wave of her hand signalling the all-clear.

Jasmine was the last to follow, her breath shallow, heart hammering. She hovered outside the frame a moment longer than the others, her eyes darting down the alley.

Robin had already reached the church’s rear door—a blackened iron frame sagging inward, warped by heat/ she touched the handle and hissed.

“Move,” Kovac said, stepping back. With a grunt, he kicked it open cracking the splintering wood.

No movement.

Robin led the others silently, boots crunching softly over blackened debris as they moved through what had once been a narrow service hall. The only light came from the sanctuary’s main chamber, flickering like dying embers through a doorway at the end of the corridor.

They stepped into the nave and froze.

Sasha and Michael stood near the center aisle. Beyond them, at the pulpit, Pastor Mathers was framed by firelight, hands raised as though mid-sermon. Beside him was Clara, sat upright, head hanging forward, streaks of blood and ash masking her face.

And behind them…

Robin’s breath hitched.

The Crimson Suit stood impossibly still, its faceless head tilted toward Sasha and Michael with the slow deliberation of a predator that had already decided there was nowhere for its prey to run.

“My child… you came back,” Mathers whispered, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on his face. “I’m sorry…”

“Let’s not talk about that, Dad,” Sasha cut him off, voice firm as she stepped forward. “Where is the doll?”

Robin tightened her grip on the shotgun and moved in a little further, motioning for the others to stay close. She felt it before she saw it.

It knew they were here.

The Crimson Suit’s faceless mask shifted from Sasha to the group lurking in the shadows. The movement was slow, deliberate, but it radiated the kind of predatory intent that made Robin’s breath catch in her throat.

“Shit,” Kovac muttered

“I… I don’t know. This Suit came in and started throwing bowling balls around, destroying chairs. Then it knocked over candles, set fire to the upper floor. Everyone else ran, but it wouldn’t let Clara and I leave. And it just stood there.”

A flash of understanding passed across Sasha’s face. Everything she had learned. The visions, it was starting to make sense—but not completely. She had one more card to play to confirm her theory,

“Got it,” she whispered.

She started forward.

“Sasha!” Tania called from hiding, her voice sharper than she intended.

The Suit’s head snapped toward the sound.

“Don’t go!”

“Stay back,” Sasha said, never turning. Her voice was calm, measured. She reached the pulpit and addressed her father and Clara. “Get up. Slowly.”

The two rose shakily to their feet.

The Suit’s arm jerked up, gripping a bowling ball ready to strike.

“Stop!” Robin shouted, raising her shotgun and training it on the machine. “It’ll attack if you move!”

Sasha didn’t even glance back. She stared straight at the machine’s eyeless face, voice steady.

“You know,” she said softly, “I always wondered why everyone in the school was killed but the library was left untouched. I know a Suit came to the door, and even with our barricade, it could’ve easily broken through. But I didn’t connect the dots until we passed them outside. They killed everyone who got near but didn’t even lash out towards me. It’s because.... they can’t hurt me.”

To be Continued...........................