It took me longer than it should have to get over the lack of proper decor, but when I did, I started to notice that there were still people around me.

More than I thought there would be given the whole ’once you go into the hole you don’t come out’ warning that I got from Commander Li.

They stood clustered near the far wall in a loose uneven group. There was maybe twenty of them that were in desperate need of a shower and a laundry machine. They were gaunt, little more than skeletons with a thin layer of muscle and skin stretched on top to make them still look humans. Their feet were all bare, and so caked with mud and dirt that they looked like something that wasn’t fully human anymore.

Was there a version of a zombie that was mostly human but not? Because if there was, then this was them.

Well... it was either that or zombies that were so starving that they almost looked human again.

Either way, there was almost no sound in this massive room other than the sound of wet breathing.

A few people cried quietly into their hands, but most just stared at the floor or the wall or absolutely nowhere at all. Their eyes shifted toward me when I stepped fully into the chamber, but none of them moved closer. Nobody begged for help. Nobody screamed warnings. Nobody tried to run toward the tunnel behind me.

That told me more than anything else could have.

These weren’t people. They weren’t zombies. They were what happened when people had completely given up on everything.

The people upstairs still had fear left in them. These ones had already gone past that point.

Several zombies stood around the edges of the room, spaced out just enough to stop anyone from trying to escape. They weren’t packed tightly together because they didn’t need to be. Starve people long enough and eventually even panic started looking like too much work.

Then I saw the thing that was making such a production of downtown Rongdu, and for a single second, I understood why I had never heard about anything like this in my past life.

It looked like a maggot that had somehow won the lottery and immediately spent the money on steroids, corpses, and poor decisions.

Its body sprawled across the center of the chamber in thick pale folds that shifted constantly against the slime-covered ground. Gray-white flesh stretched tightly in some places and sagged heavily in others while black veins pulsed beneath the surface in slow heavy beats. Every few seconds, something moved underneath its skin hard enough to make entire sections ripple outward before settling again.

I really hoped that was indigestion and not babies.

Then again... if this thing had gas... the smell alone might be enough to kill me.

The front part of its body lifted slightly when I entered the chamber and it’s attention was focused completely on me.

The head looked human enough... maybe it could be considered morbidly obese, but it had everything I considered to be normal. Its eyes were small and round, the whites almost completely taken over by the black pupils. Its nose was wide and flat... could be just a normal nose, could be a pig’s nose, but it was definitely a nose. And then there was the mouth.

It was currently closed and twisted into a smile like it was inviting me to come closer. The lips were plump and glossy. Not glossy as in lip gloss, but glossy as in there was still liquid fat dripping from its lips and down his chin... his neck.

I shook my head. I did not need the mental trauma of looking at this thing longer than I absolutely had to. I was traumatized enough just dealing with the slimy walls.

And somehow, the smell around it was somehow worse than the tunnel. Like wet garbage that had been cooking outside for two weeks before the garbage truck came to rescue everyone.

I would say that the smell was one step away from growing limbs and walking away, but considering the maggot with a human face, tiny T-Rex arms, and everything else... I was pretty sure that the smell had done just that.

Suddenly the gas station hotdogs from yesterday didn’t feel like such a terrible life choice.

The creature in front of me made a motion with its arms, and two zombies suddenly broke away from the wall and grabbed one of the men standing near the back of the chamber.

The man started screaming immediately before they even started dragging him because he already knew exactly what was about to happen. The zombies grabbed one arm each and hauled him forward while his bare feet slipped uselessly through the slime coating the floor.

"No—please—please don’t—"

But none of the other humans moved, they didn’t even look surprised.

One older woman covered her mouth with both hands and turned toward the wall while a younger guy beside her squeezed his eyes shut hard enough that his whole face started shaking. Another man simply sat down slowly against the dirt wall like his legs had finally decided they were done pretending any of this mattered anymore.

Then, the creature’s mouth opened.

The inside didn’t look like a mouth anymore. It was like the mouth of a worm or a snake, a throat surrounded by wet folds of flesh that flexed slowly every time it breathed. Rings of teeth rotated down its throat in uneven rows that disappeared deeper and deeper into its body. Some teeth were long and needle thin while others looked flat enough to grind bone. Thick saliva stretched between them in sticky strings every time the mouth widened.

Yeah.

I was really going to need therapy when this was all said and done.

The moment the man got closer to the creature, the rotating rings of teeth sped up deep inside its throat with a grinding wet sound that immediately made my skin crawl.

The man’s screaming turned ragged when the zombies lifted him completely off the ground.

He fought hard too, using more energy than he probably had to give. He kicked, twisted, begged, but no matter what he did, it was completely useless.

One of his shoulders popped loudly enough that several survivors flinched, but the zombies didn’t care. They simply dragged him closer while the Devourer’s mouth stretched wider and wider and wider until the flesh around its jaw started splitting open at the sides.

Well.

That was horrifying.

The lower jaw detached completely with a wet tearing sound while layer after layer of teeth unfolded deeper down the creature’s throat like some sort of biological woodchipper designed by Satan himself.

The zombies shoved the man forward headfirst as they let go of his arms and moved to his ankles. They lifted them up high so that the head was tilted down even further into the creature’s mouth.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

The man’s head entered the creature’s mouth, but the teeth didn’t bite him. They caught him, and then pulled him down deeper and deeper into the throat.

The rotating rings dragged him inward inch by inch while his screams became wet choking noises that echoed through the chamber. His hands clawed wildly against the slime-covered flesh around the creature’s mouth while the teeth stripped skin from his arms every time they rotated.

The creature shuddered happily, almost doing a little dance as the zombie continued to hold the ankles of the man steadily as they pushed him forward one step at a time.

I joke a lot. I speak sarcasm like it was its own language...

But this was honestly the worst thing that I had ever seen in two lifetimes... and that includes watching a mother eating her own baby in order to survive.

I never wanted to see anything like this ever again as long as I lived.

The man’s legs kicked violently for several more seconds after the top half of his body disappeared down the creature’s throat. One shoe flew off somewhere beside the creature while his heel slammed repeatedly against the lower jaw hard enough that I heard bone crack.

Then the teeth caught his waist.

One hard pull later, the rest of him vanished inside.

The chamber went quiet except for the wet sound of the creature swallowing.

Its entire body rippled slowly while something human-shaped moved beneath the stretched skin near the middle of its mass before disappearing deeper inside.

I stared at it for several long seconds.

Then pulled myself together, stuck my mask on my face and sighed. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Well," I said while watching the thing settle happily back into the slime, "that’s enough to put me off food for at least a few minutes. And it explains the lack of bones."