The truck rolled through a dead city painted in red. The Moon now covered with a shade of red, hung low and swollen over the skyline, its new color bathing everything in its eerily red light.
Jess decided to drive, while Valez in a child like manner called shotgun before Dev could having a quick laugh. Valez sat smugly upfront with his pistol across his thigh. Dev muttered softly in the back, counting fuel cans just to fill the silence.
Chris watched the road ahead, one hand pressed to his chest where the shard pulsed slow and heavy.
When the tunnel came into view, something just felt wrong. The barricade still stood. The generator still flickered inside, a trembling orange pulse. Two shapes lay sprawled just beyond the entrance.
Jess eased the truck to a crawl.
"Careful," Valez said.
The smell reached them first, it was a mixture of blood and hot metal.
Chris was already moving before the truck fully stopped. His boots splashed through dark puddles. The nearest corpse's arm was torn off at the elbow, the other's face gone.
"They didn't make it," Dev whispered.
"No," Valez replied. "They didn't."
Inside, the tunnel's light stuttered like a dying heartbeat. Shadows bent with each flicker.
Bodies were lined across the floor. Some were burned, others cut open, a few still kneeling mid-prayer. The air was thick with rot and smoke; every breath clung to the back of the throat like grease.
Jess's voice came out small. "Some didn't even try to run."
Then came the sound it was low, steady almost with whispers coming from deeper in.
Valez motioned them forward. They advanced, flashlights trembling low to the ground.
At the tunnel's far end three figures knelt in a circle of blood and chalk. The walls around them were scrawled with spirals and jagged crosses, symbols running together in dripping lines. The others lay arranged around them like offerings.
Chris froze. " Screaming in his mind it was Eda. Nolan. Bishop."
The shard under his skin flared hot matching the rage he felt.
Eda turned her head slowly, eyes unfocused. "The gate breathes."
Chris fired before she could finish.
+1 XP flickered across his sight.
Valez fired twice. Nolan dropped instantly; while Bishop stumbled, blood blooming from his chest.
Jess's hands shook. "Why?"
Bishop laughed, thick with blood. "Because they demanded it," he rasped. "Demons, gods, the horrors of the deep. It doesn't matter. They'll win the war for Earth."
Valez stepped closer. "What war?"
"The one you already lost."
Bishop then curled up sagging, still smiling, and then going still.
The only sound left was the generator's dying hum, and everyone eleses breathing still trying to process what was just said.
Valez looked over the carnage, and then the cross around his neck pondering."We destroy what they started." He said.
Chris didn't argue. The shard was heating up again in anticipation. He stepped back fast.
Jess," he said quietly.
She looked at him. "What?"
"Take a piece of metal or something sharp. Scrape every symbol off that wall. All of them."
Valez glanced his way. "Is that really necessary?"
"Yeah," Chris said quickly, voice tight. "Just… do it. Please."
Jess hesitated, then nodded. She pulled a bent rebar from the floor and went to work.
The screech of metal against concrete filled the tunnel, harsh and steady, until the runes were reduced to rough scars.
The smell made them gag. It was a mixture of iron, bile, and burnt hair. It stuck to their skin, their clothes, their memories. Every minute inside the tunnel felt wrong, like breathing someone else's death, but there was no where else they could safely be at night.
Chris stayed near the barricade, away from the ritual chamber, breathing through his sleeve while the shard thudded beneath his ribs as if it was enraged that he didn't allow it to consume.
By full night, the work was done.
After moving all the bodies to the ritual room, and covering their faces with torn fabric they could finally breath. Huddled together in the one cleanish portion of the tunnel left. They were cramped but alive. This was all they had left of the tunnel.
Valez took first watch. Sometime past midnight, a sound drifted in from outside.
It Was wet, heavy, almost rhythmic.
Something was feeding on the two they left outside by accident.
Chris froze. The noise of tearing flesh carried through the concrete.
Jess whispered, "It's on the bodies…"
Valez raised a hand for silence. They listened as it tried to drag one corpse away. Then giving up continuing to feed on both bodies.
When the sounds stopped, It made the group feel even worse. The idea settling in now that this was their life.
No one slept after that. By dawn, the Blood Moon paled into gray haze.
They moved quickly, packing what little they had. The air inside reeked of copper and smoke; even breathing hurt.
Jess paused by the wall she'd scraped clean. The stone was dull and scarred, the runes gone.
Chris joined her. The shard under his skin was calm now, but heavy resentful, as if denying a child their favorite snack.
"Do you think that stopped it?" she asked.
"I hope," he said.
Outside, the red light still lingered behind the clouds. Two of their own still lay beyond the barricade, well what was left of them.
Chris stared a long time. "We're not leaving them for whatever that was last night."
Valez met his eyes, then nodded once. "Agreed."
They rationed a small portion of the fuel they had left from the truck. Jess doused the barricade, hands trembling but steady.
"Say when," Valez murmured.
Chris struck the match. The flame caught fast, crawling across the soaked concrete, rising in a sheet of orange. The smell hit harder than before like a bbq gone wrong.
None of them spoke. The fire spread inward, swallowing the tunnel's dark one last time.
Only when the flames began to fade did Chris finally turn away. The shard beneath his skin thudded once, faintly, like a sigh.
The tally waits the voice inside his mind echoed again.