Chapter 32: The Day The World Went Away (4)

Her footsteps tapped sharply across the tile as she hurried forward, scanning each darkened storefront she passed. “Lilly?”

A vise clamped around her lungs. She quickened her steps but kept herself in check—running would only lead to mistakes. As she rounded the corner, darkness shifted and solidified.

The figure stepped into the weak glow of the emergency lights, palms forward. Dirt streaked her face, and what looked like blood darkened her torn sleeve. “Oh, thank god,” Shion exhaled, shoulders sagging. “I was hoping I’d find you.”

Reina closed the distance between them in three quick strides. “Shion! Are you hurt?”

“I was with your sister,” Shion said, the words tumbling out.

“My sister? Where is she?”

Shion’s gaze darted over her shoulder toward the darkened hallway. “We were moving some gear together when they came out of nowhere. A group. Not infected. People. They were armed. One of them grabbed at Lilly and she panicked.”

A sharp, cold spike of fear stabbed through Reina’s chest.

“What did she do?”

Shion pointed toward a shadowed passage. “She ran! Down that way. I was following behind, I thought you were her.”

Reina’s hands balled into fists. Behind her eyelids flashed Lilly—small, terrified, vanishing into blackness where anything could be waiting. Words caught in her throat. No time for questions now.

Shion’s face, beneath the grime and dried blood, had lost its usual composure. The imperious gaze that once pinned Reina in place was nowhere to be found. Whatever resentment she had carried dissolved instantly. Without speaking, Reina pivoted toward the shadowed hallway. Shion’s fingers caught the edge of her sleeve. “We go together,” she said.

They crept deeper into the mall’s abandoned heart, each footfall a whisper against the tile. Cold air pressed against her skin. The generators’ hum faded behind, the passageway constricted around them, emergency lighting reduced to amber ribbons tracing the floor’s edge.

“She can’t be far.” Shion’s voice barely carried.

With each step forward, her pulse thundered, drowning out everything but her own fear. Until something scraped against tile. A slick, heavy sound followed, like meat being dragged.

Every muscle in her body locked.

Her body jerked—and Reina jolted forward, her eyes wide, but before her mind could process what happened. The same thing slammed full-force into her side, sending them both airborne over the railing.

She fell, her back cracked against the floor below, lungs collapsing. Pain flared—white, blinding, searing. Her mouth stretched wide but no sound emerged. The infected fell right after she did, its skull meeting floor with a sickening crack.

Her fingers found the source of her agony, pressing against torn fabric where something warm pulsed between her trembling hands. A hot blade seemed to slice through her abdomen. “S-Shion—!” The name escaped as barely more than air.

No answer.

Another scream died in her throat. From somewhere down the corridor came a chorus of guttural clicks. Reina clawed her way across the floor, each movement sending fresh waves of agony through her. Blood bubbled between her lips with every labored breath.

A jewlery store loomed ahead. Her fingers found the gate’s edge, but slipped in her own crimson trail. With each breath, more of her life seeped into the cold tile beneath her. The word slipped from her bloodied lips as a prayer.

“Please…”

Metal groaned, then surrendered with a final crash. Her body crumpled against the barrier. The clicking sounds multiplied, growing louder. Closer. Her world began to fade at its edges. Beyond the lattice, shapes materialized in the corridor—writhing silhouettes that hurled themselves against her fragile sanctuary as consciousness slipped away.

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

Before them stretched the monorail platform. Beyond it, twin doors gaped into the station’s central hub, harsh light spilling outward. Near the far end of the platform, a figure materialized from the shadows. Its silhouette wavered, head lolling at a sickening angle no living person could maintain. A second form emerged beside it, then a third, their movements jerky and disjointed.

Midori’s skin prickled, a cold sensation slithering from the base of his neck down each vertebra. With each step forward, the darkness yielded its secrets.

First a few dozen silhouettes materialized, then twice that number, then too many to count. They lined the walls, draped across benches, hung over railings. Shoulder to shoulder, as if waiting for a train that would never arrive. The terminal wasn’t just occupied—it was infested.

A weapon’s safety disengaging. Along the line, gloved hands tightened their grip on assault rifles, index fingers hovering just millimeters from triggers. The vanguard advanced with makeshift spears extended—knives lashed to broomsticks and chair legs with electrical tape and twine.

Each thrust found its mark. Each kill collapsed to the floor with a muffled impact, the bodies falling so quietly that nearby infected continued, oblivious to the methodical culling happening mere feet away.

Blinding fluorescence exploded across the terminal, bathing every surface in unforgiving bright light. The station’s PA system crackled to life with a mechanical chime followed by a disembodied voice announcing a train.

The sudden sensory assault transformed the infected instantly—they jerked and contorted, faces tilting upward in unison. Jaws stretched wide, unleashing a cacophony—hundreds of inhuman voices merging into a single, primal howl of hunger. His stomach plummeted. A thousand glimmering eyes fixed on him at once and in that moment, Midori understood with terrible clarity what prey feels in its final seconds of life.

Someone shouted a command, and suddenly the air filled with noise—portable speakers and cell phones blaring at maximum volume, hurled to shatter against distant windows or clatter across the platform.

The infected collided with barriers, crawled over fallen comrades, fingers clawing toward fresh prey. A gun discharged. More shots followed, their reports bouncing off walls as projectiles punched through infected flesh. The world dissolved into madness.

They never stood a chance.

“Back! Fall back!” someone yelled.

Grasping fingers found purchase. Jaws clacked hungrily. Bones snapped beneath. Midori’s body reacted before his mind could process. He felt only the reverberations up his arm as it connected, the nauseating give of corrupted tissue parting. A vise grip seized his shoulder. He twisted violently away, staggering as his footing betrayed him on the blood-smeared floor.

His name tore through the bedlam, a desperate cry he barely recognized. Commands barked from somewhere to his right dissolved into noise. Reality fractured into disconnected fragments—motion, pain.

Through it all, he spotted Haruka, her boots sliding on the slick surface as she fought to stay upright, terror visible even through the smeared plastic of her visor.

His arm reached for her—

He slipped. The impact drove the wind from his lungs as he crashed hard onto the floor. Bodies toppled around him. He twisted away from grasping hands, muscles screaming as he pushed himself upright. The gun bucked in his grip. A spray of dark matter followed as a body crumpled.

The station had become a slaughterhouse. It vanished beneath writhing masses, final cries swallowed by the din. The lights convulsed overhead, casting monstrous shadows that swallowed entire sections of the platform. He shut down. He moved on instinct alone, legs carrying him forward through noise and blood and terror, deeper in.

Every step felt as if he were wading into scalding water. He could barely feel the heat through his gear, sweat slicking his skin beneath the armor. Infected choked every space. They cascaded down stairwells, human waterfalls. The constant thunder of firearms reduced his hearing to a high-pitched whine, and each shot sent fresh waves of agony through his overtaxed muscles.

He spotted it through the carnage—a monorail car with its doors standing open. The promise of escape beckoned from beyond the bloodbath surrounding them. “There!” The word tore from his throat.

Haruka’s body lurched sideways as an infected crashed into her shoulder.

This is my fault.

The air shattered with more gunfire. Crimson mist hung suspended in the light. From the churning mass of bodies, pale and torn fingers shot out, clamping around Haruka’s forearm. Her scream pierced his ears as she was wrenched violently backward, boots scraping uselessly before lifting entirely. The back of her skull connected with the platform’s edge—a wet sound that silenced her instantly.

Kurobane’s gun discharged in rapid succession, each bullet finding its mark in the creature clutching Haruka. The infected dropped dead, but where one fell, a dozen more emerged, fingers outstretched, jaws working mechanically in anticipation.

Midori lunged for her, seized her beneath her shoulders, and dragged her limp form toward the monorail car. Each inch gained felt like a mile as her dead weight threatened to anchor him to the platform.

“Get her inside!” Kurobane’s voice cracked as he squeezed off round after round.

The monorail doors began their mechanical retreat. His throat tore open with a primal sound as he heaved Haruka’s limp form inside, positioning himself next to Kurobane as a human barricade against the infected tide.

Certainty settled in his bones. No help would arrive—no one else drew breath. Their magazines would run dry within moments. The facts of their demise were brutally simple. He could feel their fetid breath now.

What?

The impact against his spine sent him careening forward. His boots skidded. He whirled around. In that suspended moment, he saw everything—Kurobane’s face contorted with fear and something darker. Anger? Those eyes, glassy with unshed tears yet burning with resolve. With hatred. The barrel aimed squarely at Midori’s chest.

Understanding crashed through him.

“You wanted to be the hero.”

Metal panels slid toward each other with mechanical indifference. Midori's jaw unhinged in silent protest. His muscles tensed to spring, fingers already imagining the cold edge of the door, body calculating the narrow gap—Haruka’s bloodied face filled his vision—her chest still rising, falling. He stopped. The car sealed itself with a merciless thud.

They fell upon him. Fingers hooking, nails piercing, teeth finding purchase in the soft hollows between tendons. His world became agony, each point of contact igniting in pain, throat locked around unspent sound. As the mass of bodies pulled him under, he caught his best friend’s gaze one final time.