The Buried

by Melissa Grey

  Click. Click, click, click.

  Yuna froze, her hand on the wall.

  It was closer now. Moving faster.

  And it paused when she did.

  Run, said a voice not her own. Run. Now.

  She ran.

  The clicking picked up pace behind her, like whatever that thing was was working its way up from a slow jog to an outright gallop.

  Yuna pumped her legs as hard as she dared, ignoring the burn from having crouched so long behind the stairwell. She was stiff, aching all over, but none of that mattered now. Not when she could hear the pounding drumbeat of its uneven gait behind her, when she could hear it make that horrible rasping sound.

  And then she heard that rasping sound repeated. A different tone. A different pitch.

  Like wolves howling at each other in the night, telegraphing their distance, their location. The trajectory of their prey.

  You won’t make it.

  Something lunged behind her. The carpet runner beneath her feet slid backward as something grappled for purchase. She heard the whoosh of it launching itself into the air. Yuna stumbled, slamming her left knee onto the wooden floor. The thing—a thing, not an animal, not a person, a thing—sailed over her head. Its claws—that’s what they were, talons, nails maybe, deformed, sharp, broken—snagged at her hair, dislodging half of her bun.

  The thing hit the floor in front of her. Hard. In the darkness, Yuna couldn’t discern its specific shape. It was black against black. Its breath rattled and rasped, wet and loud in the silence.

  Yuna went still.

  Overhead, a caved-in section of roof allowed a brisk autumn chill into the house. Yuna held her breath, waiting. Watching. The thing sounded as though it was picking itself up off the floor. Its nails scratched at the threadbare runner, finding its footing.

  In the distance, another sound emerged, low and thrumming. Like the quiet hum of the generators in the bunker. They were always there. Ever present. Ever on.

  But this sound was new.

  It grew louder as it approached. The thing in the shadows made a snuffling noise, as if confused.

  The sound grew and grew, pulsating. Rhythmic.

  Mechanical.

  You can run now. It can’t hear you.

  Yuna drew her legs in close, getting into position to sprint away from the thing on the floor. She was almost ready. She could make it. She could—

  A light, sudden and searing, glared through the opening in the roof, capturing both Yuna and the thing in horrid, stark relief.

  Her eyes didn’t know where to settle. Up, where the light was strongest, to see what it was. What made the noise accompanying it. Or straight ahead, on the abomination before her.

  Run.

  The thing defied description. Yuna’s mind tried to twist it apart, to fit it into a box, a shape, a form that made sense, and she couldn’t. There were legs. A twisted torso. Red, raw skin that reminded her of so much hamburger meat.

  Run.

  The thing looked back at her, craning what looked like a neck—the angle was wrong, it shouldn’t bend that way—downward, toward Yuna, away from the other thing overhead.

  For one breathless moment, Yuna and the thing locked gazes.

  (Its eyes. Where were its eyes?)

  Click. Click, click, click.

  There. A hole in the thing’s cheek. Open. Gaping. Through it, Yuna could see a flap of what looked like muscle tapping against something shiny and white.

  (Bone.)

  From another part of the house came another round of clicks. From the rooms above, another. And another.

  (Everywhere. They’re everywhere.)

  Run.

  The thing reared back on its mangled legs, as if ready to leap. To pounce. To tear.

  Yuna ran.

  Not fast enough.

  She was going to die here. Torn apart and mangled on the floor of this hideous, opulent house, her body left to decay amid the ruins.

  You can fight.

  That voice was hers. Not a ghost’s. Just hers. As she ran through the hallways, knocking into busts on their pedestals and cracked benches and fallen wood, a series of thoughts also slammed into her, one by one.

  The library.

  The armor.

  The sword.

  Yuna pivoted, her bruised knee screaming in protest at the sudden change of direction. Bracing herself for impact, she threw her shoulder against the library door, all but falling through it when it opened with far more ease than it had the last time. Her head jerked up wildly, looking for the thing she sought, the thing that could stand between her and the things behind her—

  There.

  Yuna kicked the door shut behind her and pushed herself up, scrambling for the coat of arms set against the wall.

  And the sword in the glass display case beside it.

  Yuna went to the case, fingers seeking a handle, a knob, a clasp, anything. What they found was a lock.

  Locked. The word ricocheted inside her skull, taunting her. Mocking her.

  But wait.

  She looked at the desk, overly large. Ostentatious. On it sat a coat of dust. An empty pen holder. A blotter with stains on it, the provenance of which Yuna didn’t want to know.

  And a globe. Small and marble and heavy.

  It was too large for one hand. She had to cradle it in two.

  Click, click. Click.

  Closer now. Right outside the door.

  Yuna heaved the globe up and threw it as hard as she could at the display case. The glass shattered, earsplitting. Cacophonous.

  The things in the hallway screamed.

  Heedless of the jagged bits of glass protruding from the case, Yuna reached in and grabbed the sword.

  Right as the door fell open, knocked clear off its hinges by one of those things.

  (What are they? Who are they?)

  No time to wonder.

  The one in front leaped toward Yuna. The knife—sword?—came up in her hands, hilt clutched in a white-knuckled grip, blood roaring in her ears louder even than the thing in the sky. The thing with the light that marked her as a target. The thing that stole her only protection from these things, the darkness. She could still hear it outside, churning the air above, its awful light filtering in through the library’s windows.

  The smell hit her before the creature did. Pungent and thick. Like spoiled meat left outside to rot on a hot summer’s day. Something hot and wet landed on Yuna’s cheek. Spit?

  The blade cleaved through its skull—oddly soft, Yuna realized in a distant, detached way.

  Something even hotter and wetter sprayed across the side of her face.

  Blood.

  Tightening her hold on the sword—slippery now, wet—Yuna pressed one foot into the thing’s chest and pushed.

  It slid back, clear off the sword.

  The thing outside the building seemed to pull back. The noise—that thrumming whir—faded, as did the light. The library was plunged once more into a darkness even more complete, now that Yuna’s eyes had been burned by its illumination.

  Praise be the blessed dark.

  The words were Moran’s, but the thought was Yuna’s.

  As quietly as she dared, she pressed her back against the bookshelves. Inch by painstaking inch, she followed her way along the wall as the clicking things grew closer.

  But not to her.

  From the sound of their movements against the floor, nails scraping against hard wood, it seemed as though they were clustering around their fallen brethren.

  Good. Mourn him. It.

  Yuna slipped through the door, the sound of her sneakers against the wood muffled by the shriek from one of the things in the library.

  Elation? Ecstasy? Grief?

  The sound was both human and not. Foreign and familiar.

  Yuna ran.

  She ran and ran and ran, all the way to the ballroom and the hatch she prayed was still open, bloodied sword still grasped tightly in her hands, notebook still di
gging painfully into the knobs of her lower spine.

  Her breath burned hot in her lungs as she kicked the piece of wood still holding the hatch ajar. She fell into the ventilation pit, her shins quaking with the impact. She spared only the quickest of glances up to make sure the hatch had fallen shut behind her. It had.

  Even then, she didn’t stop running.

  She was halfway through the air ducts when she heard it.

  No.

  No.

  It’s in your head.

  It’s not real.

  Run.

  She pushed herself harder and faster, her knuckles scraping against the uneven metal of the ventilation shafts.

  But the noise came again, the same one she’d heard in the manor. An uneven clicking, like something hard and sharp beating out a broken staccato rhythm against exposed bone.

  Whatever was on the surface wasn’t on the surface anymore.

  It was inside. With them.

  The bunker—the place they’d believed for ten long years was their impenetrable fortress—had been breached.

  There was nowhere left to hide. Nowhere to run. The hatch was sealed. And the monsters were here.

  Not three hours had passed since they’d come out of hiding, and Moran was already calling another bunker meeting unlike any other. Gabe’d had quite enough of those. The last one had nearly broken him. Now he was sitting on even more information, and far worse than the book. Than Olga. Than the man with the rat. Than anything else.

  The exclusion zone.

  The words tasted illicit in his mouth. Delicious, even.

  A zone of exclusion, which naturally would imply inclusion somewhere else. Just somewhere not here.

  But whether he would have the chance to share this information seemed to be out of his hands. It was in theirs, the people who had betrayed Sash, one of their own, so readily. What would they do to him, he wondered, if they knew what he had done to earn that knowledge?

  The exclusion zone.

  They sat in a half circle. A crescent of familiar (overly familiar) faces stared at Gabe, their expressions ranging from confusion (Lucas) to disappointment (his mother) to oddly ghoulish glee (Misha).

  At the open end of the circle sat Gabe. Alone. Sash was still in confinement, and Yuna was … Gabe didn’t know where Yuna was, but he could only assume she was off somewhere trying to help Sash. He hoped that she did. Because right now, he was feeling distinctly beyond help.

  His mother’s hands were in her lap. She was rubbing them together, end over end. Every now and then her eyes would find Gabe’s and something would pass through them. Then, she’d look away, sometimes at the wall, sometimes down at her fidgeting hands. Either way, it was like she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Like looking at Gabe was too much for her to bear. His father stood by her side, a protective arm slung across her back, his gloved hand grasping her shoulder. It looked like a grip that must have hurt, but maybe it was grounding them both. His father’s other hand rested on Lucas’s shoulder. It was sort of like he was the only thing holding the fragments of their family together in that moment.

  And he probably was, considering how royally Gabe had screwed up.

  Dr. Moran loomed over where he sat, her face arranged in a semblance of impartial civility.

  “Do you know why we’re gathered here today, Gabriel?”

  “It’s Gabe.”

  The doctor’s eyes twitched. It was almost imperceptible, right at the corners where her crow’s-feet started to gather, but it was a thrilling little tic all the same. It was such a Sash thing to say, it probably drove Moran absolutely mad.

  “Insolence won’t help you now, I’m afraid.” Moran strode around Gabe’s chair—a singularly uncomfortable seat of the folding metal variety—seemingly for no good reason. She went around the back, as if seeking to unnerve him. Successful on that front, considering the way the skin at the nape of his neck puckered into gooseflesh.

  Her hand settled on his shoulder, fingers curling around the slope of bone, nails digging into his flesh—even through her gloves. He tried not to tense, but it was a losing battle. She knew what she was doing.

  When she spoke, her voice was louder, more resonant. It projected through the room, washing over every soul with its authority.

  “We are here today because one of our own has violated our most sacred tenet.”

  Gabe fought to give nothing away. But his eyes darted toward Moran, entirely of their own volition.

  Deny it, whispered one part of his brain. Defend yourself.

  Keep your idiot mouth shut, whispered another, probably wiser part.

  He kept his mouth shut.

  The hand on his shoulder tightened.

  “Gabriel Correa made contact with the surface.”

  A wave of whispers rose from the gathered crowd, like the susurration of wind through the trees.

  It was an odd memory, floating up from the deepest recesses of Gabe’s subconscious. He hadn’t heard that sound in years. Wind through the trees. What a thought.

  “Gabriel Correa …” Moran luxuriated in the vocalization of his name, as though she were savoring the hard edge of every consonant. The soft curve of every vowel. “Went outside.”

  The words were a lit match thrown on a pile of kindling.

  “He wouldn’t!” Lucas shouted, surging forward through the crowd, nearly knocking Yuna’s mother down as he did.

  His father tugged Lucas back, wrapping an arm securely around the boy’s chest. “What proof do you have?” He shook his head without waiting for an answer. “My son wouldn’t do that.”

  Moran made a quiet tsking sound. “Oh, but I’m afraid he did, Mr. Correa.”

  “How do you know?” Gabe’s mother asked, her voice the thinnest octave above a tremulous whisper.

  “In my office,” Dr. Moran said, stretching out the words again, knowing she had a rapt audience, “I have a radio.”

  And then, Gabe’s blood seemed to still in his veins. It wasn’t cold. It was ice. A roar sounded in his ears, like a train barreling down train tracks. Train tracks Gabe was strapped to.

  “I keep it because I have never lost hope. I have never once given up listening for word from the outside. From other survivors.”

  It wasn’t true. She had told them again and again that they were alone, that they were all that was left, that there was no one else out there coming to rescue them. That they were all they had.

  “I kept this to myself for I did not want to gift you with the curse of false hope.”

  “That’s bull and you know it.” Gabe clapped his jaw shut so quickly it hurt. What had possessed him to say that? That was a Sash thing to say, not a Gabe thing. And yet he had said it. And he couldn’t unsay it.

  “You’ll have your time to speak, Gabriel.” Moran walked around the chair again, coming to a stop in front of him. “On that radio, I heard something I hadn’t heard in many years.” She turned to him so the full weight of that dark gaze was on him.

  “An incoming transmission.” She let the words lie there, stinking between them. Odiferous in their damnation.

  “How is that possible?” Gabe’s father asked. It was such a Dad thing to do. Question everything. That’s what he always said.

  Well, Gabe had. And look where it had landed him.

  “An outgoing transmission, naturally.” Moran paced in front of Gabe, hiding him from the group and then revealing him in turns. “But what shocked me even more than receiving it was the voice I heard on the other end.”

  She paused, standing just stage left of Gabe.

  How very dramatic.

  Inclining her head in his direction, she said, “A familiar voice. Gabriel’s voice.”

  His father shook his head. “No. That’s not possible. How would Gabe even—?”

  “He went outside.” Moran bit out each poisonous word. “He went outside and he found a radio. And he used that radio to broadcast a message to whoever was listening.” She angled her face back towar
d Gabe. “But the only person to hear it was me.”

  No.

  He wanted to scream the word at her. He wanted to fling it into her face like acid.

  But he couldn’t. Not without confessing to the very thing she was accusing him of, the thing that he did but had promised to never speak of. Not for his sake, but for Yuna’s. For Sash’s.

  “And for that,” Moran said, turning back to the small gathering, “he must pay.”

  “Pay with what?” Gabe asked. His tone was a hair shriller than he would have liked.

  “Nothing comes without a cost, Gabriel. And this one shall be fitting of the crime.”

  “I haven’t committed a crime,” Gabe said. It was stupid and futile, but he had to try. He had to.

  “Shall we put it to a vote?” Moran turned to the audience—her captive audience—and spread her arms wide. A beseeching gesture. A move that said, This troublesome boy is making this hard when it doesn’t have to be.

  “All those who think Gabriel should be punished for his transgressions …” Moran’s eyes raked over the residents of the bunker, pausing long enough to make each of them feel seen. “Raise your hands.”

  Misha’s hand went up without the thinnest sliver of hesitation.

  Of course.

  That wasn’t surprising. Not in the least.

  Also not surprising: Mrs. Eremenko. Yuna’s mother. Slightly slower, but still, Yuna’s father.

  Nastia, at least, kept her hand down. Her brows pinched together as a realization began dawning on her face. This—all of this—was madness. And too many of them were okay with it.

  Lucas turned his gaze up to his parents, his two hands clutching his mother’s forearm. He looked so young in that moment. So small. Not like the boy who was already perilously tall for his age, who would probably one day tower over Gabe and their father alike.