Chapter 3: The Hollow City
December 26, 2016 – Late Afternoon
The city was a corpse, and we were insects crawling through its cooling veins. The main roads were arteries clogged with the plaque of abandoned cars and the wreckage of a civilization that had stopped in an instant. We stuck to the alleyways, a strategy that felt wise and cowardly all at once. The silence here was different from our neighborhood—deeper, more profound, broken only by the scuttling of rats that had, it seemed, reclaimed their domain now that the dogs were gone.
Papa led, his duffel bag a grim anchor over his shoulder. He held the crowbar like a talisman. Ade followed, the fire axe looking too heavy for his seventeen-year-old frame, but his jaw was set. I was the rearguard, my own weapon—a weighted pipe I'd ripped from a broken gutter—feeling useless in my sweaty hands. Mama held Ngozi's hand, her eyes constantly scanning the upper windows, as if the monsters could be lurking in the shattered offices and apartments above.
"Where are we going, Papa?" Ngozi whispered, her voice tiny in the vast, empty canyon between buildings.
"Somewhere safe," he said, the lie smooth and comforting. None of us knew what 'safe' was anymore.
We found the first one near a looted electronics store. A body, curled fetally in a doorway. It wasn't the gory mess we'd seen on our street. This one was just… empty. Desiccated. The skin was a pale, waxy gray, stretched tight over the bones. Its mouth was frozen open in a silent scream, and its eyes were gone, leaving behind only dark, hollow sockets.
"Don't look," Mama said, pulling Ngozi's face into her side.
But I couldn't look away. There was no blood. It was as if the life had been sucked clean out of him.
Ade pointed his axe at the body. "That… that's not like the others. The ones the creatures got were… torn apart."
Papa knelt, careful not to touch it. He frowned. "This is something else."
As dusk began to bleed into the city, painting the broken skyline in shades of orange and purple, we knew we had to find shelter. The memory of the bleeding sky was a clock ticking in all our minds. 5:17 PM was coming.
We found a potential refuge: a small, standalone bank branch. Its windows were reinforced with metal grilles, and its main door was a solid slab of metal, slightly ajar where someone had tried, and failed, to pry it open.
"Inside," Papa commanded. "Quickly."
We slipped into the gloom. The air was stale and cold. The place had been ransacked; drawers hung open, papers were strewn everywhere. But the vault door at the back was sealed shut. It was a fortress.
Papa and I worked together to barricade the main door with a heavy desk and a filing cabinet. As we pushed, I heard it. A sound from the back of the bank, from the hallway leading to the staff rooms.
A whisper.
I froze, my heart leaping into my throat. Papa heard it too. He raised a hand for silence, gesturing for Ade to watch the front. He picked up his crowbar and motioned for me to follow.
The hallway was dark. The whisper came again, clearer now. It was a child's voice, pleading.
"...please don't. Please go away. We're not here."
Papa's posture relaxed a fraction. He lowered the crowbar. "Hello?" he called out, his voice gentle but firm. "We're not going to hurt you. We're just looking for shelter."
A door at the end of the hall creaked open a sliver. A single, terrified eye peered out. Then the door opened wider, revealing a small boy, no older than eight. He was shivering. Behind him, in the small break room, huddled an older girl, maybe sixteen, clutching a cricket bat.
"You're… you're not them?" the girl asked, her voice trembling.
"We're like you," I said, stepping forward. "Trying to survive."
Their names were Chidi and Chiamaka. Siblings. Their parents had gone out during the first lull to find medicine for their grandmother and never came back. They had been hiding here since the first Crimson Hour.
"They don't like the metal places," Chiamaka explained, her eyes darting towards the vault. "The things. The sounds… the red sounds… they get confused by it."
A weakness, I thought. A real one.
We shared a can of sardines and some water with them. For a moment, in that dark break room, the seven of us formed a tiny, fragile pocket of community. Ngozi even offered Chidi Mr. Hoppington to hold. He refused, but he stopped shivering so much.
The comfort was shattered by a sound from the street outside. Not a monster. Not a whisper.
It was the roar of an engine.
We rushed to the grille-covered windows. A sleek, black motorcycle, modified with armored plates and a snarling exhaust, idled in the middle of the street. The rider—Courier—was a silhouette of brutal efficiency, his dark helmet scanning the environment. He wasn't hiding. He was surveying.
And he wasn't alone. From a side alley, Cutthroat emerged, dragging something behind him. It was one of the smaller, dog-sized creatures, still twitching. He was laughing, a high, unnerving sound that echoed off the concrete.
"Look at you! Still kicking! What a spirited little beast!" He dropped it and, with a swift, brutal motion, ended its twitching with his knife.
Courier revved his engine, a single, impatient burst of sound. Cutthroat sighed, as if disappointed the fun was over, and melted back into the shadows. The motorcycle sped off, the sound of its engine fading into the dying light.
We stood in silence, watching the empty street where the creature's black blood pooled on the asphalt.
They weren't just surviving. They were hunting the hunters. They were playing a different game entirely.
Papa's face was grim. "We stay hidden. From them, too."
The digital clock on a shattered bank terminal glowed in the dim light: 5:16 PM.
One minute.
The world outside held its breath. The family was safe for now, sheltered in a metal cage. But outside, the predators—both old and new—were stirring. And the sky was beginning to turn.