Levi felt like the entire town was pressing down on his lungs, making it incapable to breath, but Levi forced himself to control it. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale, one, two, three.
His breathing was the only thing keeping him alive. It calmed his overstimulated brain and controlled the beating of his heart.
From behind a house, Levi looked up to the street, every muscle trembling, chest heaving quietly as he watched them. The monsters had gathered together, almost like a herd of zombies, thirty, maybe more filling the street like an audience waiting for a show to start. They weren't talking, just smiling at each other creepily. They had even stopped screeching. As if an entire conversation was happening in their mind.
The stillness was worse than any scream.
Each one moved with the same patience, the same crooked gait, their smiles painted on as if they'd forgotten how to stop. Some dragged their feet. Some tilted their heads looking at the lights with such fascination that it was creepy. Everything about them was creepy and terrifying.
With a silent gulp, Levi moved away, towards the barn and away from the diner. There was a hiding place in the barn, but Levi wasn't interested in the place. It was what the barn could be used for. A distraction.
Silently, he crouched and sneaked to another house, though his luck ran out. As soon as he stepped out to open to head to another house, a woman had turned in his direction. Her head twisted first, then her shoulders followed unnaturally late. Her smile stretched a little too far as her gaze locked onto him. Not a moment later, her still smile widened and every hair on his body stood.
And as if that was a signal, two monsters, both man, appeared from the corner of the house he was going towards. Panicking, he turned around, only to be face to face with four others. "SHIT!" Levi cursed, their smiles widening enough that it could tear their face.
Gravel scattered behind him as he bolted left, heading toward the forest's edge. His mace and backpack still on him as another five showed themselves from behind the trees. On instinct, he stopped.
Just for a moment, he glanced back, watching as almost a dozen of them were walking towards him, the middle aged nurse among them humming a song to herself. And before he knew it, he bolted right, back towards the barn, with the monsters turning to slowly walk towards him.
Before he could reach his destination, two others came out from behind the house in front of the barn, heading towards him. Almost as if they knew where Levi was headed. And they decided that it was a good place as any to deal with him there.
Panting, he reached the door, letting the door wide open as he searched around, finding some rusted pipes and some rope. Though tere was a patch of dried blood on the ground, it wasn't time to lose his marbles yet.
KNOCK KNOCK
One of them knocked on the wide open door, a crowd behind him- it, as it opened the barn door even further. "No one's home." Levi yelled, trying to buy time. His eyes caught one of the barn windows, though a monster just passed through, a huge hungry smile on her face if Levi had to describe it.
"Oh now, lying's bad, son." One of them, a sheriff replied, getting inside. "Oh, how about you let me go, just this time, sir." Levi shot back, taking steps back, angling his body towards a corner and immediately, two or three monsters moved to that specific corner. As if wanting to cut out his exit.
"Ha-" The chuckle was short, wrong, and done wrong, as if it didn't know what a chuckle was and it just tried to imitate how a normal person does it. "I believe we let you go plenty." It replied, its voice getting just a bit lower.
"Oh… My-" Levi ran without finishing his sentence, going straight to the window. The monster's smile froze for just one moment, disappearing, as Levi smashing through glass, yelling out in pain before bolting again.
Though this time, instead of away, it ran to the door, seeing the last monster inside the barn. Tackling the door, Levi shut it from outside, placing one of the rusty pipes on the handles, before running back to the window, seeing one monster trying to exit. One to get a mace right in the back of its head and another one in the face, making it stumble back.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
One of them cried out from the inside, and Levi knew it was time to bolt. He saw another hand at the frame and Levi stabbed the last rusty pipe through it. Again, no grunts, growls, or even cries of pain or frustration escaped the humanoid monsters.
Levi ran through the street, watching as more of them appeared from who knows where.
He cut left between two houses, the alley so narrow that his shoulders scraped the wet siding. A flicker of motion ahead made him skid to a halt. Someone, or something, was standing in the middle of the path, too still, too aware. The shape tilted its head, and Levi's breath caught.
No. He wasn't doing this again.
Without hesitation, he darted toward the nearest window. The glass cracked under his weight as he jammed his elbow through and hauled himself inside. The pros of being short, you were light. The house reeked of mildew and rot. Wallpaper peeled like dead skin. But he didn't stop—his instincts screamed that staying inside meant death. He sprinted across the room and dove through another window on the opposite side, landing hard on gravel.
The moment he hit the ground, he heard footsteps behind him. Slow. Deliberate.
He ran again.
"Keep moving, keep moving," he whispered, voice dry, mind racing. Every direction he turned, more appeared with those twisted faces. He officially was traumatized and if he saw a real human being smile after surviving this night, if he survive in the first place, they would get a mace in the face.
They weren't hunting blindly; they knew where to go.
Levi ducked behind a rusted pickup, heart hammering. From the reflection in the cracked windshield, he saw them searching, heads turning in perfect unison. Just for a moment, while Levi was catching his breath, he looked at them. Really looked.
Until his eyes widened. They were communicating. Not verbally, but physically. When one turned, others would turn towards it slightly, before moving to where the first one was basically pointing at.
If he wanted to live, he had to break that pattern. Confuse them and cause chaos.
His fingers dug through his pack until they found it, a slingshot, crudely version of an anime character's weapon, a prototype version of it. He'd made it weeks ago because someone had commissioned one. He loaded a small rock and aimed for the far end of the street, toward a rusted signpost near the old church.
TWANG.
The rock hit metal, the echo ringing across the town like a gunshot.
Every head turned.
But not to chase.
They listened.
The entire crowd paused, motionless, heads cocked slightly as if tasting the air. Then, some of them moved. Slowly, cautiously, in that direction. The others stayed still, guarding the roads between them and Levi's last known location.
Taking advantage of the small gap, he slipped out from behind the truck and crawled, using the overgrown grass for cover. Another perk of being short. One of them passed within arm's reach, a man in a mail carrier's uniform, skin waxy, eyes glassed over but searching.
Levi held his breath until the figure turned away, and only then did he move again, crouching low, every motion measured.
He finally reached the edge of Main Street, where the diner loomed under the flickering neon "OPEN" sign.
The front entrance was suicide, and the monsters near the windows proved it. So he circled around to the back, where an old fire escape clung to the wall like a skeleton of rust and bolts. A single ladder dangled a few feet above the ground.
Too high to reach. He hated being short.
But…
He could make it.
He looked around, spotted a trash can, and silently tipped it over, using it as a step. Metal groaned under his boots. The noise made his pulse spike. One of them was in the process of turning its head.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
"HEL-"
The thing stopped and instead turned towards the voice and then walking towards it. While Levi froze as cries of help, terror, and agonizing pain escaped from the barn. Without hesitation, Levi pulled himself onto the diner's roof and rolled to the center, panting, sweat stinging his eyes.
He sat with his back against the rooftop sign, gripping his mace tight. His breathing slowed.
For now, he was safe, Levi thought as cries of agony spread through the entire town, before it quietened and the town went dead silent once more. Against his will, Levi's eyelids closed and immediately, fell asleep.
Unknown to him, a blonde woman slowly walked up to the diner with a bouquet of wild flowers.