Sarah ran a finger across the top of a water heater and stared at the dust that came up, a thick felt-like layer of forgotten time.
She started to reach for the soapstone in her pocket and stopped herself. Whatever Ptolemy might have to say to her she knew she didn't want to hear. She had essentially used him as a diversion to save her own skin. He was smart enough not to appreciate that.
Ayaan was dead. Nothing mattered.
She knew what she was doing, and how wrong it was. She couldn't stop, though. Or rather she couldn't start. Leaving the basement would mean engaging the horrors outside. It would mean the possibility of dying. She'd been taught how to survive, had been taught so well, in fact, that her body would go on doing what it needed to do to keep living even if she stopped thinking altogether. It would take real willpower to go against that training, to throw herself into the fray.
In the back of the basement the building's superintendent had set up a little personal lounge: a broken-springed recliner, a coffee table holding an ashtray full of old cigarette butts, a record player and a pair of speakers. All of it dead, rotting with age, covered in dust. She found a stack of plastic crates full of old records. She took out a few and studied the album cover art. She tried not to listen for air horns or screams or sounds of violence outside. If there had been power in the basement she could have played music to block out the sounds. That might be nice. To go back in time for a little while. To pretend like her whole life had never happened yet, that it was thirty years prior. It would be nice to...
She dropped the record she was holding and it slapped on the naked concrete floor, not breaking. White fur had sprouted inside the gate-fold cover. It grew longer as she watched, soft-looking tendrils that reached for the moist air.
She had to turn around and look at the door, make sure it was locked. She needed to make sure it was locked because if it wasn't, she still had time to go and lock it. Fear took her over, though. It was like a spotlight blazing into life in a still, dark night. She couldn't move, she was dazzled by the fear. Then adrenaline poured into her circulatory system and flipped every switch toON .
In one corner of the basement a tiny patch of mushrooms nursed on a wet patch of floor. They were getting bigger. She ran. No, more like she jumped, like an antelope running from a cheetah.
She found a stairway in the corner of the basement farthest from the mushrooms. She stomped up the stairs, flew up them two at a time. At the first landing she finally managed to turn and look back. A broad brown stain was creeping across the concrete floor. The wood banister of the stairwell was cracked. Trumpet-shaped fungi peeked out of that crevice. Sarah ran again, upward, away from the basement. She could hear rustling down there. The sound of rot and blight and smut growing at a horribly accelerated pace.
If it touched her, if she got any of it on her, it would eat her skin. It would get in her mouth, her nose, her lungs. It would fill up her insides and burst her open like a wet, stringy pumpkin. She ran.
Ground floor. The stairwell door opened into another, broader stairwell that lead up into darkness. Office space surrounded her on every side, some of it empty, some full of abandoned furniture. All of those offices were dead ends. She pushed through a glass door and into the building's foyer. A thick bluish slime covered the front door, colored the light coming in through the frosted glass.
Back to the stairwell. She had only one direction to go. Up. Up and away, away from the monster. She climbed, her breath already coming in ragged gasps.
A bloom of mold ran along one wall, chased her up the steps. Sarah pushed herself, pushed harder. Every step made her knees creek, her shins burn.