Chapter 44: Lost in the Dark

The zombie did not take long to attack again. From the second floor, it cast a new spell. Luckily, Marlen saw it in time and managed to push Adam away before the wave hit him.

Adam was startled, but immediately understood and decided that they could no longer stay in the courtyard. He pointed Marlen to the stairs and then proceeded to help Noah up. Marlen understood and held her sister by one hand. The four of them moved forward slowly, expecting that at any moment the zombie would attack again.

The situation worsened when the zombie used a new type of magic. It fired a different wave, covering a much wider area. Adam felt a lump in his throat when he realized that none of them would manage to dodge it in time.

The attack covered them completely and Adam immediately felt his sense of touch disappear. The abrupt change felt so unnatural that Adam almost fell to the ground along with Noah. He looked up and noticed Marlen, who had also been affected. Luckily, they kept moving forward and entered the stairs, where the zombie would have a much harder time attacking them.

For his part, Noah thought he was dead. Without touch, sight or hearing, he felt as if he were floating in space. A horrible panic gripped his body and without knowing what was happening, he began to thrash around.

Adam was hit in the jaw, but felt nothing. He only realized it thanks to the inertia that led him to bend his neck backwards. He pulled away from Noah and exchanged glances with Marlen and Miriam. Adam was starting to come up with a plan to kill the monster, he just hoped Marlen could play along.

However, he first tried to calm Noah, who was in a complete panic. But the latter hadn't even realized he was moving. Luckily, only one thing kept him from going crazy, his senses of smell and taste.

The two senses he retained came to life in a spectacular way. Realizing this, Noah, who thought he had lost himself forever, was anchored back to reality. Smells he never paid attention to flooded his mind and the taste of his own saliva seemed sickening, but it was something to hold on to. Still, he hoped Adam and Marlen would take care of the zombie soon, because he knew he wouldn't hold out much longer.

Adam breathed a sigh of relief when he realized Noah was calming down, so he left him in the corner, out of sight of the staircase, and approached the sisters.

They both kept glancing up the upper stairs, so Adam tried to get Marlen's attention by tapping her on the shoulder, but cursed when he couldn't feel the contact. Without much thought, he pushed back against Marlen and she, surprised, punched him in the nose. Adam recoiled and was thankful he couldn't feel anything. Marlen gave him an apologetic look and then lifted her shoulders.

Adam pointed at her eyes, then at Noah and finally at himself. Marlen gave him a confused look, so Adam repeated the pointing again and finally mimicked an axe blow from Marlen. Marlen nodded after a while and Adam hoped she understood.

His plan was simple. Adam noticed that after blinding Noah, the zombie seemed to want to do the same to him. So he was willing to distract it and give Marlen a chance to kill it.

With that plan in mind, the three of them stood still for a while as they waited for the zombie to make a move. Unfortunately, this one was content to wait them out. Adam began to grow impatient and tried to think of a way to execute his plan. He pointed Marlen to one of the apartments on the first floor and then crept to the door, which he kicked open.

On the upper floors, the zombie sharpened his gaze, as he could sense that his enemies were moving within the field of silence and appeared to be entering one of the apartments. Irritated, he tried to get eye contact with them, but to no avail.

Helping Noah move was much more complicated than Adam expected, as there was no way to let him know to get up. In the end, with Marlen's help, they moved him inside the apartment.

There they encountered a group of zombies, but Adam killed them with ease. Ironically, without any sound it was easier to ambush the clumsy zombies. They were never aware that they were under attack.

After everything was in order, Adam tried to think of a solution to the dilemma they were in. Luckily, soon after, Noah began to regain his sight. Never in his life had he felt so relieved. At first, everything around him looked blurry, but gradually he found himself with a clear image of the interior of an apartment. It seemed to him that he had been lost in a dark place and had finally made it back.

Adam realized that Noah could now see. He knew it was time to move fast and take advantage of this. He walked over to Noah and gestured for him to get ready. He nodded and held up his gun.

Miriam, meanwhile, stopped channeling [Halo] and sat down on one of the living room furniture. Marlen was at her side, but she watched the entrance and the windows endlessly. Even she was beginning to be seriously affected by the situation. She couldn't wait to finish with the wretched zombie and get back to her house.

Adam and Noah caught up with them and both were glad when they realized that the latter had regained his sight. The former, on the other hand, signaled them to get ready.

Outside, on the second floor, the zombie began to get impatient. So he decided to prepare a spell that would allow him to eliminate all the senses of his enemies. However, such a feat would require a complicated ritual that would demand a great deal of energy from him.

For the ritual he used Stalkers, much less efficient than human bodies, but just as valid if used in sufficient quantity. He marked the ground with the blood of his weak brethren and drew a perfect circle. Then he sat in the middle and began the channeling of the spell.

He could wield five subtly different energies. Each of them was capable of affecting one of his enemies' senses. But, to his irritation, he could not manipulate them all in the same way. The attacks each produced were different, so weaving all five into a single spell required all its concentration.

Meanwhile, Adam and the others prepared to attack. They all exited the apartment and carefully climbed the steps.

Nerves on edge and completely paranoid, it took them a few minutes to climb the stairs to the second floor, which nearly doomed them all. They found the second floor completely deserted. Adam had a bad feeling. One of the apartments was open, so he entered it without thinking, followed closely by the others.

There they found carnage. The bodies of a dozen Stalkers were strewn everywhere. This time, Noah was the first to react. He advanced into the hallway with revolver in hand and observed, with growing horror, the zombie. It was in one of the rooms at the end of the hallway, surrounded by a thick circle of blood and emanating an absurd amount of energy.

Adam, right behind Noah, saw it a few seconds later, raised the flamethrower and ran toward the zombie, passing the Guard. Noah raised his weapon, but at that moment the ritual ended and an invisible ripple expanded from the zombie in a sphere that went through the walls and floor. Adam was engulfed by it in an instant, while Noah, just before going completely dark, managed to aim and fire without knowing the result.

He had returned to that horrible empty world, where he could feel nothing, do nothing. This time, not even smell and taste could help him. He tried to remain calm, but it was useless, that emptiness was eating away at his sanity little by little. It seemed as if he had been in that place for centuries and it didn't take him long to question his own existence.

All his senses were activated so suddenly that Noah fell to the ground. He wasn't the only one, as Miriam, Marlen and Adam also ended up on the ground in pain. Adam groaned in pain as he finally felt the blow Marlen had delivered to his nose. The sound of her voice startled him and he was about to set off the flamethrower.

Miriam was trembling on the floor, her sister hugged her a few moments later, not much better than she was. Noah, meanwhile, was the first to manage to get up and investigate what had happened to the zombie.

He walked down the hallway, past Adam and into the room. There he finally saw clearly what was left of the worst zombie they had faced. The creature had been shot in the neck and had apparently taken a few minutes to bleed to death.

Noah kicked the corpse hard. He remembered clearly the moment he had fired and felt a chill. If he had missed, they would be dead, even worse. Was there any difference between that emptiness and death? He was sure that the effect of the spell had ended soon because the zombie had died.

He kicked the corpse again and wished with all his might that he had a cigarette at hand. This fight had not been like the others. So far he had enjoyed, in his own way, the new world the System had brought. But now was the first time he had been disturbed in that way. He hadn't even realized that the zombie had thrown a book.

He closed his eyes and appreciated, as never before, being able to hear and feel what was around him. He remembered that as a child he had been very afraid of the dark and thought he had passed that stage long ago, but now that he knew the real darkness, he realized that he would probably have nightmares again.