19 – Urban Spelunking

“This must be the kitchen,” Erika said, holding her sleeve over her nose in a vain attempt at suppressing the stench. “They leave everything to rot, or what?”

The Stalker entered from the alley door, sniffing at the air as she lowered her umbrella. Although her nose wrinkled, she didn’t otherwise look bothered.

Erika stayed at the doors, peering out into the alley. They made it here without issue—none of the birds attacked—but it felt like they were being watched even more than usual. If they hadn’t attacked thus far, they probably wouldn’t attack while Erika was out of sight indoors.

It did make her wonder what they were on watch for, if not The Breaker.

“Get a load of this,” The Stalker said, using her revolver to wave Erika further into the room.

Erika narrowed her eyes at the motion. “You came awfully close to pointing that at me,” she said with a lash of ice on her tongue. “We talked about this…”

“I didn’t come anywhere near you and my finger is off the trigger.”

“I will haunt you.”

“Do you want to see a corpse or not?”

Erika pursed her lips. The Hunters were careful and cautious, aware of their mortality. The Stalker, on the other hand, used the barrel of her gun to scratch the side of her cheek.

A cavalier attitude could be refreshing, but Erika didn’t want to end up on the business end of The Stalker’s gun for a third time, accidentally or not. Maybe it was all the training Leslie was putting her through, but The Stalker’s handling of her firearm did not impress Erika; she wondered what it would take to get The Stalker to sit through a few of his lessons… or how fast she would end up kicked out of the range.

“You wanted to know where that rot smell was coming from? Tada~” The Stalker threw shut the exterior door.

Hidden behind it, shoved up against a wall, a desiccated and decaying corpse sat scrunched up. Half his face was missing, dried blood coated his dark cloak, and long gouges ran through the bone of his skull. His eyes had rotted away completely, leaving just a horrified expression on what remained of his face, as if he had been killed mid-scream.

“Some wild animal get in here or something?” The Stalker mused, using her gun to shift aside his cloak. The clothes underneath were torn to shreds, leaving large bite-marks of missing flesh pockmarking his body.

“Delilah said she killed someone during her escape, but she said she stabbed him with a knife,” Erika said, turning away from the corpse with her bat raised and ready—she wasn’t going to meet his fate. “Something else must have happened.”

“This doesn’t look like the birds got to him,” The Stalker agreed. She held up a hand to his face, easily lining up her fingers with the gouges in his skull. “This was a claw, not a talon or beak.”

“Great. More monsters escaped into the city?”

“If they have, they’ve flown under everyone’s radar. Unless The Eclipse noticed but didn’t bother telling you.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Erika admitted, advancing further into the kitchen. “Wish The Castle would answer their phone. I wonder if they’re still on lockdown.”

“Bah. Sneaky bastards like that can’t be trusted.”

“They’d be useful if they’d answer their phone,” Erika muttered, pushing past her. “Looks like this door leads to the rest of the apartments?” She jiggled the handle. The locked doorknob broke clean off with a twist of her wrist—she didn’t care about being subtle here.

The smell in the long, dark hallway didn’t improve much, but Erika had to take her sleeve off her face in order to hold a flashlight; she pulled a pair from her storage, one for her and one for The Stalker. “Almost wish I didn’t have to breathe,” she muttered as The Stalker stepped ahead of her, not even noticing the smell.

“Eh. It comes in handy, but I miss some things.”

“Oh?” Erika swept her flashlight through a few rooms as they passed. She carefully checked the communal eating area, ceiling included, before moving on to a small, dried-out pool. “You don’t strike me as the type to stop and smell the roses.”

“Maybe not roses,” The Stalker said, pausing in front of a small laundry room. “What do you smell like, I wonder?”

Erika hesitated, about to say something sarcastic before catching herself. The question might have been genuine. It wasn’t like The Stalker could smell anything. “I don’t think most people really smell like anything unless they’ve used too much shampoo or perfume or whatever—and then, it isn’t what they smell like, but the chemicals. The exceptions are, of course, people who smell bad. I take regular showers, I’ll have you know.”

The Stalker stared, expression flat, before she flicked Erika’s forehead. “You were supposed to say something hot. What kind of dorky response is that?”

“This is what I get for taking your needs into consideration,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead in good nature. “Even if I have been spending a bit too much time around Daniel, I wouldn’t know how I’m supposed to answer that question with something hot.”

“Like ‘Oh, I smell horny. Ravish me!’”

Erika rolled her eyes, aiming her flashlight at herself just to ensure The Stalker saw. “The ground floor looks like it’s mostly amenities. According to Delilah, she lived on the third floor and all the cult leaders lived and conducted rituals on the fourth.”

“It’s always on the fourth floor,” The Stalker hummed thoughtfully. Turning, she quickly spotted a small plaque next to a door at the end of the hallways. “Stairs there,” she said. “Nothing on the second?”

Erika shrugged. “Delilah didn’t say.”

The Stalker matched Erika’s shrug. She pushed open the stairwell door, shined her flashlight upwards, and sighed. “Stupid cultists can never get their elevators working.”

“You skip leg day often? Just teleport then, I’ll catch up.”

“And leave you alone with all the blood on the walls?”

Erika’s eyebrows popped up. She scanned the place, looking for monsters, but completely missed the dark streaks dragging up the staircase. She guessed that someone, bleeding from the arm or shoulder, leaned against the wall. Following handprints on the railing, the person must have been dragging themselves upwards.

“There,” Erika said as they crested the second floor landing.

A corpse on its stomach reached toward the door leading to the rest of the second floor. Its entire back had been torn apart, its spine ripped up until it pointed forward like a scorpion’s tail. Ribs, broken and cracked, splayed around its body like wings.

The Stalker crouched down next to it, nonchalantly digging her finger around in its chest cavity, and casually asked, “Think something tore it apart? Or tore out of it?”

“Don’t touch it,” Erika snapped, not sure she wanted to think about The Stalker’s question. “You’ll catch a disease.”

“I don’t think I can catch anything.”

“Then you’ll give me a disease,” Erika muttered, covering her nose. The smell was worse here, though it didn’t feel local, more like the smell was drifting down from above.

The Stalker’s face turned thoughtful as she wiped her fingers on the corpse’s pants. “Looked like it wanted in here,” she said, shoving open the door.

The hallway carried on, broken up by doorways—no actual doors, just shadowy doorways that sent odd chills up Erika’s spine. She swept her light to the nearest one then pulled back.

Erika couldn’t come up with any good reasons why they would have removed their doors.

“Check it out?” The Stalker asked.

“Maybe on the way out.” If Delilah hadn’t thought the second floor was interesting enough to mention, it probably meant they were living quarters and nothing else. Same as the third, which only got a mention because Delilah lived on that floor. “Fourth floor first.”

The Stalker craned her head to look up the stairs, bending her neck just a little too far. Little jumped past too much and hit broken neck when she kept turning her head to look over her shoulder over at Erika. “I suppose we better see their devious sanctum before shit hits the fan,” she said, turning her body while righting her head.

Erika found words hard to find for a long moment, feeling the same odd disquiet that she got around The Orderly or even Anna, lately. Now that The Stalker faced her properly, the uncanny valley effect dissipated, leaving behind just her words.

“Are you trying to curse the expedition?” Erika groaned, feeling a sudden kinship with Sofia.

The Stalker grinned, closing the door again. “Got to make it a little exciting.”

Despite The Stalker tempting fate, Erika stepped foot on the top floor without incident. She couldn’t help but notice a disturbing amount of blood, dried where it had been dripping down the stairs, but there were no more bodies to explain it away.

The cult had been doing some construction work on the top floor. A fair number of walls had been knocked down, making the hallways larger, even as they led further into the building. The entire entry from the stairs was built out similar to the chapel of The Church’s hideout, complete with pews arrayed around a central altar.

The pews were not empty.

At first, Erika thought she barged into an active gathering of the cultists. Her flashlight grazed the bowed heads of reverent penitents. It wasn’t until her second pass that she realized none were moving. Dozens sat slumped, dead, their arms limp at their sides. Although most still had hair, all their faces below their hairlines had been torn off. Leathery strips of torn flesh sat in their laps, stained with dry blood. Most were adults, but four bowed heads barely peeked above the backs of the pews.

The Stalker let out a loud whistle as she and Erika made their way up the aisle. “Think they drank the Kool-Aid willingly or were they forced to?”

Erika narrowed her eyes, looking over one of the shorter figures. “I doubt kids would just sit there while people got their faces torn off… One Without a Face—wasn’t that how some of those masked cultists referred to The Mummy?”

“Sounds familiar,” The Stalker said, poking at another corpse despite Erika having just warned her. “Wonder why they didn’t just slap masks on them?”

“They were… or… something.” Delilah had mentioned that some among her cult had been promoted with porcelain masks to differentiate them. “Maybe they couldn’t do so many at once?” she said, thinking back to the larger facility at the abandoned clinic. “Or they failed—The Daughter said The Mummy couldn’t assimilate more people right now. It isn’t strong enough.”

“A few offed themselves when they captured us,” The Stalker added. “Could have been something like that too.”

Erika tensed, feeling like they should have prepared a lot more before wandering into a place like this.

The Stalker slinked over, swinging an arm over Erika’s shoulders. “Relax, whatever happened, it was a while ago. Look at how crusty these guys are. I bet… five weeks and three-ish days since these guys got their faces ripped off. Maybe more.”

“That’s oddly specific,” Erika said, though it did give her some reassurance that this wasn’t a trap set for her.

“Just guessing based on how I dry out. Or how I used to before your brother worked his magic.” The Stalker let out a loud laugh. “Used to have to oil myself up every morning, put drops in my eyes, drink this nasty-smelling shit that was supposed to keep me going on the inside…”

Erika, with The Stalker still hanging off her, continued walking, checking between—and even under—each pew, just in case there was some face-stealing monster lurking in the shadows. “Specter-class beings come back just to wither away over a few weeks?”

“I think we’d turn into some kind of mummy.” The Stalker paused, then quickly added, “Like a literal mummy, not…” She waved her hand around the pews. “The way I heard it, someone got sick of their ass feeling like sandpaper and now there is a big shadowy company selling rejuvenation products to people like me. The Hanged Man says a few people go without, but it isn’t a comfortable experience, so most pay up.”

“Can’t escape capitalism even in death,” Erika said with a small laugh.

“You joke, but let’s just say I feel like I got the better end of my bargain with your brother.”

Erika didn’t doubt that, especially considering Carter said he did not want whatever The Stalker traded, and then that little ball of reality evaporated away when he couldn’t use it anyway, but the comment still made her pause at the altar. “You don’t miss what you traded away?”

The Stalker drew in a deep breath, thinking for a long moment. “I know what I traded, but I think losing it removed my attachment to it?” she said with a halfhearted shrug. “Like, there should be some nostalgia or longing, but there isn’t, so I don’t care? If that makes sense.”

“We kind of pushed it on you in an emergency—”

“Don’t,” The Stalker said, voice firm. “I’m happy with what I have now. Luscious hair—” She ran a hand through her hair like she was shooting for a beauty commercial. Erika wouldn’t exactly call it luscious, but it was more than she had before. “—moist lips—” Nibbling on her lip to emphasize it, she shot Erika a look before taking Erika’s hand, her gun and flashlight held in her other hand. “—and you.”

“That’s surprisingly sweet,” Erika said, holding for a beat before she had to add, “if a bit corny.”

“Hey, I’m trying to play up the romance here,” The Stalker said with mock offense. “It isn’t my strong suit. If you want to experience my actual strong suit—”

Erika laughed, lightly pushing The Stalker away. “I’m less… reticent than you might think… but I’m not that interested in getting it on over some cultist altar while surrounded by fifty faceless onlookers.”

The Stalker glanced up, surprised. “I forgot we were here. Guess I just got lost in your eyes.”

“Uh huh,” Erika rolled those eyes. “Let’s finish poking around and maybe there will be enough of the night left to see if your bite is as good as your bark.”

“Can’t be much more to look at, right?” The Stalker asked, pulling away from Erika. “We found the cult, they’ve been dead for a while.”

“That is what we are here to find out,” Erika said, stepping around the altar. It was a simple wooden bench with dried up flowers in small pots on either end—none of which chased off the smell of rot. Given the rest of this place, it had a surprising lack of blood coating its surface.

Behind the altar, positioned where the hallway would have been had the walls not been knocked down, a large wooden door blocked off the rest of the floor. The handle didn’t budge, but as per usual, Erika didn’t care about locked doors. A slight shove broke it open.

A fresh and equally unpleasant smell rushed out to greet Erika. Pungent rot still clung to the air, but the earthy stench of an overly fresh fertilizer undercut it. Even The Stalker wafted a hand in front of her face as if that would do any good.

“Thought you couldn’t smell.”

“My senses are deadened, not dead.” She stepped inside, swinging her light back and forth.

Erika checked the ceiling.

“Here.” The Stalker took a hard left at the first door, shining her light on a pen.

A whole pigsty complete with matted straw and chickenwire over the door occupied what might have been one of the apartment units. Animals sat dead on the floor, including goats, chickens, and a hound dog. None of the animals were missing their faces—with their emaciated bodies, they must have starved to death, trapped in the small room. One goat’s horns were covered in blood, and its neck was ripped clean out. Something gored the side of the dog. Little pockmarks covered both of their bodies where the chickens might have tried eating them.

None survived.

“Why did… Why do they… Why?”

“It’s some weirdo cult,” The Stalker said. She had been the one to call Erika over, but she turned away first, not seeing anything interesting among the bodies. “Don’t even try to rationalize anything they do.”

“Yes, but a whole farm? On the top floor? Wasn’t this where the leaders were supposed to stay?”

“Cult,” The Stalker said again. She started to say more, but cut herself off with a shimmer in her eyes. “Did you hear that?”

Erika did not, but just as she was about to say so, she saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her vision. It was gone by the time she fully looked, but she got enough. “No, but my ghost pointed out a door.”

“You still haven’t gotten rid of that thing?”

“Eh.” Erika shrugged. “The Hunters tried at first, but all their tests came up inconclusive and it seems like it has been helping, so low priority.”

“You don’t want to fuck around a bunch of dead-dead corpses, but you don’t care if a living-dead ghost is watching, huh? You might be more of a freak than I thought.”

Erika gave The Stalker the flattest look. “You’ve got a point. Guess we’re in for a cold night after all. Shame,” she said, heading toward the door.

“Woah, hey. I don’t mind if you don’t,” The Stalker said, hurrying to catch up.

The door was locked again, but as it swung inwards and Erika didn’t want to reach her hand past the threshold knowing something might grab her—she used her bat to smash it open. It swung hard, striking the interior wall, and broke clean off its hinges, clattering to the floor.

A man, hunched in the center of the room, didn’t even flinch. He ripped a severed hand from his mouth, tearing meat and sinew, before slowly turning his head to look over his shoulder.

“Fucking zombies,” The Stalker hissed, spinning her revolver into her grip. A flash of yellow erupted from the barrel, forming a rune in the air just before it struck the man.

He disintegrated. Rotted flesh turned to dust, wafting away like a breeze blew through the windless room. His clothes remained behind, sagging to the floor as they emptied.

Erika quickly swept her light, checking for any buddies he might have had. It was a large bedroom that might have been ornately decorated, at least for this place. Large rips and tears ran through the wallpaper, bedding, and bookcase. “How do you know he was a zombie?” Erika asked, slowly stepping inside when she didn’t see any other threats.

“You kidding me? I’ve seen the movies. That was the most zombified zombie to ever undie.”

“He might have just been a cultist, hungry to the point where he had to feast on a body?” Erika asked, not really believing her complaint as she found the remainder of the corpse the zombie had been feasting upon on the far side of the bed. It had been torn apart to the point where it was barely recognizable as a human.

“That’s even worse. Don’t need no wendigo-ass motherfucker clawing my pretty face off.”

“Are wendigos real?” Erika couldn’t help but ask.

“No clue.”

“Great. I hope we didn’t dust the one lead we might have found… here…” Erika trailed off as she stopped her light next to the bookcase.

A large desk, decorated with a cloth covered in the same symbol that Delilah had as a tattoo, held one single book. A diary-style tome, engraved on the lower right of the cover in gold lettering: Kevin Mould.

Reaching out to it, slowly to check for that film of magic, Erika took hold of it. It was an actual diary, penned in tidy, neat handwriting at the start. The final entry, labeled early January, shifted to erratic scribbling—reading between the lines, most of it was repeated apologies for failure.

“Read later,” The Stalker said, standing back at the door. “I hear more… somethings.”

“Zombies?”

“Or wendigos.”

“Great,” Erika said, tucking the book under her arm as she hefted her bat. “Don’t get bit.”

“I should be saying that to you.” The Stalker grinned, leaning out from the doorway. Lowering her gun, she fired off another blast of yellow light.