"ASHLEY!"
Silas yelled as he woke up. The noise ripped through his throat and left it parched and sore.
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 even a bit.
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 vision improved, the disorientation was worse than the pain. The ground was so far away from him. It looked like he was floating above the tables, chairs, and shattered tools. But he wasn't floating.
He was stuck.
Under the lights, the thick black-red material that covered most of his body sparkled like wet resin. It went up to the ceiling and held him in place.
He only had his head free. Something about the place smelled like rotting blood and bodies.
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 were still moving slowly. Others were hanging still, with their heads broken or crushed. It was strange that he was the only one on the roof; there were dark streaks of blood on the floor below.
Silas tried to move again, but the material held on tighter the more he tried. It felt warm and alive as it pressed against his skin.
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 saw how well the black stuff stuck to his hands. It was warm, almost sticky, and stuck to his skin like thick glue. He slowly turned his arm around and scraped it with his nails. At first, it felt soft, but as he dug deeper, it became hard. He was able to put one finger through a small hole and 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.
But he did feel exhaustion and a strange weakness that made him feel heavy and uncoordinated.
He pushed himself up, shaking all over. It was almost like his body was lazy because his muscles didn't feel like his own. They were soft and moved slowly.
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 to show for the events before.
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 looked around the room. There were still a few cocooned figures on the ceiling, and some of them were dripping dark fluid into the floor. There were cracks in the walls, and dried blood smeared them.
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. He was about to step forwad when the surface split open.
A hand forced its way through the tear, gray and stiff, the fingers clawing against the floor. 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.
Silas looked about. His body was incredibly stiff, and the air felt thicker, making it hard to breathe, as if his lungs couldn't contain it. These things 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 exactly 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 enjoyed quietness and very much liked his peace.
Now he was standing in a room full of hanging bodies, gripping a pair of medical scissors like he could actually do something meaningful with them.
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 feeling of calmness.
He breathed in and out. The shaking in his hands stopped. His thoughts cleared until only one thing remained, and that was to survive.
It wasn't that he felt calm or wasn't scared any more, but rather it was that he could feel the fear and still move through it. His body reacted like it remembered what panic was and what was causing it, but his mind stayed steady.
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.
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 in his eyes. Droplets of spit hit Silas's face, hot and had a unlikable smell... luckily none of it got in his mouth, he didn't want to know what weird zombie spit tasted like.
Though it roar was anything but weak or quiet, it was loud and rang his ears it felt like standing close to a loud speaker
He flinched but didn't step back. He had seen the feral ones before. They had still looked human then, only their violence and red eyes having been the difference but now they looked completely different.
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 finally 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 swerved and bent his body faster than he thought was possible. The movement was all instinct.
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, while untrained it was very fast, 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 it wasnt 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, it felt like his body had moved by its self.
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.