#9: Aubrey and Jude
The footsteps were close enough now to be a clattering of thunder and the beastly howl of wind in a hurricane, and the rumbling roil of earthquake underfoot all in one terrible package that would end with Aubrey strung up and skinned alive and Jude most likely left alone and bleeding in the shop’s entranceway. Like the terror wasn’t enough, so many months spent living in fear and watching over his shoulder, jolting awake at the slightest noise in the night unless he’d inflicted himself into a drunken stupor just to get some restless sleep. No way to live, but bad enough on its own without watching someone undeserving die because of his own guilt, then dying in turn with that weight on his shoulders.
With that panic squeezing his throat shut into a pinhole with the presence of his heartbeat, Aubrey couldn’t get out the words that it was pointless to struggle with the lock: annihilation the price of quick entry. But Jude seemed to get the right idea regardless and Aubrey was quick to move in tandem, throwing the weight of his good shoulder behind the cabinet that filled the gaping maw of the doorway once they’d slid it into place.
“Here, over here,” he finally managed, groping through the blackness until he’d found what felt like a chest of drawers or a large trunk. His arm on the side where he’d fallen was held to his chest because it was still almost immobilized with the throbbing heat of the impact, pain screaming through his elbow joint if he tried to move it, but there was a lip of wood that he could get the fingers of his other hand underneath and haul the thing backwards. Coming to a stop snug against the first cabinet, where he could get around behind both pieces of furniture and brace his spine with feet planted solidly to floorboard. Ready for the impact of a hundred bodies trying to force their way in, ready to hold them off for as long as he could and tell the other man to run.
But nothing came. The thunder and storm, temporarily drowned out by the groaning protests of furniture scraping over hardwood, had gone. Silence now, not quite eerie but almost… normal. The far-off sounds of conversational chatter from other hunters walking on their merry way, maybe half a block down the street.
“Where did they…” Aubrey trailed off, listening hard and breathing harder, but there was no way that a mob that size could just feign disappearance so assuredly. “I think they’re... gone?”
But no, there. There was something, some sound that came out of the darkness. Not a mob, but… singing. Not from outside, but trickling down to Aubrey’s ears from what seemed like the back of the shop. He frowned, swallowing hard as he turned to the place where he’d thought that Jude had last been standing. But the man's voice was coming from the other direction, so he turned to hiss into the gloam. “Jude? Are you… are you seriously singing right now? Shut the fuck up, what if they come back?”