John stood near the stairs, his vision blurred no matter how hard he tried to focus. Yet his modified AR-15 remained steady in his hands. The only thing louder than his breathing was Annable’s footsteps while she walked down the hall. The moment she opened the first door, he let out a sigh of relief.

  John hoped that the entire floor was empty, that what they all heard was something else. He imagined a rat must’ve made a ruckus outside. Oh he foolishly believed. John closed his eyes and prayed to God that it was just the wind playing tricks on him.

  Annable made her way over to the second room. She couldn’t help but let out a smile as she mumbled. ‘This room is empty, I know it.’ She turned the handle and pushed the door open. He hand slammed against her rifle, her eyes and mouth widened like she was about to scream.

  Yet it didn’t matter, with a swift kick her knee shattered, bone spewed out while she wallowed in agony. The figure went behind her, their scaled fingers wrapped around her head while their nails dug into her skin. John could do nothing but watch as the monster snapped Annable’s head off her body with a yank of their wrist. Like a person grabbed a can and cracked it open.

  The creature was no bigger than 5’3, their scales an inconsistent green due to countless battles. Their body was covered in scars, one past wound overlaying another. They had three long toes on each foot, with a retractable claw on each of them, two toes are at the front while one is at the back which together worked like a set of hands. Their reptilian snout is short, round, and jagged. The tips of their teeth poked out of their lips. It wore an armoured trench coat while their modified EF88 Austeyr slung to their side. The reptile’s crocodilian-like tail having strange armour attached to it. If there was something human about it, it would be their piercing blue eyes.

  It was clear that the creature was armed to the teeth. With a free hand, the reptile aimed their Glock-19 and fired at the cultists.

  John for a moment, froze in place. Mortified at the brutality displayed by a beast of horror. In a panic he fired back at the reptile, but his aim was erratic and unpredictable. Unbothered, the reptile pushed forward using Annables corpse as a shield while they advanced. Out of respect for their friend or out of sheer fear, they couldn’t dare desecrate the corpse of their dead friend.

  Freaking out, John sprang up in hopes to run away from the reptile only to have a bullet struck his shoulder and knocked him down the stairs. Stumbling down like a ragdoll cast aside by an ungrateful child.

  At the bottom, John watched up as the corpse of Annable smashed through the wall and back down to the first floor. Everyone on the first floor backed away from the stairs as the screams from the cultists upstairs were replaced with the wet sound of meat sliced apart.

  John crawled on their back to the other side of the building. Unaware that shards of glass and splintered wood dug into his forearms. Their retreat ended when they banged his head against a brick wall. John never thought he’d get that far in life. To have thought that just a week ago he took over a town with his friends without any problems without any retaliation from the police or the government. John never had a reason to join the cult, he never had a reason for any of his actions. To him, life was just a sandpit of opportunities that he could play with however he liked and even share with others.

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  Before he joined, used to party across the West Coast, drinking without a care in the world. While sex, drugs, booze, and music created temporary euphoria. He never truly felt satisfied, instead, he felt he had just drifted to the next biggest hit like a mindless drone. That was until he came in contact with Theodor, who gave him a chance to find a place in the world and build his own little paradise when a new age was ushered in by his hands. But there was a flaw in his thinking. He played in his sandpit for so long and gladly took from those who were not a part of his cultists family. He forgot that what he could do to others, someone or something, would do the same to him.

  As blood gushed from Annable’s open throat, her tongue still wagged around aimlessly as it tried to find the roof of the mouth that was torn off. John leaned to his side to puke. He rested his back against the wall, his eyes shut as to pretend it was all a dream. Yet no matter what he did, no matter how much he wanted to believe. He woke up to a nightmare.

  No one dared move, not even speak to one another. We’re not soldiers! We’re just some people on the street! John thought to himself. Seeing that there was no hope in the situation, he ran to the front door and tried to push the shelf out of the way.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Errick shouted, someone who joined the cult just over a year ago. A tough guy who believed he was invincible, that was until something challenged his masculinity.

  ‘I’m getting the fuck out of here! I’m running back to Theo.’ John panted.

  ‘We have to…’

  John screamed at Errick, their voice cracked as they pointed at Annable’s disfigured body. ‘Look at what happened! If you want to stop that thing! Get up there yourself!’

  John struggled to push the shelf, but Martha gave him a hand to get it out of the way. She handed him her pistol; she was never good with a firearm.

  Errick aimed his gun at both of them. ‘We are going upstairs together, we will kill whoever is fucking us over.’

  ‘Take someone else, I’m out of here!’ John replied, making it clear to Errick that he had no hope of changing his mind.

  Snzzzzz!

  Before he could pull the trigger, everyone looked up to a drill head burring through the floor above them. The strange device put everyone in a trance, confused about what was happening above them. John knew it had to be now! He burst the door open and ran outside with Martha just behind.