Day 5..

We spent a full day resting in the room, as Marri definitely needed it, even though she would never actively complain or make a fuss and would probably just keep going until she burnt out, and it did wonders for our mental state, all things considered and today was day 5 since it all went to shit..

We took turns on watch, mostly myself staying awake with Marri waking up every couple of hours to feed or change Lone. But somehow, this structure felt, healthy, it felt right that we didn't rush off in a panic, and instead gathered ourselves and used the time to process everything. Other than that, I did my best to handle most nappy changes and ensure she had food and water.

Duties in which I gave 110%!

The whole thing was such a surreal experience as we tried to ignore the periodic, terrible, distant noises..noises that pretty much confirmed 100% that this was happening on a wider scale than I'd hoped. But overall we tried to have a normal ‘fresh new parents’ day and I had to admit it felt pretty good compared to bludgeoning nightmares to death in brutal self defence.

Mind you there were plenty of crashes, bangs and the occasional inhuman scream that made us near shit ourselves, but we were oddly starting to get used to it, and in actuality, it got to the point where it was becoming more irritating than terrifying. Like having really rowdy, inconsiderate, antisocial neighbours.

The bloody Johnsons' are demonically screeching again, sigh..Oh and those bumps and crashes will be that Margaret, the old codger, probably chasing her cats-oh wait..no..no..she's eating them.

Me and Marri had made it into somewhat of a dark running joke, trying to up one on each other of who could come up with the most ridiculous explanation for each horrible noise.

Classic coping mechanisms..

But today was a new day, and it was now early morning. Although, since I still couldn’t find my phone, I didn’t actually know exactly what time it was..Probably something like 08:00...but regardless it was definitely morning and Marri was having a 'lie in' peacefully with Lone. Lone had made hunger cues 4 times throughout the night, where I would gently assist him to latch onto the boob and he would feed and then go back to sleep while Marri woke up each time briefly but quickly fell back asleep; it was startling how quickly he'd taken to breastfeeding and Marri was even surprised. I'd woken up a couple of hours before and didn’t feel that tired so I found myself pottered about here and there, quietly looking around for anything useful in the morning light, but instead I stumbled upon some rather disturbing phenomena, as I inspected the room in greater detail..and this disturbing something was that all the electronics were half gutted or just gone.

As if by magic.

I’m 100% sure that we had more machines and things..Hell, I could even see the clean squares on surfaces where there had once been something before, an object outline that had been stopping the dust settling or the sunlight bleaching the counter tops..But now it was completely gone.

Seriously spooky shit.

Naturally there wasn’t a single item I could find that could pass off as a decent weapon either, but that wasn't surprising.

Well, this is a hospital, not an army base. What kind of weapon would I hope to find here..Sure a scapel or something but..

Peering out the window, it was all just the same dismal picture. Nothing encouraging. The entire hospital site was surrounded by thick, tall trees, which didn’t allow me to see far but, looking up at the sky it was clear there were numerous plumes of smoke columns rising from all directions. Fires. Danger.

...Bollocks...

It must be some kind of British thing to be this blasé, to encounter such traumatic situations and then be confronted with evidence that suggested the world was experiencing the ‘end of days’ or perhaps someone had opened a portal to the hell dimension or maybe there it was an extremely advanced invasion from another country or a biological experiment gone wrong and spread through the population...

The possibilities were all sooo delightful.

And if it was actually demons?

Well...uh..bollocks..Just need to keep calm and carry on good sir.

I smile at the thought. I bet there are a bunch of Brits somewhere, queuing up for the demon portals, no chains necessary, politely waiting their turn to be enslaved for eternity, since, what else could you do but make the best out of it?

“Ooh, sorry, excuse me but there’s a queue here Sir!” I put on a classic polite British voice.

Would probably be like a builder or barmen, you know, the polite types.

“Oh goodness me! I beg your pardon my good man!”

He would be the chipper polite train conductor who was close to retirement and was a bit old school. A bit rotund too, loved his food you see.

“No trouble at all mate, no trouble at all. Soooo, here for the slavery right? Quite nice weather at the moment wouldn’t you say? At least we'll get to enjoy a bit of it before our souls are damned for eternity.”

I chuckled to myself..then coughed awkwardly.

Insanity doesn't look good on me..my jokes are not funny enough.

Although after it was all said and done, it did feel comforting accepting that there was nowhere to go except onwards. It made things simpler to plan if you had just a very simple single goal in mind.

Survival.

You can either die trying to live, or live not trying to die. The universe will get you eventually either way...Anyway...

On cue, Marri stirred, yawning as she woke up, possibly because of my bizarre monologue and so I brought some of the supplies over to nibble on whilst I filled her in - that's what she said - on all the observations I’d made, and ultimately, the difficult decisions we had to make, regarding our escape. We both munched away as we got stuck into the conversation, agreeing at the start that there was no logical reason for what was going on so we’d just accept as much as we could and stay open minded.

Use any observations, no matter how bizarre or small, to help keep us safe. Information is a pillar of wisdom.

The main priority was to get out of the hospital and get to the car and so we broke the whole thing down into 3 stages.

First stage, which was pretty crap:

I would have to go out and Marri would have to lock the door behind me whilst I checked the best route to take.

The second stage, which was really crap:

I would finish my scouting and hopefully return. Then we would decide if it's a green light and prepare to leave all together.

The third stage, which was the crappiest piece of crappy crap:

We would then make a break for it, at a quick pace but ready to retreat back to the room if needed. We would leave the key in the room, but take the rest of them with us in case we needed to take shelter in another room or if we were in a rush we could shut the door and lock the room.

And that was it really. Lone didn’t have any input except dropping a massive shart-poo during the conversation, but honestly it was a refreshing point of view.

Things might, could, probably-would change if we actually came across any of the staff or other friendly people, but based on the fact we hadn’t heard much apart from distant thumps, crashes, wretched distant screeching…

Let's just say, I won’t be holding my breath...No one is coming for us..Nobody is missing us..We've just got each other.

Our discussion on what we thought was going on was pretty varied though, Marri thought this had to be biological since the creatures we'd fought were humanoid, but deformed and manic. Whilst I was on the demon portal side of the fence, naturally influenced from all those fiction fantasy books, games and movies-

I..used…to...The dream I had! How the heck did I forget that! The bloody message I’d seen before waking up literally stated I had points and-..

I scoffed at myself..but then retracted the scoff.

Nahhhh. Noooo…it couldn’t be… Could it? Surely this wasn’t some kind of dungeon or system apocalypse scenario, surely??...Naww, It couldn’t be..There hasn't been any global message or warning and there sure as shit ain't been no help guide or tutorial either-

“HEY Godu! Are you even listening to me? Helloooo titface? Anyone in there-”

I’d completely missed what she had been saying as I stared into the distance, trying to process my crazy dream.

“Mmm-sorry! Uhh Marri? I completely forgot to tell you about the dream I had when I was..conked out.”

“Uh, okay..W-what? what dream?” she said, mildly irritated but something in her face very clearly changed.

“Sooo uhh, well, it was…a, hmm, how do I explain it...A void type place? With stars and streams of light and there was this large portal type thing that-”

“-You touched and saw shapes and symbols.” She interrupted me and her face paled.

“Huh. Yeah. Did I tell you already?” Confused, I looked to the side squinting, trying to recall when I’d told her.

“No, but..” she sighed. “..I didn’t tell you either...”

Eh.

“At first I thought nothing of it, since it was just a dream and the awful things that have happened and all that jazz...But it was really vivid and I felt pain in the dream which I can’t recall ever happening to me before.” she shook her head.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

This was starting to freak me out.

“Okay. Oooooookay.” I took a deep breath. “Tell me exactly in detail what you saw in this ‘dream’ and then I’ll tell you mine in detail. Then we can compare and decide if this was just a big coincidence, maybe some kind of shared trauma trigger?”

I hope.

“Because it it isn't..There's a very serious chance we’re witnessing the same kind of shit that has been the concept of many games, movies and a lot of books.”

“Oh yay.” She rolled her eyes. “What godforsaken kind of game or movie explains what has happened in the past few days?” She gave me a lethargic look.

“Yeah I know I know, it sounds mental, but let me give you some examples and I’ll explain the similarities.”

And I did.

I gave a few examples of games where it was typical to fight creatures and then grow in strength afterwards, you would level up after being rewarded with EXP. She wasn't a muppet so she understood without question and asked me to continue.

I went on to talk about some of the more niche movies and books that depicted the earth being merged with another world or dimension, and with that crap came sorcery, powers and creatures that weren’t native to earth. She was pretty doubtful about that since, I noted that traditionally in those narratives, the human race would be transported for training or given safety nets such as safe zones or at least some kind of guidance or training.

What we had experienced so far was just fucking brutal.

The more I talked about it, the more I started to doubt the whole concept based on how few similarities there were..Until I had finished explaining my dream and she explained hers in great detail. We had experienced everything exactly the same, except we had touched different symbols and we saw different text. I also had experienced the insane pain, whilst she had only dealt with some minor pain, but it was still damned uncomfortable she sharply pointed out. She had touched a symbol that was a circle with complex geometric symbols inside, a pair of wing-like structures surrounding the circle, and then a pair of lines going down from the circle into half arrow heads.

'Her favourite' she said.. EXACTLY the same as what I had felt.

Afterwards, she had also been shown two symbols, but with different pictorials to my experience, but one had been an upside down triangle with wavy lines going through it from the left, then up and out to the right.

The other, which was the one she had touched, was an upside down triangle with lines going through it from the bottom and up, that joined up and formed a semi circle on the top flat part and inside were crosses, donuts and hexagons.

The texts she had seen..well, she actually couldn’t recall anything explaining or mentoning a skill, but she definitely could remember the ominous message:

Attribute points available [1].

Please assign attribute points in the next [??].

We both had played a few light hearted MMOs and RPGs before, but it was ones where you didn’t really do attributes. Focused more on the graphics, levelling skills, running quests and performing fancy combos with action combat etc. Neither of us had done much to do with assigning points or attributes or whatever, but the concepts were self explanatory and I was obviously familiar with them.

We didn’t feel stronger or faster, although my tests merely amounted to me trying to do some pushups but still struggling a bit. Then I tried to close my eyes and strained to mentally will a stats screen and tried shouted a ton of mental commands

Even trying “DOT QUESTION MARK, SLASH QUESTION MARK”... But to no success, apart from making Marri snort at some of the random words I was saying.

“HELP..hmm nope. MENU. Nah. GUIDE? CHARACTER?" Nope and nada. "STATS?!…grr-”

“pEniS sTaTs pLuS fIvE iNcheS hofhofhofhof..” Marri childishly put on a nerdy voice and started snorting in uncontrollable laughter.

“Really Marri?” I groaned and retaliated with an unamused, sideways glance. She was wiping tears, shoulders shaking. The maturity of a schoolgirl.

Nothing I had tried worked and it was rather frustrating.

“Right. Let's just park this for now.” I grumbled.

“Aww Diddums I was only joking!” She winked and blew me a kiss.

I looked at her with a sulky frown, pretending to be offended but truthfully I took it as an excuse to take in her beautiful face in the sunlight. Her raven black hair and her vibrant green eyes, the most mischievous of smiles... Even with her mascara heavily smudged, to me she always was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. I couldn't hide my smirk and snorted a laugh. Avoiding the obvious trap where I’d reply with something like ‘you weren’t complaining the other night’ and she’d reply with something juvenile like ‘can’t complain with such speedy service’.

I'm not strong enough yet..Damn you woman, I WILL defeat you one day.

Truthfully this was no time to be pissed off, or pissing about, considering we had more important priorities.

Such as getting out of the maternity ward and getting somewhere safe.

For a brief moment, I had to admit that I felt..not an eagerness but perhaps just slightly excited at the idea that maybe we were suddenly going to have adventures, quests and be able to wield “sorcery” and all kinds of crazy skills, but a glance at Marri and Lone made reality sink in and sobered me up, that's no kind of life for a baby..so I focused on the dreaded task. I straightened up, rubbed my face quickly and put my serious cap on.

“Right. No point putting this off. We’ll stick to the plan. I’ll go out right now, scout the escape, and then when I come back we’ll decide what to do next. Either we try our luck today or wait until tomorrow..and I just have this sinking feeling that the longer we wait, the harder it will be...”

The light hearted mood sunk like a ship made of rocks. She looked at me fearfully but nodded, then beckoned me to come over to her for a hug. I hated how we embraced, as if I was going away for a long time. It made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach, the thought that I was leaving my team alone. My family…

Before I could change my mind, I'd given her a long kiss, moved the barricade and then prepared myself as we all stood near the door…I inserted the key.

Click.

Cold fear spread through me as adrenaline started seeping into my system, making my hands uncontrollably shaky. I froze, listening in deathly silence for any noises.

Nothing.

Creak.

I slowly turned the handle and put my foot in front of the door, an attempt to stop it from suddenly being smashed open. I held my breath and waited.

Not a peep. Sounds deserted.

Cracking the door open I noticed I was breathing heavily so I tried to compose myself as I peeked out through the crack.

Nothing, all clear..Phewwww, okay come on. You got this.

The hallways were cast in shadows and gloom, but there appeared to be just enough light coming from windows and other open rooms along the hall to make out most things. I opened the door a wider, up to my planted foot. Based on my memory, the hallway went right and left, continuing around the building to make an outer square. I rembered seeing nurse stations in the middle square next to the birthing rooms, a room with a big sign saying 'NICU' and then various birthing and recovery roomes dotted around the outer square.

We were on the bottom side, opposite from the entrance/exit and I was hoping there was a fire escape nearby.

Please. I hope so.

I now had full visibility of the right part of the corridor.

No movement or sounds.

I opened the door wider, moving my foot, enough for me to peek out and round to the left.

*snuffle*

Ajsfujjjaa!! What the FUCK was that noise!

I froze. Nearly jumping out my skin, I glanced over at Marri who nodded to Lone.

Oh shitting hell, don’t do that to me boy..

Relief washed over me and taking a deep breath in and out, I stuck my head fully out the door and I peeked round to observe the left section of the corridor.

A couple of feet in front of my face, was an oversized grin and a pair of yellow bulging eyes staring right at me. Silently grinning widely, mouth quivering and salivating.

F-F-FF-F-FF-FFUCK! IT'S JUST FUCKING STANDING THERE! SHIT. SHIT!

It shuffled slowly towards me, as I became paralyzed, but not with completely with fear..My instincts were screaming at my body to 'chill, 'make no sudden moves', 'avoid making it attack straight away', 'use your surroundings as a weapon'. So I slowly pulled my head back into the room and carefully stepped back; my hands were clammy and I was shaking like a leaf.

The thing was breathing faint, rapid, panting noises as it continued to follow, staring mainly at me, but also darting its eyes around, scanning. I slowly shifted around the door, gesturing vigoursly with my hidden hand for Marri to move far away, and I started to tense and shift my body into position, ready to slam into the door. The top of its head came first, silently into the room.

Its oversized eyes came in and observed me.

They flickered behind me as I heard Marri gasp.

The eyes widened and bulged as it looked down at Lone.

It darted in, bringing it’s stupid ugly grin into the room and started to make a hungry salivating hissing noise.

I slammed my shoulder into the door, smashing into its chin, knocking the creatures head into the doorframe with a tremendous *thock*, its eyes started to roll around.

FUCKING DIE YOU ABOMINATION!

Letting go of the door, I grabbed onto its neck with both my hands and pulled it into the room; its neck was slimy, disgusting, cold.

STOP MOVING! JUST DIE!

Ramming it’s dazed head against the wall and then dragging it onto the floor, I used my knee to pin its chest down as I smashed its head onto the floor again. It instantly went still and limp, so I jumped up and slammed the door shut and locked it.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck-

I was shaking like a leaf from adrenaline but my body had taken over without me even thinking much and in the daylight, I briefly registered that this creature had lighter hair and red eyes, different to what I remembered of the others. I grabbed the thing's legs and dragged it over to the window. I didn’t have the stomach right now to neck-stomp it so gravity could do the work for me.

This is so fucking messed up!

At the window I hauled it up from under its arms and shoved it onto the window sill.

Just fuck off please!

In my twisted mind, I somehow reflexively managed to think the words “yeet” and nearly burst out with manic laughter at the thought, as I tumbled the legs out and winced as I heard the sickening smack when it impacted onto the floor.

Bloody hell! Fucking memes! Fucking monsters!

I took a few moments to recover, hands on my knees, panting, but I looked over at Marri and gave her the okay sign with my hand. She responded by pulling a yikes face and returning a half hearted thumbs up.

“Flipping heck that’s grim...” I whispered, after briefly looking back out the window to make sure the thing wasn’t moving. It wasn’t. It was a bit of a mess since it had landed on its head first.

“I could have shut the door..But better to deal with that now rather than later.” I looked at Marri for acknowledgement. She just silently nodded grimly.

“I’m reaally not keen on it, fuck..But I'm going to try again. I didn’t see anything else out there although I’m going to still take it slow since that bastard was just standing there silently.”

That moment will forever haunt me.

BUT! Wanting to waste no time, I collected myself and prepared again..me and Marri got back into position.

Once again, I opened the door a smidge whilst scanning and listening.

Deja vu. All clear on the right side.

Opening further to check the left, I braced myself to fight…but it was clear. I let a minute or so go by whilst I tried to stay as silent as possible and cupped my ears to pick up any small sounds. There were some distant shouts echoing faintly down the halls and the occasional thuds & thumps, but it was hard to say whether that was pipework or even inside the building or outside. I thought I may have heard very faint muffled tones that sounded like human voices, but the tinnitus in my ears started to roar as the general silence became increasingly overwhelming.

Something is still not right. It's way too quiet, like we're underwater...Ugh. Suck it up, buttercup. We need to get out of here as soon as possible.

Glancing back one last time at Marri holding Lone, she had wide open glossy eyes, half smiling at me with encouragement.

"Good luck." She whisphered.

I smirked and stepped outside, whispering back “Won't be long, just popping out for some milk and bread.” and then closed the door behind me before the temptation to stay became overwhelming.

I heard a muffled snort and “You better, you tit..” from behind the door.

Chuckling myself I steeled my nerves and headed out to the right, towards the kitchen area I had looted before. I figured either I'd find a map or perhaps I would grab some more supplies, drop them outside the door in the event we needed to stay longer.

Or perhaps if I fucked up and got myself killed..

My heart ached at the thought of failing and leaving them on their own.

..Then at least those two would have something to keep them going a bit longer.

...

..

.