Basement atsumori

By nowthatweareseparated

The time was 10:58 PM.

It had been several hours since the famed Pawafuru TV play-by-play commentator Muneatsu Atsumori was supposed to go on his trip to Panama to commentate on an upcoming baseball match, yet there was no confirmation that his flight even took off. Nobody at PTV could get ahold of him, not even Producer Noride. All of Cocoro Hibikino's frantic phone calls to him were heading straight to voice mail too. After the seventh one got no response, she decided she was going to have to find him herself.

She solemnly drove towards the airport his flight was supposed to be departing from. The giant building looked alive from the outside. The lights were on, but there were no incoming or oncoming planes in the sky.

Around 15 minutes from her destination, she set her car's radio to the news in the hopes that there was any information on what might've happened to Mr. Atsumori's flight but received nothing but garbled static. She shut off the radio with a frustrated shout and continued to drive in silence until she drove into the parking garage.

Once inside, it was devoid of life. No travelers, workers, police officers, nothing. It was just her, rows upon rows of parked cars, the noise of the ventilation system and the overhead sodium lamps that bathed everything in their thick yellow light. She checked her phone to see if she had gotten any texts or calls back, but found that her phone had no cell service.

She searched for the nearest vacant lot so she could get to the last known location of the commentator as quickly as possible. The last thing Muneatsu sent to Hibikino before he was supposed to take off was a photo of him smiling with a cup of coffee in one hand while sitting in Gate 13 of Terminal 2. All sorts of people from all walks of life were visible in frame and some were smiling along with him.

He looked so happy. Those people did too.

As soon as she stepped into the bright exterior of the lobby, she tripped over a hard plastic suitcase and fell to the floor. While reeling from the pain, she saw that the floor was covered in people's abandoned belongings and luggage bags. Pants and shirts were in the mix too. It looked like people were trying to run away from something with all their stuff in tow. But whatever that something was, it had gotten to them before they could escape. But there was no blood, no sign of any struggle. They just vanished into thin air. Gone.

She trawled through the endless field of luggage cases and backpacks, occasionally tripping over somebody's bag. There was only the sound of television screens and air conditioning accompanying her on her journey to Gate 13.

Nobody was there when she arrived. Not even any abandoned luggage. The nearby cafe, the same one Muneatsu got a drink from, was trashed. Coffee cups and trays were thrown everywhere. A close look at one of the coffee grinders showed that all of the coffee beans were replaced with some sort of brightly colored mold.

Was the Airport evacuated? And if so, was it over this mold? That's what she thought at first. So she checked her phone again, still no service. She tried to connect to the Airport's Wi-Fi but saw that the list of wireless networks she could connect to was completely empty.

Hibikino turned around to leave, only to see something that made her heart drop like a rock. Just outside the massive glass window overlooking one of the runways, was a giant airliner belonging to the airline Muneatsu was flying on, torn in half and laying in a heap on the tarmac with overturned police vehicles and baggage tractors surrounding it. Getting closer to the window revealed that there was a trail of shrapnel leading from the plane and into the building.

Something was in the building with her.

Hibikino was staring at the wreckage for a good minute before there was a loud pop, followed by another, and another. She screamed and ran to avoid the shattered glass and mercury dust that was now raining onto her from above. In less than a minute, the terminal was plunged into darkness. The only sources of light now were malfunctioning LED screens and the starlit night sky.

To avoid the glass, Hibikino took refuge in one of the nearby duty-free stores. To avoid the dust, she covered up her face with her scarf and tried not to breath deeply. While trying to find some supplies under the cover of darkness, she stepped on something wet and slimy. Looking down, it was a big pile of glowing blue moss. She threw up a little in her mouth and kicked it away. But not before It left a bright blue stain on her shoe.

She further explored the area of the terminal where all the stores and restaurants were and saw that anything that was even remotely edible, plants had gotten to. Plastic bags that once held chips and nuts and been torn apart and practically licked clean by slimy yellow vines that where trashing about looking for more food while trash cans and plates on restaurant tables had been taken over by clusters of little orange mushrooms. She couldn't stay here. What if those plant things ate everyone? What if they ate Muneatsu?

She tried not to think about that possibility.

She attempted to check her phone a third time, but the a battery icon flashed on screen before disappearing, despite having a 53% charge not too long ago. Then as if to add insult to injury, the air conditioning went out with a loud bang that rang out like a gunshot. Mystery liquids in every color and consistency fell down from overhead pipes and vents like tropical rain as the temperature inside the airport quickly climbed to uncomfortable levels. And when the temperature rose, so did the plants. They became three times their original size in a matter of minutes.

Every new area of the airport she entered, she half-expected to see another human in the same situation as herself. If not, some unlucky traveler's corpse or at least a skeleton wearing a airport security uniform. Anything that wasn't just another squirming gelatinous plant would've sufficed. It was suffocatingly lonely in here. "Where had all the people gone?" was on top of her mind at all times.

She looked outside the window and saw it was completely black now. The lights of the city and the stars had all vanished. This sight, or lack there of, shook Hibikino to her core.

After charging it for a bit, she decided to check her phone one last time. 50% charge, but draining rapidly. Just like before, there was no service and no Wi-Fi. She dialed 110 anyway as a Hail Mary. All she got in response was 20 seconds of what sounded like gurgling and screaming before her phone shut off and threw up the low battery screen yet again.

She ran to the closest emergency exit and flung it open, but was met with a thick wall of plant roots. There was no escape. Everything became a blur after that. What felt like hours of aimlessly wandering through the airport while dodging giant puddles of multi-colored slime mold and veiny tendrils that threatened to swallow her passed by.

She forgot to eat before arriving to the airport, and was starving from going hours without food or water. So in a state of hunger-driven delirium, Hibikino ripped up a chunk of unappetizing-looking fungus that was bursting from a trash can. Without even thinking once, she bit into it. A burst of runny fluids filled her mouth, and it tasted like Muneatsu's favorite food, with hints of coffee and creamer too. She didn't know why, but after wolfing down those mushrooms, something in her heart told her that Muneatsu was still in this airport and was still alive. She felt a little less helpless after that.

Next thing she knew once she came back to her senses, she was at once used to be a security checkpoint. The hard tile floor was now covered in roots and moss that made a nauseating squelch with each step that she took. The container where people had to empty any liquids into before proceeding was shaking violently and producing an unbearable amount of hot, humid air. Air that turned anything that was made of plastic in the surrounding area into barely recognizable goo.

She heard a loud meaty growl from beyond the scanners. In the distance was a pair of windowless metal doors. “STAFF ONLY” was printed in faded red text on one of them while one of them was ajar. That sound came from those doors. And her gut told her it was Muneatsu.

Hibikino called out to him, and received another wet rumble shortly after. Against her better judgment, Hibikino ran through the functionless body scanners and past the warped conveyor belts. Arriving at the mysterious door with her hand out and heart beating fast.

“Muneatsu? It's me, Cocoro Hibikino. Where are you?”

Before she could even place her hand on the handle, something grabbed her by the torso and dragged her down a long flight of slime-covered stairs. She fell for a while, landed on soft ground, and passed out.

When she woke up, she thought she was laying down on the grass, looking up at the night sky. But it was really a completely black ceiling. There was a little square of faint blue light just above, shining down on her like a full moon would.

The ground she had been resting on was fleshy blue moss, the same kind she kicked off her feet. Hibikino struggled to get up, the moss having practically glued her down. When she did eventually muster the strength to get up, she looked at the highlighter blue filth that had soaked into her clothing, then the new world she found herself in. Her jaw dropped.

This was the basement of the airport. Now it was a forest of pulsating flora and funga. The plain concrete walls were now smothered with pulsating red veins and long glowing yellow mushrooms that looked like cordyceps. It smelled and looked absolutely horrible. She couldn't take it anymore. She seized up and puked all over the ground. Her lost lunch was quickly absorbed by the floor beneath her, the sight of which caused her to throw up again.

But somehow, she knew the bioluminescent hellscape she landed in was indeed the person she was looking for. She had finally found Muneatsu Atsumori. He just looked a little different. That's all. Her abject horror morphed into a twisted sense of relief.

“Muneatsu, you're alive! Hibikino excitedly called out to him. "You're alive!"

In return, she received a wet, gurgly moan that she could feel in her chest. “Look down, you said?.” She tepidly did as he “said” and looked down to see that there was a star-shaped hole in the ground, many glowing dots surrounded it. She didn't quite understand what she was looking at.

“W-what happened to everyone? What happened to you?”

There was no vocal response. Instead, the ground beneath her violently lurched. Sending her sliding towards what she soon realized was a gaping maw.