HolLow. Part 2: The meet

I slipped down the dark alley, I kept to the deepest shadows, a reflex from back when people were still being taken. I wore an old scarf across my face, but it did little to filter the air of the stench of rotting flesh. Andy had said midnight at the Jolly Zombie. My watch read 11:56 as I knocked the fifth beat to our password on the wood door of the tiny pub. No one answered. I flicked my lighter on, my watch now read 11:57. I waited another thirty seconds before knocking out the password again, as loud as I dared. As I struck the wood with my knuckles, I felt dread rise in me.

Many unpleasant fates could be met in New Goesstow. They included being eaten by your friends or by rats; dying of the slightest illness, or of starvation or thirst and death by pure terror. Some people saw things, in the city. None was quite sure how real the monsters were, the few who survived to tell of them could not speak in a coherent manner, their mind eternally dimmed by horror.

I thought of hammering against the door, or even knocking it down, but I restrained myself, noise could attract any number of unwanted attention, from both the city and the complex. I tried the handle, it turned but the door didn't budge, it was apparently jammed from the other side. I went to the window next to the door and tried to pry off one of the boards nailed over it, with my knife, enough to catch a glimpse of light. Suddenly, I saw something move, on my right side, at the edge of my line of sight. I didn't bother turning, I left my knife in between the boards and slipped into the next doorway, hoping I wasn't visible. Half a second later, a bright light swept around the corner of the street, a few meters away, and started bobbing along it. I heard the shuffle of boots on the cobbles, my guess was four men. I heard a whisper, without understanding it, and the shuffling stopped. Next came the clink of metal, a grunt of effort, and the shriek of nails being pulled out. The light was turned away from me now, I took a look out from my hiding place. I saw four complex soldiers in full armour, three carrying rifles, the last armed with a crowbar. Suddenly one of them turned my way. I hold back a gasp as I jerked my head back. The noise stopped, and footsteps came my way. They stopped, and I heard a noise I identified to be my knife being pulled from behind the board. One of the soldiers grunted, I knew what he was saying.

I barely had time to slip through the luckily unlocked door behind me before the party split up and lights were pointed my way. I didn't breath as I saw the light wash over the keyhole and around the door. When I could no longer hear any footsteps, I slowly slipped down the crumbling wall to sit on the damp stone floor.

How had they known?