To Love Victoria

8: Hide

We sprinted up the stairs, rushing through the door and slamming it shut, bolting it behind us. We began sprinting down the hallway and we dived into one of the rooms as we heard the door come crashing down behind us.

There were rows upon rows of office cubicles that we could hide in. We needed to make choices quickly, the creature was only a few seconds behind us. The three of us hid under separate desks, just two flimsy pieces of wood between us and whatever was approaching. It was different from the other demons. I couldn't see it but I could hear it. Its footsteps were far louder, indicating that it was something far bigger than the other creatures that we had seen. There was this dreaded sound of something metal scraping against the ground. Every now and then it would pierce something and break the monotony of its footsteps with a loud cascade of tearing and ripping of cubicle walls and tables.

I held my breath as I heard whatever it was come closer and closer to me. My heart was pounding so much, I was afraid that it would give away my position. We couldn't run, we were trapped. This was where the three of us would die. Just like with what Olivia said, I would duck and the Sergeant would die, but she didn't know what would happen next. I did. I knew very well what would happen next. I knew that death was inevitable for me.

I covered my hand over my mouth as a weight was applied down on the table above me. Claws wrapped around the underside, mere inches away from my face. "Private Walker, Sergeant Dunn, Private Cross. It is safe to come out now, the creature has left." I heard what sounded like Lieutenant Riley's voice call out from above. But there was something so deeply wrong about the voice. It was too monotone, it lacked depth or emotion. It wasn't like listening to an actual voice, more like listening to a recording.

I held my hand tighter over my mouth, I didn't dare to move. Neither did the Sergeant or Private Cross, they knew it was a trap. "Private Walker, Sergeant Dunn, Private Cross It is safe to come out now, the creature has left." The weight shifted from the table as it crawled its way over the cubicle wall again, repeating the same line for the third time. Its footsteps became more distant and appeared to leave the room, though I wasn't so sure. It could have easily been another trap to make us think that it was safe. I heard what sounded like the Sergeant's voice whisper over to me from the cubicle behind me. "I think it's safe, let's go." I almost fell for it. I almost crawled my way out from underneath that desk. If I had done so, it would have lunged at me and ripped me into pieces.

I sat there for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. A grunt came from behind me and the footsteps started back up again, making their way over to a different door from the one we had entered through. Even after it sounded like the creature had left, we still waited for a few minutes. Until we were sure that it was safe, we remained silent and still.

I made the first move, my heart still pounding in my chest. Whatever was hunting us down might not have left the room, that was my biggest fear, that it was still hiding, just waiting for us to leave our positions. But we needed to leave. Nothing jumped out at me, even for the next minute after I was still waiting for that thing to just rise up from out of one of the cubicles and crush my head. The Sergeant got up from the cubicle behind me as well and we slowly made our way to the door. Private Cross rose from her hiding spot as well. We didn't speak a word to each other, but with the silence between us, we all knew what each other was thinking.

We went back into the hallway, looking up and down at the deep slashes across the walls. They were several inches thick and many metres long, like deep valleys. I shuddered at the idea of what would have happened if it had caught us and at the thought of what kind of creature could have left such marks. The door lay crumpled on the floor, bent at an odd angle and the hinges were broken off. The staircase was several metres in front of us, the plan being to descend to the ground floor and then make our way to the South Entrance. It was our best shot at escaping.