Chapter 8: Chapter 8: Tainted Reflections

The hairs on Henry's neck stood tall. As he'd neared the bathrooms, he'd felt more and more uneased. He recalled the dark figure he'd seen rising from the pool around that strange pillar of electronics. Was it still stuck in that room?

Henry slowed before the entrance of the bathrooms. About 200 hundred yards down, he could see the rectangular patches of light coming from those big windows. He held his breath, watching for any shadows moving through them.

None did.

He took a moment to back up the forklift for a quick and easy escape, then stepped through the entrance of the bathrooms.

He froze.

Very little light from the arcades bled across the tiled floor. And the shadows were deeper still beneath the closed stalls. And the doorway beyond? It was a rectangle of impenatrable darkness.

He steeled himself, making his way forward. His heart dropped as he walked in front of the mirrors, mistaking it as a figure moving in the dark.

They needed that bait. He swallowed, steps crunching agaist the cold floor. Attacking the Hungered Ones anywhere near the Faceless was a terrible idea. With what he'd learned, it seemed like the two monster types had some kind of hivemind. Even if he just drove past, it could alert the Faceless, putting Riley at risk.

Henry arrived at the gateway of shadow, and he peered into the store. Almost pitch black, besides the beeping red light of a security camera.

One of the ceiling lights flickered with brightness, revealing those people painted on the walls and signs.

In that same burst of light, Henry noticed the security camera had rotated to face him. Who could be watching?

Maybe it was just motion detection. He needed to stay focused on the immediate threat. Henry recalled his earlier encounter with the Flat People. He needed to keep his eyes on them. Not blink. But how could he do that without a consistent source of light? Were the monsters as limited by the darkness as he was? That would only be fair.

He took a deep breath.

Henry stepped out into the store. The room lit up from the flickering light, as if from lightning in a dark sky. Henry shuffled with his back against the wall, his vision set out in the distance. He soon found the second door. He had considered taking one of the other bodies, but those were nothing more than dried masses of blood and flesh. He wouldn't be able to move it without making a mess. If he got himself covered in the stuff, what would stop the Hungered One's from tracking them down constantly?

How could he wash it off without a source of water?

In a moment of darkness, Henry pulled the door open behind him. When the light came on again, a figure stood thirty paces away, smiling at him. Henry kept his eyes peeled, staring at it until he dissapeared into the bathroom.

He quickly grabbed Riley's mother, carrying her through the...

A flat cardboard hand wrapped around the edge of the doorframe, a face peeking inside. Henry swore his heart would burst. It didn't attack him. It wouldn't unless he blinked or turned away.

More voices sounded in the distance. Like advertisements, they loomed closer down unseen aisles, cardboard feet scraping the floor with a distinct sound.

The lights went out. Henry bared his teeth, ready to roar. To lash out with the furry of his fists. But nonething happened. As he'd hoped, the darkness didn't count as a loss of sight. Eyes beging in to burn, he edged past the flat creature, shuffling with his back against the wall. He swore he saw gradual movement from his periphereals, but as he focused on it, the movement ceased.

Something popped like a gun within the depths of the store. It came again. Louder.

Henry groaned. Someone was out there. And in need. Henry's left hand grazed the edge of the door. He could easily flee.

He blinked by accident. The square ceiling light buzzed like lightning, but the People of the Walls were gone. He spotted the brown back of one of them, stucking in a running posture.

A distorted scream sounded in the distance.

Henry placed Riley's mother on the floor. He took one step, then another. Soon he was running down an aisle, slowing when the place fell into darkness.

A smiling face appeared just in front of his, flat arms wrapping around him with surprising stregnth. Henry roared, gripping at its head and tearing. The thing continued to wrap its body around him, constricting. It felt like getting his blood pressure checked at the doctors, only for his whole body.

The head ripped off, the entire thing sliding off of him like a loose blanket. He continued onward.

He saw her. A statuesque woman with curly black hair, dark skin, and a sniper rifle raised at the flat monsters frozen on the floor below the shelve she had climbed atop.

She methodically shot a hole through each of their heads, making them collapse to the floor.

She did not see the one frozen behind her. She raised the gun at Henry.

"I'm friendly!" Henry shouted.

The ceiling light shut off. Something smothered his face. His lungs immiedtly roared for air, although none came.

The gun fire three quick shots succesively as Henry felt true terror. With it came weakness. He would die here and now.

Unless...

There was someone he cared about far too much to leave behind. His fingers dug into the stretchy surface of the monster, finnaly tearing a hole for him to breath through. The monster pulled tighter, wrapping around him like a tightly fit glove. It squeezed the gap shut like a vice.

Henry pried his glowing red fingers through, pulling the being apart right through its midsection. With a satisfying tear, the creature gave up its fight.

The woman. The Flat One had wrapped around the woman like a cacoon, covering her entire body and rifle too. She writhed under the flat membrane.

Henry sprinted over, pulling her off the shelves in a powerful motion. This particaly monster felt stronger. Perhaps the closer they got to consuming you, the more strength they gained.

Would he fail this woman as he'd done so with so many others? Henry pulled as hard as he could at the wet brown membrane wrapped around her face, an imprint of her screaming expresion coming through.

Even as his fist glowed red, he wasn't strong enough. His Strength of Passion bar filled to the max.

It wasn't enough. The woman began to lose her fight. What could he do? For a moment he felt at a loss. Henry blinked.

The gun. The membrane looked thin where it stretched around the tip of the long barrel. Henry rolled the woman onto her side, feeling at the gun beneath that slimy wet skin. He made out the trigger.

Reinvigorated with hope, his fists flaired red, and he speared his finger into the monster, feeling the hard metal of the trigger through its flesh.

The gun fired.

It popped like a water ballon, the entire monster exploding off of her, wet flesh rippling away like torn rubber.

The woman gasped. She breathed, looking up at him. She avoided his eyes, looking past him instead.

She pointed a finger.

Henry followed her gaze. A featurless humanoid made from dark flesh stood fifteen feet away. The girl grabbed her rifle, aiming at its chest.

She fired.

The bullet dissapeared harmleslly. She shot three more, all them failing to harm it. On its face, a sort of display formed. Like that of a TV.

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On that screen... he saw a rapidly shifting image of his own face. Faces of stretched open mouths. Exagerated smiles. Souless eyes. He got the feeling of falling toward the monster.

Henry fought to pull his gaze away. He crawled away.

He crawled past the woman.

He felt the thump through the floor, like an AC kicking off. When he turned back, the being was atop the woman, its display showing a bright, distorted reflection of the woman's features. The air between their faces distorted, her scream distant as it sucked something away from her.

What could he do against something like that? Something that could take several bullets without even flinching. Something that had destroyed an alerternate reality entirely?

The being stood suddenly, leaving the woman on the floor. Its face remained stuck with a flickering, shifting image of the woman's face. It was more solid now. As if it had aquired something. It turned around and ran away, heavy steps thumping the floor like steel beams.

Henry looked down. She was alive?

"Are you okay?" he asked, giving her a hand.

She brushed a hand through her curly hair, cringing at the slime covering her fingers. "I'll be fine when I can take a nice long shower." She exhaled. "You really did show up at a convient time. What are you doing here?" She took his hand, standing to her feet.

"Retrieving a body."

The woman looked at him funny. "And?"

"I'll explain the rest as we go. I promise I'm one of the good ones." He summoned the forklift, getting into his seat.

He looked back at her. She was inspecting his forklift with great interest.

"I'm Henry." He put it in drive. "Are you coming with me?"

"Diana. Marine Core veteran. Now an officer of the law. Yes. I think I will stick with you. But I apologize for prefering my own two feet. Over that..."

"I don't want to leave you behind, but my friends are waiting for me. It would be faster if climb on."

"Want to bet?" She smiled.

"What?"

"You think a forklift can beat me? Let's put a wager on it."

"I don't have anything to wager..."

Henry pressed the gas, starting slowly.

"Whoever wins gets a favor from the other person."

"If I wasn't about to cart around a dead body. I would agree. We don't need you wasting your energy trying to prove something either."

"And here I just wanted to have some fun. A girl needs to maintain her sanity in a place like this somehow."

She stepped onto the ledge, allowing Henry to speed up.

"Let's get the basic needs covered first. Then we can think about having some fun."

"Is that an offer, big man?"

Henry blinked. "I mean. I don't know."

She laughed softly. "Oh relax."

"And you feel okay after what happened?"

"I'm alive arn't I?"

"Yeah. But that thing we encountered. It's something powerful. I don't know if it did anything to you."

She was silent for a moment. "It felt like... Like I could feel myself inside of it. Like it copied me somehow."

"Let's hope that's the end of it."

Henry turned forward, speeding up. Riley was waiting for him. And he wasn't sure she understood how much he cared for her. Maybe he should let her know.

***

Riley stuffed yet another XXL cup into yet another plastic bag. She had a full roll of plastic bags ready to stuff with food as well.

She winced, holding her lower abdomen.

"I don't know, amigo, but that seems like plenty to me," Julio said.

She shot a murderous glare at Julio. He raised his open hands, professing his innocence.

"I'm going to eat every burger in that place," she said.

"What about us?"

"You can have the fries." She shook her head, looking down at everything she'd collected. It was more than enough. Really, she'd just been trying to distract her mind from the fact that she'd likely just sent Henry to his death.

She looked over her shoulder in the direction he'd gone. She kept her ears wide open for the sound of that engine. She'd heard other things instead. Like the patter of one too many feet on a monster far out sight.

She shivered. Things with lots of legs were the worst. Actual abominations.

"Let's go to meeting spot," she said.

Julio didn't respond immiedetly.

"Hello?" she asked, turning around.

Julio had withdrawn his gun. "Gaucha..."

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