He came to, confused and on wobbly legs. Bending forward at the waist, hands on his knees, he caught his breath. A litany of questions crossed his mind as he attempted to gain his bearing,
'What is happening? Where am I? How did I get here?'
Vertigo hit, his vision swam, the room spun, and his stomach lurched. He faced the floor, breathing deep, the blurry world slowly sharpening.
After a few seconds, he stood straight and scanned the area. A large foyer stretched around him, unfamiliar and eerie. Three levels rose above him—railings of glass and metal, rooms framed in glass and wood.
A hotel? A mall? A college campus?
He didn't recognize the place, and trying to recall how he'd gotten here came up blank. Debris littered the floor—broken glass, electronics, books, paper, and the like.
Other bodies occupied the area around him in various other poses.
'What the fuck? Who are these people? Are they people? Is this some kind of fucked up dream?' He thought disoriented.
There was a pervasive silence and stillness in the air, making the scene surreal as if he was having some type of fever dream or hallucination.
Again, he tried recalling what had been happening before, but to no avail.
He took stock of what he could remember, his name, Jose—check, his life—check. But the last memory felt like it had happened months ago, suggesting some sort of short-term amnesia.
Jose examined his last memory; he was picking up his prescription medications and remembered how he felt that day, looking down at the labels on the medications and wondering when he would ever feel normal again.
The anxiety and depression he'd been staving off his entire life had finally caught up with him a year ago, and it'd hit him like a truck, bringing his entire life to a grounding halt.
It had been a long road back afterward. There were a long couple of days in the ICU, followed by a long couple weeks in the mental ward, till he was "no longer a threat to himself, or others," as the doctor had put it.
By the time he'd left the hospital, he no longer had a job. His relationship with his long-time girlfriend quickly fell apart after, followed by a falling out with his family.
He clenched his fists and shook off the intense emotions welling up, redoubling his efforts to figuring out his current predicament. Falling apart from the shit storm that was his life could happen after he'd gotten his footing under him.
It had come to him like an epiphany, 'What if everything here is a psychosis-induced illusion? How can I differentiate it from reality? The thought swirled around in his brain.
Walking up to the nearest figure, he waved his hand in their face. "Hello?" He asked… No answer. He reached out to touch their shoulder.
There was an instant churning in his stomach as he did, an all-consuming fear that wasn't grounded in anything specific. The atmosphere was still, an eerie quietness pervaded the scene, and a heaviness hung in the very air around him as he laid a finger on them.
"Ah!"
He screamed, jumping back as he touched the person. His heart hammering in his chest as he froze, unable to process what was happening. There was no doubt that it was a real person. The skin was cold to the touch but also soft and mushy, as only skin could be.
His finger left a depression where he'd touched them, the skin having sunken in. Black lines began radiating out from the depression. The skin peeling back, curling, breaking, and turning an ashy color as if it were paper burning away.
Stepping back, he watched as the entire body crumpled and turned to ash before his very eyes.
Jose stood frozen, his mind reeling. None of it made sense. 'How could a person simply turn to ash like that?' He'd heard mention of spontaneous combustion, though he'd never seen it before, so he'd thought of it as an urban myth. Was this it? Or was something else happening?
His heart quickened, beating in his chest as if it were a trapped animal trying to escape.
Confusion and fear ruled his mind.
The horror of a regular person just crumpling away like that and turning to ash before him was just too unreal to accept, though he'd seen it with his own eyes
As he tried to make sense of it, he could hear something in the background… Footsteps, a muffled voice.
He wanted to turn. See who it was. What wash happening. But the horror of the scene he'd just witnessed left him in shock, his muscles frozen and unresponsive.
A young man stood before him, breathless, wide-eyed. "Hello?! Can you hear me!? Do you know what the hell this is!?… What is happening here?"
"I… I don't know," Jose whispered as he came back to his senses.
"Shit, this is crazy," said the young man his voice heavy with weariness and confusion.
"Okay, okay, just… Just calm down. I don't know what the hell is happening either… Maybe, maybe, we should look around for other survivors, of… Whatever happened here," eyes drifting back to the ashes on the ground.
"Where did you come from? What direction?" He asked the younger man.
It surprised him, the way he was behaving. His entire life, he'd prided himself in being decisive and steadfast in the face of dangerous and uncertain circumstances. But here he was unable to gain his footing or wrap his head around the situation.
The young man pointed to the second floor. "Just a minute ago. No idea how I got there."
Agitated and disoriented as he was, he was starting to see a pattern.
Like the others around him, he and this young man had been frozen in time, and some catalyst had woken them from that state.
So the question was, why had others not woken up yet? And, why did the one he touched turn to ash like that?
"Same, I can't remember anything yet either and have also been up for only a minute or so," Jose said, eyes floating back to the ashes again.
The young man followed his gaze. "I bumped into someone when I got up, and they turned to ashes too. I freaked out and ran."
'So touching another person who was still, "frozen in time," for lack of a better term, would turn them to ash,' Jose thought.
"AAAAHH!!"
A scream. They turned. A woman stumbled into the lobby, eyes wide.
"What the fuck is happening!!? Are we dead!? Is this hell!? Are… Are all these people dead!?"
They tried to calm her—but another scream rang out, deeper this time.
A young man ran into view, cradling his mangled hand. Blood poured from missing fingers. Tears streaming down his face, his eyes wide with shock and horror.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as they took in the scene before them, and then everything happened all at once.
A sickly pale-gray woman came running behind the newcomer, blood dripping out of her mouth and down her chin as she chewed on something and cackled like a maniac.
Five others around the lobby stirred. Limbs dropped. Eyes turned black. Skin gray, veins dark.
The newly awakened tilted their heads up sniffing the air and, in unison, turned in the direction of the young man who was running for his life.
Without warning, they burst into a dead run toward the newcomer, knocking over and trampling some of the other stationary people, turning them to ash as they did.
A tall guant man with grey hair reached the young man first—slammed into him like a linebacker, propelling them forward as they slid and tumbled on the floor.
The moment they'd come to a stop, the large man bit into his neck and ripped out a large chunk of flesh.
A horrifying scream—a gurgled whine.
The large man began chewing on the flesh with his head tilted up looking at the ceiling as he laughed.
The woman who was originally chasing the young man caught up and joined the others as they reached into the open wound and ripped out gouges of flesh with their bare hands.
The monsters ate the young man's flesh, cackling in the same maniacal way as the first one. The young man's screams tapered off, his dead eyes unfocused as they stared up at the ceiling.
Jose's skin felt clammy, sweat rolled down his face, and he shivered from the shock of what he was seeing.
He'd seen mindless violence plenty of times before. But this, this was madness, pure and unadulterated madness.
Naseua began creeping up as the monsters voraciously chewed and swallowed down the bloody flesh as if they were enjoying a freshly cooked steak.
A hand clutched his arm, a whaling in his ear snapping him back. The woman was trembling, barely upright.
Both men turned to her, she froze, horror writen on her face.
They looked back to realize the monsters were now looking at them, no longer chewing.
"Huh?" The monsters all uttered in unison as they tilted their heads, like puppies, regarding them as if they had done something strange.
Jose instinctually grabbed the woman by her shoulder and shoved her toward the exit while turning and pulling the younger man with his other arm.
He wasn't sure if the monsters would attack them next, but he didn't plan on waiting around to find out.
"RUN!" He yelled, and made for the door.
He reached the exit first. The doors didn't open. Acting without hesitation he charged, shattered the glass, rolled, and kept running.
"Follow me I live across the street!" Yelled the younger man over his shoulder taking the lead once they were outside.
They burst into the door to the apartment building, slamming it shut and locking it behind them. "I live on the second floor. Come on!" The young man yelled while heading for the stairs.
They made their way up the stairs and down the corridor to his apartment.
The young man froze at the end of the hall. He raised his hands to stop the others before they made it across as his breath caught in his throat.
Down the hall to his right was another gruesome scene.
Lying on the floor was the body of a heavy-set man, an elderly lady sat on the floor next to him. She had the same pale-gray skin as the others and was ripping chunks out of the man's flesh with inhuman strength.
He fumbled for his keys, shaky and sweaty causing the keys to slip from his hands.
They held a collective breath as the keys hit the floor noisily. They could hear the old monster utter the same "huh" as the others had when she stopped eating.
Jose slowly hugged the wall, scooting the woman back with him, singaling for silence, ensuring they were cut off from the monster's line of sight.
The young man dared not move, but he could see the monster sitting there, just staring at him in that weird puppy-like manner from his peripheral.
She only stared at him for a few seconds, then thankfully returned to her meal and cackling.
He allowed himself a slow, agonizing breath while he, very slowly, bent at the knees and picked up the keys. Every little noise he made was as loud as a gunshot to his ears, giving him pause.
Luckily, the monster paid him no mind continuing her meal.
It felt as if hours had passed before the young man picked up the keys and opened the apartment, though in truth, it was only seconds.
Once the door was open he slowly crept in and waved the others in behind him.
Jose began moving slowly, but the woman couldn't stand to be near the monster for another second and loudly ran across the hall into the apartment.
The monstrous old lady burst into raucous laughter as she rushed over to investigate.
Jose bolted into the apartment, slammed the door, locked it, collapsing against it.
Outside, they heard sniffing and scraping.
He looked under the door.
The monster had dragged her meal in front of it, and sat down to eat.