"That seems like fun."

"Not fun," Commander Li warned immediately, his voice quieter now as he removed his hand from my arm. "Whatever they’re doing in that hole... they’re never happy with just one. We need to get as far away from that wall as possible."

I raised an eyebrow and slowly looked around the basement again.

The entire thing was maybe a hundred feet by sixty feet. There were concrete walls on every side, one staircase leading upward, several exhausted soldiers, a growing collection of traumatized civilians, and a giant black hole in the wall that occasionally swallowed screaming people whole.

"And just how far away do you realistically think we can get?" I asked him, cocking my head to the side.

Li opened his mouth before he closed it again.

Yeah.

Exactly.

The zombies had dragged every single person in this basement down here for a reason. If there was a safe place to hide, somebody probably would have found it already.

Or died trying.

Either way, same result.

"We tried barricading the stairwell yesterday," Li admitted after a moment. "The infected stopped bringing people downstairs for nearly six hours."

That got my attention immediately.

"And?" Zhenlan asked quietly from behind me.

Commander Li’s expression darkened slightly while several nearby soldiers looked away.

"And then they dragged twenty-three people downstairs at once."

The basement went silent and I could see one of the younger soldiers sitting near the far wall swallowed hard before speaking quietly. "The screaming lasted almost an hour."

Another soldier elbowed him hard enough to make him shut up immediately.

Nobody looked toward the hole, not even by accident.

"So the thing in there gets angry when it doesn’t eat?" Yuche asked calmly beside me. "I mean, I am assuming that whatever it is has to be eating people... right? What else can happen in that hole?"

"So," muttered Lingyun, nodding his head. "We have the screamer, the Butcher, and the eater? Is that even a thing? I mean, that is the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, why would so many zombies be following orders?"

Wei spun around and stared at Lingyun like the man was speaking a foreign language. "What are you talking about? Zombies don’t follow orders. And what is a screamer?"

Now both Lingyun and Yuche were looking at the other man with something resembling pity in their eyes. "You haven’t met a screamer yet?" muttered Lingyun even as the two men shook their heads. "Seriously man, you need to get out more."

Before Wei Guang or Commander Li could say anything, another vibration rolled beneath the floor hard enough that loose dust drifted down from the exposed ceiling pipes overhead.

Somewhere deeper inside the hole, water dripped steadily into darkness while the entire basement seemed to hold its breath around it.

"It doesn’t leave the hole?" Zhenlan asked, bringing the conversation back to the present.

Li shook his head once. "Not that we’ve seen."

"But it can?" Chenghai pressed.

This time Wei answered.

"We don’t know," he snapped immediately. "Nobody here is volunteering to find out."

I nodded my head. That was fair. I wouldn’t exactly be standing in line to volunteer to be eaten.

Lingyun shifted closer beside me while staring directly toward the hole with open dislike written all over his face. Unlike everyone else in the basement, he didn’t look afraid.

Annoyed?

Absolutely.

Murderous?

Always.

Afraid?

Not even a little.

Honestly, I was starting to think the apocalypse had somehow improved his personality.

"If it stays inside the hole," Chenghai continued slowly, "then why stay down here waiting to die? Why not force your way upstairs?"

"We tried that too," Wei snapped immediately, clearly happy to finally have questions he could answer instead of listening to me insult his murder basement. "The infected drag us back every single time. Anyone who fights too hard disappears first."

Ah.

So there were rules.

That made this entire situation significantly more interesting.

I took another slow step toward the hole while narrowing my eyes slightly, trying to see deeper into the darkness beyond the broken concrete. I refused to breath in through my nose because that smell alone was enough to qualify this entire hotel for demolition.

Commander Li reached out automatically to stop me from moving closer.

But before his hand could fully close around my arm, Lingyun smoothly caught Li’s wrist and removed it with just enough pressure to make the warning clear.

"We’re happy as we are," Lingyun said brightly. His smile looked completely harmless, but his eyes looked like they belonged to someone deciding where to hide a body. My money was on the black hole that we were all talking about.

"We aren’t taking any more applications," he continued pleasantly. "Our bed isn’t big enough."

Commander Li blinked once in complete confusion before immediately taking a small step backward and lifting both hands.

"No," he sputtered, shaking his head from side to side so fast I was surprised that I couldn’t hear his brain rattling in it. "I’m not interested in her that way," he continued quickly, giving me a panicked look.

Oh.

Oh that was unfortunate for him.

I smelled his weakness immediately. "What?" I asked while staring at him in mock offense. "Am I not your type? I’m crushed. Truly crushed."

Several nearby soldiers suddenly became very interested in the concrete floor, but Commander Li looked like he would rather fistfight the thing inside the hole than continue this conversation.

"I didn’t mean—"

"We might have room for two more applicants," Lingyun interrupted casually while glancing toward Chenghai and Zhenlan. "Depending on whether or not we kill those two first."

"Fuck you too," Chenghai replied immediately.

"Still considering it," Lingyun informed him pleasantly.

Zhenlan rubbed one hand slowly down his face. "Can we not threaten murder in front of the military personnel?"

"Why?" Lingyun asked. "They already live in a basement where people get eaten alive. I doubt we’re lowering their morale anymore than it already is."

Shockingly, nobody argued with that logic.

One of the soldiers near the wall actually snorted before quickly pretending he hadn’t while Wei looked one sentence away from a complete emotional breakdown.

"I genuinely cannot tell if all of you are insane or if I’m the insane one for still trying to keep people alive," he muttered.

"A little bit of both probably," I answered honestly.

Another vibration rolled beneath the floor.

Stronger this time.

The lanterns hanging from the ceiling swayed softly while several civilians immediately pulled closer together against the walls.

The zombies near the staircase all stopped moving at the exact same time.

Every head slowly turned toward the hole.

The entire basement froze.

Then the voice came from the darkness.

"I choose her."

The words didn’t echo.

They dragged wetly through the basement like something enormous had forced human language through a throat never designed to speak.

Every single person stopped breathing, even the zombies seemed to become unnaturally still.

Slowly, very slowly, I turned my head toward the hole.

The darkness inside remained absolute, but now I could hear it breathing.

It sounded wet, heavy, like its lungs were working overtime trying to both speak and breathe at the same time.

"She is mine," the voice repeated from somewhere deep inside the blackness. "I want her now."

Ah.

Well.

That sounded personal.

And possessive.

Now I had to meet the thing that said I was his without permission.