My Team Got Called to a Supermarket That Was Abandoned For 10 Months

The call came in after we had already gone to bed for the night. Our station’s blaring loudspeaker alarm forced me to rocket out of a state of half-slumber and sit up in my bunk. The words “fire response” came over the same loudspeaker as I looked at the alert on my phone and saw that only about thirty minutes had passed since I had closed my eyes. My phone read “Forcible Entry—Victim Trapped Inside of Building”, followed by an address that I didn’t think anything of at the time. I wasn’t terribly tired—I never really drift into a deep sleep while doing overnights at the firehouse—and so I was able to step out of my bunk and quickly make my way to the gear room without having to shake off too much grogginess along the way.

It was a cold night in the dead of winter, but my usual bunk room always feels like it’s about a hundred degrees in there, so I had gone to bed that night in my usual attire of black gym shorts and a gray T-shirt. The gear room, on the other hand, tends to mimic the outside temperature with near-perfect accuracy, so I mentally prepared myself to step out into the frigid winter air in what was barely more than a pair of skivvies. The cold hit me hard, and I couldn’t prevent myself from shivering as I walked past Ozgood and Fuller, who already had their turnout pants on and were busy pulling their suspenders over their shoulders.

“Feeling a little chilly there, rookie?” Ozgood said. I had been with the department for more than three months at this point, but seeing as I was still the newest guy on the payroll, I had not yet shirked that nickname.

“A bit,” I admitted as I made it to my locker and began stepping into my pants. “Maybe you can cuddle me when we get back, Ozzy.”

The guys laughed at that—methods of tickling their funny bones had been some of the first things I had learned while working there.

Once we all had our pants on, we grabbed the rest of our gear and began walking into the apparatus bay. Pryce, our driver, was already in the driver’s seat of the Rescue, his gear stashed in the cab where Fuller and I would be sitting. It always blew me away how quickly the guy managed to get ready during nighttime calls. The other guys all said that he didn’t sleep when he worked overnights, and instead spent all night sitting in the bay, just waiting for the call that may not have even been coming.

Fuller and I jumped into the cab, and Ozgood climbed into the officer’s seat up front. Pryce had the Rescue peeling out of the bay before I even had my seatbelt on.

“You’ve got the address, right Pryce?” Ozgood asked our driver.

Pryce nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you recognize it?”

“Yeah,” the driver said again.

“How could somebody possibly be trapped in there?”

“I don’t know,” Pryce said, “but I don’t like it.”

“What’s so weird about that address?” I asked, confused by their conversation.

“It’s the address of that supermarket that shut down a while back,” Fuller said. 

“Not just shut down,” Ozgood said. “Ten months ago it was completely abandoned, out of the blue. It’s been closed up ever since. There’s no way somebody could be trapped in there.”

“Maybe some teenagers broke in or something,” I said. “What do the notes say?”

“Somebody called 9-1-1 and said that they were stuck,” Ozgood explained. “They said ‘I can’t get out’ a handful of times before they hung up the phone. Dispatch couldn’t get any other details from the caller before the line got disconnected.”

“Maybe it’s somebody pulling a prank,” I offered.

Fuller shook his head. “The notes say the call came from the landline in the office at the back of the store. Whoever made the call definitely made it from inside of the building.”

Pryce partially glanced in Ozgood’s direction while he drove. “So what’s the plan then, Officer?”

Ozgood, evidently not finding anything useful in the digital system while browsing through the tablet sitting in front of him on the dash, flipped through the binder of old preplans resting on his lap. When he found the page he was looking for, he took half a minute to skim its details. “We’ll pull around back and enter through the door in the rear,” he eventually said. “You boys back there good to do some forcible entry?”

“Yeah,” Fuller said. He looked at me. “You take the Halligan, I’ll take the axe.”

I nodded. “Alright.”

Our conversation went dormant as we continued our way to the scene of the call. The frigidity from the outside world seeped into the cab as we drove, and I soon found myself shivering once again. Pulling on my turnout coat helped the cold some, but I still found myself wishing desperately that I could be back in that 100-degree bunk room. I silently resented whoever had called us out here on such a brutal winter night. We were almost certainly in the midst of being pranked by some kids. With any luck we would arrive on-scene and find them outside without ever having to enter the building, where we could quickly scold them for wasting emergency resources before returning back to the warmth and comfort of our station. We still had a long, cold night ahead of us, and I prayed to God that this would be our only call before my shift ended at 6am.

Ozgood looked at Fuller and me in the rearview mirror. “Get your packs on now, boys,” he said. “I want everyone on air. We ain’t taking any chances with the air quality in this place, considering how long it’s been sealed up.”

“You think it’s gonna be dangerous in there?” Fuller asked.

“Don’t know,” Ozgood said, “but it can’t hurt to be safe.”

I resisted the urge to groan. Going on air meant we’d have to refill the cylinders when we got back. Of course, we could’ve just slapped fresh tanks into the SCBAs and left the used ones in the engine bay until morning, but if Ozgood didn’t insist on refilling them right away, then Pryce most certainly would. Our long night just got a few minutes longer.

Ozgood, Fuller and I all pulled our SCBAs over our shoulders and began tightening the straps. Pryce’s pack was in a compartment just outside of the driver’s side door, so he wouldn’t be able to get it on until after we arrived. None of us pulled our masks on yet; we knew we would likely have to force the rear door, and we didn’t want to fog up the face coverings with the effort.

We arrived at the strip mall where the abandoned supermarket lived and had to drive the length of the shopping center before we could loop around to the rear side. Much like our destination, most if not all of the storefronts along the strip appeared to be devoid of businesses. It was difficult to make out many details in the dark, but from my spot in the cab I could see that several storefronts lacked any kind of signage or branding out front, and those that did possess these things looked to be in varying states of disrepair. The road we drove on as well as the parking lot on our left side were riddled with potholes that were stared down upon by row after row of completely dead or rapidly flickering streetlights. The entire place felt incredibly eerie; it was as if we were driving straight into an apocalyptic hellscape that existed only a few short minutes from our fire station.

Pryce pulled around back and we disembarked from the Rescue. Ozgood approached the rear of the supermarket while Pryce pulled on his SCBA and Fuller and I grabbed a set of irons from the rescue tools compartment on the truck. We had also each grabbed a flashlight from the cab of the apparatus before stepping outside; they hung from our sides by their straps and gently bumped against our hips as we approached the structure.

The building’s rear wall was constructed of old, faded, crumbling brick. A single loading dock, complete with a rusty iron shutter, was carved out of a section of the wall. A couple of yards from this dock was a small concrete platform, accessible by both a staircase and a ramp of the same material. A metal door existed at the top of the platform on the same wall as the shutter. Ozgood was already standing outside of this door; Pryce was climbing the steps while Fuller and I approached with our tools. I followed Fuller up the stairs to the platform and stepped forward, ready to shove the fork end of my Halligan into the door frame. Pryce stopped me by placing a firm hand on my shoulder before shaking his head. 

“Don’t they teach you to try before you pry anymore, rookie?” he said. 

I frowned, taking a step back. “They do,” I said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Ozgood laughed. “I guess you can’t blame the guy for being a little eager.” 

He wrapped a gloved hand around the door’s handle, gripped the latch, and pulled. Much to my surprise, the door put up no resistance as it came away from its frame. Ozgood noted my change in expression and grinned. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “The caller had to get into the building somehow, after all.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess you’re right.”

Ozgood released his grip on the door and allowed it to fall back into place. “Alright,” he said, “let’s get on air and get this over with.”

We did as our officer instructed and pulled our masks onto our faces before we opened our air cylinders. I heard my SCBA’s low pressure alarm ring briefly, indicating new airflow, before I attached my regulator to my mask. My next breath allowed a small blast of air to fill my mask and kiss my mouth and nose. When we were all ready and our breaths were coming in the form of slow, deliberate swallows, Ozgood once again opened the door. Pryce stepped inside first, followed by Fuller and then me, with our officer bringing up the rear. The metal door groaned shut behind us, cutting off our portal to the outside world.

All four of us clicked on our flashlights and began scanning our new environment with our beams. We found ourselves in a tight, dark hallway. Its walls were made of plain, off-white brick, its floor a long stretch of worn, gray vinyl. Thousands of particles of what I at the time assumed to be dust floated and flitted through the air all around us.

“Fire department!” Ozgood yelled. His words sounded mechanical and distant through his SCBA’s voice amplifier. When he received no response, he lowered his voice and directed it at us. “The preplan says the office should be just up ahead.”

He led the way through the passage until we came upon a door on the wall to our left. It hung slightly ajar; the space beyond it was bathed in darkness. “This should be it,” he said. 

Ozgood slowly pushed the door open and allowed the flashlight attached to his turnout coat to illuminate the space beyond the threshold. He then took a cautious step inside. “Fire department!” he called again. “Is anybody in here?”

The rest of us stood in the hallway while our officer searched the office. All three of our PASS systems—the blaring alarm on our SCBAs that starts going off when we’ve been standing idle for too long—began to sound while we waited. We all needed to shake our SCBAs in order to silence the alarms, a process that came as second nature to us.

After about thirty or forty seconds in the office, Ozgood came back out into the hall and closed the door shut behind him.

“It’s empty,” he said, “but the phone is hanging off the receiver. It’s got a dial tone.”

“So then somebody actually was here,” I said.

Fuller glanced down the hallway from which we had just come. “But why would they need to call 9-1-1 when they were this close to the exit?”

Ozgood shrugged. “Beats me. But I think somebody really did make that call from inside of this place.”

“Maybe it actually was a prank after all,” I suggested.

“Might’ve been,” Pryce said. “Doesn’t change the fact that we still have to search this whole damn place.”

“How is everyone doing on air?” Ozgood asked. After confirming that we all had plenty of the stuff left, he went on. “Let’s get this over with, then. If we’re quick about it, we can finish our search without having to go back for fresh cylinders.”

He led us down the hall until we reached another metal door at the far side. This barrier was different from the earlier one in that it was already partially ajar—a strange fact, considering that the other door of the exact same type had closed on its own. This had evidently raised red flags for all four of us, because we immediately began to share glances with one another that we all knew indicated our concern despite our faces being largely obscured by our masks.

Ozgood took a cautious step toward the door. He attempted to push it open, but he was immediately met with resistance. He then positioned his forearm against the barrier and gave it a forceful shove. The door still put up a fight, but with a little effort he was able to create enough of an opening for us to fit through. With the space cleared, he took a step inside. The heavy metal door remained frozen in place even after he had left it behind. 

“Jesus Christ,” we heard Ozgood say from the other side of the threshold. 

Pryce quickly followed our officer through the doorway. Fuller went after him, and I brought up the rear.

The space on the other side of the threshold was just as dark as the hallway had been, but our four flashlight beams did their best to illuminate our new world. More particles—thicker and more dense in their congregation—floated through the air all about us. They were so plentiful that our lights struggled to penetrate their haze, but we had just enough illumination to see that we were in a stockroom behind the main store. The walls, ceiling, floor and shelves were all covered in a heavy layer of fungus. The mass looked to be one giant, perpetually growing organism that was constantly and frantically searching for more space to consume with its long, tendril-like roots. Looking at the ground, I could see that the door we had just come through had been forced to scrape along the fungus in order to come open. It was now held in place by the layer of fungus, which had glommed onto the bottom of the door with the buildup of the material that had been scraped away. 

“What the hell happened in here?” I said.

“Good question,” Ozgood said. “I’ve been in some nasty places in my day, but none have ever been quite like this.”

“I think we’re good to get out of here now,” Fuller said. “Anybody who made their way in here would likely have been dead within minutes of breathing this air. This clearly isn’t a rescue attempt anymore—if anything, it’s a recovery.”

“All the more reason we need to press on,” Pryce said. “If somebody is still alive in here, then we need to pull them out ASAP.”

“We’re not properly equipped for this!” Fuller said. “We should be in hazmat suits in an environment like this—not turnout gear!”

Pryce shrugged. “It don’t make a difference anymore now, seeing as we’re already in the thick of it.”

“The Pryce is right,” Ozgood said. “We need to at least check this storage area. If we see no signs of anybody being in here, then we’ll pull out, call in hazmat, and get deconned. But we need to make it quick. Fuller, you’ll search to the left with me while Pryce and the rookie go to the right.”

Fuller sighed to announce his frustration, but he offered no further protest.

Ozgood looked at Pryce. “Radio us if you find anything.”

The driver nodded, and our two small groups went off in our separate directions. I didn’t know what to say to my companion—he had always been the hardest person at my station to strike up a conversation with—so we remained silent as we conducted our search. We followed the mold-covered wall and weaved past shelves consumed by fungus. After rounding a corner, we came across a new metal door that was largely covered in the mass, and which was only identifiable by the handle that stuck out from the blanket of mold.

“I figure this door leads into the loading dock based on the preplan,” Pryce  said. He took hold of the handle and tried to open the door, but it remained firmly in place. “Locked. But I doubt we’ll be needing to go in there anyway. This door looks like it’s been shut tight for a long time. Any potential victim in here won’t have made it past this thing.”

We continued on for another minute or so before we spotted Ozgood and Fuller. When we reached them, we found that they were waiting for us in front of a pair of swinging doors. One of the doors was slightly ajar; it was pushed away from us and stuck in place, just like how the metal door had been. 

“You took so long that I was getting ready to radio you,” Ozgood said.

“We were looking at something back there,” Pryce said. He glanced at the fungus-caked double doors. “I’m guessing you two aren’t the ones who pushed that open.”

“Correct,” our officer said, “which means whoever was in here went farther into the store.”

“Which means we need to keep going.”

I expected another protest from Fuller, but the man remained silent. After another quick oxygen check, during which we confirmed that we all had close to three quarters of our cylinders left, we continued on into the store proper. Ozgood pushed against the stuck door similarly to how he had the previous one before leading the way into the space beyond it.

I did not think that the particles—that the mold spores—could have gotten any worse than they already were, but I was wrong. They were so thick and oppressive that I could hardly see beyond their dense curtain. The haze partially reflected my flashlight’s beam back at me; it felt as if I was surrounded by the smoke of a burning building, or as if I had been swallowed by a heavy, ravenous haar.

An even greater quantity of mold infested this new space. It teemed in the shadows beyond the reach of my flashlight and oozed out of a nearby frozen food chiller, making it look as if the waist-high container was overflowing with ice.

“Fire department!” Ozgood called again. “Is anybody in here?”

His echoing voice was the only thing to respond to him.

“It’s going to take us forever to search this place,” Fuller said. 

“Not if we move quickly,” Ozgood said. “Same pairs as before. We’ll go along the perimeter wall. If we haven’t found anything by the time we meet up, then we’ll begin searching the aisles one by one. Any questions?” Nobody responded. “Good. Now let’s get this over with before we start getting low on air.”

Ozgood and Fuller once again began moving left along the outer wall of the supermarket while Pryce and I began moving to the right. I glanced in our companions’ direction after taking only a few short steps, and was slightly alarmed to see that the beams of their flashlights had already been completely consumed by the swirling mold spores. In a matter of seconds it had become as if they had never existed at all.

I walked with Pryce for another couple of minutes while sweeping my flashlight with one hand and holding my Halligan with the other. I had yet to use the tool since entering the structure, and I considered offering it to my companion, who held nothing in his hands (he, like Ozgood, had a flashlight attached to his coat), but I decided against it. I feared that the older man would think I was trying to pawn the Halligan off on him, and I did not want him believing me to be lazy.

The silence in that space was almost overwhelming. It was as if the miasma of mold was muffling any and all ambient sound that would have come through, while somehow also creating a harsh noise that rattled my brain and threatened to destroy me from the inside out. The only sounds to break up the quiet were our soft footsteps against the fungus-covered floor and the rhythm of our regular, mechanical breaths. I checked my cylinder’s pressure again as we walked. It had not gone down much since the last time I had looked at it, but I was worried about suddenly going low on air in such an inhospitable environment. Of course I knew that it would activate a low pressure alarm before things got too dicey, but my paranoia told me that there was always the chance that the trigger would malfunction, and I would wind up sucking my mask to my face before I knew it, suddenly forced to choose between imminent suffocation and breathing those toxic, putrid particles.

Eventually the silence became unbearable, and at risk of wasting more oxygen, I spoke. “What do you think caused this place to get like this?”

At first Pryce didn’t answer, and for a moment I thought that he intended not to, but then his robotic-sounding words escaped from his voice amplifier. “Don’t know,” he said. “I ain’t ever seen anything like this.”

I glanced at some of the nearby freezers as we walked. Beyond the sheets of mold that fogged up the glass, I could see rows upon rows of once-frozen meals still sitting in their spots on the shelves.

“I guess they abandoned this place with everything still in it,” I said. “Maybe that’s what caused all this mold to grow.”

“This place has only been abandoned for less than a year,” he said. “It shouldn’t have gotten this bad in such a short time.”

I considered this for a moment. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter what caused it to get like this,” I said. “We’re only here to find a potential victim, and that’s all we have to worry about right now.”

Pryce nodded. “That’s right. Leave the more complicated stuff in the higher pay grade where it belongs. Glad to see you’re finally starting to get it, rookie.”

We kept going for another minute or so in silence. I continued to scan the way ahead of us with my flashlight beam, for all the good it did me in that dark, gloomy space. The spore haze seemed like it was growing thicker the more we walked, and the more dense it was, the more difficult it was for our beams to penetrate it.

It was for this reason that, when I saw movement in one of the aisles from out of the corner of my vision, I didn’t quite believe my own eyes.

I came to an immediate stop and turned my flashlight down the aisle in question. Pryce, looking at me, did the same.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I thought I saw something move down there.”

“A person?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “It could have been. It also could have been my eyes playing tricks on me. It’s hard to tell in here.”

“We should check it out regardless.”

I hesitated. “Are you sure we should head off the path? We told Ozzy and Fuller that we wouldn’t start checking aisles until we met up again.”

“It could be the victim,” Pryce said. He brought his hand up to the radio mic strapped to his collar. “Pryce to Ozzy.”

There was a pause before Ozgood’s crackly voice came over the speaker. “Go ahead, Pryce.”

“The rookie thought he saw something down one of the aisles. We’re going to check it out. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“Copy that,” Ozgood said. “Just be careful.”

Pryce nodded, as if the man on the other side of the conversation could see the gesture. “Always.”

The two of us began creeping down the aisle. Without thinking, I looked up at the sign above my head as I passed it. We were walking into the canned goods aisle. Part of me wanted to chuckle; the items down that aisle would probably have still been edible, assuming one felt so inclined to dig them free of the layer of fungus that guarded them. I couldn’t say the same for almost anything else in the store.

“Fire department!” Pryce called, speaking that familiar mantra. “Is anybody there?”

Silence.

Pryce and I got to the center of the aisle, right about to where I had seen the movement earlier. We searched around the place with our flashlights, but we turned up nothing. As far as either of us could tell, we were completely alone in that passage, surrounded on all sides by preserved foods covered in an ever-growing blanket of death.

“See anything?” my companion asked. When I shook my head, he brought his hand up to his radio. “Pryce to Ozzy, turns out it was a false alarm. We’ll get back to the outer wall and continue our—”

The sound of crashing glass behind us brought his words to an abrupt end. Pryce removed his hand from his radio as he and I turned to look in the direction from which we had just come. On the floor a few yards away lay what I could just barely make out to be a shattered jar, its contents spilling out onto the floor and mixing with the mold that lived there.

“You alright, Pryce?” Ozgood said over the radio. My companion ignored the question. Instead he and I shared a brief glance before we took a cautious step toward the ruined jar.

“Hello?” Pryce said. “Is somebody th—”

His words were replaced by a sudden shout as his feet were pulled out from under him and he landed on his back with a terrible crash. Pryce began sliding along the moldy floor in the direction that we had just been facing. His yells were mangled by the harsh screech of his SCBA scraping along beneath his back.

I rushed through the darkness after my taken companion, but he was moving far too quickly for me to keep up with him. He would have soon been lost to the shadows, but he managed to reach out and grab onto a shelf divider as he was pulled past it. The thing dragging him continued in its effort, but he managed to hold on long enough for me to reach his side.

Wrapped around his leg was a long, squirming tendril that stretched on into the shadows beyond where my flashlight beam could see. It fought desperately to rip Pryce free of his anchor, which he held onto for dear life. Dropping my flashlight and allowing it to come to a rest at the end of its strap at my side, I took my Halligan into both hands and lifted it up to my head before bringing the forked end down upon the angry tendril. Matter was severed from matter as both ends of the tentacle, now free of each other, writhed on their own. The end wrapped around Pryce’s leg released its grip as it began to violently contort on the ground; the longer section quickly darted away from the blow and disappeared into the darkness.

I took my Halligan into one hand and used the other to grab Pryce by the arm. He desperately backed away from the twisting mass as I helped him to his feet. After taking a few moments to catch our breath, we cautiously approached Pryce’s attacker. It looked to me, in the dim light of my flashlight’s beam, to be a tendril of moldy, twisting flesh; an unholy union of fungus and meat. It continued to squirm on the floor, but without its main body to support it, its efforts were ineffective.

“What the hell is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Pryce said, out of breath, “but we need to get out of here.”

I noticed a sudden hissing noise, which prompted me to lean toward Pryce. My stomach sank as I realized that the sound was his quickly depleting air source. “I think your cylinder ruptured when that thing attacked you,” I said. “We need to get you outside.”

“Not until we find the others,” Pryce said. “We can both go off of your cylinder for a bit if we need to.” He quickly changed a knob on his radio. “I’m going to contact Dispatch. See if you can get a hold of Ozzy and Fuller.”

As he began his transition to the outside world, I brought my hand to my own radio mic and pressed the button to begin my transmission. “This is Search Team Two to Search Team One,” I said. A few moments of silence passed, during which I did not receive the go-ahead to speak. “Come in, Ozzy. Are you there?” I was met with further silence. “Oz-man! Fuller! Are either of you there?”

“I can’t get in touch with Dispatch,” Pryce said. “Something must be blocking the signal.”

“No good on reaching the others, either,” I said.

“Dammit,” he said. “Then we’re just going to have to—”

A horrible, screeching wail suddenly came blaring through both of our radios. It was so loud that we could hear the original sound coming from the other side of the building—the radio was unnecessary to broadcast that cry of primal, desperate distress.

“That sounded like Fuller,” Pryce said as we both looked in the direction of the scream. He had hardly finished his sentence before the blaring alarm of a PASS device shattered the atmosphere all around us. Pryce did not even glance my way before he took off in the direction of the shrill noise. I offered one final glance at the still-squirming tendril of flesh before rushing after him.

I squared up next to my companion, and together we sprinted out of our aisle and toward the source of the commotion. The PASS alarm grew in volume and intensity as we ran, until it finally reached its final, ear-splitting evolution. We rounded a corner and soon found ourselves in the midst of its mighty, overwhelming song.

The sound was coming from the space that had once served as the store’s meat department. A gigantic mass of writhing, undulating, mold-infused meat grew from the remnants of the department’s display case, which had long since ruptured from the pressure created by the abomination that we now gazed upon. The mycotic mound of once-flesh squirmed and lurched as its stygian body continued to intrude into the space beyond the display. We quickly spotted the source of the PASS alarm: the meaty silhouette of one of our companions—it would turn out to be Ozgood—stood completely still as the wall of flesh consumed the last of his body. His PASS alarm became muffled as the mass closed around any remaining apertures through which the sound could escape. The screaming SCBA’s flashing orange lights continued to gleam through the coffin of carrion before they too were completely ingested. What looked to be the outlines of several arms, legs, and even faces stretched out from the squirming heap of meat; the muted, agonized groans of our swallowed companion joined a chorus of  indistinct voices that called out from the tumulus of wriggling death.

“I can’t get out!” I thought I heard one of the voices say. I also thought I heard another one say the word “stuck”, but I couldn’t be certain. Their words sounded more like the primal cries of panicked animals than the intelligent sentences of human beings.

“Mother of God,” Pryce muttered next to me.

Fuller stood at the very limits of this advancing mass; several fleshy tendrils were wrapped around his legs and hips and torso and pulled at him as he desperately swung at his attackers with his axe. I rushed to Fuller’s side and began digging at the tendrils with my Halligan. He managed to sever one of the muscly vines as I worked, but two more quickly took its place. They managed to easily dodge his incoming blows; one latched itself around his neck while the other splashed against his mask. The mask shattered with enough force to disconnect his regulator; I only heard his scream for a brief moment before the mass of fungus and meat filled his mouth and nose and completely consumed his face.

I instinctively tried to step away from the mound of twisting tissue, but I was stopped when one of the fungal tendrils lashed out and grabbed onto my boot. Pryce rushed forward and grabbed the axe from Fuller’s hand moments before the flesh had fully consumed its victim. He brought the axe down on the matter creeping its way up my boot; I was able to pull my foot away from the larger mass and managed to shake away any meat that remained there, setting myself free.

“Come on!” Pryce said. He turned and ran away from the growing wall of carrion without looking to see if I was following after him. Needless to say that I was; I also did not turn back to offer our lost companions a final glance, for fear of losing all hope at the sight of the monstrous formation of meat that so desperately sought to add us to its ranks.

We cut through the nearest aisle in our desperate flight toward our exit. Tendrils of matter rushed toward us as we fled; each of us swung our respective tools-turned-weapons at our encroaching foes. Fungal flesh splattered against the shelves on either side of us; we did not stop to admire the works of art that we left behind.

Soon our exit came into view. I was filled with a fresh burst of hope that was quickly dashed into oblivion when I suddenly noticed that I was running by myself. I turned back around and spotted Pryce crouched on the floor a few yards back. He desperately hacked and sucked at a regulator that was no longer providing him with any oxygen. In my frantic effort to escape, I had not noticed the sound of his low air alarm. I did not know how long he had struggled on while fighting against his need to breathe.

A tentacle exploded from out of the darkness and wrapped around the arm holding his axe. I took a step toward him, but he used his free hand to rip his suffocating regulator free of his mask. “Go!” he shouted as spores filled his lungs. Two more tendrils grabbed hold of him and began pulling him deeper into the shadows. He did not scream even as they found the new opening in his mask and made themselves at home.

I turned and sprinted away from my companion. It seemed to take me hours to reach the swinging doors that led into the storage area, but at long last I finally stepped beyond this threshold. I continued to run, my breath coming in the form of heavy, mechanical gasps as I reached the partially open door that led into the back hallway. I did not think that I would find the strength to force my heavy, sweating body through that tight aperture, but I somehow managed to make it to the other side. The way outside was now in sight—all I had to do was make it to the other side of that impossibly long hallway.

Something latched onto my back, halting my progress. My next step grew heavier, as did my next, until I could no longer move forward. Looking over my shoulder, I saw multiple tendrils latched onto the back of my SCBA. I desperately began tearing at my airpack’s straps while silently cursing the fact that the thing was so thoroughly secured to my body. Soon everything was pulled loose, and all that remained was one strap pulled over my shoulder. I took one final gasp of air from my regulator before I tore it from my mask and brought the bottom of my hood up to cover the new opening. I then released the SCBA strap from my shoulder. The airpack fell backwards into the tendrils that so desperately pulled against it; in the same moment I managed to sprint away from the lost air source and rushed the rest of the way toward my exit. My lungs burned as I tore open the metal door standing between me and the outside world. I scrambled onto the cement platform and quickly slammed the door behind me. It wasn’t until I was down the stairs and halfway to the Rescue before I finally pulled my hood away and took a huge, gasping breath.

Fresh air had never tasted so good before, but I did not have time to enjoy it. I rushed to the Rescue, climbed into the officer’s seat, and reached for the radio attached to the center console. But my hand did not even make it halfway to its destination before the speaker came to life with the anguished, tortured wails of my three lost companions.