Harriet Cassandra

1:07 a.m., Wednesday, February 5, 2020

“Here’s one coming up!” Cassandra said. She anxiously shifted her stance; her left ankle still hurt after the bad fall she had running down the stairs. Fleeing in high-heeled boots was a challenge, but she was too stubborn to take them off; they are very expensive.

She chewed her lips while watching the number displayed on top of the metal doors gradually tic upwards. She came closer, eager to enter as soon as it opened. This was the only working elevator out of the four.

3, 4, 5, come here to the 16th floor.

But what if there were people inside? She tightened her grip on the rubber handle of the baseball bat she wielded. If that was the case, then they just had to make way for her...or I’ll force them to make way.

Made of aluminum, the bat felt incredibly light. But it was also sturdy. It was a bat specifically made for home defense that the bartender kept below the counter in case there was an especially rowdy customer. This should be enough to dispatch anyone inside who’d try to stop her from getting on. It wasn’t much use against Adumbrae, as the bartender himself personally came to know, but it would be helpful in taking control of this eleva—

“What are you doing?” Melinda, the grouchy lawyer from Wilkens and Kingson, demanded of her.

Cassandra scowled. She hated this hag. The bitch was strutting about, thinking she should be their leader even though they were the ones who saved her. But Cassandra did lower her bat, surprised at herself that she was already prepared to clobber anyone inside. Desperate times make people…well, desperate.

“You’re going to fight those monsters? Are you insane?”

“Ah…no.” She didn’t say she was actually expecting people inside. It hadn’t crossed her mind Adumbrae could also be using the elevator. It was possible, but she was too prideful to admit that. She begrudgingly backed away from the elevator door.

“Let’s hide, first. Come.” Melinda trotted off on her platform sandals that sounded like cloven hooves when they hit the floor, the perfect sound for the devil that she was.

“Fine, whatever,” Cassandra grumbled. Lawyers couldn’t be trusted in her eyes, but she still followed her. Survivability was higher if she stayed with the pack. She could also use these people as shields when it came down to it.

“Over here!” Rolly, the gym attendant for the midnight shift, called to them. He had forcefully opened a nearby room by smashing the lock using a barbell with a couple of small gym weight plates attached to one end—an improvised sledgehammer. He followed after the two of them entered, giving off an air of protective masculinity, something Cassandra recognized all too often.

A perfect candidate for a meatshield, she thought. Just like that bartender. She scrunched her nose. “Ugh, it also smells. Is something in here?”

“The door was locked. It just smells bad everywhere.”

“It’s like gasoline. The stench is already stuck in our noses that we smell it everywhere,” Melinda conjectured. She turned to Rolly. “Don’t turn on the lights,” she said as he reached for the switch. “We don’t want to be noticed.” She took a position next to the slightly ajar door, peering outside to observe the incoming elevator. Rolly shrugged and stood beside her, trying to get a view as well.

The last member of their group, the elderly but still spry Connelly, was already inside the room, giving it a quick look for possible threats, brandishing one of the prized swords from his expensive Persian blades collection, or so he said. The bright lights from the corridor coming through the small gap glinted off his scimitar. Cassandra could hear him furiously sniffing. “What was that?” Connelly asked as she approached him. “You going to fight them monsters?”

“Not really. No,” she replied. She eyed the crusted blood on the sharp edge of the blade. The blood of his son that had the misfortune of visiting him this dreadful night, the elder Connelly had explained. He took his own son’s life before he could fully transform into an Adumbrae. This man was a useful ally, but also a dangerous one. She had to watch her steps around him.

“We can only take care of the weaker ‘uns. Stronger ‘uns, don’t bother.”

“Quiet,” Melinda whispered. She had a finger on her lips. With her other hand, she raised her silver revolver that looked like it had never been used before.

“It’s here,” Rolly said. There was the ding of the elevator stopping on their floor followed by the subtle hiss of the doors opening.

“I can’t see the back of the elevator,” Melinda said in hushed tones. They crowded behind her. From the angle they were looking from, they could only see the left front half of the elevator.

“Should we rush out now?” Cassandra said, hoping to encourage others to go out before her and bait out possible danger.

“What if there’s something in there?”

“What if the elevator leaves, huh? You don’t mean to tell me you want to use the stairs?”

“And what will you do if there’s something inside? Kids these days—”

“Sixteen fucking floors, Melinda,” Cassandra said. She looked at Rolly and fluttered her eyes, wordlessly imploring him to come to her aid.

“Hush,” Connelly growled from behind them. “Something’s inside. The shadows.”

He was right. There was a hint of shadows on the floor. Cassandra didn’t notice it immediately because the light from the corridor washed it away.

A person? An Adumbrae?

They wouldn’t know if they didn’t go out.

The elevator would certainly close soon if the person inside had pressed the button for another floor or if someone from a different floor called for it. But she wasn’t the one going out there first. She took a step nearer to Rolly, almost about to press her breasts against his muscled arms. If I could just get this guy to go all macho and be the bait. She put on her best damsel-in-distress face and looked up at him. “Rolly, can you—”

There was a thud outside. “A person!” Melinda exclaimed.

Someone had dropped face-down on the floor. His torso out in the hallway, his legs still inside the elevator. The elevator dinged again, closing its doors, but the body blocked it. What good luck! “Is he dead?” Cassandra asked.

“Nope,” Connelly answered. “He’s ‘un of them monsters.”

“Turning into one to be exact,” Melinda said.

The man jerked to life, then convulsed on the ground. His groans reached them. He turned over and they saw black veins creeping up the left side of his body, covering his neck, climbing his cheek, coiling up his arms to his fingers. They radiated from a point in his neck, a point that the man stabbed with a sharp object, although Cassandra didn’t have a clear view of what it was.

A knife?

The man gripped the sharp object with both hands, driving it deeper into his neck. Red blood mixed with black liquid flowed not only out of his wound but also from his ear and mouth.

“He looks familiar,” Cassandra said. She was sure she had seen him in the lobby when she complained about the foul smell to the janitor. The blue jacket with the logo of Marty’s he wore, now partially obscured by black goo and deep red blood, was too distinct.

“My god,” Rolly said. “Is that Ramon? Ramon the pizza guy?”

Connelly clicked his tongue. “Mother Core forsakes us. If the pizza delivery guy is turning into ‘un of ‘em, that means—”

“The ground floor also has monsters,” Melinda finished. “Nowhere is safe.”

“We still have to get to the bottom of the building somehow,” Cassandra said. “And there’s our way! Taking the stairs is suicide!”

“What do you suggest we do, Miss-know-it-all?”

“We can…uh…” Cassandra turned to Connelly. They were scared for their safety. How about this old guy? She doubted her sex appeal would do much to him so how about she tried this? “He’s still human. We can help him. At least let him pass on as a human. Unless our lawyer here has a problem with that?”

“Hmph. At this point, it is arguably self-preservation. There is jurisprudence to support—"

The elevator sounded again. It tried to close its doors, but the struggling pizza guy’s body kept it open. He continued moaning in pain, continuing to stab whatever it was in his neck. He wasn’t winning, that was clear.

“We have to act now.”

“She’s right,” Rolly said. Cassandra did a mini-dance in her head to celebrate. He nudged the door open with his shoulder, his barbell at the ready. “If you guys won’t do it, I will.”

A screech from behind them. A flash of black ball in the darkness of the room. Connelly yelled in pain. Thuds of struggle. Without knowing what it was and without looking behind her at Connelly’s fate, Cassandra immediately dropped to the floor and crawled to the other end of the room as fast as she could. The old man shouted profanities, and Melinda joined in. Sounds of a fight. The lights were turned on, perhaps by Rolly, and they finally got to see what it was.

“The hell…”

“Fuck.”

“What is it!?”

“I got it! I got it…” Connelly huffed as he leaned on his sword. “Piece of shit.” His precious scimitar skewered with its curved blade a small grey creature, pinning it to the floor. “Fucking demon baby.”

And that pretty much summed it up. It was a crying, stretching its chubby short arms up, trying to reach Connelly. It grabbed the sword and pulled itself upward, the blade sliding through its body.

Melinda stepped forward and fired her gun. She missed. “Fuck,” she spat. The baby cried even harder. She walked as near as she dared and put a couple of bullets into its head. It stopped crying.

Everything fell silent. Only their breathing could be heard. They looked at each other.

“Is that…” Cassandra’s eyes were drawn to the fleshy string growing out of the baby’s stomach leading to something behind the couch, “…an umbilical cord?”

“Might be,” Connelly said. He held down the baby's deflated head with his boot and pulled out his sword.

Ding!

They all jolted in surprise. The elevator! Her ticket to escape. They nearly forgot about it! She stood up, ready to rush out. She was determined to fight her way into the elevator. She hoped that, at the least, Rolly would go with her. They could leave the rest. She was at the doorway, beside Rolly, when a bloodcurdling shriek made her stop. All of them tensed up, looking for the source of the noise.

“My…baby….” said a belabored guttural voice. From behind the velvet L-shaped sofa at the corner of the room, something stirred. An Adumbrae? Connelly might’ve missed it when he hastily checked the room earlier.

A gnarled hand with extremely long, twig-like fingers gripped the top of the sofa, followed by a rotting arm that had several joints a human arm shouldn’t have. It pulled the rest of the body hiding behind it. A ten-foot-tall woman towered over them, her head already hitting the ceiling. Her body was nearly just skin and bones, her tattered clothes draping loosely like a sail hanging on a mast in a windless sea. She cried black liquid from her sunken eyes.

“Baby…where…” she moaned as she stepped over the backrest of the sofa with her freakishly long legs. Cassandra noticed the umbilical cord from the dead baby monster connected to between her legs. “Baby…dead?”

“We should run from this ‘un,” Connelly said as two-foot-long black claws burst out of the fingers of the willowy Adumbrae. “Out!”

Cassandra shoved Rolly out of the way and nearly jumped into the corridor in her panicked escape. The heel of her left boot broke. She fell on the floor, crying in pain as her foot and ankle twisted in an awkward position. Rolly fell on top of her, but he dropped the barbell to the side as he did. Melinda jumped over the two of them. Connelly was the last to exit the room.

“Stand up and run!” he shouted at them as he closed the door.

Cassandra was about to pick herself up, ignoring the pain as much as she could, when Rolly stopped her from standing up. There was a crash. Something splashed on them. Blood. They looked up. Connelly’s blood.

“Oh my god,” Cassandra said. The Adumbrae’s claws pierced the door and went through the old man’s chest.

“Go,” he managed to say before vomiting more blood. He roared and stabbed his sword into the door. A shriek responded from the other side. “Go!” he yelled.

Rolly helped Cassandra stand up. “Where do we go?”

“The elevator!” she said, pointing her bat in that direction.

“No!” countered Melinda. “Let’s go this way.” She ran off the opposite end of the corridor.

“Don’t follow her,” Cassandra said. She squeezed his arm. “I already came from there. Adumbrae are there too! Let’s escape in the elevator.”

“But Melinda,” Rolly said, resisting her pull towards the elevator.

“She’s already gone!”

“Go already, dammit!” Connelly said. “I can’t hold—Aaaa!” The door shattered and Connelly was pulled inside the room.

“The elevator,” Cassandra said, almost whimpering as the pain of her injured ankle was getting to her.

Rolly followed her instructions and carried her towards the elevator. “Fuck this,” he said. “Oh, shit!”

The wall to their left exploded. Connelly’s mangled body was thrust into the hallway, held in the Adumbrae’s grip, blocking their path. Both of them fell to the floor in surprise. The Adumbrae exited the room through the hole it made with Connelly’s corpse as a battering ram.

“Follow Melinda,” Rolly said. He set Cassandra down on the floor and picked up the barbell-sledgehammer with both hands. “I’ll hold this thing here for as long as I can.”

“What do you mean follow Melinda?” Cassandra said hysterically, her voice nearly breaking into a shriek. “I can barely walk!” But as she said that, she was already crawling on the floor. She tried to stand up, using her baseball bat as a crutch. “Fuck!” she yelled in pain.

“Come and get some of this!” Rolly yelled.

Cassandra looked back as she limped, tracing Melinda’s path, and saw him waving his barbell to swat away the Adumbrae’s long arms. “Why can’t these people just help me?” she panted, breathing through clenched teeth, trying her best to endure the pain. “Where’s that hag, Melinda?”

The Adumbrae flicked her fingers and cut off one of Rolly’s hands. He dropped his barbell and screamed in pain.

“Shit. I’m going to be next,” Cassandra said. She hastened her pace, but the pain in her ankles nearly made her crumple on the floor. “I’m not going to give up,” she hissed. “I’m not going to fucking die here.”

The Adumbrae cried, “MY BABY! WHO KILLED MY BA—”

Surprised at the abruptly cut-off screams of the Adumbrae, Cassandra checked behind her once again. The head of the Adumbrae was on the floor beside Rolly who was holding his severed hand. A fountain of black liquid gushed out of the monster's neck. The Adumbrae fell on her knees, revealing their savior behind her.

It was the pizza delivery guy.

He was mostly human, except that his left arm has turned into a huge blade.

Was he going to kill them too?