Horror passes over Peyton and Terri's faces as Jill describes what the priest was doing. Peyton goes full police mode on the man demanding to know how many people he has cut up and fed to his sister all the while the man stumbles over his words. The other man is standing to the side his gun gripped tightly in his hand to the point Rhodie thinks he could snap it. Terri is doing something similar with her camera as she points towards the priest as he tries to beg and explain his way out of this mess. The reporter woman looks sick to the core at hearing what the man of god has been doing.
But that isn't what is tugging his attention. No, that scent from earlier is back. Stronger this time. Fresher. He shifts his body back towards the dark corridor they had emerged from. Every muscle in his body screaming at him that something dangerous in down there. Barring his teeth he barks loudly towards where the scent is coming from. The most intimidating bark he can muster escapes him as it feels like he is challenging something.
When he stops barking silence settles around them. His war cry had halted Jill and Peyton's conversation. He expected something to come back to him. To answer his call but nothing comes. No sound comes from the darkness. But he can smell it. The unusual scent growing stronger but not moving forward. How can something grow in strength without coming closer...
Unless it's not just one thing.
"What is it, Rhodie." Jill crouches down next to him levelling her gaze in the same direction as him with her gun ready. Her eyes narrowing trying to see what has gathered so a response from him. Time ticks on and when nothing comes out of the darkness that other man tries to cut in calling him a dumb dog and scoffing at his actions.
That's when he hears. The squelching noise on the stone floor reaching his ears. Something is coming closer. He bares his teeth body readying itself to spring forward and attack the threat head on. When another squelching noise catches his attention. Coming from the other corridor on the wall opposite the one he is glaring down. His head flickers there then back to the first one. Whatever they are. They are coming.
His head jumping from one side to the other has Jill standing and signalling something to Peyton with hand gestures. The man nods at raises his finger to his lips as he ushers Terri, the man with the gun and the priest further back into the room his own gun aimed down one hallway while Jill covers the other.
Slowly he and Jill back away from the corridor wanting to get further away from whatever is coming. And boy do they come. One moment he is intently looking at the darkness the next something flesh like darts across his vision and disappears somewhere into the giant room they are hiding in. He tries to track the beast but it is moving too quickly for him. He can't even track its scent as the rotting odour lingers everywhere around him making it impossible to narrow it down.
Jill swears next to him encountering the same problem as he is. Whatever these things are they are too fast. "What the fuck are those things," Terris calls out just as Peyton begins to fire at the spot one of the creatures was lingering in. His bullets smash into the stone and the thing is long gone.
Jill and Peyton both flash their flashlights over the dark roof of the church desperately looking for any sign of these things. When either of them spots one of those things they fire never being able to hit the squealing creatures. It's like the things are playing a game with them. Waiting until spotted and then dodging the bullets.
Terri tries to help using her camera to help narrow down where the monsters are and calling it out. Bullets fly always hit stone rather than the flesh they were intended for. The priest is muttering prayers to God and all Rhodie can do is watch and see how things unfold.
Peyton moves to fire again when a clicking noise comes out of his gun rather than the loud bang Rhodie has grown used to from guns. "I'm out," Peyton tells Jill who tenses up even more.
The guy who has the third gun is trembling and waving his gun around in an uncontrolled manner. "Fuck this." He sneers glaring towards the rest of the group before taking off and attempting to run down one of the corridors.
Peyton shouts after him. "Hey get back here." Not that the man listens. The man thinks he has better chances on his own. That if he can get out of here then he will be safe. An idea that is quickly proven wrong when one of the creatures drops down from the ceiling in front of him knocking him to the ground. The monster lands with a soft thud rather then the louder noise one would expect from a thing its size.
Rhodie hears Jill whisper "What the fuck." As the monster looks like a ball of flesh on four legs with its brain exposed and very sharp teeth. It doesn't have any eyes but seems to know exactly where the man is on the ground opening its jaws threateningly towards monsters outside that used to be humans still look like humans although they smell appalling. These new monsters don't look like any animal he has ever encountered before. And Alice and Jill took him to a place called a zoo once where he saw so many strange looking animals. But nothing like this.
The man in panic fires bullets into the creature's mass. Hitting its body and even its brain until his gun clicks just as Peyton's did. But his bullets do nothing but enrage the thing. A full round of ammunition was shot into that ball of flesh and it didn't even flinch. Not like the different monsters outside. At least they went down. This thing doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
They can do nothing but watch as this giant tongue unravels from the beast's mouth and wraps around the man's throat a whimper leaves him just before the beast is yanking him in and tearing him to shreds.
Teeth and claws ripping into flesh splattering blood and clothes all around. A horrendous tearing sound fills the space. The sound of flesh being bitten off in chunks as razor sharp claws ripping through the man like a knife through butter. A sound infinitely worse than the sound those other monsters made when eating the flesh of people.
Wails of agony shriek out of the man as he screams for help as chunks of him are torn away and devoured. Jill grabs his collar and hauls him into a small enclosed side room. Terri, Peyton and the priest follow her, and she shuts the small door sealing them in while those things are distracted eating that man.
Jill leaning against the doors looks towards Peyton looking as white as the bed sheet back in Jill and Alice's room. Breathing heavily she closes her eyes trying to push the sound of what is happening outside the small wooden doors to the back of her mind. "How the fuck are we supposed to get past them." She asks her voice barely audible over the screams of that man.