Chapter 58: The Price of Hunger Is A Massacre

The gunshot cracked through the concrete corridor, sharp enough to rattle teeth and tear away the last fragile pretense of order.

For a fraction of a second, the entire lower-floor mob froze, caught between the shock of what they had initiated and the realization that there was no turning back.

The man with the rusted shotgun stared stupidly at the grey smoke curling from the barrel.

Before anyone could shout a warning, the upper-floor defenders answered.

A disciplined volley of gunfire ripped through the reinforced stairwell doorway.

The lead survivors, bunched tightly together in the narrow approach, didn’t even have time to raise their makeshift weapons.

High-velocity rounds slammed into flesh with wet, heavy impacts. Three men at the front dropped instantly, their momentum carrying them face-first onto the blood-spotted floor.

Panic tore through the mob in an instant.

Those behind the fallen scrambled backward, but the crushing press of people pushing frantically from the rear left them with nowhere to go.

"Get back! Get the fuck back!"

"Move, you idiots! MOVE!"

Nobody listened. Some tried to force their way through the crowd while others stumbled over the bodies at their feet. A man screamed for someone to pull him away as he clutched his wounded leg.

Then the defenders fired again.

The gunshots thundered through the stairwell, drowning out the curses and desperate pleas. More survivors dropped, and the cries of the wounded rose above the chaos.

The men who had shouted about taking the upper floors moments earlier were now fighting one another for a way out.

The stairwell instantly transformed into a slaughterhouse.

The upper-floor faction held absolute supremacy, firing down from the elevated concrete landing and using the reinforced doorframe as a narrow choke point.

The lower-floor attackers possessed numbers, but in a confined space against automatic and semi-automatic weapons, numbers were nothing more than stationary targets.

A few survivors returned fire, blindly emptying pistols or hunting rifles into the gloom of the upper landing. Stray rounds chipped masonry and sparked off iron railings.

One desperate attacker lunged forward, throwing himself up the first few steps before a slug caught him square in the chest, folding him backward over the concrete edge.

Yet the defenders weren’t entirely untouchable. A frantic, lucky shot from a wounded survivor on the landing clipped an upper-floor guard in the throat, sending him crashing down the stairs in a twisted heap.

Another defender took a hunting knife to the shoulder when a handful of attackers managed to burst through the smoke into close quarters.

The close-range fighting was messy, brutal, and desperate.

"Get him off me!"

"Shoot them! They’re coming through!"

A gun went off at such close range that the blast echoed painfully through the stairwell. Someone cursed as a blade struck his arm.

Another man fell against the railing, screaming while he tried to stop the blood running between his fingers.

Boots slipped on the blood-slick concrete. Men hacked at one another with knives and metal pipes, while the defenders shouted warnings and fired whenever an attacker exposed himself.

For a few moments, the attackers managed to bring the fight directly to the defenders. Then the better-armed men pushed them back, leaving the wounded crawling away from the growing pile of bodies at the threshold.

A short distance down the corridor, half-concealed behind the angle of a structural pillar, Zarek watched the carnage unfold with amusement.

Elsa stood beside him, her hand gripping the pommel of her sword.

She had fought monsters before and seen people die, but the sight of so many human beings being cut down in seconds still made her stomach tighten.

She kept her eyes on the stairwell, forcing herself not to look away whenever another survivor fell.

Ayesha crouched near the corner, one hand pressed against the wall. Every time someone screamed, her attention snapped toward the sound. She had handled firearms herself. Seeing what they did to people at this distance was different.

Mara stood a step behind them, pale and silent. She recognized some of the faces in the crowd. These were people she had once tried to organize, people who had gathered around her when the building’s old order collapsed.

She had failed to keep them fed, but watching them die like this was nothing like imagining what might happen if they attacked.

"Stop shooting!" someone screamed from the stairwell.

The answer was another burst of gunfire.

Mara flinched. Elsa tightened her grip on her sword, while Ayesha lowered her gaze for a moment, unable to follow the next body as it fell.

None of them moved toward the fight. They knew that rushing into the stairwell would only put them in the line of fire. But standing safely behind the pillar did nothing to make the screams or the sight of the dead easier to bear.

The momentum of the attack shattered completely within minutes.

Realizing they were walking into a meat grinder, the surviving lower-floor men tried to break away. Some dropped their weapons and raised their hands, screaming for quarter, begging the upper-floor defenders to stop shooting.

The defenders showed no mercy. They had no reason to trust a mob that had violently forced its way up their steps. A fresh round of gunfire cut down the men attempting to surrender, their frantic pleas abruptly silenced on the concrete.

A handful of diehards made one final, suicidal charge upward, firing wildly until empty chambers clicked on empty air before being put down with cold precision.

The gunfire tapered off into ragged, echoing pops, then ceased entirely. Silence rushed back into the corridor, broken only by the wet gasps of the dying and the frantic whimpers of those bleeding out among the wreckage.

The lower-floor group had been completely wiped out. Every single person who had joined the attack lay sprawled across the stairwell and the approach, their blood pooling into dark, viscous streams that soaked into the porous floor.

But the victory had cost the upper faction as well. Two defenders were dead, and another three leaned heavily against the walls, clutching bloody wounds.

The smoke drifted slowly toward the ventilation shafts, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of cordite and fresh blood.

The surviving upper-floor guards swept the area with their rifles, kicking aside fallen weapons and putting down anything that still twitched. Their faces were tight with lingering adrenaline and grim exhaustion.

Zarek watched the aftermath settle. The lower-floor group was gone. Everyone who had joined the attack lay dead across the stairwell and corridor, leaving no one to return downstairs and tell the others what had happened.

Elsa glanced at the bodies covering the approach, her fingers still wrapped around her sword’s pommel. She didn’t comment on the outcome.

Ayesha had gone quiet. Mara kept staring toward the stairwell, her face drained of color.

"An inevitable outcome," Zarek said, his attention remained locked on the upper landing, waiting to see who would emerge to clean up the mess.

Footsteps sounded from deep within the upper stairwell—calm, unhurried, and entirely out of place amid the carnage.

The guards parted, stepping back respectfully as an elderly figure walked out onto the landing. He was dressed neatly, his white hair combed back, completely unbothered by the thick smell of death and the bodies scattered across the concrete.

He didn’t look down at the dead men. He didn’t check on the wounded defenders groaning against the wall.

His gaze swept past the debris and locked directly onto Zarek.