Chapter 15
Elias stumbled through the gate of the orange house, slamming it shut behind him with a heavy, metallic clang.
He crossed the small, overgrown yard and opened the front door.
Elias dropped his heavy backpack with a thud. He collapsed face-first onto the worn, floral-patterned couch in the living room. The rough fabric scratched his cheek, but he didn't care.
His muscles screamed with exhaustion, his lungs burned, and his heart hammered against his ribs. He was alone.
The memory of the mall's final hours washed over him. After the initial unity, cracks began to appear. A man had declared himself the new leader.
His group, armed with scavenged tools and a sense of entitlement, grew arrogant, demanding supplies and obedience. Arguments escalated into shouting, then turned into shoving matches.
Chaos erupted within their shelter. People took sides, families huddled fearfully in corners. The noise, the shouts, the crashes were deafening inside the mall's hollow shell.
But they forgot the danger beyond the walls. They forgot the creatures listening outside. It was night.
He remembered the first sound: a low, resonant groan, vibrating through the floor, deeper than the hoarders' snarls. It was the headless giant's call, but closer, much closer, and much quieter.
A sudden, terrifying silence fell inside the mall as everyone froze. Then came the thud. Like a mountain falling. Then another.
Each impact shook the building violently, sending plaster dust snowing from the ceiling. The vibrations traveled up through the soles of Elias's feet, rattling his teeth.
The rhythmic thud… thud… thud… was coming straight for them.
Panic exploded. People scrambled.
Then, with a shattering roar of rending metal and concrete, the entire western wall of the mall ceased to exist.
Framed against the starless, dark sky was the impossible silhouette of the headless giant, its massive, black fists embedded in the ruins of the wall.
And above it, blotting out the few visible stars, were the flying things. Dark, leathery wings beat the air with a sound like wet sails snapping.
Their emaciated bodies were pitch black, limbs ending in long, wickedly curved talons. Their faces were grotesque masks of spiraling flesh where features should have been.
They circled like vultures, silent except for the rush of their wings.
The hoarders needed no further invitation. A black tide of them surged through the giant-made breach and the other stressed entrances, shrieking with mindless hunger.
The screams that followed were short and brutal. Elias ran, weaving through collapsing debris, dodging lunging hoarders and the grasping talons of the harpies.
He saw Martin vanish under a pile of snarling black bodies near the shattered food court. He saw Arnold trying to hold a door, overwhelmed by the swarm.
He just ran, driven by pure terror, bursting out into the night through a service exit choked with smoke.
Since then, it has been scavenging and solitude.
He moved through the corpse of the city, picking through ransacked stores for dented cans and warm bottled water, the silence broken only by his footsteps and the distant, haunting calls of the giants or the skittering of hoarders in the shadows.
He'd called out in the abandoned city, but found no one. Only echoes and the oppressive weight of abandonment.
Now, in the heavy quiet of the orange house, he pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen was a dark mirror reflecting his own grimy, hollow-eyed face. He thumbed it on.
He dialed his mother's number again, pressing the cold glass to his ear, straining against the utter silence for a ringtone, a busy signal, anything. Only the hollow void of the dead network answered.
The finality of it was a physical ache. He'd thought, in some naive, movie-fueled corner of his mind, that the apocalypse would mean freedom from responsibility.
He hadn't accounted for the crushing loneliness, the constant fear, the gnawing uncertainty about the fate of the one person he loved.
The horror wasn't exciting anymore; it was exhausting, terrifying, and filled with regret.
He let the phone drop onto the dusty couch cushion. The weak light faded completely as night fell.
Elias curled onto his side on the rough fabric, pulling his hoodie tighter against a chill that came from within.
He closed his eyes, not against the dark, but against the hollow sadness pressing down on him.