“What the are you…!?”

“What- What- What the are you…!?” it repeated back to her like a mirrored reply, with her own voice, “What the are you…!?”

Taeyeon wanted to move.

She wanted to move desperately, but her neuronal commands were being ignored by her own body. It was as though she had been jolted with electricity and now her muscles were paralysed in its catatonic state. Her clone realised that and started to grin in a twisted manner. It had even cloned her clothes, oxygen tank, face mask and all; a complete copy.

It picked up the machete lying just next to it and twirled it in its hand, before glaring at Taeyeon with a certain insatiable lust for blood. It marched forward.

“No!” Taeyeon scurried backwards with her still glued to the floor, unable to get up, “No!”

It pinned her down, with its knees resting on her chest. The machete was pressed against her carotid pulse. She could feel its sharpness with every pulsation. The creature’s entire weight rested against the resistance of her right triceps, which haven’t had a workout since she was ten years younger. They burned. Taeyeon grabbed the creature’s hair and pulled with all her might until it screamed in pain, in her voice. With that window, Taeyeon took off and ran without a weapon. Her chest ached and so did her body. The oxygen tank strapped to her back was beginning to weight a tonne.

She looked back and regretted.

She saw herself running on the walls on all four limbs.

It was steadily catching up to her. There was no way Taeyeon could outrun that creature, but maybe she could outmanoeuvre it, somehow. She made a sharp right into one of the rooms. As soon as she dashed inside, she slammed the door behind her and double-locked it. She backed away from the door as it shook from the slamming that came from the outside; the slams were hard and vigorous. It looked the creature wouldn’t stop until the door flew off its hinges and that would not take long. Even slam caused splinters to burst from the door.

 “NO!” Taeyeon heard her own voice coming from beyond, “Goddamn it… What the are you…!?”

She was inevitably trapped herself here. She had to think fast. There was no exit from here. Desperate, she darted into the restroom and locked the door. There was no window here either. Out of an option, she grabbed the porcelain toilet tank cover and groaned at how heavy it was. She had nothing else to defend herself with, other that disposable toothbrushes. She sat on the toilet bowl as she heard the front door of the room broke off into smithereens.

Then, nothing.

Her fingers hurt from the tight grip.

Five, maybe ten minutes passed.

She still sat in silence.

“Do I go out? Do I go out?” she murmured quietly, “I have to… I have to…”

She crept out after having peeked through. The door was smashed, with pieces of its carcass all over the bed and the carpet. It was clear. The hallway was empty from the looks of it. Maybe this was a good time to make a break for it. She was right in the centre of the hotel room when she realised she made a grave mistake. She forgot to check the ceiling.

With her aching and trembling hands ready to strike, she looked up, all ready to see a clone of herself, hanging from the ceiling, ready to pounce, but nothing.

There was nothing on the ceiling.

With a sigh of relief, she let her fingers take a short break. Perhaps it had gone away. Perhaps it had found something else to chase. That was the hope. She dropped the ridiculously heavy cover on the carpet and grabbed the fireplace rake resting on the side. This felt much sturdier. She felt like she could do much more damage with this, until she dropped it in shock when she walked out.

She saw her clone, with its back facing her.

“HELP! HELP!” it screamed as it turned its head backwards, cracking its vertebra loudly in the process, “HELP! HELP!”

It pounced at Taeyeon, this time pinning her down perfectly. Both of the creature’s hands were gripping and choking her trachea, cutting off her air once again.

“Hey!” a familiar voice screeched from behind, stealing away both of their attention.

Taeyeon stared in fear as Irene slowly approached with her gun, but her face slowly grew more confused when she saw there were two of them.

“Shoot her! Shoot her!”

“No! Shoot her!”

“I’m the real one!”

“No! I’m the real one!”

“Goddamn it! Shoot her!”

It grabbed Taeyeon by her neck and slammed her against the wall, choking her life out. She struggled, trying to wrestle her way out but clearly her lack of exercise gave her physique a poor outlook. That, coupled with her asphyxiation, she was easily overpowered.

“Irene…” she croaked with her final whispers of oxygen, “It’s me… Sh- shoot her!”

Irene, without hesitation, opened fire and blew one of their brains out, splattering it all over the hallway. The dead one collapsed with gravity as life left.

Taeyeon opened her eyes and they stung from all the blood oozing down her forehead.

“Get up!” Irene pulled Taeyeon up to her own two feet and placed the blood-soaked machete back in her hand, “You’ll need this.”

“How did you know it was me?” Taeyeon looked at herself, lying dead on the floor with a hole between the eyes.

“You spoke, and you knew my name,” Irene grunted in disgust at all the blood, “These Mimics need something to copy. They can’t be original, not as far as I know.”

“I know I’ll look hideous after I die…”

“Who doesn’t?”

Taeyeon struggled to breath even with her face mask maxed. Now, she felt like her stomach was gurgling in disgust and wanted to expel all of its contents. She was trying to curb the nausea and her food down. Perhaps it was the strangulation or the fact that walkers could now mimic people, her head felt lighting and floaty. She grabbed on to the table beside for support.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be…” Taeyeon shook her head awake, “Now, that’s done. I’m done for the night.”

“Not yet, Taeyeon.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s somebody else in here. Someone let the Mimic in. Someone sabotaged our circuit box.”

“Ah .”

“Here,” Irene passed back Taeyeon’s machete back to its rightful owner, with all the slime and blood, “You’re gonna need this.”

“This is absolutely disgusting.”

“Too bad it’s absolutely necessary.”

“I’m not gonna kill another human, Irene…” she looked at the light reflecting off the blade, “There’s too few left of us. We can’t keep killing each other.”

“What if the other person is gonna kill you? What are you going to do?”

“Well…” Taeyeon sighed, “I’d like to say that I can reason with him. What’s the point in killing me, Irene?”

“He thinks you have resources needed to go on living. Food, water, sanctuary.”

“I can share…”

“He can’t.”

A loud gunshot tore their conversation to a halt.

Taeyeon dived down on her stomach and covered her head. A few shots went off and all she saw was bright sparks that lit the hallway for a split second before dropping it back into deep darkness, blinding her. Irene grabbed Taeyeon by her shirt and pulled her up to her feet, giving her the ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ look and ushered her out of the gunfight zone. It was absolute chaos and the gunshots started to deafen her ears with tinnitus. Confusion would be a massive understatement.

“Get out before you blow all-” another gunshot screeched Irene’s speech to a halt.

Irene stopped moving and dropped to her knees, holding her abdomen which started to ooze a dark fluid which was difficult to identify in the dark, but was most likely blood.

“No!” Taeyeon tried to hold Irene up from falling face flat but the years of inactivity must have put her out of shape. She could barely hold Irene up before she felt like her shoulders were going to dislocate, “Irene!”

More shots were fired and the bullets ricocheted off the walls, creating more sparks around them. Taeyeon looked up and saw that the shooter had gained more courage. His silhouette became clearer against the moonlight as he stepped closer towards them, yearning for the kill. Taeyeon’s rage became immense; without thinking or hesitating, she grabbed Irene’s gun from her paralysed fingers and took aim.

She fired.

A female yelp became audible when the bullet penetrated the attacker’s shoulder, spurting out blood against the window behind and painted the moonlight shining inside in blood red. The attacker collapsed to her knees, holding her bleeding shoulders and ruptured rotator cuffs. Taeyeon tried to get a good look at her but it was just too dark. With a dishevelled grunt of anger and dissatisfaction, she took off through the window.

“Hey!” Taeyeon rushed towards the shattered glass and looked out of the building, scanning the area.

A trail of blood trickled from the walls and down to the cold, dark sand just below on the ground, but no body. She escaped. Cursing under her breath, Taeyeon retreated. She turned around and saw Irene standing up on her own.

“We need to get you patched up!”

“I’m fine, Taeyeon.”

“You got shot!”

“I’ll fix myself up. Come with me. Let’s get this night over with.”

Taeyeon nodded and followed her towards the stairs. She looked back on the dirty blood-stained carpet. Blood stained, as she thought, but it was almost too dark in colour to be blood. It must have been the poor lighting playing tricks on her.

***

Taeyeon sat alone in the dining room.

Irene refused to let Taeyeon help in patching her wounds.

So, she sat here alone, thinking what just transpired. From the Mimic, to the fact that there were other people still alive, trying to kill them, made her mind twisted and convoluted. Questions loomed and taunted her.

Why was she trying to kill them?

That question got her roaming after a while. She paced about around the hotel, exploring places she had never been before. She was on an unfamiliar floor in a maze of a hotel. The electricity had been partially restored. At least the air conditioning was working, though not a full capacity. It would take some time to get the entire system back up after the sabotage. Taeyeon glanced out of the window. It was dawn. The sun was rising. She pressed her hands against the window and it felt hot, as though it was already middle of the day where the sun was the hottest. She drew the blinds. She would be blinded if her eyes were exposed directly to the rising sun.

She sat down quietly and basked in her own thoughts.

“This is insane… what the hell is happening!?”

She rubbed her face awake and looked up, where she saw something that caught her attention immediately: blood.

“What the hell?” she stood up and kept her eyes on the blood stain on the ceiling, “Where did that come from?”

It wasn’t fresh. The colour had turned dark and it had all dried up but she knew a bloodstain when she saw one. She walked over to directly beneath it and glanced around, analysing. There was an indentation in the wall, just below, as though someone’s head had been smashed in here. Crumbs of paint still heaped below the indentation. It was a sloppy job. She knelt down and rubbed her fingers around the floor before putting them up to her nose.

Bleach.

It smelt like bleach; faint, but present nevertheless.

She traced it.

Then she stood, contemplating.

She was in front of an old-fashioned elevator, where it was literally a cage suspended by a few metal chains, in a larger cage. It was hidden in a dark corner of the hallway in a floor that she had never been before. This elevator was tucked in somewhere where the other floors wouldn’t even have a clue about its existence. The question was why. Why all the secrecy? Perhaps this was an old part of this building, made long before its gratuitous renovation into a lavish hospice for those with enough greens to throw away.

“How old is this thing…?” she glanced.

The elevator was hidden in darkness. She entered the lift unsteadily, fumbling around in darkness to find a switch. Her fingers detected a small chain and she tugged it. The yellow bulb burst into light, blaring away with an electrical buzz. It felt like she was brought back in time to the 50s. She scanned the metallic cubicle and saw mechanical buttons at the side. There were only four of them; one to open and one to close, with the other two for floors, with simplistic labels of A and B. She guessed it was redundant to have an emergency alarm button since the passengers could just scream their heads off if the elevator got stuck.

“Where does this go?”

She pressed it but nothing happened. The elevator didn’t budge. Strange. Electricity was already powering the elevator. Was it broken?

She looked around and noticed a key hole.

That, however, wasn’t the only thing she noticed, now with a better look and with better lighting.

There were some dried blood stains around the keyhole and the buttons. She took a sniff and clearly the same bleach smell was present, stronger than ever. As a matter of fact, the whole elevator reeked of it.

She had nothing but questions to lead her forward from hereon.

***

“Don’t go in there. It’s bad for you.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are asbestos particles in there. It’ll give you cancer.”

She asked Taeyeon to kneel and hold her position. Taeyeon did, but she could feel her thighs burning from the weight of her winter jacket and thick clothing beneath it, keeping her warm but also keeping her down. She glanced around the ruined lan