"Whatever the reason, daylight's safe, Marcus."

  "They had theories at the club too. Sunlight, temperature, moisture, even theories with air currents. Twenty-eight people, all falsely confident about why they were safe."

  "And one groundskeeper knew better?" Darnell finally looked at him properly. "That’s what you're saying?"

  "I'm saying they're dead and I'm not."

  "You're not dead, because you ran." Darnell stepped closer. "Because you were some punk-ass groundskeeper who had it good, and when the chips were on the table, you ran and let the others fight."

  "Because I paid attention."

  Darnell's hand cracked across Marcus's face. Hard enough to knock him down. All to remind him of where he stood.

  "You paid attention… You really think that, don’t you?" Darnell laughed. "You fetched golf carts and kissed ass, and when shit got hard, you ran. That's what you're good at. Running and running your mouth."

  Tell Tank about the columns." Fee chimed in again. He wouldn't leave it alone. Marcus had noticed that about him… the way he picked at things. People, wounds, injuries. Anything that might still have a reaction left in it.

  "Fee." Darnell's voice carried a warning.

  "What? I just want Tank to hear the good part." Fee hopped off the counter, crunching through broken glass. "The part about the claw marks."

  "Hoof marks," Marcus said quietly.

  "Right, right. The hoof marks." Fee grinned at Tank while slapping Darnell on the back. "Tell us Marcus. How deep were they?."

  Marcus didn't want to, every time he told it, he saw it again. The columns, the way they were rent apart, reminded him the most of what had happened. But staying silent meant another hit or worse, Darnell deciding he wasn't entertaining enough to keep around.

  "Four gouges on each strike," Marcus said. "All parallel. Each one wider than my hand. Strikes carved into marble like it was wet clay."

  Tank raised an eyebrow. "Marble? You gotta be kidding me, rich ducks like that deserve to die."

  "The columns at the front entrance. The biggest ones were twelve feet tall and solid stone. The thing walked through the barricade and marked them on its way past. Like it wanted to remind us of whose territory we'd been living in."

  Marcus watched Tank's face, hoping, praying for any crack in the skepticism but there wasn't one.

  That was the thing about people who'd survived this long on luck and violence. They'd built their entire worldview around the idea that human beings were still at the top of the food chain. That the System was just a game with different rules. That if you were mean enough, armed enough, ruthless enough, you'd make it.

  Marcus had believed that too. Before the Driving Club, before he'd watched a creature treat automatic weapons like sunshine at the beach.

  "Twelve feet tall." Tank's voice was flat until he laid the sarcasm on thick. "Marked marble columns. Some white-tailed deer. Sure Marcus… so believable."

  “The antlers alone were wider than that doorway. The points are like metal, but not metal. More like a bone that shines and reflects light."

  Fee was loving this. It showed in his smile. "And it just walked through all your guns! Thirty people were shooting and it walked right through!" He swung his bat, smashing a lamp off a nearby end table.

  Sash looked up from her bag. "How long were they shooting?"

  Marcus met her eyes. She was the only one who'd ever asked a question that wasn't straight mockery. "Maybe forty seconds. From the first shot to the last scream."

  Fee smashed another lamp. "And they all died!" He screamed at the giant mirror in the lobby now like it was an audience, arms spread wide in triumph. "The big scary deer monster got them all! Boo hoo!"

  Sash lit another cigarette. Her hands were steady, but her eyes kept drifting toward the windows. "You said it marked the columns, on its way past. What do you mean, on its way past?"

  "I mean it didn't attack when it first arrived." Marcus's voice dropped. "It walked through the front entrance like it owned the place, smashing down the erected barriers with ease. Like it had always owned the place and we were just... tenants, squatters who'd overstayed. It stopped at the first column too and raised one hoof to draw four lines down the marble. Then it moved to the next column and did the same thing without a care in the world."

  "While people were shooting at it?"

  "Yeah, a hail of gunfire and barely even seemed to register." Marcus shook his head. "It was like... it was examining us... And then it turned around. Looked at us, all of us, one by one, like it was counting... like it was taking attendance." Marcus's hand went to his throat. "And then an RPG went off and the screaming started."

  Fee had gone quiet. Even Darnell was listening now.

  "Monsters aren't intelligent," Tank repeated. "The gunfire must have confused it."

  Darnell kicked a duffel toward Marcus. "Ready up."

  Marcus picked up the bag and moved toward the front door.

  "Wrong way, groundskeeper." Darnell jerked his thumb toward the back. "We go out the…"

  The wall behind Marcus exploded.

  Not broken, not shattered, exploded. The entire frame ripped from the wall, glass, brick, aluminum and molding tumbling through the lobby in a wave of debris that sent the looters flying. The chandelier above them swung wildly, disconnected, and rained crystals down like jagged hail.

  Marcus moved first, not thinking, just giving in to the animal part of his brain, what had kept him alive at the driving club. He hit the marble floor and rolled behind a toppled couch, ears ringing, dust choking his lungs.

  Through the cloud of debris, he saw it.

  Antlers first, wider than the doorway. Points catching the morning light in ways that hurt to look at. Then the head, lowering through the ruined frame. Eyes like burning coal. A body that kept coming, unfolding into the lobby, bigger than the stories he'd told, bigger than his memory had allowed him to believe.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  It had found him again.

  Fee was screaming, joyously. But Marcus scrambled backward, tripped over his own duffel, and went down hard. The Forsaken Stag's head swung toward the movement.

  "Shoot it!" Tank screamed as he brought a submachine gun to bear.

  Yet the shots sounded small in the ruined lobby. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The Forsaken Stag didn't flinch either and it certainly didn't slow. It crossed the distance to Tank in two strides, and then Tank wasn't standing anymore. He wasn't anything anymore.

  Sash made a break for the service entrance. Smart and quiet, she almost made it too.

  Almost.

  She was fast, but the thing was faster. It moved in a blink, cutting off her escape with a speed that defied its size. Marcus didn't see the impact, only the way her body was flung back into the room like a ragdoll, sliding to a halt near the overturned concierge desk. She didn't move again.

  Darnell had frozen. The Red Cross on his armband stood out bright against the dust and debris. His mouth was open, eyes locked on the beast, but nothing was coming out.

  Marcus didn't watch what happened next. He was already crawling. Toward a storage closet, toward darkness. Toward anywhere that wasn't here.

  Behind him, Darnell finally found his voice, a high, pleading sound that was cut short by the sickening crack of bones breaking. Then there was nothing except the sound of hooves on marble and breathing that sounded like a furnace.

  Scrambling over the threshold of the closet, Marcus reached back to pull the door shut when something grabbed his ankle.

  He kicked out, panic seizing his chest, but the grip was iron. He looked down.

  Fee.

  Half his face was gone, caved in, wet, red, smiling. The arrogance was gone replaced by a primal, sadistic stare. His grip tightened on Marcus's boot. His remaining eye, still moving, still alive, tracked...

  "Take me with you," Fee croaked, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Or I'll scream."

  Marcus grabbed Fee by the back of his jacket and hauled him into the supply closet. He pulled the door shut, plunging them into pitch blackness.

  They hid. They waited. They hoped.

  The trail speaks to me in the language of fear.

  Salt and cortisol. The particular musk the hairless apes exude in whatever diminished capacity passes for knowing among their kind. It winds through their crumbling streets, past their abandoned vehicles, through the shadows of towers they built in mockery of permanence.

  All of them forget that I am patient like erosion. Certain as the season of winter. Inevitable as the turning of ages.

  I follow, unhurried. Savoring the anticipation of what awaits at the trail's end.

  But the trail does not remain pure.

  It mingles. Braids itself with other scents, other signatures, the accumulated stench of a species that cannot help but press itself together in times of crisis. As if proximity were protection. As if their sheer countless numbers should mean anything to me.

  The first cluster hides in what was once one of their glass warrens. Hollow monuments they built to fill with themselves. I taste them through the walls. Seven distinct heartbeats inside seven interchangeable husks of the same base terror.

  None of them is the one I seek.

  I enter regardless.

  They scream, as they do. They scatter, as they do. One produces a weapon that spits fire and noise, and I permit the projectiles to touch my coat so that they may find fulfillment in providing a sensation that amuses me. It was important for my materials to give them hope, before I demonstrated how little such emotional things mattered.

  The others follow in quick succession. I take no particular care with them. They are not art yet. They are not statements. They are merely materials between myself and my purpose, and I correct them with the efficiency their insignificance deserves.

  The mechanism speaks then, unbidden and unwelcome.

  I did not ask for this accounting. I do not require it and yet the number sits there, waiting, as though my acknowledgment were optional

  I continue the hunt. The trail strengthens, weakens, braids and separates. The one I seek moved quickly through these streets, but not quickly enough to avoid leaving traces.

  Another cluster. Twelve this time, its family perhaps, huddled in a structure of brick and false security. They have barricaded themselves inside, reinforced their entrances, convinced themselves that preparation equates to safety.

  I enter through the roof.

  The killing takes longer here. Not from difficulty. From curiosity. I select them individually this time, observing the mechanism that assigns its measurements.

  The stronger ones yield more, The mechanism rewards the hunting of worthy prey, penalizes the culling of weakness.

  Why would my mechanism distinguish between my materials at all? For only I can create meaning from their lives, demonstrated through my art.

  I emerge from the structure painted in their essence. The trail calls me forward.

  The next cluster has made its refuge in one of those long iron boxes the hairless apes once used to move themselves in herds. I stand at its base and consider the aesthetic of it. A container with space for many, all to hold a few. Their inefficiency offends. Why did my materials not stack themselves closer?

  I knock into it. Flip it onto its side. The soft ones inside scramble, shouting while engaging in their frantic herd-babbling behavior as though coordination could save them.

  Again I flip. Again. Until the metal groans and folds and weeps red through its seams.

  I continue like this. I find clusters. I let them amuse me and I continue because my materials must learn distinction.

  For hours the sun follows me as I move among my stock. Until I find a cluster where glass falls like hail. Beautiful, the scenery is almost musical, screams harmonizing with shattering, a symphony of endings that pleases me in ways I did not anticipate.

  When silence returns, the mechanism whispers again.

  I pause. The number is larger than before. The mechanism, it seems, has opinions about which vermin deserve higher tallies. I find myself reading the numbers twice before I continue. This is not interest. This is the irritation of something that will not stay in its place.

  As if sourcing gradations among my raw materials constituted any meaning to my art.

  One of them, inside the place where glass fell like hail. Even has a particular note to it, the mechanism urging me to see it.

  I dismiss this as I dismiss all its crude arithmetic.

  The mechanism insists on categorization, on hierarchy. On the absurd notion that some of my materials are worth more than others by virtue of their accumulated experience.

  But I was ancient when their great-grandparents were learning to stand upright. I have forgotten more than their mechanism has ever measured.

  And yet.

  The one who took her from me. The mechanism assigned it a number too.

  I find myself remembering this, the concept of it, turning it over like a stone with interesting markings.

  Curious.

  And yet.

  This one fought differently. Not the blind thrashing of my materials on the killing floor. There was a sequence to it, intention perhaps, a false meaning behind their purpose. At the very least it moved as though its movements mattered, as though the arrangement of its limbs in space constituted something more than a chance to become anything greater than a moment in my art.

  I discard this observation. It is meaningless. They are all meaningless.

  But the observation does not discard cleanly. It clings, like burrs in fur. Like the scent of her.

  Irritating.

  The mechanism whirs again. I wait for it to finish. I should not have to wait for it to finish.

  It too lacks distinction.

  I hunt because something precious was taken from me.

  I will follow it until my beloved's killer is unmadet..

  I will make it so.

  I am hungry now.

  Hungry in ways that transcend mere flesh.

  Hungrier than even this simple mechanism will ever understand.