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“Where are we going? Pezzy?”
“Puffer? Puffer. Shhhh…remember Quiet Game?”
Pezzy spared one last glance up the stairs where Droid and Grizzy silently disappeared up, before closing the closet door with painful consideration and turning to a pair of blown-wide eyes and a fervently nodding head of his very much grown adult friend.
Or, as of the last five minutes, his eight-year-old kid. His glasses are cracked from falling off of his too-small head, and his clothes are filthy, not that any of them four have had a care of hygiene for months, now.
And the very reason for their negligence is about to burst through the front door of this abandoned house, any second now, its roars and thundering steps audible for blocks. Hiding, no matter how cowardly, is a skill they’ve grown very accustomed to.
Just like now. After Puffer finished nearly nodding his glasses off, he scurried off to the back corner of the closet, grabbing with a focused look at the padded winter jackets littering the floor and draping them over his back. The fort grew fast as he collected more, only needing a careful adjustment from Pezzy to keep it steady until the kid was completely lost behind a behemoth pile of insulation for protection.
Pezzy had moved closer, leaning against the pile as both a backrest and human shield. In good time, too, because it was time to cue the monster to barge in.
Any second now. 3…2…1…
Muffled roaring echoed, closer now but not quite at their doorstep. Maybe another count?
3…2…1…
There it was, the clattering of the stacked books at the bottom of their driveway; their tripwire warning signal, because that noise travels as clearly in the silence as the monster running closer…closer…
And smashing straight into the door, wood shattering, hinges ignored. Just in time.
The house’s stale, dead silence was now broken by the heavy breathing and the horrid scrape of talons cutting through hardwood flooring. It wasn’t roaring, now. It was hunting.
Its tactic was its usual: force their prey out of hiding.
With a twisted frown on his face, and leaning against the pile of clothing with more, hopefully comforting, pressure, Pezzy predicts they’ll have about twenty more minutes left to enjoy this house before it comes crumbling down to join the rest on its street—it’s been lucky to be on a cul-de-sac.
The pile shifted almost imperceptibly underneath him, and Pezzy relented, left hand slipping underneath the fur lining winter hoods to grasp onto Puffer’s tiny hand. The kid, timidly, tapped him on the top of his wrist. How long? It asks. If he could speak, his high-pitched voice would be trembling almost as much as his tiny tapping was.
Pezzy squeezes his hand tightly in response. Soon .
It’s squeezed back in either acknowledgement or in need of comfort, he doesn’t question it. Five minutes ago, Puffer would have slapped him for holding his hand like this, the man finding his moments of lucidity from his kid brain to be akin to treasure to him. Pezzy doesn’t question that, either; he wasn’t the one cursed into being a kid seven days before an apocalypse, after all. The least he could give his friend was sympathy, let alone some of his usual life’s independence.
Pezzy tuned out Puffer’s shakiness, just tightening his grip every time his friends’ fingers twitched on instinct. His real worry, obviously, was the monster. Immediately after ensuring the house was clear some time ago, he kept a mental map of it. Right now, it was stalking through the entryway, slashing up the ground where it intuitively believes its prey will be hiding. Some underlying instinct from being a tunneling apex predator, or something.
It’ll probably go through the dining room wall next and enter the kitchen, Pezzy noted. It was the first place he noted seeing dried blood on the walls, obvious to the entryway’s line of sight even without the monster’s heightened sense of smell. One more wall after that, and he’d be in the living room, and in the far corner of that? Their closet. Against the wall on the opposite side? A staircase. Up to Droid and Grizzy.
Neither of those options were good for their twenty-minute-countdown, and the telltale sound of the dining room drywall crumbling as the monster let out a roar was the sign of it starting.
Tick tock , Pezzy thinks dryly. Where are you Droid?
Almost in reply, a child’s wail ripped through the silence. It was muffled, more like a cry of surprise more than anything, but any sound is death, here.
There he is, Pezzy realized, biting back an audible sigh as the monster practically lunged for the staircase, the house shaking violently as the kitchen wall was decimated in its path. Don’t die .
He was pleading to air, at this point.
—
“In here.” Grizzy hissed, pulling at Droid’s sleeve with more force than a five-year-old body should be able to logically have. Though, with the panic constantly pulsing through Droid’s mind during these months, he never had the blood pressure left to care for it. “Hurry.”
Droid dove more than ducked into the house’s master bedroom, grabbing Grizzy and hurriedly hauling him to the bed. Stuffing him under unceremoniously, the smaller easily acclimating to the space, Droid sucked in a breath. Think small , he thought, before forcing himself underneath the huge bed. Logical claustrophobia be damned, he was going to deal with pressing every inch of his body on the dusty planks of the bed’s foundation for a few minutes.
And a few minutes is probably all he’ll get, before he’d had left. Well, having left life or the house is another question entirely. Grizzy set a hand on Droid’s forearm, guiding his weaseling into the hiding spot. His other tiny hand was placed on the floor, sensing the house’s shudders as the monster entered.
Droid, especially him, never asked to live in a horror movie, or a horror game, whatever you could call this. Most things he could find a reason to laugh at, to break the suffocating silence, but not this. Any noise, any shift, any and every subtle motion that vibrates something is pure and utter death.
It’s terrifying, and he’s been late to get over it as his friends have. Even now, Grizzy was lying on his back, slightly propped up in a sitting position with his palms flat on the floor. He met Droid’s eyes, aware and focused, not teary like his tiny child form implied he’d be in this situation. Grizzy dipped his tiny head, eyes darting over Droid’s shoulder and back to his eyes rhythmically, intentionally.
Right, the plan . At the top of the staircase, there was a simple, straight hallway. To the left, a double-door to the balcony. To the right, two doors, closer by only a handful of feet being the master bathroom.
Logically, the monster will walk up the stairs, “check” the bathroom by tearing it to shreds, then go through the wall into the master bedroom. Meanwhile, they’ll slink around it, and run down the stairs to join Pezzy and Puffer. Logically .
Droid nods before curling and twisting his body to look over his shoulder. The wall to the bathroom, and door, was too close for comfort, not that anything about this position screamed comfort in the first place.
No. They had to get back to Pezzy and Puffer as soon as possible.
“Droid…” Grizzy’s whisper was quiet, but it had Droid snapping back to face him in twice the amount of speed. Its tone sounded pained, teetering on a whimper, and Droid watched in real time as the confident look of his friend morphed into one of a wailing preschooler.
And wail, he did, tears starting to stream, his voice rising in volume enough to make Droid’s blood boil with adrenaline, “ Drooooid! ”
It didn’t take the sound of a roar to make Droid shut him up with a hand against his mouth. “ Shi– crap –quiet game! Quiet game, Grizzy!” He hissed, waiting for the kid’s whines to cease before he retracted his hand. He immediately felt swamped with guilt at the teary, wide-eyed look his friend gave him, pulling him closer to his squished side as the staircase thundered with the monster rushing up it.
It’s now or never .
The steps stopped. Something made of glass shattered, likely one of the frames on the upstairs tables being forced out of the way by the monster. Droid saw it earlier, his gut twisting. A family of three was pictured, a young girl smiling toothily at the camera with her parents each holding her shoulders.
He didn’t want to add another blood splatter to this house’s walls. The monster was still, for now, its heavy huffing muffled but audible down the hallway.
Go into the bathroom, go into the bathroom.
One rippling growl sounded, then a boom! as the monster burst into the bathroom.
Squeezing Grizzy to his chest, the kid limp in fear beside him, Droid rushed to shift out of the hiding spot, darting to the bedroom door as he heard a pipe burst in the bathroom, the monster stumbling around with a howl of fury. Bathroom tiles were shattering at an impressive pace, giving Droid the cover to duck down and scoop Grizzy into his arms, the kid clinging in his hold, crying silent tears.
He waited for the smash! of the bathroom mirror to sound before taking the chance to sprint forward. His blood pounded in his ears, his arms wrapped around his kid friend almost as tightly as he was holding onto him.
They made it to the top of the stairs, starting down it, when the monster roared . Droid didn’t spare a glance behind him to know it was following.
He didn’t have to look behind him to know that its pale skin glinted in the frail moonlight from the balcony door, the tufts of fur it once had from its life underground burnt off in patches from exposure to the alien sun. The pale skin was stretched taunt against its bony, starving four-legged form, its shoulders hiked uncannily high to give the monster another two feet of height to make it nearly hit the roof. Lower, just above where its paws were replaced by solely jet-black, curled talons as long as Droid’s arm and strong enough to tunnel through rock, was its head. Its nose jutted out in a narrowed snout befitting that of an overgrown mole, mouth permanently ajar to display two jagged rows of teeth; One makes the first contact, draws the first blood, and one keeps their prey still.
Droid only tightened his grip on Grizzy, and dove over the railing.
And with a gasp of short-term relief, they smacked into the couch cushions, rolling off of it in an instant as the closet door flew open.
With barely half a second to think before the monster would be downstairs, Droid dove into the closet, shoving Grizzy through first into Pezzy’s arms before snatching the doorknob and yanking the door carefully closed.
He hardly dared to breathe as the monster shook the aged house right outside the door with its growls, with its frustration at losing its prey. In its underground habitat, it’s unlikely it ever lost a hunt with how furious they became when the four dared to actually survive their attacks.
Oh, but they didn’t survive yet.
As one, they recoiled backwards as a talon stabbed through the wooden door, its curl blurring in his vision with how close it came to Droid’s face.
Well, this is how we die. Fuck.
He dared to glance at his friends, one last time.
Grizzy had been passed to Puffer in the corner, the older kid hugging his pseudo-brother tightly from his fort of jackets, forcing Grizzy’s head away from the door and closing his eyes into a hood’s fur lining.
Pezzy was pulling at Droid’s arm to move away, his eyes wild with pure terror that Droid months ago thought he would never see on his friend’s face. His hand was wrapped around his forearm to turn both it and his own knuckles white, but Droid didn’t care, trying to take in every image in his final moments.
Don’t look , Pezzy mouthed as Droid moved with him to crouch in the corner with the kids. The door was ripped off its hinges behind him; he didn’t look to see the monster’s glee, and Pezzy didn’t, either. Puffer looked up from his embrace with Grizzy, eyes bouncing from Pezzy to Droid questioningly, almost begging them to have a solution, to get them out of this as they usually do. They returned this question with looks of hopelessness and shared apology.
There’s nothing we can do. We’re sorry.
That’s when Puffer’s eyes flickered to the doorway, at the monster shifting in the close quarters to lunge, and his fear-riddled gaze hardened into something more mature, aware.
And he looked, and sounded, absolutely fucking pissed.
“Puffer!” Pezzy cried as the kid darted under his arm right between the adults, throwing his own arms out protectively and sending a glare that’s usually never directed so sharply upwards at something taller than him. His voice came out tense, strained, but decidedly himself .
“Fuck. Off.”