>>24025010You barrel out of the apartment door still clutching the bent butter knife, sneakers skidding on the chipped tile of the third-floor hallway. Gina's door—#302—is five feet away, but halfway there, the bathroom vent back in your unit explodes outward in a spray of rust and drywall. Something heavy hits the floor behind you with a wet thud, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of claws on linoleum. Gina's door swings open before you can knock—her dyed-red hair is piled in a messy bun, headphones dangling around her neck—but her expression shifts from annoyance to horror as she looks past you. "Jesus Christ, Mark, that's not a—" The sentence dies as the thing in your bathroom lets out a sound like a dying garbage disposal.
> What do we do Gina?Gina's eyes widen—her apartment behind her is cluttered with takeout containers and half-packed moving boxes—before she grabs your wrist and yanks you inside, slamming the door shut just as something heavy collides with it. The deadbolt clicks home a millisecond before the thing outside snarls and rams the door again, shaking the frame. "The *fuck* is that?" Gina hisses, pressing a chipped-nail hand against the door as if she could hold it shut through sheer will. From your apartment, the sound of overturned furniture and splintering wood echoes down the hall. Gina's fingers tighten around the butter knife you're still holding—her grip is surprisingly strong—and she exhales sharply through her nose. "Okay. Okay. I have bear mace in my duffel bag. And a neighbor on the first floor who definitely owns a gun."
