"ASHLEY!"
Silas screamed as he woke. The sound tore through his throat, leaving a dry ache behind.
His vision was blinding, white light pressing against his eyes until the shapes around him started to form.
He tried to move, but nothing happened. His arms wouldn't lift. His chest wouldn't shift.
The only thing he could control were his eyes. He blinked hard, over and over, hoping the light would settle. Eventually it did.
When his sight cleared, confusion hit harder than pain. The ground was far below him. Tables, chairs, and broken equipment looked small, as if he were floating above them. But he wasn't floating.
He was stuck.
A thick black-red substance covered most of his body, glistening under the lights like wet resin. It stretched from the ceiling, holding him in place.
Only his head was free. The air around him smelled of iron and decay, the kind of scent that burned the throat.
He turned his eyes as far as he could. The others were there too, dozens of them, strapped or cocooned in the same pulsing material.
Some still moved weakly. Others hung limp, their heads crushed or torn open. Blood streaked the floor below like a dark reflection of what hung above.
Silas tried again to move, but the more he struggled, the tighter the substance held. He felt it pulse against his skin, warm and alive.
His thoughts blurred. How long had he been here? Days? Hours? The last thing he remembered was the girl. The little one, Ashley.
He swallowed hard, his voice hoarse when he spoke. "Ashley… where are you?"
No one answered. Only the faint sound of something dripping echoed in the room.
He decided to stay quiet. It didn't seem wise to shout when he didn't even understand where he was. How had he ended up on the ceiling? Who—or what—had done this to him?
He tested the grip of the black substance. It was warm, almost sticky, and clung to his skin like thick glue. He twisted his arm slowly, scraping at it with his nails. The texture was soft at first, then brittle as he dug deeper. He managed to hook a finger through a small tear, then another.
The material began to split.
It happened faster than he expected. One moment, he was still trying to pull free. The next, the whole mass peeled away from the ceiling with a wet sound.
Silas dropped.
He hit the ground hard. The impact forced the air from his lungs, but not the pain he expected. It hurt, yes, but not enough for the height he had fallen from.
As a child, he'd once fallen from a fence barely two meters high and thought he'd broken his ribs. This was at least four times that distance, yet his body only ached.
No sharp pain. Not even broken bones. But he did feel exhaustion and a strange weakness that made him feel heavy and uncoordinated.
He pushed himself up, limbs trembling. His muscles didn't feel like his own, soft, slow to respond, almost lazy.
He looked down, brushing the sticky residue from his chest and arms. His skin was clean beneath it.
'Not even a scar"
He pressed his hand to his abdomen. The wound from the glass shard was gone. Completely. Not a mark left behind.
That kind of injury would have taken at least a month to close, maybe longer.
Either he had been unconscious for weeks, or something had changed in him.
He scanned the room. The ceiling still held several cocooned shapes, some dripping dark fluid onto the floor. The walls were cracked, streaked with dried blood. Everything reeked of decay and blood.
It looked like a nest, something organized, like a spider web meant to store food for later.
Silas stood in the middle of it, silent, realizing that whatever had trapped him might still be nearby.
A sound broke through the stillness. A soft stretch, like rubber being pulled, then a faint tear. Silas turned toward it. The noise came from one of the cocoons near the far wall. The surface bulged outward, tightening before slowly retracting again.
He took a cautious step closer, his shoes sticking slightly to the floor. As he moved nearer, he could make out a dull red glow behind the membrane. Inside was a shadow that shifted with every strain of the cocoon's surface.
He leaned forward, watching the outline press against the film. A shoulder. Then a head. It was moving.
His first thought was that someone had survived, just like him. He reached out, trying to see through the dark gel. The light caught a shape beneath, pale and still. He was about to step back when the surface split open.
A hand forced its way through the tear, gray and stiff, the fingers clawing against the floor. The sudden motion sent a pulse of air through the room. Silas stepped back, his heel hitting a metal tray that clattered across the tiles.
He winced at the sound.
From above, more noise followed. A wet creak, then another. The other cocoons began to shift. Some sagged under their own weight. Others stretched and tightened, the membranes trembling as something inside pressed against them.
The room filled with the sound of slow tearing and muffled groans. Dust drifted from the ceiling with each movement.
Silas looked around, his body tense, the air seeming heavier with every breath. Whatever these things were, they weren't dead. And they were waking up.
He searched the room for something he could use. The place looked like an old examination area, metal stands, broken drawers, a few scattered tools.
A pair of scissors lay near a toppled tray. Further down, a bent IV pole leaned against the wall. Nothing looked ideal, but anything was better than nothing.
His hands shook as he picked up the scissors. The handle was sticky, coated in dried blood, but he held on anyway. He wasn't a fighter.
The last time he'd been in one was in high school, a stupid argument that turned into a scuffle behind the gym. Since then, he'd avoided trouble whenever he could. He liked quiet. He liked peace.
Now he was standing in a room full of hanging bodies, gripping a pair of medical scissors like it meant something.
His body began to change. A strange warmth spread through his chest, chased by a wave of cold that crawled up his arms. His pulse slowed. The panic he'd felt minutes ago started to fade, replaced by an unnerving calm.
He breathed in and out, steady and quiet. The shaking in his hands stopped. His thoughts cleared until only one thing remained, survive.
It wasn't that he felt calm. It was that he could feel the fear and still move through it. His body reacted like it remembered what panic was, but his mind stayed steady. Every sound, every shape, every shadow in the room felt sharper, clearer.
He was about to look away from the cocoon when the tear widened. Something pushed through, first a shoulder, then a head that dragged the rest of the body behind it.
The thing landed on its hands, its limbs long and thin, skin pulled tight across the bone.
Its body was pale gray with a wet shine, and its spine jutted out in sharp ridges that ran down its back like broken glass.
The mouth stretched too wide, filled with rows of pointed teeth that looked jagged and uneven, as if they'd grown without order.
It stood crooked, one arm hanging lower than the other, breathing in short, sharp bursts that sounded more like growls than air. Its eyes were small and deep in the skull, moving too quickly to focus on anything for long.
Silas stared. His body understood what it was seeing before his mind did. It wasn't human anymore. Whatever these things were, they had started as people.
The creature turned toward him, its neck cracking as it straightened, and for the first time, Silas realized that quiet wouldn't save him now.
It let out a roar that shook the room. Droplets of spit hit Silas's face, hot and sour. The sound wasn't just noise; it was pressure, like standing too close to a speaker.
He flinched but didn't step back. He had seen the feral ones before. They had still looked human then, pale and violent, but still people. This thing wasn't.
Its shape might have started that way, but whatever it had become didn't belong to any word he knew. And it definitely wasn't a zombie, at least by modern media standards.
It moved.
The first step was heavy, claws scraping across the tile. Silas lifted the scissors without thinking.
The creature lunged, fast and low, its arms dragging across the ground before it swung upward.
He dodged, his body bending faster than he thought possible. The motion was instinctive, not skill.
He stumbled back, hit the wall, and raised his arm again. The creature turned and lunged a second time. Silas reacted before his thoughts could catch up.
His leg kicked out, not clean or trained, but fast enough to knock the creature off balance. It hit the floor and slid across the tiles, limbs twisting as it tried to stand.
He didn't stop to think. His body moved again, crossing the space in two quick strides.
He brought the scissors down as the creature turned. The metal went deep through the top of its skull with a single dull sound.
The creature jerked once, then went still.
Silas stepped back, his breath even. His hands were shaking again, but not from fear. He looked down at the thing on the floor, its body twitching in small, fading movements.
He hadn't fought like that. That was all instinctive.
And whatever had changed him since waking up, it wasn't done yet.
Across the room, the other cocoons began to swell, their surfaces stretching in short bursts as something inside pressed against them.
Silas glanced at the scissors in his hand. He already knew what had to be done.
He stepped to the nearest cocoon and leaned close, trying to make out the shape trapped beneath the membrane. A faint outline of a head pushed forward with each pulse. He raised the scissors and drove them in.
Dark fluid ran down the surface and pooled around his shoes. The movement inside slowed, then stopped. The liquid thickened and dried quickly, leaving a rough, black film behind.
For a moment he just watched it, his eyes tracing the way the color shifted as it hardened. He caught himself staring and shook his head.
There were more of them.
He tightened his grip on the handle and turned toward the next cocoon. "Time to clean up," he muttered, his voice low and steady. Then he walked forward and kept going.