Kyle West - Evolution

“The hospital is just two blocks away,” Julian said.

We were going to have to building hop again. The dragons were nowhere near us, instead circling the city near Central Square, about a half mile away. In the distance came the screams of another victim. More crawlers screeched from the street below. The dragons appeared to be ferrying them inside the city, right over the walls.

I ran after Julian and the others, making the jump to the next building with ease. The buildings were so close together that it would have been hard to fall. We hopped from one, to the other, silently through the night. Finally, reaching the end of the apartment row, we took a ladder down to the bottom. For now, the street was clear.

Once we hit the ground, we ran to the left. Julian was very fast, and hard to keep up with.

He took a right turn. After passing shops, cafes, and more apartments, we came to a large, open area filled with grass. A driveway circled around in front of a large, four story building.

“We’re here,” Julian said.

We ran up the drive and through the hospital’s front doors. The building was one of the few in the city powered with electricity. The glass doors slid open, leading into a lobby. Blood and dead bodies covered the floor. From within the building, I could hear screams of victims and the horrible wails of predators.

“We can only follow the noise,” Samuel said. “Get your weapons ready.”

We ran down the hall, and up a flight of stairs. When we arrived at the door that led to the second floor, a low hiss sounded from the other side, followed by a woman’s scream.

With a shout, Samuel kicked open the door, pointing his gun down the hallway. A crawler leaned over a small woman’s frame, ready to tear her to shreds.

Samuel fired, hitting the creature’s face. As the creature cried out and faced us with its angular head, his former prey forgotten, I realized that these crawlers were different from the ones in the Great Blight. Their armor was thicker, covering nearly every spot on their body. Their bodies were lower to the ground, affording them better speed and balance. Their legs had thickened, and the blades at the end of their tails were longer. The cruel spikes growing from their backs were curved and sharper than ever.

During our two months in Skyhome, it was not only us getting stronger. The virus was evolving its alien army to become more powerful than ever before.

Instead of attacking outright, the creature curled into a ball, its spikes jutting out on all sides. It rolled forward, right toward us.

Our bullets glanced off its armor, doing nothing. We shut the door to the stairwell, backing up the steps. The door burst open, and the monster’s head slithered in. It opened its mouth to give a bloodcurdling shriek. Then, it scuttled up the stairs after us. We could do nothing but back away, run faster…

We exited onto the third floor, and ran down the hallway, passing rows of open doors. Most of the rooms were empty. When we passed the final door, we found a familiar form lying in the bed, her eyes shut.

“Makara!” Samuel said.

The crawler burst into the hallway, slinking low to the ground, its white eyes afire with bloodlust. We faced the crawler. We couldn’t give another inch, or Makara would die. This was where we stood our ground.

The narrow confines meant we couldn’t defeat the creature in our usual way — flanking it and getting a good attack on its soft underbelly. It completely blocked off the hallway, making it impossible to get around it from the front.

“Samuel, you and Julian keep it occupied,” I said. “Back up if you need to.”

I grabbed Anna by the arm, pulling her back.

“What are we doing?” Anna hissed.

“This hallway probably circles all the around,” I said. “If we can get behind it…”

“Hurry!” Samuel said.

The creature charged forward. Samuel and Julian backed up to the corner as Anna and I broke out into a dead run. We had to make it all the way around before the creature could hit Samuel and Julian. Hopefully, the creature would be too distracted to avoid Makara altogether.

We rounded the corner, finding a short hallway that led to the right again. We took the corner. We were now on the opposite side of where we had been.

“Faster,” Anna said.

The monster screeched from behind. I heard Samuel roar out, either from pain or exertion.

We turned another corner, finding ourselves on a short hallway. Just one more turn, and we would be behind the crawler.

But when we made that last turn, we found the hallway completely empty.

“They must have backed up further,” I said. “Keep going!”

We kept running, circling a corner yet again. The hallway was still empty. There were no sounds of struggle, no signs of a fight. I was beginning to wonder if we might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Until the crawler surged out of a door right behind us.

“Run!” Anna said.

We did run, but the creature snatched onto my leg. That’s when I heard gunshots. Somehow, Samuel and Julian had gotten behind the crawler. The crawler screamed horribly as it turned to deal with the new threat. Its grip loosened on my leg, and Anna ran forward, wedging her blade between the wall and the creature, angling it. With a thrust, she managed to stab it in the gut.

The creature collapsed to the floor and thrashed about, its tail swinging back and forth madly. Anna’s katana remained embedded in the creature as purple blood spilled from its gut, both from bullets and blade. We backed away, allowing the creature its dying spasms. A minute later, its movements had settled into feeble twitches. It settled into death.

Anna ran forward, retrieving her katana. It was coated in slimy, purple blood. She ran into a nearby room and wiped the blade on some bed sheets before sheathing it.

Samuel and Julian ran to Makara’s room, Anna and I following behind. Inside, Makara sat up in the bed, her eyes half opened. She was still dressed as she had been in the Coleseo . The skin surrounding her wound was angry and red, and white gauze surrounded her entire abdomen. Her face was pale and strained.

“I tried to get up,” she rasped, “but…”

“Come on,” Samuel said. “Ashton’s waiting up above. We’re getting out of here.”

He picked her up as if her weight was nothing, placing her gently over his right shoulder. She winced in pain, but said nothing.

“Glad you’re alright,” I said.

Makara forced a smile. She wasn’t looking at me, though. She looked at Julian.

“Thanks for guarding the door,” she said.

Julian’s face reddened as he gave a shy smile. “It was nothing.”

They shared a look, but it didn’t last long. Samuel strode out the door, walking quickly to the steps. The rest of us guarded him, making sure nothing else jumped out at us.

As we entered the stairwell, the power in the building shut off, leaving us in blinding darkness. It was dead quiet, but from below we could hear crawlers, their scuttling legs heading for the stairwell. I heard one of them hiss from below in the darkness.

“Go, go, go !” Samuel yelled.

We ran up the stairs. The creatures below were out of sight, but they made their presence known by their screaming. The metal of the stairs rattled as the crawlers ran up at lightning speed.

After two flights, Samuel burst the door open, revealing the hospital’s flat rooftop. Being the last one up, I shut the door, barring it with my back. Julian joined me in holding the door closed.

“The flare, Anna!” Samuel yelled.

Hastily, Anna reached at her side, withdrawing the flare gun from its holster. She pointed upward and fired. A long streak of red surged into the dark sky, arcing high above and falling again toward the ground. It left a trail of smoke that lingered and glowed in the night.