Footsteps echoed from the hallway in front of our room. I hurriedly went to the door and tried to listen. There were more than two people rambling and talking to each other out there. I finally dared to look through the peephole and found four dumb teenagers with unintimidating weapons, like a baseball bat and a crowbar, standing in the middle of the hallway. They wore black hoodies like thugs. I watched them conversing to each other right in front of my door, and the fear ran through my bloodstream after realizing that they might burst into my room.

The next thing that happened was that one of those boys who brought a crowbar readied himself to breach through the door opposite of my room. These punks were trying to rob Mr. and Mrs. Loghin. My mind thought about things I shouldn't even consider; stopping those thieves and saving the lovely couple, but that was stupid. I didn't want to step out and deal with those bastards. Besides, I wasn't completely healed and I had no gun. Why should I care? This is a worldwide catastrophe. Everyone should worry about themselves. So the only thing I could do was to watch and help the couple as soon as they left. Hopefully they left afterwards and not robbing my apartment instead.

Though the guilt remained in my mind as I was close to that couple.

The knob fell off after the crowbar snapped it, and the other guy bossily kicked the door open. It flew, literally, and it smacked the wall behind it.

'Poor Mr. and Mrs. Loghin. They're extremely lovely and don't deserve to be treated like this. These kids will die in the most painful way possible.' That was what I said inside my mind. I wanted them to die in the most gruesome way for robbing this old couple.

And they did.

Before the first guy could step his foot inside the room, a predator jumped on him and quickly cut through the kid's ear with its teeth, tearing it apart. He shambled everywhere, screaming in pain and panic as his head kept pouring blood after the attack. The predator hugged its victim until the three other boys couldn't do shit to help his dying friend.

But what disturbed me the most was the scream. It echoed throughout the hallway, bouncing towards every room dreadfully.

Then, that predator launched a second bite to the boy's nose. I could hear the crunch of cartilage breaking inside his nose.

I remember the scream distinctly. I remember his last word.

"Heellppp!"

"Shit. Benjamin!" his friends screamed as he was eaten alive.

And the predator finally sank its teeth to Benjamin's neck. His body went limp, then falling to the floor before the quietness filled the hallway for two seconds. The predator which just killed Benjamin stood at the center of the hallway, focusing its sight on the three remaining boys.

Another predator flew toward the second boy from inside the room. The boy shrieked like a girl before finally brought down by the angry beast on top of him. One of the friends smacked the predator with the baseball bat, bashing its skull until its brain layered the poor boy beneath it.

The second predator laid dead in the most anticlimactic way besides the boy on the floor, but the first predator leapt and tore his flesh apart, killing him piece by piece until nothing was left. The one with the baseball bat trembled like a kid, peeing his pants as he had no more dignity inside. He watched two of his friends being peeled from the outside, and probably had a sudden panic attack. His hands which hold a baseball bat just killed a predator, but everything was too much for him so he started shaking.

The boy planked the predator's head while it was still eating his second friend, but his swift was so pathetic, it did nothing to hurt the beast.

After the boy on the floor died, the predator shrugged to focus its attention to the two living boys. Before they knew it, they fled away from the scene. Those two boys ran for their lives. The panicking dude even left his bat behind.

The single predator chased them, but their voices disappeared right when they exited my vision.

Three dead bodies decorated the hallway in front of my room. Two were the robber boys with black hoodies, one was the lady predator who didn't really do much.

But the scene was too scary until I forgot the most essential detail.

The two predators were Mr. and Mrs. Loghin.

The one who died on the floor, smacked by that metal baseball bat, was Mrs. Loghin. She still wore her favorite night dress. I remembered the sound of her jazz music every Friday night. I remembered that she invited me to a dinner after the event of my dad almost choking me to death. She was a lovely woman, so as her husband. They were in their late sixties, but they looked forty-five.

Now, her white dress got smeared from her own blood. Her pale skin decorated most of her layers and her neck wasn't in a right position anymore. Her head snapped, but she already turned. At one side, I was glad that I didn't have to kill her, but at the other, I watched her death glimmered across my face.

Mr. Loghin even owned all my albums. He said he was proud of me, and I always considered him as my real father, the one who cared about me. But I just saw him killed two boys by churning their fleshes out from their bodies. I saw his eyes before he chased the remaining two bastards. They were cold and lifeless.

I was stunned. I was too stunned to move. My sight wasn't very wide from that peephole, but seeing brutal murders live could make someone traumatized.

My feet didn't budge. I had to move and probably return to my sister in the bedroom, but I didn't. Every part of my body was locked. My eyes, now weary and watery, stared to the three bodies hampering across the hallway, barely inside my vision as the peephole was small.

Holy shit.

If you thought that wasn't scary enough, the two boys started to wiggle like drunks. I saw the first boy cracked his neck back to the right position. I witnessed him twitching and wiggling all around him and that his legs and hands trembled like crazy. Then he started to hiss, and finally, he woke. He was on his feet, alive, breathing. His skin grew very pale and his mouth dropped an insane amount of saliva. Half of his body was also painted in red, and his nose and right ear weren't there anymore.

My heart raced.

Then, the second boy did the same. He rose.

I watched their every movement. I was hypnotized by the horror I never thought could be real. How could this possibly be? In shows and movies maybe, but in real life?

One of those two newly born predators turned its eyes towards my door. I gasped and tumbled backwards audibly. I hit a dresser behind me and knocked the dozens of books shelved there. Those sounds were loud.

Shit.

They began to hiss at first.

Then they began to charge for my door.

They banged it with their bodies.

'They can't breach a door, can they?'

I did lock the door, but with that much force, they could burst inside at any time.

I turned my mind quickly. The dresser behind me would be enough to block the door for now, so I slid it as fast as possible, as loud as it might be, and blockaded the door with it.

"What's going on?" My sister came from the bedroom.

Those two predators still tried to breach, but hopefully the dresser would be enough.

"Ti, what's going on?"

"Predators. They're outside."

"What?"

The bumping and banging on the door could be very annoying. Ashley realized predators were trying to reach her apartment, so she gasped loudly and almost fainted.

"No, no, it's okay, they're outside. They can't open the door." And I hugged her.

"B-but... but they're out there?"

I nodded as another bang made me jump.

"We're trapped here, then."

I just hugged her. I didn't answer. I didn't know what else to do.

Ashley's voice became so breathy. Her face turned pale and she dropped a shed of tear.

"We're going to be fine. Don't you worry, okay?"

She nodded and I led her back to the bedroom.

−

So of course I couldn't sleep. I hugged Ashley as tight as I could. I did lock the door and hid with her below the many layers of blankets and bedcovers, and it wasn't even enough to dampen the sound. The thought of them busting into our room while we were asleep irritated me.

But days went past us. Every day, every minute, every second, the thuds on the door resisted us from the urge of doing our normal activities.

It got so unbearable that I almost launched a scream to them, but that would just scare my sister so I erased that idea.

Imagine being trapped in an apartment room without ever going out, and there were these constant knocks on your door, but those were from the bad monsters.

We were that scared that we duct-taped every side of the door and blocked it with more heavy stuff. The situation got more and more claustrophobic every day.

Five days had passed since the first knock, and they didn't stop, not for a second. My temper got so high that it almost made me crack my head.

"Ti, when will they stop?" Her question strangled me in another web of mystery.

"I don't know, Ash. Hopefully soon. They're still made out of muscle and flesh. They'll soon hurt themselves."

But I didn't really know that.

The sixth morning, the knocks on the door didn't wake us up, but another sound did. This sound was a thousand times more disruptive and loud that Ash and I quickly snatched out of our dreams. The sound vibrated every atom inside our apartment building, shaking its foundation to its root.

I opened the curtain and saw another building being crumpled by the government. It was the office building just five blocks away, and I saw it fell down towards Planet Earth with dust and flame leaping everywhere. The once magnificent building transformed into a huge pile of destroyed concretes.

"Ti, why are they destroying buildings?"

I shrugged while she went closer to me. "Maybe to decrease the number of predators."

If that was what they were doing, they couldn't think effectively.

"Will they destroy this one?"

Maybe.

"I don't know. I think they will clean the whole area and rescue any living person inside before destroying it."

But if they cleaned the area, why bomb the building? The government was just detecting movements with their techs and decided if they should bomb the place or not. I could bet some people were still alive in those buildings they bombed. This apartment could be next to desolate. I didn't want to scare her some more, though.

Our conversation was yet again interrupted by those two predators bumping the door. My face turned red in anger after almost six days of constant annoyance. My fear for those jerks even disappeared.

I couldn't live like that no more. I needed to get rid of them.

After I said goodnight to Ashley, I covered my body with the bedcover we shared while the blissful sound echoed in the background.

But that night, I had enough.

Minutes passed but they felt like decades. Every second, every thud on the door, every short hiss they pronounced, I was slowly disorienting. It felt like slowly being swallowed into an endless pit of darkness and fear, with no literal end to it.

And an hour passed without me falling asleep.

Fuck it.

I rushed off the bed, checking whether Ash was sleeping or not, and paced towards the source of the sound.

What should I use?

After running to the kitchen, I returned to the front door with a sharp, shiny object in my hand. The knife seemed awkward being hugged by my fingers. I felt like I was about to commit homicide.

But I was.

I moved the dresser as quiet as possible, though complete stalk wouldn't be very easy when you're moving a heavy wooden dresser. I cut those stinking tapes with the knife.

I breathed.

They knocked again. And again. And again.

I slowly unlocked the door.

They knocked again. And again. And again.

I turned the door knob as fast as I could. The two predators stumbled down inside, staining the brown carpet in my apartment with gooey liquid and blood.

I immediately planted my knife to the head of the first predator. I could hear my weapon click and the skull cracked. It got through the brain and ended up in the other side of the head before the predator finally stopped twitching and died.

The second one tried so hard to get to its feet, but I was pumped with my adrenaline and so I sliced its neck off with the same weapon. I let the second monster choked before stabbing it one last time to its left eye to end it all.

My breathing grew heavy as my body turned numb. I fucking stabbed two guys with a knife in my one home.

My palms were dyed to the color red.

I realized I was then as sinful as those bastards before they turned. I was a monster dressed up as a normal person. I crawled in my own skin. The thought slithered my throat. I just stabbed two people.

I killed two people.

"Shit."

I worked quickly by dragging those two fellas outside towards Mr. and Mrs. Loghin's room. When I entered it, the smell of the room was like an isolated Martian dead zone. I can't even describe to you how it smelled, but it was as unearthly as you may think. The smell just rushed inside your nose and pinched your brain.

My hands slid the window open to let the odor out. Touching those dead bodies were gross as it was already, but I needed to just get rid of them. I tossed both bodies out from the window and also Mrs. Loghin's. My eyes watched them as they hit the pavements down below, creating a pretty disgusting mess down there.

That one experience changed me forever. Since then, I am a murderer, and not even hell can punish me for all the things I did. Maybe I did everything to protect myself and my loved ones, but I'm still guilty for every nasty action I had to do.

The next thing my instinct told me was to search Mr. and Mrs. Loghin's whole apartment quickly. I scavenged the bathroom for soaps and shampoos. I collected packs of food and powdered milks from the kitchen. I grabbed towels, clothes, blankets, and bedcovers, and I moved every item I stole to my apartment. Lastly, I grabbed the metal baseball bat lying on the hallway. That stupid coward apparently dropped it before running away.

I locked the door again only to realize the nasty blood and liquid stain oozed through the carpet where those two freaks lied on. I didn't know what to do but to drench it with as many water as I could. I also sprayed perfume there to get rid of the smell.

I saw Ashley still sleeping on the bed. God, I wished she just didn't pretend to sleep.

When I closed my eyes, I plunged into a pit of nightmares. That night, I dreamed about stabbing that two dude's face, over and over again.

The knocks on the door might not haunt me again, but the guilt of murder would.

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Picture : ArcDaily from Pinterest