The gloomy hallways had been royally trashed, with ceiling tiles missing and various medical artefacts smashed or scattered around. I tiptoed as best I could between the objects to avoid making any surplus noise than needed, but it was pretty useless as each footstep echoed small tip-taps that made me wish there was carpet instead of lino flooring.

Well on the bright side, at least it is not plastered with blood and flesh..unlike that corridor. I shuddered at the reminder.

The building, which was solely dedicated to this Maternity ward, comprised of hallways that formed a square and we were located at the bottom or southern side. The right side of the square, or the east side, consisted of the Kitchen, Post Delivery Recovery Rooms NICU and the main office station for the nurses and staff. I knew all this because of the very beneficial tour we had opted in for, prior to birth. It made a huge difference for stress levels, knowing where we were going and how it all looked.

Who could have foreseen the real stress coming from monsters trying to kill and eat us..Yeah, no mention of THAT in the NCT classes..

Each hallway corner had double doors, and there was a middle corridor that split the middle of the square, connecting the east and west hallways. From what I remembered, the middle corridor had a bunch of rooms for emergency surgery and other offices but I wasn’t too sure, we’d not been in there..However, most crucially, the middle corridor was the one I’d seen caked in blood during the first night.

Just the thought of it made my blood run cold.

As I reached the double doors that entered the east hallway, I took a look through the small square embedded windows; I couldn’t see anything immediately behind the doors so I slowly pushed one open. I passed through and moved quickly towards the kitchen directly in front of me; the door was propped open and there was decent visibility via the sunlight coming through the windows.

Hmm can't see shit.

With the electric still off, it was still plenty gloomy, harbouring plenty of dark hiding spots where something could lie in wait-Shut up. Shuuuutt uppppp. Stop scaring yourself dickhead! My fear levels spiked and my mind started imagining all kinds of horrible scenarios, the desire to retreat back to Marri and Lone becoming extremely potent.

Remember why we are out here! Get a grip man! Try find a weapon, then go check the exit! Move!

The kitchen was a mess, with a few gruesome bloody smears and handprints, but my mood lifted when I saw a ray of sunlight shining on a laminated map with fire exit instructions on the wall.

If this was a game, this would be the point where the atmospheric choir music would play and a new step in the quest assigned… maybe some experience points would be bestowed upon the brave adventurer….?

I paused for a moment, glancing around in anticipation of any changes, choir music or rewards…but nothing. Just me standing there like a right twat. I sarcastically smiled, shaking my head.

Ha. Yeah, figures that real life is nowhere near as convenient.

The map showed the nearest fire exits, which weren’t on every hall like I’d expected, and actually over at the North hallway. Basically the normal exit lift.

Bugger.

With that confirmed, I looted everything useful I could find, which amountd to a couple of large tubs of baby milk formula and a pack of protein bars and rushed back to the door, placing it down quietly, taking a deep calming breath and longingly looking at the door.

Argh. I hate being this scared.

No matter what, I just couldn’t shake off this degrading feeling of fear, and the alluring temptation to return to safety.

It's right there in front of me, shouldn't we wait for help to come?..

It was kinda' ridiculous at this point, as I’d already had to fight and kill several humanoid nightmarish creatures.

Hell, the third one I had proactively engaged in the fight and chucked them out the window with not too much difficulty.

Which was actually not as bad as I thought..but on the other hand.. the situation is still fucking terrifying..I really need a weapon.

I forced myself to return to the kitchen and had another quick look in the drawers thinking that even a simple knife would be useful, but again, we were in a hospital, so the most dangerous things I could find were blunt butter knives and sporks.

Surgery or maybe a store room would no doubt have better “loot”, like a scalpel...

I crept out of the kitchen holding two butter knives.

At least I wasn’t dual wielding sporks..

Fuck you spoons, for being useless weapons..

Carefully treading towards the next door, the plaque read 'Recovery Room, please be quiet'. I glanced through the small window and visibility was once again poor and incredibly dark since the windows were furnished with blackout blinds. I slowly turned around; directly opposite this room was the middle corridor.

The blood corridor.

Stomach clenching, my heart rate went through the roof as I caught a faint whiff of copper in the air. But my terrible morbid curiosity compelled me to look through the window and before I could hesitate, I was at the window and.. the unholy sight caused my palms to sweat uncontrollably and chest pains flared up.

Fuck shit, fuck, fuck! Has it gotten worse? It looks MUCH worse!

The golden light streaming through windows and open doors painted the still and soundless atrocities with a delicate eerie glow. Reflective dust particles floated peacefully, drifting and glinting without a care at all of the surrounding nightmare. Coagulated blood and bits of dried flesh were caked on the walls, ceilings and floor, and small piles of tissue and small infantile remains were scattered around the place. The ground had scattered, bloody footprints and handprints, with streak marks leading out to the opposite end of the corridor where something had been dragged through the mess.

Stepping back, I took slow deep breaths to stay calm whilst desperately trying to forget the images seared into my mind, wishing I’d just fucking carried on without looking..One grim positive was that it had bolstered my resolve to get out of here fast.

Creeping back over to the recovery room entrance, I was contemplating if I should check it out for people, or rather, could I summon the courage to look?

Nope.

It was pitch black due to the heavy blinds and tinted windows.

All designed to make the environment calm and dark no matter what time of day for mothers recovering after birth..I hope they were evacuated or escaped.

I contemplated the situation other fresh parents must have been in and the very high possibility they were not as lucky as we were.

Imagine if we had delivered 30 minutes earlier, we would have been in one of these rooms instead and..little Lone… I rubbed my face, dismissing the terrible ‘what if’ scenario I'd started to picture.

Moving onwards past the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, I still had not heard a single peep, which paradoxically made me more nervous. Being the place that premature babies would go to recover, it was usually the most protected and observed place, with nurses and doctors paying close attention to the occupants for obvious reasons..It was the only place I’d had a shred of hope of seeing another friendly face, perhaps a group of people had managed to barricade themselves in to prioritise this room above all others.

But there's not a single soul in sight..Hopefully people grabbed their own and ran for the hills the second this all started..

More dark imagery about those fucking creatures prowling unchecked around the completely defenceless premature infants filled my head, it made me feel sick and angry. A true hatred for these monsters was brewing.

I moved on.

Walking up towards the secure doors that led out to the north hallway, I stopped at the nurses office and observed. The door was closed and there was no window, just a thick heavy door. It was locked. Again I wondered if there was a chance that maybe a nurse or staff member had stayed behind to look after things here, but quickly dismissed it since nobody had come to our aid in the last few days and I’d been tiptoeing around for probably 20-30 minutes already. My hand hovered above the door, about to knock..But then I decided against it.

Truthfully, who in their right fucking mind would stay willingly? And who knocks on doors in an apocolypse?!

I lowered my hand.

Yeah. Probably shouldn't make any noise. There's no one here.

Sighing, I moved on to the final double doors.

On the bright side of everything so far, our escape route was not looking too bad at all, the north hallway would be the final stretch until we reached the fire escape stairwells and it seemed clear and quiet and-

FUCKING NEVER MIND.

I'd reachd the double doors and peered through the door window. There was a literal heap of bodies. Naked, bloodied and mangled, slumped in a pile, laying in front of the two large lifts in the middle of the hallway.

The majority were….Holy shit. They were pregnant women, some of their stomachs still looked pregnant but they were definitely…gone. There were also a few men at the edge of the pile of corpses, clothed, but they had gashes and rendered flesh on display. The door must have been well sealed to keep out what surely was a truly horrific smell.

My eyes scoured the room and I could see the emergency exit stairs right opposite-

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ugh that so bloody grim..So we would need to just go straight over.

It would be a 5 metre distance before we were in the stairwell and then 3 flights down before we reached a fire escape door.

Well there it fucking is. Okay, okay..

I was surprised I hadn't completely lost what little sanity I had left, but I was coping. I felt disgust and shock, but in the same way you would feel when seeing it in a movie, or if you saw a deer that had been smashed up on a road. My mind was adapting, becoming desensitized to these horrors. We were going to have to suck it up either way.

We need to get out and away from this hellhole.

Turning around, I started walking back and noticed that I must have gotten a stone or something stuck in my shoe, because it was clacking on the floor with every step.

So I stopped to check..but the clacking continued.

*clik*...*clak*....*clik*...*clak*..*click*clak*..*click*click*clak*

My breathing sharply increased and adrenaline flooded my system.

“When the FUCK will I get a break from all this bullshit!" I growled through gritted teeth, straining to figure out where the noise was coming from. I was getting really sick and tired of all this stress and fear. Each ‘clik’ and ‘clak’ making me flinch, not with terror, but with a burning rage.

Reaching breaking point, I started getting impatient, ready for a fight.

"Come on out then you fucking piece of shit..where are you!" I lowered my head and clenched my fists.

The double doors to the middle corridor started to open and a grey long thin arm slunk out at a low angle and slapped onto the ground, then another long thin arm came out and slapped down, but both joints were bending as if someone was doing a backwards crab walk.

And that is exactly what this thing was doing.

It looked extremely malnourished, with grey skin and no hair. No sign of gender as the skin was stretched like a grey leathery plastic, making it look unrealistic rather than a living thing. All of its boney joints seemed to be bending at wrong angles as it was backwards crabbing..out of the doors. The head was gyrating 360 degrees, much like an owl would, slick with no hair and its face looked deformed with a very strange angry expression, mouth baring shattered shards of teeth and saliva oozing out like a slimy waterfall. Both the feet were deformed, with bone sticking out where the toes should have been; the cause of the clik-clak noises. The toes looked like they had been snapped off.

It reacted and dashed when it noticed me, even though its gaze was difficult to locate on its wild eyes, and its jaw started to chatter violently. As it scuttled towards me, it made a manic, mumbling chewing sound. At that very moment, my mind was in a weird mixed state of being petrified of this thing, but the ‘clik clak’ noise was infuriating and I felt insulted at how quickly it had decided I was an easy target to attack.

FUCK. YOU. J-janky shithead! Come on then!

I started running towards the crabby little cunt and gripped onto the butter knives. My tactic was to try and get a kick in on its face, shank it in the mouth or eyes, then abandon my weapons and try and get it into a chokehold, hopefully holding on until it passed out or died.

We impacted and I managed to get an absolute hoofer of a kick in first, the thing didn’t even try to dodge! Instead, it just opened its mouth to try and take a bite, but all it got was a face full of boot with an almighty *THUCK*. It sprawled on the floor dazed, and I tried to get some stabs into the soft tissue, but the knives suselessly slipped out of my pissing hands and clattered on the floor.

Shit, shit, shit! FUCKING USELESS KNIVES!

I jumped onto it and started to try and wrap my arms around its neck, but I was too slow and failed to get a solid grasp. It recovered and slipped easily out of my grip and started to whip smack me with its arms and it felt like I was getting hit with sledgehammers. I received a heavy blow to the head and it put me into a horrendous dazed state for a second, enough to stumble backwards down onto my arse. It was already clambering on top of me, forcing me back down, and it continued to smack me rapidly around the face and neck, causing my vision to flash sparks and dark spots.

Agh it's starting to win. FUCK I can’t let it! I can’t find an opening to fight back!

I couldn’t get up and I was starting to panic.

Ughh… please.. I don’t.. Want..To.. Die.. Please!!

Curling up into a ball, I covered my head from the blows. The monster suddenly gave me an opening by biting me instead of continuing to hit and I yelled out from the pain in my thigh, but took the chance to start smashing it in the back of the head. The fucker wasn’t letting go and it hurt like hell but I kept pelting it in the head and in the back of the neck as it sunk its teeth further into the flesh.

After the fifth blow, it released me and scrambled back, sloppily licking around its bloodied gnashers and lips. The bite wound was deep, its teeth were jagged but I had little time to dwell on it, I needed to either find a chance to escape, or gain an advantage.

It withdrew, which made me stupidly pause in confusion, before it then lunged forwards knocking me off balance. I had fucked up, once again, by hesitating. Before I could get up fully, I was now on my back, struggling to hold both of its arms whilst trying to gain a chance to kick it off me. Its mouth was snapping, its whole head was twisting and turning, trying to get closer so it could bite a chunk out of my face. I growled in panic filled fury and released my right hand from its arm and rammed my palm into its throat, gripping it in a chokehold, whilst pulling its other arm with my left, managing to destabilise it and roll it off of me. Following the momentum, I managed to get on top of it and went completely beserk smacking it in the face, pausing for a split second to let it raise its skull away from the ground before smashing my palm into its face so that it banged against the floor with a loud crack.

Repeating this countless times, I followed up with rapid punches to the lower jaw from both sides, ignoring its attempts to hit me off with its arms and it trying to bite my hands. My mind went into autopilot as I laughed maniacally.

“YOU. SHOULD HAVE. JUST. LEFT US. ALONE! YOU. JANKY! PIECE OF! SHHHIIIIT!”

Its strength lay in its ability to build up momentum and whip its arms around, but on the floor under my body weight, it was running out of stamina very quickly and unable to deal with the blows raining down. The tables had turned. It started to let out a gurgling sound as blood frothed in its mouth and if it was anything remotely human, it probably had severe brain damage. I grunted with effort as I hopped up and jumped on the spot, letting gravity help as I rammed my knee down onto its windpipe, grimacing as I felt the cartilage cave in. It went still, limp, and I fell off and scuttled back away, pressing my back against the wall as I sat and caught my breath.

That had been a horrible, horrible fight - and I put all the blame on those stupid bloody butter knives..and fuck those spoons..They wouldn't have helped either..

I spat out some blood and checked the wound on my leg, wincing in pain as I touched it.

Definitely need to get it disinfected and bandaged ASAP but I’ll give myself several minutes to recover first... I didn’t feel good at all.

Sitting still for a few more moments, I got my breathing under control and made sure to keep a good eye on my surroundings, but I was starting to feel very drowsy.

Oh no..not again..please..

Struggling to keep my eyelids open, I heard a faint noise like soap suds in a bath. I drowsily looked around for the source and noticed that the Janky’s body was breaking out in patches of..rust?

Is that rust?

The same oxidation process you would see on a rusty bucket or wheelbarrow, was appearing on the creature and spreading all over at a rapid pace. I sat in a drowsy fascination as this occurred all over the body, seemingly no pattern to it. A few shimmering glittery particles started to appear, accumulating in a sparkly, cloudy fog-machine like effect. After a few seconds, a shallow wispy stream of glittery particulates started slowly drifting gently away, hovering and wavering. My eyes were really heavy and I started to nod off, jerking back awake every few seconds.

Am I... hallucinating...it’s kinda making its way closer-

WIthout warning, it shot out towards me and I sluggishly turned my head and winced, whilst trying to scramble onto my feet. But I miscalculated, putting my hand awkwardly down and falling onto my elbow. I opened my mouth to make a formal complaint and choked as the wispy stream cloud enter my lungs. I tried to gasp but my lungs felt packed to the brim. It felt like there was an inferno raging inside my organs and my body became incredibly itchy and sore. Something was burrowing in my bones and swimming in my veins, although that didn't hurt as much as it just felt horrible and alien. Then, as quickly as it entered, the stream came out and I managed one deep breath before I started hacking up and coughing up nasty black stuff with bits of coagulated blood in it.

"Ughhhhh o'shit, oh that's rank, ughhhh make it stop, ughhhkk!"

After a few more coughs and demonic purging, it was over. I sniffed and wiped my face with my sleeve.

"Phhhhhhhhhhhooo..ohh shit what was that.."

And I. Felt. Amazing.

It was shockingly relieving, as if I’d turbo-purged myself of a chest infection or had eaten some dodgy food or drunk too much and had completed a tactical chunder.

Wow.

Standing up feeling completely refreshed, I checked my body over, noticing that the wound on my leg was all but gone, with only some pink scar tissue remaining…but that was it.

What the hell just happened.

In fact nothing hurt at all any more and all my wounds were completely gone. I looked over at the creature's corpse, it had changed to a dull fleshy grey state and there was a slight powder residue around it.

“Fucking weird…” I muttered.

I'm not interested in investigating right now though. F-that. I'll just take this bizarre gift and walk away.

Shaking my head, I started making my way back towards our room.

Thinking back to my game theory, it really wasn’t like anything I’d read or seen in games, but perhaps what just happened was either an attempted spirit possession, or, possibly a reward for winning? Either way, I was most certainly healed.

Maybe I have some sort of skill that absorbs life or healing power from….corpses?..or, maybe like in games where the enemies drop health packs or orbs perhaps?…or maybe it is some kind of lifesteal?..hmm.

I checked my leg again to scratch the scar but it was already flattened, gone. A faint bald patch was the only evidence of a wound being there.

“I mean, I'll take it but... Yeah…. Fucking weird.”

I swiftly returned and once I got back to the room, everything overall felt.…safer. The thickness in the air had lifted, in a sense.

Like when a room is stuffy and a window is opened, bringing a wave of fresh cool air.

I received a super big, long, hug from a distressed Marri, who was on the verge of bursting out of the room after hearing my distant altercation. I comforted her and let her know everything was going to be okay, and giving her a short explanation of what had happened and also how our escape route was looking clear. I made sure to be clear we’d have to go past the horrors of the north hallway and what she should expect.

“That’s so horrible….those poor people and the mothers…the babies….” She was tearing up looking down at Lone and I moved over to check out the window.

"Yeah it's beyond messed up..But we can do this."

There were still plumes and pillars of smoke littering the sky in all directions. It was overwhelming and a few silent droplets slipped down my face as I imagined how so many families or friends were most likely being devastated. I dared to even question if this was happening everywhere, but deep down I already knew that answer..

And it made our situation so heartbreaking, especially since we had just become parents so recently. I always tried to see the positives in life, but right now the future looked bleak. Just the thought of if Marri had become a body in that hallway..if Lone had-…..I couldn’t bear the thought…if something like that ever happened..

I’d burn this world to ash.

But we had come this far, in our most vulnerable time, we had survived.

We can do more.

I turned to face her and smiled resolutely.

“We can do this, Marri. We’ve come so far already, we just need to keep going and we’ll make it. I know we’ll be ok.”

She smiled back and nodded.

We decided to hunker down again for the night and make our move the next day, at sunrise, considering the light was starting to dim already. I'd noticed she’d stripped the room of beddings, cushions and sheets, and had made a floor bed in the corner with a sheet tied up to make a small tent. It made for an incredibly cosy and happy place but it didn’t escape me that she may have been preparing to stay here for a longer time.

In case perhaps, I hadn’t made it back...

That’s my girl.

You make sure you both keep going no matter what.

He's your priority from now on.

...

..

.