"There! That trapdoor! It's our only way! Try to open it!" Rick's voice, raw with desperation, barely registered above the horrifying symphony of splintering wood, inhuman shrieks, and the terrified cries of his own group. The main oaken door of the church was visibly buckling, decaying hands and snarling faces forcing their way through the widening cracks.
Ethan, Glenn, and Shane scrambled towards the altar, their feet slipping on the dusty stone floor. The iron ring set into a heavy stone slab near the altar was their last, improbable hope. They gripped it, their knuckles white, and pulled. Nothing. It was as if welded shut by time and neglect.
[SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TRAPDOOR MECHANISM – HEAVY STONE SLAB, COUNTERWEIGHT SYSTEM LIKELY SEIZED OR ABSENT. HINGES CORRODED. OPTIMAL APPLICATION OF FORCE: UPWARD AND SLIDING MOTION TOWARDS NORTH WALL. UTILIZE PRYING TOOL AT SOUTH EDGE FOR INITIAL LEVERAGE.]
"It's stuck solid!" Glenn grunted, his muscles straining.
Runners were now spilling into the church nave, a tide of frenzied hunger. Rick, T-Dog, and Morales formed a fragile, desperate line, their weapons rising and falling, buying precious, bloody seconds. Dale, surprisingly agile for his age, was using a heavy, broken candelabra to try and trip the advancing creatures, yelling for the women and children to stay back.
"Pry it!" Ethan yelled, remembering his crowbar still in his backpack , a purchase from the System shop he'd made before Taylorsville, claiming he'd found it. He fumbled for it, his hands slick with sweat. "Get something under the edge!" He shoved the tip of the crowbar into the slight gap the System had indicated. "Now! Pull!"
With Shane and Glenn heaving on the ring and Ethan applying leverage with the crowbar, there was a grating shriek of stone on stone, then a sudden give. The heavy trapdoor lurched upwards a few inches, then slid ponderously aside with a final groan, revealing a gaping black hole in the floor a narrow flight of stone steps disappearing into suffocating darkness. A gust of cool, musty air, smelling of damp earth and something else, something ancient and undisturbed, rose to meet them.
[SUB-LEVEL CHAMBER DETECTED (LIKELY CRYPT/CELLAR). AMBIENT TEMPERATURE: COOL. AIR QUALITY: STALE, LOW OXYGEN. INITIAL BIOSCAN: NO ACTIVE WALKER SIGNATURES DETECTED IMMEDIATELY BELOW STAIRWELL. FURTHER SCAN REQUIRED FOR DEEPER AREAS OR DORMANT THREATS.]
"Kids first! Lori! Carol! Get them down there!" Rick bellowed, his Python cracking, dropping a runner that was almost upon T-Dog.
It was a terrifying, chaotic evacuation into the unknown. Lori practically threw Carl down the steps, Sophia and Lily, white-faced and screaming, bundled after them by Carol. Dale, after one last, desperate swing of his candelabra, was helped down by Morales, who was bleeding from a gash on his arm. Jacqui and T-Dog followed, T-Dog clearly in agony from his old arm injury being aggravated.
The church was now a killing floor. Runners, their speed and agility devastating in the relatively open space of the nave, were overwhelming the last defenders.
"Go, Glenn! Go!" Ethan yelled, using his bat to deflect a clawing hand, then smashing it into the face of another runner.
Glenn, after helping Jacqui onto the steps, scrambled down. Ethan, Rick, and Shane were the last ones at the lip of the dark precipice, fighting back-to-back, a desperate, bloody rear guard. A runner grabbed Ethan's backpack, its teeth snapping inches from his neck. He twisted, slammed his elbow into its face, and Shane blew its head apart with a perfectly timed shotgun blast.
"Ethan, now!" Rick yelled, shoving him towards the opening. Ethan tumbled down the first few steps, landing hard. Rick followed, then Shane, who practically threw himself into the darkness just as a wave of runners reached the trapdoor.
With a combined effort, Rick and Shane, their faces illuminated briefly by Ethan's dropped flashlight which had miraculously stayed on, heaved against the underside of the heavy stone slab. It slammed back into place with a thunderous boom, cutting off the shrieks from above, plunging them into near-total darkness. The immediate, furious pounding of the runners on the stone above was a terrifying, muffled drumbeat.
They had made it. But to what?
They were huddled at the bottom of a short flight of rough-hewn stone steps, in a chamber that was cold, damp, and utterly black beyond the erratic beam of Ethan's recovered flashlight. The air was thick, making breathing difficult. The sounds from above, though muffled, were a constant reminder of the horde just feet away.
"Everyone… everyone alright?" Rick gasped out, his voice echoing strangely in the confined space.
Shaky affirmations answered him. Someone, probably Dale, was coughing. The children were crying softly.
"Anyone bitten? Check yourselves, now!" Shane's voice was harsh, practical.
As their eyes slowly, painfully began to adjust to the oppressive gloom, aided by Ethan's sweeping flashlight beam, they started to take in their surroundings. They were in a low-ceilinged stone chamber. It looked like an old crypt or cellar, perhaps as old as the church itself. Alcoves lined the walls, some empty, some holding crumbling, unidentifiable remains.
[SYSTEM SCAN (CRYPT LEVEL): MULTIPLE DORMANT WALKER SIGNATURES DETECTED. LOCATIONS: DEEPER ALCOVES AND CONNECTING PASSAGEWAYS. METABOLIC ACTIVITY: EXTREMELY LOW. CURRENT THREAT LEVEL: LOW, BUT WILL ESCALATE IF DISTURBED OR IF PROLONGED PRESENCE DETECTED.]
Dormant walkers. Great. Ethan kept that information to himself for now; the group was already at its breaking point.
"Is there… is there a way to bar this trapdoor from down here?" Glenn asked, his voice shaky, shining his own weaker flashlight beam up at the underside of the stone slab, where the pounding continued, though less frenzied now, more like a persistent, angry scratching.
Before anyone could answer, before they could even properly assess their new, subterranean prison, a new sound cut through the darkness, a sound that did not come from above, nor from any of them.
It was a soft, deliberate footstep, echoing from a dark passageway at the far end of the crypt, a passageway Ethan's flashlight beam hadn't yet reached. Followed by another.
Someone, or something, else was down here with them.