“Hello?” he asks loudly. “Who’s in there?”
No answer from the room, except for another jerk of the handle.
“I’m going to unlock the door now!” he calls out. “But I’m not in the mood for any surprises, you got that?”
Still, no answer.
Thorsten puts in the key and turns it. He pushes down the handle and opens the door.
The girl immediately steps forward. Thorsten lets out a gasp and steps back. He had mentally prepared himself for a surprise, maybe even an unpleasant one, but not this. The stench comes rolling at him like an avalanche, causing him to gasp for breath.
Thorsten has seen a lot of sick and wounded people in his life, but this girl takes the prize. Something is obviously very wrong with her, and yet she’s still, amazingly, able to walk. She comes at him in a staggering pace, reaching out her arms, and Thorsten notices the missing fingers, probably torn off in some sort of accident.
He backs up and instinctively reaches out to grab her hands, catching her by the wrists and trying to hold her back—he wants to help her, but he doesn’t want her to come any closer.
“It’s all right, take it easy now,” he says in the most calming voice he can muster. “We’ll get you help. We just—”
He’s interrupted as the girl’s head jerks forward and bites down hard on his wrist.
“Ouch, goddamnit!” Thorsten roars and pulls back his hand. The girl immediately goes for the other one, so he lets go and steps back farther. “You stop that, you hear me?” The girl doesn’t seem to hear him at all; she’s only interested in taking another bite, so Thorsten takes yet another step back and meets the wall, clutching his bleeding wrist. “Now you listen to me. You need to lie down and …”
That’s all he has time to say before the girl lunges at him. This time, he’s somewhat ready for it and manages to avoid her snapping teeth. Instead, he shoves her backwards, causing her almost to tumble over.
He stares from his throbbing wrist to the girl. What the hell is wrong with her? Must be rabies or something …
He decides to abandon any attempt to help out the girl and instead go get help. He jogs back towards the elevator, squeezing hard on the wrist, trying to stop the blood, which finds its way out through his fingers in thin trickles, leaving a bloody trail down the hall.
The elevator has gone back up, so Thorsten hits the button. He hears steps behind him and turns around.
The girl has followed him, her arms outstretched, as though longing to hug him. Thorsten never had any kids himself, but he used to be married to a woman who had a teenage daughter—Camilla was her name—and Thorsten developed a pretty good relationship with his stepdaughter. Thorsten and the woman separated, and it’s been almost four years since he’s seen Camilla, but for one fleeting glimpse, he sees her face on the sick girl in front of him, and it makes him hesitate.
Jesus Christ, that’s someone’s daughter …
The eyes of the girl are so unlike anything he’s ever seen—if he didn’t know any better, judging from the eyes alone, he would have thought the girl was already dead. Except she’s clearly not, coming at him eagerly, looking an awful lot like Camilla.
“You … you stay away from me,” he croaks, trying to make it sound like a demand, yet it comes out a plea.
The girl doesn’t pay any attention either way. She’s only a few steps away, when the doors finally open behind him, and Thorsten is able to move again. He steps inside and hits the button for the ground floor. Then, he backs towards the back wall, staring at the girl who’s about to enter the elevator, as the doors begin to close.
“Stop!” he shouts, suddenly finding his voice again. “You stay there! You hear me?”
The doors close less than half a second too late. The girl is in. Thorsten begins shouting.
As the elevator reaches the entrance hall less than one minute later, Thorsten is dead.
The girl, whose name was once Selina, is busy eating his liver. Sensing new, living prey, she turns her head, licking the dark brown blood from her lips.
In front of her, just about to step inside the elevator, stands a young man with a cup of coffee and a look of stunned terror on his face, frozen to the spot. He became a father for the first time just this morning, and he only came down here to get the coffee. Now, he’s headed back up to the maternity ward to be with his wife and their newly born. He never gets to see any of them again, though.
Three minutes later, the entrance hall has turned to chaos.
THIRTEEN
Finn is sweating profusely under the scorching high noon sun and his lower back is starting to complain. But he’s almost done trimming the hedge, so he pushes on.
A movement makes him turn his head to see his wife crossing the lawn carrying a beer can and a shallow dish. “Cool refreshments for my gardener,” she says, handing him the beer.
“Thanks, hon,” he groans, wiping the sweat from his brow. “You want me to drink it out of that?”
“This is not for you,” she tells him, putting the dish down in the shade of the hedge. Finn notices it’s full of water. “It’s for the poor hedgehogs. They suffer terribly in this heat, I’m sure.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Finn mutters, opening the can and gulping down half of it. He’s become a little too skilled at drinking beer after his retirement last year. It’s just such a wonderful pastime—whenever the garden doesn’t demand his attention—but the damned things are starting to show up around his waist and gut.
“I don’t get why you don’t just wait till sundown,” Lone says. “This is no
