Moments | Sweet Home

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Yeonha drops heavily to the carpeted floor, done for a while.

Her adrenaline had spiked and then dipped, spiked and then dipped. She's exerted more strength than she'd had the capacity for, sustained several injuries, and now she needed this moment to put herself together.

She rolls onto her back, staring at the ceiling above her. The light bulb flickers, and flickers and then it goes out. She breathes out once more, rolls onto her side and startles.

She comes face to face with the first person she's seen in this building.

Only this person is dead.

"Ah!" She scrambles away from the corpse till her back hits a cupboard, clamping her hands over her mouth.

It was only half of a person.

She coughs, staggers to her feet and runs to the sink and vomits. Once she's gotten over the sudden shock of it, and emptied everything from her stomach until it feels hollow and her throat burns; Yeonha turns back to the body. The person's cold, dead, fear stricken stare looks back at her, wide eyed and forever frozen in a scream of silent terror."What did this to you?"

She starts to run her hair through her curls but stops, remembering their grubby state. Her hair is a matted mess too mind you but still, there was no point in making it worse.

Her first move onwards was to shut the apartment door, just in case whatever monster had taken his lower half decided it wanted to come back for the rest of the person's body. She winces as the door makes a beeping sound as it closes. Too much noise. 

Then she decides to give what was left of the deceased some remaining dignity, closing their eyes and covering the man in a blanket that had been left on the bed.

It was partly for her own sake too, because every time she caught sight of the body of that horrible horrible expression it brought a cold chill down her spine.

Yeonha's stomach grumbles and she grimaces.

Really now? You can be hungry after all of this?

"Sorry." She mutters to the deceased, ducking her head before moving to raid his cupboards and fridge for food. She takes two bottles of water, unzips her backpack full of supplies she'd grabbed from the hospital and puts one in, drinking the other. In goes a few protein bars, packets of ramen, dried seaweed and chips. She zips it back up, slings it over one shoulder then bites into an apple.

Once her hunger is satiated, she decides to clean herself up. Yeonha avoids the bathroom since its door and walls are sprayed with blood, and instead uses the kitchen sink to scrub the grime and filth off of her face and arms and out of her hair. With the gauze in her bag she wraps up her wounded palms and fingers.

She apologises again to the dead man, as she takes a clean shirt and a jacket from him and puts a spare shirt in her backpack. "What kind of man were you?" She wonders, picking a photo of him with a younger woman. Was that his wife? Mistress? Sister? Daughter?

She sighs and places it back down, continuing to search through his things. "So you were a mountaineer. Where you seeking a thrill or escaping?" She finds a lot of familiar gear; climbing boots, rope, harnesses and pulleys, and a radio.

Radio.

She snatches the device up quickly and immediately turns it on. Yeonha's face scrunches up at the loud sound of static that scratches through, she lowers the volume and keeps flicking through the radio channels hoping to hear something, anything. She gets nothing.

She places the radio on the ground beside her as she rummages through another rucksack of equipment, finding a first aid pack and a flare gun.

"Ah...Ah..Ah.."

A person. There was an actual person, an actual living person on the radio. In her eagerness to grab the radio she staggers and stumbles.

"Hello is anyone there?"

"Ah..Ah..Ahh." She hears the males voice again but he doesn't respond to her.

She adjusts the radio and tries again. "Hello, can you hear me?" She tries, speaking a little louder, but not too loud to attract any unwanted visitors.

For a moment she hears nothing and then all she gets is static.

"Please, if there's anyone there, let me know you can hear me." She pleads, and waits again once more for a response. She's all but given up hope, this person whoever they were mustn't be able to hear her. She sighs, about to discard the radio when there's static again and the person speaks.

"I can hear you."

Yeonha cries in relief. She wasn't alone. Thank god there was another person thank god.

"You can't trust them." It whispers in her head and she wills it back into silence.

"Hello? Miss, are you still there? Can you hear me?"

She sniffles and swallows and presses the button to respond.

"Yes, I can hear you. Yes." She laughs out her relief, wiping her eyes and throwing her head back.

"You have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice." She exclaims.

There's a pause, some static. Then he speaks coolly. "Miss, can you tell me where you are? What building you are in? Are there others with you?" Yeonha glances and the blanket covered corpse and grimaces. "I'm in an apartment, there's half a dead body, I haven't found anyone else."

"You don't know what building you're in? What apartment number?" Yeonha hears the frown in his voice. How was she supposed to explain this one? "See, he's already suspicious."

"Would you believe me if I told you I fell out of a helicopter and landed on the roof of an apartment complex then climbed into an apartment through the window?" A pause. Then static. She bites her lip. 

"Not in usual circumstances." He says. "But stranger things have happened."

Stranger things like people turning into monsters.

"Are you hurt?" An obvious question following her incredible story. Yeonha glances down at herself. She should have been badly hurt, her fingers should be broken and her shoulder dislocated and ribs smashed up.

"Not badly." She replies. "I have a decent amount of medical supplies to patch myself up."

"Are you infected?"

The killer question.

"He'll abandon you if you tell him, just like those people you saved in the helicopter."

"No." She lies. To both him and herself.

"Do you have a weapon?" He asks next.

 "Weapon?" She repeats with a question in her voice, did he not believe her? Were his next words going to be to tell her to kill herself. "You said you're alone in an apartment right? You can't stay there. You should try to find more people, find out where you are if you can get help." Ah. So the weapon was for protection. She clips the radio to her body and reaches into the bag of equipment, pulling out an ice axe. Sharp and strong enough to do serious damage. Yeonha picks it up, fixes the freehand leash to it and gears herself up. "This should do." She nods.

 "Okay I've got a weapon." She says over the radio.

"Good, we might lose contact if you run into any monsters, the radio will go static. Do you have a phone?"

"Lost it in the fall."

"Can you find one in the apartment? And some earphones? If you try to call someone You'll be able to hear a ringing if a monster gets close." 

"I'll look around."

"Good luck." He says as she heads towards the door, and then he cuts out and she hears static.

Her hand reaches for the door handle and stops, as she hears scratching and snarling outside.

Oh fuck.


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A/n: Thanks for all the votes and read everyone! Hope you're enjoying this story as much as i am enjoying writing it. Did y'all catch on who she was talking to on the radio hmm? If you didn't it should be clearer in the coming chapters.