Chapter 4: Blood on the Stairs

Gift’s POV

Darkness swallowed the living room instantly. The only light left came from the window, where flashing red emergency lights from the street below bounced off the walls in steady, rhythmic waves. Distant screams, sharp and full of horror, began rising from the city streets.

"Stay behind me," Mich commanded, his voice changing in a single second from confused friend to trained officer.

He reached down and drew his hand gun from its holster with a smooth, practiced motion. The dull metallic click of the safety coming off echoed loudly in the dark room. He stepped cautiously toward the hallway door, shielding me with his broad frame.

My hands were shaking so violently I had to ball them into tight fists to keep from crying out. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a soldier. I was just an ordinary girl who used to spend her late nights reading web novels under a cozy blanket, and now I was trapped in the dark with real monsters waking up right outside my room. Every breath I took felt thin and cold, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"Mich, be careful," I whispered, my voice caught in my throat.

"Don't worry," he said quietly, not turning around. "I'm not letting anything touch you."

He reached out and slowly pushed the front door open. The apartment corridor was bathed in a dim, eerie red glow from the battery-powered emergency lights overhead. High-pitched shrieks and heavy thuds echoed up from the floors below, making the walls vibrate slightly.

We stepped into the hall, aiming for the heavy metal door that led to the emergency stairwell. But before we could take five steps, the door to apartment 4B swung open with a harsh bang.

A middle-aged man stumbled out into the hallway. It was Mr. Henderson, the quiet neighbor who lived down the hall. He was clutching his neck, dark red liquid pooling between his pale fingers and soaking through the front of his shirt. He took heavy, uncoordinated steps toward us, his breath coming out in wet, ragged gasps.

"Sir! Stop right there!" Mich called out immediately, lowering the angle of his gun and taking a step forward. "I'm a police officer! What happened to you? Do you need medical attention?"

"Mich, no! Stop!" I screamed, terror surging through my veins.

I recognized him instantly. In the early chapters of the book, Mr. Henderson was the very first Common Zombie in this building.

Under the dim emergency lights, I saw the greyish, lifeless tint in his wide eyes. His jaw twitched unnaturally, hanging open at an awkward angle as a low, wet growl rattled deep in his chest. He wasn't looking at us for help; he was looking at Mich's bare throat like a starved animal looking at food.

Mich stepped closer anyway, holding out one hand to support the wounded man. "Sir, let me look at your neck—"

Mr. Henderson lunged.

With terrifying speed, the infected man threw his weight forward, slamming Mich violently against the wall. The gun slipped from Mich's fingers, clattering across the floor tiles and rolling away into the dark. Mich grunted loudly, his large hands grabbing Mr. Henderson by the shoulders to push him back, but the zombie possessed unnatural, mindless strength. It snapped its blood-covered jaws wildly, inches from Mich's face, trying frantically to sink its teeth into his neck.

"Get off!" Mich yelled, straining with all his strength, but his mind was frozen in hesitation. He was trying to restrain a neighbor, a civilian he knew, not realizing the man in his arms was already dead.

Mr. Henderson's snapping teeth grazed Mich's collarbone. Mich's arms began to shake under the pressure, his boots sliding uselessly against the wall as he got pinned.

"Mich!" I cried out.

Seeing the only person protecting me about to be bitten, something inside my brain snapped. Pure survival instinct wiped away my panic, my fear, and my hesitation in a single fraction of a second. I didn't think. I didn't plan.

My eyes landed on a heavy metal fire extinguisher mounted in a red wall bracket two feet to my left.

I grabbed the thick handle with both hands and yanked it off the wall with a harsh metallic screech. Swinging the heavy cylinder back, I stepped forward and slammed it with all the strength in my body directly into the side of Mr. Henderson's head.

A sickening crunch echoed through the narrow hallway.

The infected man's head snapped sideways, his grip instantly loosening. He collapsed sideways onto the floor like a sack of wet flour, his body twitching once before going completely still.

Mich slumped against the wall, chest heaving as he stared down at the unmoving body on the floor. Slowly, he raised his eyes to look at me, his face pale with utter disbelief.

I stood there frozen, my hands numb as I held the heavy fire extinguisher. Dark red splashes marked my pale skin and the front of my shirt. I was breathing in short, desperate gasps, my eyes wide as the reality of what I had just done hit me like a blow. I had just taken a life.

 The original Gift hated confrontation, turned away from the sight of raw meat, and couldn't stand the sight of blood. Mich knew that about her. Seeing me stand over a dead body, drenched in blood without crying, shocked him far more than the attack itself.

"Gift..." Mich breathed, his voice barely a whisper. "You... you just..."

Before he could finish his sentence, a soft, chime sounded inside my head.

A transparent blue interface materialized right in front of my face, flashing bright, clean text over the dark hallway.

[COMMON ZOMBIE ELIMINATED.]

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: +10 EXP.]

[PLAYER LEVEL: 1 → 2.]

[SYSTEM UPGRADE PROGRESS: 1/100.]

A sudden wave of subtle warmth rushed through my limbs, easing the numbness in my hands and making my body feel strangely lighter and stronger. I stared at the numbers floating in the air, my heart hammering in my chest as I slowly let go of the fire extinguisher. It fell to the floor with a loud, heavy metallic clang that echoed down the quiet hall.

"Gift, what is going on with you today?" Mich asked, his tone laced with a deep, unsettling confusion as he reached down to pick up his gun. "How did you know he was going to attack? Why did you—"

He stopped talking mid-sentence.

A strange, unnatural coldness suddenly swept through the hallway.

It wasn't a gentle draft or a cool night breeze. It was an intense, biting freeze that settled over the air in a matter of seconds. The temperature dropped so fast that the sweat on my forehead felt like ice, and when Mich took a breath, his exhalation turned into a thick cloud of white mist in the dark.

The loud screams from the lower floors vanished, swallowed by an absolute, heavy silence.

"What is that?" Mich whispered, raising his weapon again, his eyes darting toward the heavy door of the stairwell at the end of the hall. "Why is it so cold?"

The heavy emergency door pushed open slowly, without making a single sound.

Down at the bottom of the  stairs, standing in the deep shadows where the red emergency lights couldn't reach, was a tall, silent silhouette dressed in dark clothing. He stood completely motionless, looking up through the darkness directly at me.

Even from a distance, the pressure coming off his frame made it hard to breathe. And then, he shifted slightly.

In the pitch black of the stairwell, two glowing, pitch-black eyes locked onto mine.

My breath hitched in my throat, a feeling of genuine dread washing over my skin. This wasn't a brainless Common Zombie. This wasn't a normal human survivor either. This creature exuded an ancient, terrifying authority that made my newly leveled stats feel completely useless.

I stared down into the dark at him, my mind spinning in complete horror.