To be honest, if the recent delivery rates hadn't spiked so inexplicably, Arthur wouldn't be caught dead in this piece-of-shit van at this hour. His work ethic was strictly "make enough for tomorrow's smokes and cheap beer, then call it quits." Refusing to bust his ass for a single extra dime, he normally would have tapped out after two drops, headed home to crash on the couch, and chugged beer to late-night TV.
The battered Ford van rumbled down Seattle's slick streets.
90s grunge blasted from the radio, the distorted guitar riffs barely drowning out the engine's rattle. Outside, the April rain felt endless. The wipers struggled across the windshield with a rubbery squeal-squeal, barely scraping two fan-shaped windows of visibility through the deluge. The van's aging heater blew out a stale mix of motor oil, cheap tobacco, and ancient dust.
Steering with one hand, Arthur grabbed his thermos and took a swig of lukewarm black coffee. He muttered a curse at the miserable Seattle weather over the radio, mentally running the numbers—the payout from this delivery would just cover next month's auto insurance.
He'd noticed a sharp drop in night-shift drivers lately. The couriers who usually clustered around gas station convenience stores to shoot the shit seemed to have vanished into thin air, leaving the dispatch system drowning in an avalanche of expedited orders. Desperate for bodies, the company had more than doubled the base pay. It was only the lure of that extra "two packs of Marlboros per run" bonus that convinced Arthur to reluctantly break his own rules and drag himself through a few extra drops.
The digital clock on the dash glowed 10:45 PM.
In a city accustomed to nightlife, the streets should have been pulsing with neon and crowds. Instead, they were unnervingly empty. The streetlamps cast a sickly yellow halo, their reflections shivering in the asphalt puddles before shattering under the van's tires.
Riding shotgun was tonight's sixth urgent delivery.
It was a square box tightly wrapped in brown paper. The sender was a 24-hour pharmacy on the edge of downtown; the destination, an old apartment block near Capitol Hill. The delivery note read: "Urgent antibiotics. Must hand-deliver to customer." Ten minutes later, the van pulled up to the red-brick building.
Arthur yanked the handbrake, grabbed the package, and kicked the door open. The freezing rain immediately slapped his face, cutting through the fog of his exhaustion. He pulled up the hood of his windbreaker and ducked into the lobby.
The ground floor reeked of perpetual damp. Large chunks of plaster had peeled from the walls, exposing the grayish drywall underneath. A faulty motion-sensor light buzzed weakly overhead.
Avoiding the caged elevator that looked like a death trap waiting to happen, he took the concrete stairs.
The stairwell was dead silent. Aside from the hollow echo of his own combat boots, there was no muffled TV noise, no murmur of conversation. With every floor he climbed, the air seemed to grow thicker.
On the fourth floor, the hallway lights were completely burned out. The only illumination came from a sliver of city streetlights bleeding through a cracked window at the far end.
Arthur held up his terminal, sweeping its sickly green glow across the peeling walls. He followed the numbers... 401, 403... The end of the hall was a recessed dead angle.
Unit 402 was tucked into that lightless pocket of shadow.
He stepped lightly. Three paces away from the chipped wooden door, his boots rooted to the carpet like driven nails.
He smelled it.
Not the usual old-building mustiness, and not a backed-up kitchen sink. It was a rancid fish stench—like fifty pounds of seafood left to rot in a plastic bag beneath the mid-summer sun, fermenting into pure putrefaction.
"Fuck, did a sewer pipe burst?" Arthur grimaced, holding his breath. He had delivered to plenty of squalid slums, but this eye-watering stench was a first.
He instinctively shallowed his breathing and angled the terminal's screen light onto the cheap synthetic carpet.
Seeping from beneath the door of 402 was a pool of pitch-black liquid. It was thick, devoid of any reflection, silently creeping through the carpet fibers, inching toward the toes of his boots.
Then, a sound came from the other side of the door.
Very faint, but in the dead silence of the hall, it made his scalp prickle.
Drip... drip... It sounded like something heavy and drenched was pressed flat against the inside of the door. Viscous liquid was rolling down its contours, hitting the hardwood floor drop by drop.
Arthur's hand, raised to knock, froze in mid-air. Even the worst plumbing disaster wouldn't produce sludge with that kind of texture.
His blood ran ice-cold.
His hand instinctively hovered over the box cutter in his pocket, as Detective Morgan's warning suddenly echoed in his ears: "If you notice something wrong... forget the package. Just run." A biting chill shot from his soles to his crown. Every hair under his windbreaker stood on end. He didn't dare take a deep breath, terrified that whatever was behind the door would hear him.
Moving with agonizing slowness, Arthur bent down and placed the brown paper package on the carpet, half a meter away from the black ooze. He didn't even tap "Delivered" on his terminal, terrified the digital chime would give him away.
Eyes locked on the crack under the door, he took two slow steps back.
Then, he spun around.
He didn't look back. He took the stairs three at a time, his boots hammering a feverish rhythm against the concrete. The hairs on his neck stayed upright, his instincts screaming that something in the dark was slithering down the stairwell after him. Only when he burst through the lobby doors and plunged back into the icy downpour did he finally exhale, his starved lungs burning with a needle-like pain.
Arthur wrenched the van door open, threw himself into the driver's seat, and jammed the key into the ignition. He cranked the wheel hard. The tires shrieked against the flooded asphalt as the Ford bolted into the deluge like a hunted animal.
The van fled the street.