Chapter 113 - The Tenants Awaken Part III

Chapter 113: Chapter 113 - The Tenants Awaken Part III

"It means some people were already awake when this started."

A man shook his head.

"This started when?"

"Two days ago."

"No."

He immediately shook his head.

"That isn’t possible."

"It is."

"You expect us to believe the entire city has been like this for two days?"

Penelope didn’t respond.

Because there was nothing she could say that would make it easier to accept.

Another resident pulled out his phone.

The screen showed full battery.

No service.

He stared at it.

"My phone still works."

Kai looked at him.

"The phone does."

"The network doesn’t."

The man swallowed.

"So..."

He looked toward the elevator.

"The power is still on."

"Yes."

"The elevators are working."

"Yes."

"But we can’t call anyone."

"Not right now."

The man’s face slowly paled.

"Then how did you know?"

Kai looked toward Erik.

Erik answered.

"We’ve been watching."

The residents exchanged uneasy glances.

Someone whispered,

"Watching what?"

Before anyone could answer...

A loud crash echoed from the stairwell.

Everyone turned.

The sound had come from several floors below.

Then came another.

And another.

Something was moving through the building.

Fast.

The residents instinctively backed away from the stairwell.

Kai lifted his axe.

Ben tightened his grip around the crowbar.

Penelope’s hand settled against the katana at her side.

Erik drew his pistol.

Killian’s expression didn’t change.

He simply looked toward the stairwell.

The residents stared at the five of them.

For the first time...

They stopped seeing them as five strange people who had somehow been prepared for the impossible.

They saw them as the only people in the hallway who weren’t afraid.

A faint growl drifted upward.

Then another.

A woman began crying.

"My children are downstairs."

A man immediately grabbed her arm.

"Don’t go."

"But my children—"

"Don’t."

His voice cracked.

"We don’t know what’s down there."

The woman looked toward the stairwell.

Then toward the elevator.

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime.

Everyone flinched.

Nobody stepped inside.

The empty elevator waited patiently.

The lights inside remained bright.

The building continued functioning as though nothing was wrong.

And somehow...

That made everything worse.

Because outside their windows, the world had already changed.

Inside the building...

They were only just beginning to notice.

Killian moved first.

He stepped toward the elevator, pressed the button to send it back down empty, then held his palm against the call panel until the screen flickered and the button light died completely.

"What are you doing?" the man with the dead phone asked.

"Making sure it doesn’t open on its own again."

"Can you do that?"

Killian didn’t answer. The panel simply stopped responding.

"You said this started two days ago." The same man shook his head again, like repeating it might change the answer. "If that’s true, why are we only finding out now?"

"Because you were asleep," Penelope said.

"For two days?"

"Some of you longer."

A woman near the back spoke up, her voice unsteady. "That’s not possible. People need water. Food. You can’t just sleep through—"

"You weren’t sleeping the way you think you were," Erik said. "Whatever put you under kept your body alive. It didn’t keep you aware."

Nobody had an answer for that.

Another crash sounded from the stairwell, closer than the last.

"So what do we do?" the man asked. "Do we wait for the National Guard? FEMA? Somebody has to be coordinating something."

"No one’s coming," Killian said.

The bluntness of it landed harder than the crash had.

"You don’t know that."

"I know it’s been three days and no one has," Killian said. "That’s enough for me."

Kai tightened his grip on the axe. "Look, we’re not here to sugarcoat it for you. The dead are walking. They eat. They don’t stop unless you destroy the brain. That’s it. That’s the whole rulebook."

"You’re talking about zombies," the woman said flatly, like saying it out loud might prove how absurd it sounded.

"I’m talking about the thing that’s currently trying to get through that door," Kai said, nodding toward the stairwell. "Call it whatever helps you sleep tonight. Assuming you sleep."

Erik’s eyes stayed on the stairwell. "They hunt by sound. Vibration too, if you’re loud enough. Screaming, running, slamming doors — all of it draws them. Silence is the only thing that’s kept any of us alive this long."

"Then why are you standing here talking to us?" the elderly woman asked, her voice sharp with fear rather than accusation.

"Because in about thirty seconds we’re not going to be," Erik said. "This is the only warning you get."

The door shuddered under something’s weight on the other side.

"Get inside your apartments," Penelope said. "Lock the doors. Don’t answer for anyone unless you’re certain who it is. Don’t turn on the television, don’t play music, don’t let your kids scream if you can help it."

"And if one of them gets inside?"

"Then you already know what to do to it," Kai said. "Head. Every time. Nothing else works."

A younger man near the front swallowed hard. "What about food? Water? None of us have — I mean, we weren’t prepared for—"

"Then get prepared," Killian said. "Today. While there’s still something left in this building to take."

"Take from where?"

"Other apartments. The vending machines. The maintenance closets. Anywhere," Erik said. "Because in a week, none of it will still be there, and it won’t be the zombies that took it."

That got their attention in a different way than the growling had.

"You mean people," the woman said slowly.

"I mean people," Erik confirmed. "The dead only want to eat you. The living will want everything else you have, and most of them won’t ask nicely."

"That’s insane," the man muttered. "We’re neighbors. We’ve lived on this floor for years."

Kai looked at him without any particular sympathy. "Give it a week without power and running water. Ask me again."

The hallway had gone very quiet, the kind of quiet that came from people trying to absorb too much at once.

"So that’s it?" the woman asked. "You tell us all this and then you just — leave?"

"That’s it," Penelope said.

"You’re not going to help us?"

"We just did," Erik said. "You know what’s out there now. You know how it dies. You know what to watch for once the water runs out and people get desperate. That’s more than anyone gave us."

"But—"

"We have our own family to get back to," Killian said, already turning toward the stairwell. "You have yours. Figure out how to protect it."

Another impact against the door, harder this time. A few of the residents flinched back toward their own hallways.

"Go," Erik said, not unkindly, but without room for argument either. "Now."

This time they went. Doors clicked shut one after another, the deadbolts turning in a ragged, uneven chorus down the corridor.

Kai watched the last one close before glancing at Erik. "You think any of that actually sinks in before it has to?"

"No," Erik said, checking the pistol in his hand. "Nothing does, until it does."

The stairwell door shuddered once more, then went still — whatever had been pressing against it losing interest, or losing the sound that had drawn it there in the first place.

Penelope sheathed the katana halfway, listening.

"We should keep moving," she said. "This floor’s as done as it’s going to get."

Nobody argued. There was nothing left on this floor that belonged to them, and nothing they owed to the people behind those doors beyond what had already been said.

They turned back toward the stairs, and the hallway went quiet behind them — the kind of quiet that wouldn’t last.