The scratching continued.
skrrt
skrrrrrt
skrrt.
Nails against concrete. Claws? Teeth? The monster in the dark. Unseen. Unknown.
"We can move the forms,' said Anton. Though he tried, exhaustion could not be kept out of his voice. He turned and saw Sasha sleeping, as he always did. Anton swallowed his anger. He could move the handmade wooden forms, now lightly stuck to concrete, but he should not do it alone. It was slower. He understood Sasha’s exhaustion, felt it in every bone, but understanding did nothing to mitigate the bite in his voice: "Sasha!" he shouted. A hoarse whisper in the dark. A weak cry. Tired. So tired.
Again:
"Sasha. The forms!"
"Huh?"
His friend, his brother, the only person who mattered in Anton's world anymore. The only person left looked up at him with confusion in his eyes. That bleary, tired look of an over-exhausted man. This was the last compatriot of Anton. His last hope and friend. He wished it were a woman.
"It is solid?" said Sasha, standing up, stretching in the hunch that he always held now. They could not stand all the way, Anton and Sasha, not anymore. Not since they took the small access tunnel off of the main subway. It was safer here. Less concrete to pour behind them, less work to move forward, away from the demon scratching at the walls they built. Less room to live.
"Yes," said Anton, looking at his watch in the dim light. The seconds and minutes and hours had ticked by as their latest pour of concrete had hardened between the misshapen wooden forms that Sasha now moved and the last pour of concrete they had completed. For a moment, the quiet of the tunnel was interrupted by Sasha pulling the wooden forms away from the most recent pour. Their bases scraping against the old dusty floor of the tunnel, removing another veneer of the plywood bottom and lifting unknown dusts and molds and death into the air. But those deaths were unknown. They were far off. Whatever cancers of the lungs that Anton and Sasha were developing were nothing to be afraid of. The only fear was that beyond the concrete.
The scratching.
skrrrrt
skrrrrrrrrrt
skrrt
Unceasing. Unending.
While Sasha set the forms in place, Anton pulled over the closest bag of quick-mix concrete and began pouring the powder into their plastic bucket. They had already moved the pile of goods that they had accumulated for survival away from the new pour zone. They'd pushed the boxes and bags forward, as always. Forward. Running.
"Ready," said Sasha, as he backed away from the forms. The wooden walls of plywood and scrap timber sat just far enough away from the freshly poured concrete to create a gap for a new layer. Not too far, as the concrete would take too long to set, and not too close to give them no reprieve of their unending work. The wood was braced at its base with the heavy bags of concrete. They had so many of those. So many to move in front of them as they ran. Anton looked at his friend and saw the exhaustion still in his eyes. He was falling asleep again as he stood beside the forms that they had built so long ago. What time was it? Not in minutes or hours, but in days. Anton did not know. His watch would not tell him. His memory would tell him less.
"Ready," he said. He handed the bucket to Sasha, who poured the new concrete, liquid and sloshing, against the forms and the recently solidified section they had just pulled the forms away from. Anton mixed up a second bucket as his friend poured the first. This continued until the forms were filled. From floor to ceiling, the tunnel was blocked off with an additional layer of concrete.
Work completed, Sasha fell to the ground once more, asleep before he finished sitting.
Anton looked at his watch. The leather strap had warped and worn away and he had replaced it with a string and electrical tape. But it still ticked away the seconds. The hours. Hours. The concrete took so long to set each time. The package proudly advertised its speed, but the time between moving the forms and beginning each pour again felt so long. Anton did the math in his mind. Four. When the hour struck four, they could move the forms once more.
Start again....
The same race again at four.
In the quiet between Sasha's snores, Anton heard the scratching begin again.
The sound was unique as it worked through the solid stone of the concrete, then the liquid they had just poured, then the solid again of the forms, finally into the air around Anton's ears. Scratching and ticking. The monster and the watch. Each sound competing for his ears and his attention. Each fighting for focus against the exhaustion that he felt.
Anton wished that there was an alarm on his watch. Tick. Tick. Tick was all the sound that it made, though. "No safe sleep on this wrist. You are on your own," said the ticks. Anton's eyes screamed with dry pain in protest.
Sasha couldn't be trusted to stay awake. Not anymore. Anton looked from his sleeping friend down to the resolute face on his wrist. 4 was so far away.
It was so close.
Maybe a little rest? Maybe this time Sasha would wake and check the time. Anton shivered at nothing. The cold of the tunnels was always there. He grabbed the wool blanket from their pile of goods and lay it atop his sleeping friend. If one of them would sleep, they should sleep well.
He began moving the goods forward again. Always forward, but not too fast. Not too far.
They had once explored beyond the tunnel they had walked. This was before. This was with Arkady and Olena, Volodymyr and Katrya. The big tunnels, those of the subway. This was when they found the little tunnel and decided it would be easier to fill the concrete in the small maintenance path rather than the large subway. they had adventured and explored ahead while the minutes ticked by and the concrete formed behind them.
Were those good times? Anton wondered. They certainly were not in comparison to the old life. The old old life. Before it was just the six of them, before it was tunnels and darkness and monsters. Yes, the exploration was not good compared to that time. But it was good compared to now. It was brighter then. They had fires in the large subway tunnels. The smoke dispersed better there. Anton and Sasha had tried a fire in the maintenance path, but the smoke grew too heavy too quickly and they could not breath. There was not enough space for air to flow and take the smoke away. So they were in the dark and the cold. The world was lit by candles and flashlights. It was warmed by blankets.
Was it winter above?
Anton did not know.
They had been down here so long. Down in the safety of below. Away from the monsters above. The demons. The killers.
Anton shuddered at the thought of the little he had seen. He knew what scratched at the wall they built behind themselves. He had seen glimpses as he had heard the screams of his old friends.
They ran from the large subway tunnel into this small maintenance path. Were his friends not dead now, Anton and Sasha would have perished with certainty. A sacrifice of sorts. Had the monsters not been distracted by the quarry behind them, these two men would not have gotten their freedom. The deaths of four to save two. There would not have been time for them to start the new wall without them behind.
They had abandoned their friends.
There was nothing else they could have done.
Anton felt the tears dripping down his cheeks as he looked at Sasha sleeping.
There was nothing else they could have done.
The surface was dead. Monsters roamed it, horrors of an unknown place. The news had been unreliable before the calamity, but it had ceased in the chaos that drove the few that could survive down below. Into the safety of the tunnels they went. They survived this way, together, for a time.
The monsters were came below though. They remained below. They were behind Sasha and Anton, behind the wall they were building.
There was only forward. Only the tunnel and the darkness in front of them. Anton kicked a crate of food ahead, clearing the space for the forms to move to after the latest concrete had set at 4. The food would last, but would they?
He did not like such thoughts, but they were the only company left to him. Sasha slept. He was no company. Anton had is thoughts for company now. Those and the scratching.
Skrrrt
skrrrrrrrt
skrrt
Ceaseless. The monsters did not sleep. They did not stop.
They had killed so many before any had thought to head below, to the subway tunnels, to safety. Safety. Is that what this was? Anton wondered. He wasn't certain that this was truly safe. And was safety worth this work? This exhaustion?
He had finished moving the crates and looked down at the ticking face on his wrist.
Anton dreamed of the surface. He dreamed of his mother and their home at the edge of the city. He dreamed of the sun and the warmth of the sky and the grass beneath his feet and of joy and happiness. His dreams didn't turn away from the joy as they did when he had lived up above. Before the monsters, he would dream happy thoughts and wake as they turned dark. Now he slept with wonderful melancholic dreams dancing in his mind.
He woke to a scream.
"Anton, it has broken through!" shouted Sasha. Anton didn't know what his friend was saying. Words had no meaning as the smile faded from his face and his eyes opened to the darkness of the tunnels above and around them. He saw his friend frantic about the forms. Had those moved? Sasha was still wearing the wool blanket that Anton had placed upon him. He was racing back and forth between bags of concrete and their buckets of water, collected from cracks and drips, gifted from the earth above the tunnels.
"Anton, wake up! It broke through!" said Sasha.
Anton only heard the sound that followed his friend’s shout:
A scream, if that is what it could be called, like the death cry of a terrified woman, erupted from the gap that now lay between the forms and the latest pour of concrete. Some call or cry of the monster beyond. Was this the sound of the demon’s joy? The scream ruptured through Anton’s ears and vibrated sharply in his ribcage. He stood up to join his last friend.
Were Anton to look at his watch, he would see the time was far past 4. He had slept the deep sleep of the exhausted and those on the precipice, ready to perish. The cry of the demon beyond the wall woke his soul to action. Anton raced to help Sasha mix concrete. Powder and aggregate of stones and water, creating a thick slurry in the buckets. As Anton looked over the forms to pour the concoction down, he saw the hand of their foe. A claw wholly unhuman, with talons as long as Anton's forearm, unworn by the grinding and scratching against the new concrete. Undamaged by the work taken to reach the pair of frightened men. It worked blindly through the hole in the stone wall the men had built, reaching for them, reaching for the wooden forms. Scratching against their side of the wall and breaking away chunks of just-set stone. It was widening the gap to fit the horrendous body it must have through.
The claw lurched back into the hole as the slurry of concrete fell in the gap and wet the talons that had come so close to the safe space Anton and Sasha had created. The scratching did not stop, though. It worked still, inside the hole that the devilish hand had emerged from, widening and working and ceaselessly chasing.
Anton and Sasha mixed and poured and mixed and poured, filling the gap between the newly breached wall and the wooden forms, thankfully undamaged by the monster beyond.
"We cannot wait here," said Sasha, as the liquid concrete had almost reached the top of the forms. "There is not enough time for the stone to set. It will come."
"Sasha."
"It will come!"
With that last cry, Anton's only friend in the world began placing things in the wool blanket he had just been wearing. Food and tools and candles atop the cloth laid out on the floor of the dark tunnel. He ignored the work of Anton, avoiding even looking at the forms and the mix of concrete at their wall.
"Sasha, what are you doing?"
Sasha did not speak. He worked, placing as much as he could carry onto the cloth before tying it up in a sort of bindle to throw over his shoulders.
"We cannot keep at this," said Anton's only friend. "It will come."
Sasha ran forward into the darkness. Disappearing and leaving Anton behind. Leaving him alone by the wall of their creation. Alone with the ticking and the scratching. There was a new sound with him now: the sound of razor-sharp claws: blades, not of this world, swimming through liquid stone, working their way towards the forms, blindly pushing and fighting to get through, to join Anton in this tunnel.
They had worked so long.
To give it up now was not a choice. Anton looked back at the forms and the noises of the demon behind him. The monster that had chased them for so long. Days and weeks and months.
Was it winter above them?
Anton quickly threw together his own bindle of goods and ran.
He knew it would yield no life. No safety. He ran as Arkady and Volodymyr did. He ran as Olena and Katrya did. Anton ran as Sasha did.
His footsteps became the only sound in the dark of the small maintenance tunnel. They were no friend, but they were new. Footfalls of a running man who had been still so long. A man with no choice. A man with no path behind him. No safety.
Anton didn't notice the light of the tunnel in front of him as it slowly appeared. The gradient of the world was changing around him so subtly slow that it could not be noticed. He saw a figure before him, not in darkness, but against light. A silhouette of a man and a bindle of cloth. Anton saw Sasha and thought not of what caused his friend to stop or the light that now surrounded him.
He stopped beside his last friend in the world.
"We can go up," said Sasha, hearing Anton arrive. "Or we can continue in new tunnels."
He gestured. In front of the pair of worn down men were stairs. There was light above and warmth. Even so deep, they could feel the change. Anton and Sasha could feel the world above them for the first time in so long.
There was another blood-curdling cry behind them. It echoed and danced through the tunnels, becoming worse and less recognizable as the sound bounced around the stone world of the men.
They had to run.
"Monsters are above," said Anton.
"A monster is here now," said Sasha.
The sounds of the demon behind them were getting closer, as it finally had the freedom to run after them. No more was there a wall.
"The tunnels will be safer," said Anton. He looked at the branching path, away from the stairs, deeper and around. It must lead to another subway station. Another path. More darkness. Safety, maybe. Life, maybe.
Sasha and Anton were left with a choice as the demon behind them raced forward to end their lives.
They looked up at the light. Shadows moved in silhouette across the wall behind them. Figures, familiar in their contrast to the shapes of the men. Sharp, clawed hands casting shadows on the wall so far down the stairs. Behind them, Sasha and Anton heard movement. Ahead, they saw it.
There was no choice at all.
Thanks for reading my short story! The best way to support me is to comment below, check out pledge options, and share it wherever!
Love ya!
-Max