Ethan hesitated at the threshold of the ominous room, his senses screaming in alarm. He knew he had little choice but to enter, even though his instincts vehemently warned him against it.
"Step inside," Marcus ordered, his tone unwavering. He gave Ethan a firm push from behind, propelling him into the gloom.
As Ethan entered, he noticed another door on the opposite wall. It was solid steel, resembling the cell doors he had seen earlier. "What's that door for?" he asked, his voice quivering with an undercurrent of unease.
Lila remained silent as she positioned herself near the newly discovered door, while Marcus lingered near the entrance, effectively blocking his escape. They were corralling him, and the sense of impending dread tightened its grip.
A pungent odor filled the air, a mixture of dampness and decay. It was disconcerting as if the room had been marinating in the stench of death for years. Ethan's eyes darted around, trying to make sense of his surroundings in the dim light, but his apprehension grew.
"Stand here," she instructed, pointing to the other metallic door. "See for yourself."
Ethan hesitated, dread clawing at his insides, as he approached the door. He peered through the small viewing glass, straining to discern what Lila wanted him to see in the dimness. The faint red glow played tricks on his eyes, distorting the shadows within.
Then he spotted it—a figure stumbling within the room, moving erratically, as if in a trance.
As if sensing a presence beyond the door, the person faced the door, but the shadows concealed their features.
Without warning, the person lurched at the door with an inhuman intensity, a guttural snarl escaping their twisted, contorted lips. Their body slammed into the unyielding metal with a deafening, bone-rattling impact. Ethan's heart plummeted, and an icy shock surged through his veins. He staggered backward in sheer horror, his feet tangling with fear, landing on the cold, unforgiving floor.
"What's wrong with him?" Ethan gasped, his voice quivering with disbelief and terror.
Then, a spine-chilling noise cut through the turmoil—the metallic grating of the door being shifted, like the gears of a dark machine. On the other side of the door, in the corridor, both Lila and Marcus stood, their expressions hardened and resolute.
"No, no, wait!" Ethan rushed toward the door, but it closed with a resounding thud, locking him in the oppressive darkness.
"Open it!" Ethan screamed, hammering on the door with frantic desperation.
Lila met his panicked gaze but offered no comfort. "It's necessary," she said, her voice steady. Her hand pressed a button on a remote control.
A hiss slithered into his ears, like the eerie whisper of a specter from the netherworld. The door to his back slid open, and there, bathed in the dim crimson light, stood a creature that could have been plucked from the darkest corners of a person's most dreadful nightmares.
The abomination before him was a grotesque amalgamation of what was once human, but now marred and contorted beyond recognition. Its skin hung in tatters, ashen and mottled with decay. Sunken eye sockets were hollow, devoid of life, and their cloudy, milky eyes fixated upon Ethan with a malevolence that chilled him to the core. Strands of lank, greasy hair clung to its pallid, ravaged scalp.
Fingers, gnarled and elongated like skeletal claws, reached out for him with a menacing hunger, their nails broken and stained with filth. Its clothing was tattered rags that barely clung to its emaciated frame, fluttering like a shroud of death.
The creature's incoherent growls and snarls emanated from its gaping, maw-like mouth, revealing a maw littered with shattered, jagged teeth. It shuffled closer, each step a ghastly, uneven lurch, as if held together by sheer malevolence.
Panic welled up in Ethan as the creature, fueled by a grotesque hunger, sensed his presence. It lunged with surprising speed, crashing into him with enough force to knock the breath out of him. Ethan stumbled backward, his heart racing, every nerve on edge.
His pulse pounded in his ears as he leaped away from the attacking zombie, narrowly evading its gnashing teeth. The creature collided with the door he had entered through, its gnarled hands clawing at the metal.
He fumbled for something, anything, to defend himself. He spotted a metal rod leaning against the wall and seized it with trembling hands.
The first zombie lunged, its bony fingers resembling skeletal talons as they clawed towards Ethan's throat. In a surge of adrenaline-fueled desperation, he swung the rod with a furious intensity that bordered on primal, delivering a resounding blow that sent the creature staggering backward with a sickening, bone-crushing crunch. The sheer power coursing through his veins left him awestruck.
But there was no respite as two more zombies approached, their gruesome faces twisted into macabre snarls, revealing their rotted, twisted teeth bared in a mockery of hunger. Drawing on newfound determination and the primal instinct to endure, Ethan launched himself into a frenzied battle to fend off the decaying abominations.
Each swing of the rod was a visceral, gut-wrenching struggle, met with a chorus of unearthly moans and guttural snarls. Panic still flowed like a tumultuous river through his veins, but he persisted.
Yet, no matter how mercilessly he battered them or the extent of their injuries, the relentless abominations clawed their way back, an unyielding testament to their insatiable hunger. One of the zombies found its leg crushed to a pulp, yet it relentlessly dragged its mangled body across the floor, inching closer to its prey.
Fatigue wore away at Ethan's resolve, and exhaustion ushered in a series of fateful mistakes.
As a zombie closed in on him, he took a step back, his foot sliding on something slippery, sending him crashing to the ground with a heavy thud. The zombie pounced upon him, and Ethan could barely wedge the rod between them. The creature's snarl was a nauseating assault on his senses, its rancid breath turning his stomach.
It grasped at him, attempting to close the agonizingly small gap, its snapping jaws mere inches from his face. His weary arms trembled under the strain, struggling to keep the creature at bay. The other zombie, the one with its crushed leg, persisted, crawling nearer while another loomed overhead.
"Goddammit," Ethan's voice, cracked by despair, became a vessel for his growing fury. Death loomed, a haunting specter in this dismal chamber, and his only witnesses were two strangers. The cruel injustice gnawed at his soul, fueling a fire within him. Why did he have to be subjected to this torment?
From deep within him, a dormant strength stirred, awakening like a slumbering beast. A torrent of otherworldly power surged through his veins, injecting life into his battered form. With a primal roar of defiance, he channeled his newfound vigor. The zombie that had pinned him writhed in agony as he unleashed it, a broken marionette sent hurtling across the room, its body reduced to an unrecognizable, shattered wreck.
Ethan's emotions erupted like a volcanic eruption, his fear and despair morphing seamlessly into a blazing anger. His eyes blazed with an unnatural green hue, casting eerie illumination in the dimness. Gazing at the crawling zombie, he raised his boot and crushed its skull with savage determination.
The final zombie closed in, but his arm moved with blinding speed. The rod became a whirling projectile, piercing through the creature's skull with an eerie precision. It continued its trajectory and impaled itself on the opposite wall, vibrating like a sinister pendulum.
A chilling silence settled upon the room as Ethan's breath came in ragged gasps. He had confronted the living dead and emerged triumphant, yet his rage remained unabated.
His gaze shifted to Lila and Marcus, who observed from the other side of the thick door's small window. Sweat and blood dripped from his trembling hands as he pondered the pair. The haunting questions that had tormented him since his abrupt awakening in this nightmarish world only grew more intense. Who were these individuals, and why had they subjected him to this harrowing ordeal?