The Ravaging

Chapter Two

A whole minute passes with us standing there silent, trying to listen for anything in the hallway. The clicking starts up again, this time more incessant than before, but it becomes quieter as the beasts must be moving away from the door.

Finally, after what feels like forever, Finn looks down at me. "What's your name again?"

This time, it is me who raises a brow at him, my eyes flicking between his brown eyes and the hand he has holding my mouth closed. Finn scrunches his eyebrows together before finally understanding that I cannot talk with his hand holding my jaw closed.

"Oh, sorry about that," he says a little bashfully. He pulls his hands away from my jaw and head, and I reach up, rubbing where his hand had been.

"It's fine." Cracking my jaw, I look back over to where my backpack is lying. The keys to my car and my apartment are in there; two very important things at the moment. Those beasts could be back any minute, and we should get out of here while we can. The thought of them returning has me hustling over to my dark blue backpack.

The sound of Finn clearing his throat causes me to pause in my search of my keys and look over my shoulder at him. He has his arm stretched over his shoulder as he scratches the back of his head and gives me a hesitant smile. "Your name?"

"Alden Hale." He nods his head holding his hand out to me. It takes me a second to realize that he wants me to shake his hand. "Oh." My hand shoots out so quickly to grab his that I end up slapping his hand pretty hard when ours meet. Wincing, I try to give him an apologetic smile. Looking up, I see that he has a wider smile than before on his face.

"I'm Finn Foster." He gives my hand a brusque shake and a squeeze before letting go. "What were you doing here? I thought all classes were canceled today because of what has been going on."

"Ah, well, my professor didn't want to get behind in her planning, so she had us come in anyway. She ended up letting us out earlier than usual, but I think it was only because she was too busy doing something on her computer." My eyebrows scrunch in confusion as I look around the room. "What are you doing here if there were supposed to be no classes today? I thought the people who are in the storage department only worked on days that there are classes."

Finn grimaces for a second before hesitantly meeting my eyes. "Ah, yeah, well that's how it's usually supposed to work, but since my professor wasn't too happy about the prank my friend and I played, I was stuck working today." He looks around the semi-cluttered room. "He was supposed to be here, too, but he never showed up. We were supposed to organize everything in here."

My brows raise minutely as I follow where his eyes are tracking across the room. "Didn't get too far, hm?"

Finn opens his mouth to protest my words, but the sounds of approaching footsteps stop both of us in our tracks. Finn gestures for me to stay where I am again, but I just narrow my eyes at him. Together, we walk silently back to the door, standing only a few feet away from it. Something is coming, and it is not going to be good.

A shadow from the other side peeks in through the crack between the floor and the door. As quietly as I can, I lower myself down, laying my face flat onto the cold linoleum. The crack in the underneath the door is just big enough so that I can see the feet of the figure that stopped outside the door.

Quickly, I stand back up, backing quietly away from the door. Finn's eyes track down my trembling body. The fear must be showing in my eyes because as soon as his meet mine, he jerks away from the door.

"Not human?" he mouths.

I shake my head in answer. The feet I saw were definitely not human. The sickly green pallor of them and the way they are gnarled tells me that they may have once been human, but they no longer are anymore.