EMPTY

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Listen to this warning of a clear ending—spreading the warning of a distorted beginning. No drill was launched, nor good mercy.

“Please be advised: Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours.”

It’s been a motionless ride, my world.

“I repeat. Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours”

Be careful not to overload the hell.

“It is moving. It is running to devour yours.”

As I am still here.

1: SAFE DEATH

YEAR 2000. TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

OMNISCIENT

When death is already an easy thing to achieve, what’s stopping anyone from making it so pleasing, at least?

Physically sick, homeless, and must be a murderer. That was the kind of human you might see him as. He was treading his steps into the pool of luminous water scented by someone's artificial heaven, possibly subjective.

You may think he was glad to be in this room with this thing that consists of liquid, round, and not too big. He could stay here for as long as his body may wish. Sometimes a minute, sometimes less than an hour. Sometimes... almost instantly. There was no other place you could jump into, other than this resort in the middle of the Polian City alley, hidden, almost. And it was filled with everything you need, especially if you were physically sick, homeless, or a murderer.

“Kio Ilcito, am I pronouncing it right?” Joas’ voice echoed out of the intercom device placed on both sides of the room. Everything is white, aside from the man and this sparkling pool of euphoria designed in the center of the four-corner chamber. “...Says here you’re being sought as the criminal who proudly murdered his father with a knife. Is that the reason why you should be dying?” he added.

“Not really,” the patient, Kio, answered, eyes following the soft, sparkling groove of the water across his feet.“...But diagnosed with something incurable,” he counted, before idly stamping one foot down on a glass stair leading to the pool edge, soaking in a shallow section.

“...Before being a criminal for chopping off the brain of a father who owned a dick that doesn't choose,” and another foot, swiping with the drift of warm, glistening soak, “...and I regret... I regret doing it later than it should have been just because I didn't know how to chop.” The patient voiced his affliction, staring at his unblinking reflection over the clarity of the tainted aqua defining his loss.

“Where’s Mother?” he once again questioned, grasping a sharp whiff of expectation audible beyond the device.

The patient carried a prolonged pause before answering in a whisper, sounding almost bored, “Nowhere. But I turned out to be her forced replacement, died the moment she put me out of a hole. Never in my life can I forgive them.” Another beat of pain pounded as he didn't intend to, but delivered to one who listens, one to have him decide.

“Will your death be the reason for someone to do the same?”

“No one will ever notice I’m gone. I'm not sure about the policemen”

“You may die,” Joas announced like an ending play.“...Sink... Freely... Drown with the antidote,” he remarked, seasoned with encouragement and heartily… dark.

The patient shone down his adoration over the flowing moist, receiving his unholy gift, mumbling unaware, “Antidote... My antidote.”

“Your antidote.” Joas rephrased, resonantly grasping his faith in the idea of how humans’ suffering must end only of their own will, to be drowned in a restful delight… after an ultimate misery, and made this Montorium to be found by him.

Straightaway, as the patient dives down his whole being, his body slaps down the 6-foot drench of drug, flooded with surprise solely for his eyes; awakened, and dilated in uttermost pleasure as though his body and soul had him apart into a different side. He swims, and swims, and swims.

Exploring his imaginative delight, tears as well were immersed in the relaxing insides of the water, dissolving his sorrow and fatigue. His arms dance around the firmness of the liquid, grooving but also steady. His feet flutter as he glides deeper and deeper, and gently goes up. He's slowly gulping the fluid of the restful end before he even knows it. It should be enough; it should be gratifying.

Not long after, his skin deflates with dead paleness like a raisin out of its prime. His unmoving body sails upwards, rotating naturally to the front. And right there, the valuable smile unfolds across his face like a corpse that Joas always longed to become.

Hecor, the clinic's head of documentary, entered the room to capture the new patient’s closed-lip smile as evidence of yet another freed soul leaving its bodily wretched life. The brightness of the camera flashed onto the patient’s face with a single click, taking the overly clear image to forever lie in his eyes and in his heart.

Phil followed to burn the bodies into nothingness afterwards. He carried the patient’s body down to the basement’s human oven while humming a lazy whistle, his song of optimistic goodbye.

Hecor then paced out of the room to grab his flip-style phone vibrating inside his pocket. He answered the call. “Cheska,”

“How is it going?” she replied.

“Nothing changed. Still waiting for your… understanding,” he answered, sliding the door of the pool area shut with a loud snap. Hecor marched straight into the lobby, carrying the faces like a nightmare he couldn’t wipe off his mind— no matter if he was fully awake.

“We’re not coming back to assist with your clinical crime. I want to be a nurse, not a killer. And I never misunderstood you,” Cheska answered.

“When will you stop hoping he could fix his mind?” he asked, while placing the phone between his right ear and his shoulder, turning his visual attention to the camera just to assure he had saved his newly captured imagery of the lost.

“Maybe the world would do it for him,” she asserted, with a hint of indirect threat that made Hecor suddenly space out. His eyes locked on the open window.

“It’s just that… not all doctors save a life by just extending it. You never know if every living creature in this world is living its life. Some were just sort of… breathing,” Hecor told his friend, firm as his fingers glued to the faces flashed on his camera screen like souls smiling over their slowly fading existence, overpowering the solidity of his tone.

Cheska went along the spirit of silence for a second, gathering a reply full of intent. “He told you that, I see. But he didn’t tell you about those who were just lost,” she meaningfully claimed like a daughter of nature.

Hecor dropped his shoulders in disapproval and the urge to protest. She was smart, and she had heart; his borrowed knowledge had nothing to compete with half of what she possessed. The conversation was just then interrupted by a continuous chime, a ring of desperate, suicidal blaring out for help.

“I’m guessing it’s younger than the rest.” Phil interrupted as he returned from the finished duty.

“Who?” Hecor intrigued.

“Someone who wants to die again,” Phil joked without smiling.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Hecor told Cheska almost after a beep.

Hecor walked directly to the entrance before swinging the door open in prepared sympathy for a face he was about to see. But he wasn't expecting his eyes to widen at a little girl who was too small, too innocent to be a patient who wants to die, and mostly just beginning her life.

A school uniform with a backpack. A rainbow-colored umbrella in her grip. Hecor ascertained it was not that bad, but still bad.

“Where’s the idiot? I saw him get in here!” the girl greeted with a yell. Hecor was then struck with paranoia, not making it very obvious.

Instilling a soft tone in his voice, “Sweetie, nice to see you! But I hope not to see you here again. Kids are not allowed to be here. Besides---wait, do you need him to come with you to school? Would you like me to take over?” his unshakeable worriedness tried to explain the illegality of her presence, being proudly here.

Flashing the most fake-looking smile of innocence with her droopy eyes, she replied, “I can walk on my own. Can you at least hand this to him for me?” She spoke with a hand lifting a rainbow-colored umbrella, where a goose whistle was making a tinkling noise on its handle.“...Idiot left this again on the couch. What a shame, I’m not even planning to get in there,” she added, one brow up while hiding the fact she was casually trying to peek a naughty glance at the narrowly open door.

Hecor constantly nodded. “Alright, sure, I’ll hand this to the idiot, okay? Then you'll go? You--- are you sure you don’t want me to take you to school? I brought a bike!” he smiled, his left hand receiving the umbrella with all the glory of her command. His right hand reached for a gentle tap on her head, an apologetic affection.

“That bike?” Asiana pointed to the sidewalk where somebody's lonely MTB was parked.

“Yeah,” Hecor said shortly, turning to the side, visually claiming someone's unoccupied bike.

Hecor shouldn't be paying much attention to the wrong thing, but he's distracted by an unusual pack of flies swirling around something on the ground. It was too thick to see what was festering, but it was next to the bicycle's pedals. He was starting to think he could finally smell it. The stench.

“Hey! I knew it! It’s not a wafer stick! It’s not a goddamn wafer stick! It's sizzling!” Asiana hooted as she got her opportunity to get through, dashing as she finally caught the brother’s habitual seat on a stairway. In his mindless frame of existence, lighting a cig, thereafter hitting a smoke— their eyes eventually met.

Realizing Hecor had lost his own caution, he turned back to the kid even belatedly, for the little one’s stubbornness was too strong to overcome. Asiana succeeded in her way, fronting her idiot older brother with a shout.

“…It’s bad for your health! You're gonna go to hell!” complained the little girl flowing the genuine words of her deepest concern. Hecor was left with the umbrella in his grip like his only source of ease, a holder of his running tension.

Joas arched a brow in improper mockery, “You wanna try?” puffing out the smoke as he bluntly talked, but it was rough as he was handing the blazing cigarette to the kid like a clowning way of concealing mood.

Asiana didn't seem to be offended; rather, she was disgusted. “Ew, my breath will stink--”

“Now, get out of here,” Joas cut in, crashing the cigarette tip against the concrete wall like a pen writing a flame until it's dry. That's the only way he could hold down the irritation about his sister’s prohibited arrival, and no one must be blamed.

Asiana sought evidence by roaming her eyes around the plain area that looked merely like a normal, unsuspicious room. A wooden coffee table. A black leather couch. An abstract painting hanging off the raw concrete wall. “But... I can’t see anything wrong here. Other than you.” She folded her arms, standing in her little bossiness, thinking it would overshadow her brother’s unnecessary offense.

“Hecor, can you take her to school right now?” Joas aborted his fuming impatience, looking down at his little enemy as he got up. Asiana dominated his outrage by casting her own madness, flaring her nostrils as wide as they could, with a glare, a fearless kind of glare seething to win the argument against someone older.

“Come on here, sweetie.” Hecor put himself back into the quarrel by switching sides to their little opponent. He was about to hang the umbrella on a hook when Joas abruptly retracted it, taking it back to his little sister’s hand.

“My hand is even bigger than the canopy of this umbrella. That’s yours. Now, please, go.” Joas firmly advised.

Asiana didn’t move as she sensed herself about to cry. What does she know? Why was it she couldn’t know? Simply, he couldn’t let his belief ruin her dreamy world.

Rather, Joas chose to keep her blind by gently reaching for her tiny arm before pulling her by her wrist and guiding her into the doorway. The cost was Asiana’s wild-pitched screaming, a reviving tantrum over her exhausted brother, who merely caressed his own temple. He was on the brink of giving up.

“There are dead people in the basement of this room, Asiana. You might not want to catch them walking up here.” Phil’s disturbing phrases seemed to strike Asiana as fearful.

The child instantly rushed her way out of the door with a squeal, an umbrella, and a heavy slam of the door. Brother could only pause, eyeing the little child running away, his look smeared with blame.

Joas was never good at consoling the stubborn. At least the little girl had finally removed herself from their accountability.

“Hey... uh, anyway, Andres Carino just cancelled his appointment,” Hecor decided it was the perfect time to remind him.

“Appreciate it, Hecor.” Joas tapped his shoulder without looking.

Officially fulfilling the little trial, Joas was comforted to eventually visit a special room. It was serving as his favorite spot located in the farther area of the clinic. With a sharp breath, he boasted. A chair offered him a rest to stare equally sharp at seemingly nothing; he stretched his left leg into the bottom of a switch that turned the main lights on, revealing a main view under the light and a collection.

The illuminated room divulged a glass wall wholly shrouded by a malicious gallery of patients’ legacy in photograph form. They were all bound and displayed evenly like a wallpaper covering the edges very well, composing each patient a pair of reminiscences: one shot dry, one shot drowned but finally smiling underneath the ecstatic little sea... gone but might still look alive. A photo of a man, an old lady, faces of disabilities, filling his sight with faces of what he believes was cured. Like a proud father to his only son, he admired their courage as much as the religious would detest it.

And then, a hiss of nature, or a spirit he accidentally called, was how the waft slammed violently from the open window, delivering a cryptic silence like an unknown reminder. Something caused it, as he thought, but not the sensation on his nape rousing intensely. The swift air then stole one of the photographs to be detached, hauling his attention to watch someone's little portrait dancing ghostly into the thin air. There, it slowly landed on the bottom, before flipping in a swaying motion as if apologizing for a cause.

To that, the blank space was left deserted on a see-through glass wall where a patient’s memorial used to lie. It upset him a little, but Joas immediately approached. He bent down to the floor with a prudent touch, grabbing the image in fear of the slightest wrinkle it might cause. He was not being disrespectful. He was caring too much.

So steady as a painting, he moved carefully to get the image back into its designated little home. His sight, however, decided to show him too much truth just by looking back at the wall. He was consumed by the sinister breeze yanking his spirit apart from his body, and he didn't like how it felt. Because right now, he was seeing the space—occupied, finally filled up. But not by the photograph.

Something was looking nearer, granted through his blood pumping very strongly as if it wasn't true. He was certain it couldn’t be true. But he might say so—to that shadow moving at the corner of his eye.

In his puzzling sensation and senses trying to lie, he was now stuck gazing back at someone’s dolly eyes, reddish undereyes— teary, but it’s dry. It was dilated for a heaving stare, a reflection of disorder, in this daylight. With flaky, paper-white skin, squashed with dents of peeping varicose veins, its broad arthritic head facing his surprise— friendly, getting close to greet him with its sloppy smile in a highly spirited curl of a stretchy emotive mouth; Joas can hear it squelching. Its tongue moving. Even its larynx vibrating like an oldman's snore.

Only at this point does he realize... he was looking at someone's corpse who seemed never meant to die and never wants to. The longer he looked, the less he understood this totality of a mutated male human in white formal attire, knocking to reach his heart, brain, and smelly mind.

Joas didn’t know how; he didn’t know why. And no one knew what was behind its sudden emergence, happily peeking outside the transparent partition, mostly not in the exact space where the corpse’s photograph supposedly lies. It wasn't the visitor he was expecting to make him feel a little older.

In relation maybe to this fear, the silence later bent into a catastrophic noise in a hoot of trumpeting alarms, fusing along with the scream of humanity in a pulse of horror coming to grow.

Thus, holding his gaze, not averting from this danger's eyes, Joas ran swiftly backwards into the nearest cupboard. His blind hand rummaged until he found a single syringe as his sole defensive weapon. With the sudden panic of Phil and Hecor pounding behind the closed door, Joas slammed it open and rushed outside for a brotherly goal.

Fear seized the jaws of the two who were left by a friend, catching a view of the strange human banging its head senseless against the wall. It was crying to enter, its whimpers singing like a laughing goat, mindful of its own need, wailing with a desirous toothless grin. Hecor and Phil's throats intrinsically seal with terror before they shut the door, gasping for the oxygen that felt lost after the glimpse of someone they should've welcomed before.

Ashen with dread, with the image of a horrific creature stuck in his head, “What the fuck...” Phil grunted, pressing his fear against the door, heavy with a shock comparable to a cardiac arrest.

The sun lacked brightness today, spewing out the smoke of darkness to accentuate the tragedy that mostly happens at night. Joas burst out of the Montorium in a different type of haste while forgetting the earth’s existence where trouble had begun, heels not even touching the ground.

Roaming his petrified gaze, he saw nothing but crumpled pieces of the crowd shrinking in different directions, and the usefulness of the deserted bike nearby. He hopped on and cycled harshly as he rode past the left leg of nobody and squished the kneecap against the wheel—none of his concern. At least he scared the swarming flies away, scattering like the current population.

Dread was progressively boosting through the wheels, whooshing rapidly and squeaking like a toy. Everything was blending with the cruising shadows of an increasing number of replicas of the first one he found. And it was longing to have the same smile and duplicate deadness, but longing merrier. Apart from equal aggressiveness being seen, the hideous entities appear to be spreading violence and unimaginable torture against humanity in a cannibalistic way. No room for any kind of hesitation this time.

He was deaf to a pang of screaming regret but forced to listen to a yell of a dying world. The topmost selfishness was roaring loudly, crying out loud, but quickly silenced. Lives were being fought. Lives were running away to unknown destinations. And lives were paralyzed; screams were singing with the melody of their body thoroughly chomped, from forehead to toes, from the outer layer to the bones. Fighting souls were with eyes closed, but bodies openly skinned alive like stripping clothes. They were nothing now but a bunch of emotional meat. No one was too young, and neither is too old.

[ Area 32 will be bombarded in a minute. Please switch to a safer area. ]

There was the worst getting worse. It was the area near and before the alley into Asiana’s school, the exact possible place where she had probably been stuck alone and fearful, hopefully just alone. The environment’s air swiped bitterly against his breathing as he clenched his teeth, clogged by regret and worry.

His palm raked his face to wipe the drip of his sweat and desperation. ’Cause still, he found nothing. But he got himself found by a horde of wandering smiles in a corporate uniform, starving in front of the convenience store for his presence he unknowingly offered. Instinctively, he flared up, racing to enter every corner of the greasy road where all he could see were different faces of tragedy anywhere his taunted gaze would set off.

Joas resumed the rush for his final job, cycling harder past the pair of runners paving the way to chase his humanly tease. They were into him, wildly, eagerly, religiously— reaching his arrogant resistance with a screech. Still, he was keeping his eyes aware, seeking the kid he had unintentionally lost. Further beyond each passing moment, he was folding up his fear for having endless reasons to have it, after everything he’d seen.

Then, amidst the hopeless ride that had already turned into more minutes, he was finally freed from the chasing game. And a familiar umbrella caught his eye on the side of a driveway. It was isolated, aware of its function as a cover, well sufficient as a child-friendly guard. Yet at the same time, the doom remained strong enough to stop him from focusing on either the victim or the threat. Surely the umbrella could no longer cover.

Dead pals almost next to Asiana turned around; Joas confronted them with the body of the bicycle full of honor and simply slammed the hunting faces off— smiles then almost flattened as they were blown off to the ground. But the impact wasn't violent enough to take them back into their roots. So slowly, they were rising back.

Joas ran back away, mindful of one of the fallen corpses coming for revenge. But it was moving more aggressively, happy, with a deep snore penetrating dangerously in a subtle means of calling a better mate. It wasn't letting him pass this moment. Still, it was a fair outcome for Joas.

Asiana remained in her terrified position like a scared frog, but her eyes were overpowered by relief. She was still hiding under the vigilant canopy of her little umbrella, but in her innocent watch, the dead found her just as easily as it was energized to meet her this time.

Thus, before Asiana's eyes make her move, a gasp bursts from her mouth the second her feet are harshly pulled up. The tip of her head touched the ground, and her face reddened with her own blood— coloring it darker from her crying caused by the freak holding her up. A nightmare not even her little brain can make up.

Gaining two ways to battle death, the winning dead was now aiming to crunch his sister’s little calves, other than a threatening sight of an explosion in range nearby to end them both at once. But Joas made up his mind, composed, his hand quickly reached into the pocket of his pants for the syringe of acid he purposely got. Now his mind was seemingly frozen. Chances were spreading apart. And his heartbeat was drumming. He gambled his luck and threw off the syringe, flying in the gravity, about to plunge into the big smiling head he aimed to switch into cry.

But on negativity’s fondness, the syringe leaped over a misguided pattern as he forgot to sum—vaulting down on the dead's chest out of his aim to the lowest probability of beating. When in surprising positivity, his rival explodes nonetheless like a party balloon in contrast to what he predicted. A god-blessed set it might have appeared. Bloody residues scatter all over the crying Asiana, bathing her red pasta of gut in the juice of her brother’s unexpected success. He caught her body as quickly as an athletic reflex or a paranoid mother.

Asiana never felt as secure as she was now in his arms. But Joas knows he wasn't yet done. So he turned around to see his job seemingly finished, but not by his own hand. Thus, with a mystery in his head, he ran his sister away just a yard from the forthcoming detonation booming on the ground. There was a better way for them to die; he swore.

“What are those... What’s happening?” Hecor's package of confusion was for the other line of the call. Endless screams were departing through the Montorium's walls, compounded by abrupt gunshots in unstoppable mayhem going on. The group has finally rejoined, at least gathered in the same lobby for their temporary evacuation.

“Dad is now working to find its source. But based on a recent observation, their weakest point was their chest, as their head is empty and senseless.” Cheska’s explanation was barely understood due to the noise of the wrecking that overlapped her voice. Joas, recalling his first kill, theorized the information might be in the right doctrine.

Peeking through the window blinds to check the place barely a world, Phil interrupted, “Are they rabid?”

“Yes,” Cheska answered, informing them with direct caution. “… So stay fearful and alert. We’ll be there in 15 minutes. Run in case we're late.” Cheska ended the call, for another moment for them to be trapped with the choir of tragedy outside. With the prayers of survival, they were unforgetful in the world they were living in. At moments like this, everything would be too much to ask.

Sitting on the couch with only his thoughts, Joas then caught something on Asiana’s wrist, seemingly a new form of doubt. A beaded bracelet that seemed childishly customized at first, but mysteriously specialized by those tiny red dots of light peeping through the layer. Vocalizing his suspicion, he asked, “Where’d you get that?” his eyes were glued over.

“From Cheska. She told me I look cool with it.” Asiana's playful yet forthright response made him avoid her eyes for a reason. Joas replied with a slow, reluctant nod, as he knew it, and it was foul.

“Someone will be bringing you home. Wait till later,” Joas plainly claimed.

By what his words had done, the little girl was amused. “We’re going back home?”

JOAS

“I repeat. Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in area 41. It is moving. It is running to devour yours”

Those humming growls weren’t always too engaging. But it was louder and higher than the recorded powerless report that requests everyone to hiddenly die. This deadly happiness overthrew the cries accepted by them all. Everyone was finally heard.

No one was safe; remembering their worth throughout their lifetime of torture wasn’t enough to conclude, considering the span. Too short. Too deep. Now, they were scattering into tiny bleeding pieces, crying with regret—“I must’ve ended it when I was whole.” No condolences to someone’s spinal cord swimming in the drainage to never be unbreakable.

It pained them, and so did my soul.

Wet by the drops of their own tears, waiting for the last tick of their time. They were trapped, listening to their body being crunched by one or many. A taste of the torment from the voices’ plea, yelling no, requesting the mind not to back down against the chews penetrating to the bones, left eaten incomplete, with flies depreciating, dirty, and embarrassed. In the process, the only matter that could numb the despair was to kill their hope, as only the dead become alive.

To say at least, to this world, I had lived as a fellow who granted a cure as a means of death. But only for those who’ve been sick for an unreasonable sequence of living, a sickness that sleep couldn’t cure— by kindness, along with a beautiful scent of the volitional ending with a grave, with flowers, with reasons, without the harshness of the living world. Without being ended by the carelessness of this living world.

Matter of damn fact, these non-living bodies lived out death’s beauty by knowing how to make it to the living. Even in their dead appeal. They were eating what I didn’t have. I vomit what I didn’t want. They were ahead of my way with the knowledge of why they were running. As I, since then, am empty, clueless, and afraid, wandering in this living world like an amnesiac.

But, for the time being, I would try to run on my feet, as a path for this kid. My first and last objective.

“It’s stupid. It’s really stupid. I won’t leave you here! Please!” Asiana solidly screeched, her tiny voice showered with tears of fearless dedication to rushing our demise. I adored it. I envied it. But not while she was looking up at my face. It felt unconvincing, with her little hands bouncing my arms in an understandable will. ’Cause one thing I couldn’t ignore was the hollowness of this elevator being distortedly tight. Because our destination on a rooftop was to seek someone’s help, for the usefulness I couldn’t offer.

I inhaled sharply, engrossed in the right words to save at least this little human’s brain. “Those dead figures will eat your flesh, happily and irrevocably, so that you’re never gonna take it back to your crying body. You hear that?” I said quietly, in a tone meant to horrify, although mindful of the fact that the child wouldn’t listen. I was talking to a nine-year-old human in a bloody uniform, who normally must be easily daunted even by tales undertoned by factual advice.

“They're dead, but why smiling too lively? I’m scared, and you, an idiot! My only home is you ’cause mom’s far away from here. You hear that? I’d rather die beside you than survive with a stranger.” The kid’s tone reduced, and melancholy softened as she casually pursed her lips to delay another of her innocent cries. Just not to barricade her sight of me like I’ll illicitly disappear any minute.

A home, they say, was a refuge inside every human being’s psychological disarray for each mind to be held. It was philosophically human-made material for almost dying people who finally found the desire to survive. To forget the pain built inside since birth. Purely therapized.

“At least trust my way, if not him.” Calmly, I defied, partly unsure of the sense I was inducing.

“Not now… don’t prove it now! I know! I’m never your real sister, so you can’t love me as I do. That mom is right,” the kid claimed in a truly strange breath.

One brow creased on my exasperated face, absorbing those unnatural terminologies that came out of the tiny witless mouth. There was no way a sensitive mother could come to such a conclusion. Perhaps the daughter merely heard it wrong.

I would no longer be here, realistically alive, if I, all along, didn’t have even the tiniest bit of love for this needy being. My existence as a resisting living was the language that I used as a responsible brother I am.

“Asiana, please.” I stood up straighter as I held my composure back, displaying a gaze of first warning.

Cold, abstractly, the elevator doors finally retracted. We went out calmly to set off on this hazy and empty surface of the rooftop elevated against the blood-soaked chaos underneath. Sure damn well, the heaviness of this child’s claim was even more dangerous. Our gaze then rose, catching the sound of a helicopter blade whirring in the approach of our defenseless area. The servant just came in at perfect timing overhead. Intrusion had never been kinder.

“That’s why you are too lazy to save me on your own”

Oh, it hadn’t ended yet—the drama of this kid twisting my dread to punish my gut in unwanted frustration. And I could do nothing but shift my coward eyes away to forcefully ignore. She had to understand that safeness wasn't in line with whoever she wanted to be with. It was not.

Imperiously glancing back at the child, I spoke in an indistinct trail of reluctance, lazily spinning this dwarf-sized umbrella in my left hand for the phrases, “I’ll come after. And... and I’ll be bringing this--fuck” I picked it up as it dropped,“...hopeless umbrella.”

Glorious, her face eventually lightened hearing the magical spell of that stupid rainbow umbrella. A greater intent manipulated by fondness. Not long, she joined my eyes to be painfully narrowed, surged by the forceful slam of the wind brought by the twin-seater plane’s continual noise in a fit of landing down. It's equipping for an additional life to take and borrow. A life that must be completely returned.

Werth, this kid’s obliging service, finally bounced off the aircraft in his confident footpath coming our way. “Joas,” he called as he was now in front, “...Where your boys at?”

“I suggested they stay inside.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of her,” casting out his friendly wave to Asiana, who’s trying to hide me behind her back, keeping me grateful rather than having her run for persistence.

“Did you get the address?” my tongue wrenching with forced trust, paired with a straight gaze looming until he subtly swallowed the underlying threat. All as I breathed for his reassurance that my sister would land safely and alive. Even without a brother’s splitting appearance.

“I’ll be patient enough to handle this little bratty-looking kid,” he said before chuckling, not hearing my question. This public sergeant must be the most trusted person in times of crisis like this. Otherwise, he was stupid. It was he whom this little damsel shall rely upon for her safety, not to die with me.

“Did you get the address?”

“Of course, man”

Sunken responsibility in my regard, steadily following her little feet as she headed on her way to a new expedition. Kid wasn't even looking back at me. Werth accompanied her in getting her latches on. Her pure eyes spoke of astonishment—just as an innocent kid had always been, even after a blameless argument.

“Am I gonna throw up!?” She yelled out to me like she was certain.

“Check your bag’s left pocket just in case!” I shouted back.

The aircraft was now preparing to take off for the main event to ensue. The little passenger lastly spun with a beaming smile, showing her awareness of danger. She waved her hand with a plastic bag across the window with her naive readiness—for everything to reset the moment she looked away from the truth.

My feet still planted on the ground of uncertainty, giving her a single nod. I could feel my neck hugged by an invisible choker, hard to ignore because of the guilt.

Until the brave craft was consumed by safe clouds above the ending fateful town, I finally grasped the courage to pace out in a way of striding back to the danger. With a loose commitment to necessary resistance, I was finally breathing with no words to respire. But in behalf of reducing this worry, I would try to curse that safeness could exist—it merely didn’t belong to my company— but to my sister. I would die without wondering why.

Another basis why these creatures are worthy of silent adoration: their holistic labor supplied with their brainless tolerance. It made them all comedic as they crumble, tumbling like merely heavy drinkers on the road. It was our time to go.

But unfriendly was a loud bang behind the door that answered our tempting curiosity, stepping us—Phil, Hecor, and I—back from the dark rebellious surprise. The fate of this sacred place to be invaded by non-patient corpses will soon take over the place, and these bodies we own would end up inside an over-bloated stomach. Soon, we would be mixed with a fleshy crowd we have never been with on a normal day. No matter how healthy their food was, their belly was impossible to fill as long as living humanity smelled and reeked—wanting to be alive.

We pound off onto the upper floor of the neighboring building like willing survivors, but truthfully lax. Once elevated, our glance dropped to the other side to see the current case behind the door, a pack of tumbling obsession knocking at the door to enter all together.

Natural phenomena, it was, a farewell to Montorium.

We, with no valuable option but to leap from the two-story building to supersede and freely fall and pop like a bubble. It was a proper decision that Asiana was positioned in a lofty adventure. The crybaby certainly wouldn’t enjoy this variety of hide-and-seek.

“Come on, just jump,” Phil ordered Hecor, stooping down to the bottom with eyes fearful of being the first to lose in the early wave.

We headed off one by one with the help of a lower-level roof. Then, we quickly surrendered our feet over the window’s edge, diving down as we anchored to the ground. A ground soon to be a grassland of apocalyptic corpses.

The power of someone’s god allows us to be freed momentarily— just to appreciate the extent of the undead’s capability of turning the Polian City into a better one, better for their kind.

Victimized bodies, dead or alive, all scattering across the pavement’s totality where human flesh was the scent of the air. Everybody's stinking but loved by pests; thus I discerned the metallic smell of uncooked meat and spoiled ones unfinished.

We were stepping on a road of widespread destruction, the product of the undead’s enjoyment in their chosen town. It was a perfect amusement, setting the sinkhole of hell in line with a predictable disappointment.

Corpses National Party wasn't yet over. They weren't even wasted yet. A full-course meal to be feasted on was just being heated, to be beautifully designed on a long table encircling the whole globe.

So here, our moving eyes were trying to look for lively smiles to be avoided or met. We hadn’t seen one again, but cackling whimpers in the distance were casually remaining. The priority now was to find any vehicle we could use to elude an alternative fate. Yet we landed at the train stop filled with jumbled nothingness. It was quite less dangerous in comparison to my usual danger. The distance from the howls was gradually turning tighter and stupider. They owe me a shame; I was a fancier of all medleys of a corpse.

“Let’s phone them now.” Whining, Phil spoke while my feet remained in stillness.

Digesting a potential threat as a means of observing the sense of the ruined zone, I am keeping an ear to the ground as a substitute support.

Hecor raised the phone to his head like a sacrifice, walking ghostlike as he engaged himself with an area of the signal. Phil and I stayed behind, with hazy brains and eyes lazily fixed on the phone as the sole reliance, anticipating the indication of success with a tone.

Still, I was aware of each crossing moment shifting the volume of the ambiance, turning higher in an ominous sense. With each pace, I heard it more, something’s— someone’s arrival, waiting to be known, waiting to be avoided, waiting for a reason. Despite the intellect’s occupation with Hecor's seemingly pointless device, our feet kept us moving incautiously cautious.

My recognition, fortunately, was merely instigated by a noise unleashed from my very back. Something dived down to disturb, not meaninglessly. My nose demanded my attention to swivel for the fallen mystery behind, slowly, deliberately. The celebrants might want a poke of a cake.

“There we go!” Hecor’s sudden scream thundered through my chest; I almost stumbled. “...Cheska, pick up! please! Pick it up!”

Then, further terrorized by fear when I realized where our feet unknowingly shepherd us into— for ourselves to be found mindlessly in the middle of a functioning railroad carrying the remaining pieces of the world.

Rattling in the tremble of peril in our path, hailing the mad arrival of the train getting its way uncontrolled. Clanking, hooting, it was pushing us to quickly head out down to the rail side. Still holding the awareness of stupidity, we embarrassingly left a pathway for the train to cross. And for us to refrain from the inanity, surely, from now on.

The train passed; watching it cross was an ordinary sight at first, but the wind slapped me unusually hard this time. An outstanding matter on its roof gave me something to look at longer.

With the dark smoke foregrounding my vision and my thoughts, my feet then balked off the ground.

I was eyeing a horror, a little decapitated head sitting over a spacious roof of the train like a ball with ponytails and a crumpled nose. I knew I should follow.

The head, a human’s sliced head with a little age that failed to escape the afterlife in a hurry. Dark, dried blood outlined around the eye sockets like a red, loose rubber. It was standing with a dented forehead and a sloppily slashed neck where death mercilessly took the unrealistically fleeting span of a little one’s beginning life. Of my Asiana. Her one eye was closed, but it didn’t make a difference; it was meant to be recognized more.

So, I was running for another time.

Dull, humid, commanding time to cease my grief with my moistened eyes moving along the traumatizing imagery, but I was sprinting with hatred, following the track of the train I could no longer perceive. I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t know. Agony, agony, agony all over my vast body.

Those little eyes clouded with a harmless desire, linking over my widened gaze. Now slowly drifting farther along the disappearing train, it was leaving everything but the perpetual dread. My fellows must’ve already witnessed the detectable grief seething on their side, chasing a friend who was chasing nothing anymore.

Werth.

What could Werth have done with this?

His body.

His head.

Where was a piece of him?

The plane, at least.

Where was the rest?

My sister was in the sky, and she was smiling. I left her there, and I stayed there until she faded above this killing ground. She must have been able to escape. What now, what now, she’s here in the opposite of my only need?

She wasn't wrong. I killed her. And I was the one she wanted to die with.

I couldn’t move, I couldn't forgive, and I refused to die the same. These weak eyes I nudged for the wish to see her body that must be around—and the darkness justified by her headless body as the disturbing mystery that dropped a while ago behind the tree. It was too late to be saved now; against the flock of corpses a foot away from where I ran from, spinning her leg off her waist but already detached from her upper body that kept her red starry bag she’ll always own, and I hoped I could take it.

Now, my sister's remaining pieces were dismembered in different spots as if meant to be collected; the nearest one was her open belly, leaving her tiny liver mushed like a cake—skewering tragedy down to my future, and to the next life I would biologically abhor.

Then it saw us. The hungry reveler and its hungrier friends. Blood-stained smile, bragging hellish eyes glimmered with an urge through looming growls in the name of bacterial dominance. I was seeing a perfect time to surrender, not to participate in a fantasy of this world where, in truth—there was no safe place for anyone to be buried, at least.

“Let’s run, Joas!” Hecor’s pleading gaze slips out of the corner of my mollifying eyes.

Running, flying, crawling. You could do anything, and a cruel death, however, will do the same. It was sweet until you realize it wasn't for you.

“Run... Run!” Phil took over the loudness.

Time closed the distance between the living and the dead, coming heavy on our side with a group led by the one grasping Asiana’s arm. I knew it was hers by the bracelet persisting absolutely on her wrist, stronger than her bones. Not too long before a grinning bite devours the whole of it, from hand to shoulder, in disgrace to a brother watching already close.

Other than a call of the void, I’m hearing Phil’s thought being careless of what he might be thinking. “I think this is the time I should tell you--”

A boom jolted my nerves back to life, but the strike of the shot came out somewhere unforeseen. My body remained standing with life, not Phil—as he left a short whiff of a sigh before landing on the already disastrous ground. I stared at his cold eyes, trying to catch the maroon syrup from the pulpy hole next to his brows, like his dream process of death with a tiny circular gap. A tactical vanishing, into suddenly.

“He’s not with us!” A familiar voice from afar joined the bleed.

Soon, I would be too numb.