[Soul Forged] Chapter 14: The Penthouse

It. Made. No. Sense.

I crumpled the MRE pouch, burning my hand, and tossed it from the closet. It burst against the opposite wall of the hallway, splattering gray sludge.

How?!

The question echoed in my head.

How was there nothing? No one?

Just yesterday, this place had gleamed and hummed. Thousands of feet, thousands of voices, sound everywhere you went, people everywhere you looked. Today, the very foundations were crumbling around me. I was alone. In the truest sense of the word. In a way I hadn’t fathomed. I might as well have been floating in the middle of the ocean or through outer space.

I realized I was rocking, hands in my hair. Clamping my teeth shut to hold in a scream, I backed out of the rancid closet, dragging the pack out with me. I held it too tightly to me, focusing only on it, breathing through the panic.

Focus, Torrin. See what else is in here.

I dug around inside it and started putting the other water bottles in my deep pockets. My finger brushed crinkly packaging as I grabbed the last one. I pulled it out. White plastic, blue writing. Survival Hardtack. The thin, degraded plastic came apart in my hands as I tried to open it, but the contents had fared better: a mylar shrink-wrapped block of thick, beige crackers. I turned them in my hands. They felt hard as boulders, but there wasn’t a speck of mold on them.

Salivating like a dog, I got a fingernail inside the plastic and ripped them open. There were perforations between the rectangular cracker shapes cut into the dough, but in my trembling hands, they wouldn’t break apart.

Not giving a shit anymore, I smacked the block on the floor, and a chunk snapped free, skittering over the ground. I scrambled after it, caught it, and brought it to my nose. It didn’t smell like much, just a hint of salt. I licked it, tongue scraping over hard ridges that tasted like dirt. I chomped down on a corner and nearly cracked a tooth, but I left it in my mouth, sucking on it until the corner broke off and crumbled on my tongue. It rolled down my throat like pebbles.

But it was edible. I took the block, found six more in the pack, took those too, stuffing my pockets to capacity, and went on sucking the rest of the first cracker.

Turning back to the left-hand hall, I made sure to carefully chart my way to the lobby so I could return for more hardtack if needed.

Crossing the lobby to the unexplored wing of the ardent floor, I found myself in much wider halls with doorways spread much farther apart. A deepening darkness crept along the walls as night fell. With my light dying, I listened closely for any stray sound as I peered inside the first doorway. 

Lumpy shapes in the middle of the wide space made me shrink back, but they didn’t move or seem to breathe. I tentatively ventured deeper inside and saw it was a metal coffee table that had seen better days. The couch was nothing but a husk of framework, its fabric nothing but dust. There was some fancy ironwork on one wall, and a cutout in the opposite wall that revealed the remnants of a small, once-stylish kitchen with an enormous fridge. I explored a little deeper, scouring the floor for forgotten weapons. I found a bedroom that no longer had a bed, but tossed haphazardly in the corner was an ardent’s under armor. Figuring I could use a replacement to my inferior, torn-up long johns, I picked it up only to find it frayed at all the seams, the sleeves barely hanging on, the legs tearing up the sides, the collar and cuffs tattered messes. Maybe not.

On to the next room.

And the next. There were a few quill rats in that one. A busted window and a gaping hole in the bathroom wall had allowed nature to take hold in the room. Umbrella-like mushrooms with faintly pulsing golden veins grew along the baseboards, casting spiderwebs of light on the shadowed wall. A sapling was sprouting from a crack in the floor, its slim branches bending toward the window. 

The fourth penthouse was the largest yet. An ironwork chandelier had crashed on the floor, scattering crystal fragments. I maneuvered through the debris and explored the remnants of two couches with the toe of my shoe and an iron poker I found against a sagging fireplace.

Inside the rotting frame of the couch, the cushions now disintegrated, the exposed, rusted springs cast confusing shadows in the fading twilight. I stuffed the poker into the tangle of coiled metal, trying to wrench them apart for a better look below. They squealed and made brittle pops before one pinged free, flying past my face. As I ducked, I heard a wooden clatter inside the couch. Peering back inside, through the small hole I’d made in the springs, I got a glimpse of smooth, off-white parabeast bone. Excitement shivered down my spine. Using the poker, I scooted it out from under the framework. A small parabone knife. Lips parting in a soft sigh of relief, I picked it up and inspected it. It was no longer than my hand, and the blade definitely needed sharpening, but it had a nice balance to it and three serrated teeth near the handle.

I looked around the room. All the windows were intact. The door was still on both hinges, although one little push would let anything in. Even if I fixed the latch, a kid could probably kick the rotten thing down.

No, the door was more like a screen. I needed a better barricade if I was going to sleep here.

Maybe I can rig the chandelier…?

The kitchen appliances were sturdy enough, too. I could hole up in there, maybe move the fridge, sleep behind it. And I could hoist the chandelier over there, rig it to a rope, drop it on the head of anything that tried to approach me.

I got to work, dragging the heavy chandelier to the kitchen in stops and starts, panting all the way. The fridge wasn’t any easier to move. I couldn’t brace properly on my injured leg. In the end, I pulled it out a few feet and then ran at it a couple of times, slamming my shoulder against it with bruising force until it toppled. I pushed it up against the counters, making a low wall in front of the space where it had once stood, then crawled over it and hunkered into the hole I’d made. I’d be hard to see, huddled in here between the counters, but if something did find me, they could get over the fridge just like I had.

I needed something to rig the chandelier. 

But what? Absolutely everything I’d come across had been in near total disrepair. Even that under armor…

The stitching at the busted seams was made of strong but fairly ordinary thread, but the parafibers themselves were versatile and resilient. I couldn’t wear it, but maybe I could still use it.

Hurrying back down the hall, I found the discarded under armor and tested the stretch of the fibers at the central points of the fabric. The weaving was a little loose and saggy, but that would make it more workable for my needs. 

By the time I headed back to the penthouses, my leg was buckling under me every few steps, forcing me to lean my right shoulder against the wall as I trudged onward. God, I needed sleep. My chin wanted to sag onto my chest. I could hardly stay upright, hardly see straight.

The chill sweeping out of the neighboring penthouse—the one with all the mushrooms—woke me a little bit, lifting my head just in time to see a moving shadow inside the doorway that jump-started my senses. The size of a cat, there was something spiky on its head and something not right about its pudgy lower half.

Was… was that a quill rat with pants? I rubbed my eyes, and the creature scampered deeper into the room and out of sight.

I chuckled. You’re really losing it now, Torrin.

I made it back to my penthouse, dropped the under armor beside the chandelier, and almost just crawled into my hole. The thought of hefting that thing made my shoulders ache.

It’s that or risk waking up to your head inside a ghoul’s mouth.

Groaning the whole time, I cut the under armor into dozens of long strips, using the distressed edges as starting points to make the job easier, then tied most of the strips into a rope, saving a few. I tied that to the center of the chandelier. In the moonbeams coming through the window, I tossed the other end over an exposed joist in the decayed ceiling, then sat in my hole and pulled the cord through my hands, shoulders killing me. Higher, higher it rose, finally bumping the joist. I tied it off by looping it through the two fridge door handles and tying the trucker’s hitch knot Seth had taught me years ago.

One good swing with the knife, and I could cut the cord and drop it on anything trying to climb over the fridge. Theoretically.

But what if I didn’t hear the thing coming?

One more precaution, then I could sleep.

Cutting one of the spare strips of the under armor into more pieces, I made a new, wire-thin rope and tied it to the hinge of a missing cabinet door, then tied the other end around my wrist. Crawling back over the fridge for the final time, I stretched the cord across the dark kitchen at a diagonal. I couldn’t easily see it with the naked eye. Hopefully, anything that snuck in here couldn’t either.

I curled up on my side, head bumping one counter, boots against the other, knees scrunched toward my body. I laid the bone knife beside my face and rested the hand tied with cord atop it, staring at the vague shape of it in the dark.

It’s never going to work.

The whole setup was a last-ditch prayer, but I didn’t have the energy to think up another.

Already, my lids were drooping. I wanted another hardtack but couldn’t move to reach one.

Don’t even get a last meal before I end up something’s dinner.

It was my last thought before my lids fluttered shut and refused to open.

I felt myself drift, sink through the floor into sleep.

Then searing light shone against my lids, turning them red.

I jolted upright, hand splashing in water.

Not again.

I sat up in the white world, butt in an inch of water, feeling no damp or chill.

Twisting in every direction, I found the area unchanged.

For a recurring nightmare, it sure was bland.

I pinched my ghostly arm, trying to snap myself out of it. My translucent skin crinkled between my fingers, but I felt no pain, only mild pressure. I pulled my arm hair, and the skin rose with it, but no discomfort. It looked so real, though. I could see the veins in the back of my hand.

I put my hand in front of my face, inspecting the faint whorls in my faded fingerprints. I couldn’t recall a dream ever being so detailed.

Out of nowhere, a pressure pinched the skin of my wrist, and then my arm was yanked up over my head.

I jerked awake, opening my eyes in soft, charcoal darkness, the paracord slackening, dropping my raised arm back to the penthouse kitchen floor.

Something was in here with me.

There was a soft clacking of claws, and my fingers closed around the knife handle. Then two beady, glowing eyes appeared atop the fridge. I tried to snap upright, but I’d thrown my cramped legs over the fridge in my sleep, and my contorted spine and abs protested. I only twitched, slashing the knife through empty air.

The quill rat’s long snout had been stretching toward my shoe, but now it twisted toward my face, sharp front teeth bared. Thwap! It smacked its paddle tail, quills standing on end like a bristling dog.

I jerked my legs back toward my chest, got a tingling, numb arm under me, and pushed off. The knife swung for the cord holding the chandelier, but the rope around my wrist pulled taut, stopping the momentum before the blade barely nicked the fibers. The parabeast’s tail whipped at me, and quills dislodged in my jacket sleeve, digging barbs into my forearm.

Stinging pain drew a hiss from my lips as I swapped the knife into my other hand and slashed again, carving through the cords of my trap.

I dropped back into my hole, an arm over my head, as the chandelier hit the fridge with a resounding bang.

High screeches echoed through the penthouse, and I looked up to see the quill rat writhing beneath the iron frame, claws scraping frantically across the metal.

Breath rasping in my chest, I sat up with my back pressed to the wall as the creature wriggled furiously. 

A few broken quills rolled in the indentation made in the fridge doors, and a few were lodged inside the bulb hole, but I didn’t see any blood. The parabeast twisted and contorted as it tried to bite at its own quills and free itself. The chandelier shifted with its movements, and the quill rat got its tail free, laying its quills flat to slide out from under the heavy frame.

With a haggard groan, I stabbed the knife down on its head where the spines were smaller. I felt the resistance of its natural raden aura push back, like punching through water, and the blade glanced off. The creature tried to roll into a ball, tucking its head into the safety of its larger back quills, now aimed at my face. I raised the knife for another strike. The blade bit through the raden aura, scraped along the length of a quill, then skated over the tough hide, leaving a shallow gash. 

Again, I brought it down. Quills chipped, and my jacket sleeve ripped on the barbs as I dug into flesh, hitting bone.

The tip of the knife snapped off, one edge splintering deep enough to reveal the steel core, and my hand slipped, nicking myself on more quills. The creature’s head twisted around, teeth ripping through the meat below my thumb. I tore free with a war cry, stabbing until my shoulder burned and my breaths were ragged in my own ears.

The squeaking stopped. The quills lay flat. I sank back against the wall with a gasp, dropping the broken, bloodied knife at my side.

Panting, I looked down at my hands and arms. Blood dotted my jacket sleeves and trickled down my wrists from bleeding palms and knuckles. Quills stuck out from the dense fabric in all directions.

Grimacing, I pinched one between two fingers—and froze.

A white, wispy substance with a faint effervescence, like smoke in diffused light, seeped out of the creature’s body. It coalesced into a hovering cloud that drifted toward me. Shrinking against the wall, I slashed at it with my knife. The cloud didn’t dissipate or even part around the blade, just bobbed like a disturbed buoy as it continued to move closer. It passed through my overalls when it reached me and sank into my chest.

Knees popping, I shot to my feet with a strangled yell, swatting and clawing at my shirt.

Agony sucker punched my gut, and I gagged, shins knocking against the fridge, body tipping forward, coming down hard next to the parabeast’s corpse. The pain of the impact paled in comparison to the fire poker carving up my guts. I was instantly in a sweat, clambering over the fridge, dry retching on hands and knees on the floor, staring at the doorless cupboards, unable to move, torso seizing.

Whatever that white stuff was, it was killing me from the inside out.

Helplessness crushed down on my windpipe as I pawed at my chest. I gripped my shirt, yanking down on the collar and clawing at my breastbone as if I could reach inside to get the thing out.

A sudden weight on my back left me pinned, heart pounding. The world fuzzed, distorted by a foreign, bleary image overlaid on my retinas. In it, I was hunched atop the fridge, looking at the hole between the counters. But I could also still see the cupboard in front of my face, feel my hands on the cracked tile and concrete of the kitchen.

Terror stabbed its claws deep into my back. My skin roughened with goosebumps and my hair stood on end. In the image that didn’t belong to me, a hulking shape rose up, a blade coming for my head.

Distantly, I heard myself screaming, the cries choked by the sounds of my stomach flipping over. Bile and gritty, doughy chunks of hardtack spilled down my chin and splattered on the floor, warming my hands. But still my stomach raged—torturous cramps in between hunger pangs.

Food. That’s why I’d come here. The smell.

No. I came here to hide.

Feed.

“What the f—” More vomit, mostly water and stomach acid, splashed across the kitchen.

A dark shadow rose over me. I bared my teeth, ready to bite. I twisted toward the oncoming threat, jaws gnashing, fell on my back, swiped with my claws—hands.

I was writhing around in my own vomit, hallucinating. From the pain? The rune I’d swallowed? Had it perforated—

Another throb through my stomach turned the world white at the edges, then black. I arched my back through the worst wave of it, then flipped onto my stomach, face to the cool concrete.

Something was moving, just out of sight. I could hear it. Or was I imagining that, too?

The distinct creak of a weather-worn floor broke through the chaos in my head.

It was real. Something else was coming. I had to get up.

But I couldn’t get up.

My body melted into the floor, lids fluttering.

The click of nails on a hard surface carried to the ear pressed to the floor. It sounded closer.

Let it come, I thought, as my eyes fought to close. I couldn’t do this anymore. My mind drifted toward blackness, the real world fading, and the hallucinated image eclipsed mine. I saw my end in the downward arc of a jagged blade, my own snarling face mirrored above it. And from the pit of my tormented stomach came a ferocious, inescapable instinct to keep fighting, no matter what.

Survive.

Seth’s last word emerged from the steamy haze created by the collision of my own icy terror and what I now understood was the quill rat’s fiery fury.

Click. Clack. The other parabeast was almost on me now.

I would not die by rodent while rolling around in my own vomit.

I gritted my teeth and shifted my hands into a bracing position, breathing through the simmering pain in my gut.

Blinking rapidly, I shook off the fading image of myself killing one parabeast and looked right into the furry face of another.

“Argh!”

I powered to all fours and flung myself back from the creature, hands scrambling around in the dark for my weapon as I took in the full oddity of the beast: large teddy-bear ears, fluffy rabbit tail, little deer antlers, big eyes, koala nose. It stood upright on its back legs and almost seemed to frown at me disapprovingly, unmoved by my shout or wild movements. Weirder still, it wore pants. So, I hadn’t hallucinated that before.

At last, my fingers bumped the knife handle, but my wrist was still bound, and I couldn’t fully reach it. I twisted to grab it with my other hand, then whirled back around to brandish it at… the creature’s retreating back. A lumpy backpack bounced as it rounded the corner of the kitchen, out of sight.

A parabeast with clothes? Or were they natural markings and features that simply looked like clothes?

I ogled the space where it had been and sat in disbelief, listening to it shuffle through the penthouse living room. The creak of the door signaled its exit, leaving me alone to piece together the chaos of the last few minutes.

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