Returning to our floor 3 starting point, I heard the woman gasp as she covered her face in repulsion to the stench of rotting bodies. The little girl whimpered, screwing her face and started to complain with fear, but the woman shushed her and pulled her closer to cover her eyes from the source.
Shit I forgot to give them a heads up..
I felt like a twat for not thinking to warn them, but the rumbling of approaching footsteps and inhuman wails kind of took precedence.
Fuck it, they'll survive!
We needed to get out of there, swiftly.
We navigated down the stairwell quickly, but carefully, our breathing and footsteps oddly deafening in the suffocating darkness, and then adding that to the stress-fear cocktail was the occasional snuffle or babble from Lone; my teeth were constantly clenched with anticipation, even though it was only going to be less than 60 seconds before we in theory would reach the exit. We made it past floor level 2, then floor level 1, and then finally to the ground floor where right in front of us we could see the emergency push-to-exit door that would take us out of here.
Praise health and safety regulations!!
I wasted no time pushing it open and scouting around before waving everyone to join me and, after the last person was out, I carefully put a brick in the doorway to stop the door from fully shutting. There were no evident footsteps following us down the stairwell, so it seemed like whatever residents we had disturbed, had either stayed up there or in the worse case were smart enough to tiptoe towards us.
Hopefully bloody not.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with cool, refreshing oxygen an smiling in premature relief.
We’re outside! We made it! HELL FUCKING YEAH!
The crisp, cool air was very welcome and the sun's warmth on my skin felt fantastic, although I looked up at the sky and could see very dark clouds in the distance coming in fast.
Typical. Looks like rain-AGH Never-pissing-mind that. Let's not stay here for long, don’t want to become one of those typical twatto's you get in movies that dawdle and die!
Our surroundings were other hospital buildings, with trees towering behind those buildings and we had come out on the north side of the maternity ward and going by the sign I’d located, our car park was on the opposite south side. The route to the car park was on our left.
“Okay.” I whispered to the group. “Our car should be parked in the B car park which is on the other side of the ward. So we’ll go left here and then move onwards and look for the next sign.” I pointed to the sign that had given me our first direction.
We'd tried to recall where we’d parked from the day we arrived, but neither of us simply couldn’t remember...so we'd have to wing it a little.
“Once we get to the car, you are welcome to come with us if you need a ride?” Marri hushly offered to the lady and the little girl.
“Thank you ever so much. Yes please. I don’t drive myself, but my sist….” The ladies whispers trailed off, her eyes glanced at the little girl before looking down. "..Y-yes that would be very much appreciated. Thank you kindly."
Ah shit..
Marri gently placed a hand on her arm and gave her a comforting smile. I gave a short node before one final quick check of my surroundings then turned back to them all and continued speaking in a hushed voice.
“Okay, let’s move on quickly. We need to carefully watch around corners so keep a few steps back whilst I check them and I’ll wave you on when it is okay. Please keep an eye out behind us and be prepared to run.”
Kindly, my brain gave me a flashback warning of the last corner I peeked around as I moved up to the left corner and I peeked around..
Phew, all clear.
Moving up to the next corner, I checked again carefully…It looked all clear as well..Except for the blood splatter marks, of course, from where we’d thrown the three individual bulging-eye, grinning-nightmares we had fought so far..And of course the bodies are gone!..Their corpses weren’t anywhere to be seen either, even though they definitely would have died…right?..
...
I’ll be on extra lookout for something that would drag monster corpses away.
I spotted the sign for the B Car park pointing us to the building in front, so I somewhat recklessly sped up and followed the path as it trailed down the right side of the building. Our way forward was a long walkway, with the right side framed by a fence holding a thick wooded area and the left being the building itself, and, even though we were so close, I paused with momemtary relutance as it was quite the perfect shelter for an ambush..But we had no time for timidness; the facts were it was a straight walkway and it looked clear, so we briskly walked forwards and mercifully made it without incidnt to the next corner.
And once we rounded that corner…
We could see the lines of the car park.
We’ve actually made it! Oh thank fuck!
I turned around to grin at my companions but foreign movement caught my full attention behind them. Deeply alert, I stretched my neck to look, and my heart nearly gave us as it skipped a dozen beats and tried to jump out of my ribcage when I saw…IT.
Holy...shit!!!
There was an abnormally large head poking out from behind the corner we had just come from and it had pupil-less white eyes, no visible hair, a bulbous nose, large ears and a dislocated jaw that hung low ,stretching its drooling mouth as if it was silently screaming…But the worst thing was that it was abnormally high up in the air, towering past the second story window.
I felt my blood drain from fear.
The thing was rythmically jerking its large head around, making its dislocated lower jaw flap grotesquely each time. I flickered my eyes towards Marri’s concerned face as I put my hand up with a STOP sign and mouthed DON’T MOVE as I put a finger to my lips to signal for silence. I was making a split second gamble based on utterly fucking random instincts that this thing couldn’t see very well, and that the breeze was blowing in our direction so maybe it wouldn't smell us.
The last thing we should do is make sudden movements or loud noises..If that fucking thing takes one step towards us though-
It slowly moved a limb around the corner and my heart fucking plummeted into the ground.
NONO SHIT-
It was an absurdly huge limb, like a stick insect, and it was attached to a body which you could consider human, but was warped, elongated, and had a joint in the middle of it where you would expect a normal human's sternum to be. It barely made any noise as it crept out into full view, constantly twitching its hunched head, left, right, left, right, and its oily wrinkled skin was a greyish white, taught against its skeletal frame. It took one step towards us and I very nearly fucked it all to hell and yelled out RUN..but I somehow managed to keep it together and wait.
WAIT, wait..It hasn't spotted us-
And my hesitation paid off as a distant hollering noise grabbed its attention. It jolted its head away from us and emitted a deep rumbling groan as it carefully moved back round the corner and finally, out of sight. We stood there for a few very long seconds in complete silence, before I silently waved them to continue, one soiled pants heavier, and turned around to enter the B car park.
What the fucking hell could we do against something like that? Run and hope it isn’t fast?
Inside my mind, a new core fear had been formed… the thing had been at least 6 metres tall.
Fucking..Giraffe size tall..I bloody hope there are not more of those things..What kind of demonic shit have people had to deal with out here?!
The car park was very large, but eerily only had 5 cars in it. A fact that instantly caused panic and fear to rise in my throat, thinking ours was gone, until I started to thank my lucky stars as I quickly spotted our own vehicle which was smack bang in the middle, even though I was sure it was a lot closer. The whole car park was framd by a row of trees and when we first arrived, we had entered the hospital from the front main entrance, but this time we would be leaving from the back of the carpark. We moved quickly towards it and I was getting extremely excited yet nervous about whether it still had any charge left in it, or if some voodoo dissappearing shit had happened to the electronics; I had no choice but to hope for the best..
Frantically clicking the open button whilst getting closer, I tried the old trick of putting the key closer to your skull and nearly cried with joy when I saw the yellow lights flash to signal it unlocked the car. It was a large, brand new electric SUV, with tinted windows, comfy seats, tons of space for the new baby and for myself as I was a bit of a tall lad, just shy of 2 metres.
Ample legroom and safe, comfy seats, here we come!
We were almost fully sprinting by the time we reached the car and we all yanked open the doors and jumped inside, me in the driver, Marri in the back with Lone, the lady in the front and the little girl in behind me. I immediately pressed the start button and grinned as I saw the dashboard light up like a christmas tree and showed me it had full charge, which was a bit confusing as we must have used some on the journey here, but at this point I didn't care much.
“PHEW! OKAY!” I breathed out as I locked the doors and hit the button to power it back off. “That was scary as FF-uhhhhell, but we made it! We really made it! Oh man, this feeeeeeels amazing!” Even given the situation, my social manners kicked in at the presence of 'guests', but this success felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
“Okay, phew, so, I think before we head off, we should quickly introduce ourselves and I'll also briefly explain what we’ve experienced so far, because, although I would love nothing more than to book it out of here, I think it's worth taking a few minues just to assess this insane situation.” I pointed to my gloves.
“Aaaand, I think we should have some snacks, since you two look like you could use something to eat and drink...As do I actually..Hm." I was indeed feeling unusually peckish, so, whilst keeping a careful eye out, we took a bit of time having a drink and some food whilst we introduced ourselves and shared stories.
Their names were Erza, who was the woman, and Lyra, who was the little girl who was 8 years old. Immediately by the way they spoke, I could tell that they were kind hearted, genuinely good people. Erza was tanned with blue eyes that were slightly higher than typical and slightly slanted and overall she looked possibly of Syrian heritage with dark brown hair that was a bit matted but otherwise would have been wavy. She was noticeably pretty, not that it mattered to me much, and Lyra looked very similar but with dark blonde hair. I had originally thought she was her daughter but it turned out this was not the case..
Lyra was Erza’s Niece and her Mother worked at the Ward as a Maternity nurse so she would babysit when she did night shifts. I didn’t ask right away where she was for obvious reasons, but Erza explained that they had made their way to the hospital after this whole nightmare started happening. They lived a 30 minute walk away and after the power had gone out, things started going crazy. She said she had heard a few fights and people were starting to panic as all access to phones or the internet was completely gone everywhere. But it wasn’t just access, they also explained that most electronic devices had just disappeared or stopped functioning.
I'd already checked, but the radio was completely dead, weirdly not even static on the FM/AM bands. I’d also tried to get something, anything, on the car infotainment system, but it found nothing and even the gps signal was showing offline.
Once Erza and Lyra had arrived at the hospital, they found it was utter chaos and she had almost turned back when she heard the horrific noises just like we had. They had entered the building opposite, wading through the frantic patients and staff that were all fleeing, and tried to make their way to the Maternity Ward office, but hadn’t been able to get across the walkway due to the chaos and people warning them to run back the other way. They were swept up in the crowd and ended up barricading themselves in a staff kitchen area with some of the remaining staff members who spoke about horrific things, things, she didn’t go into detail about..but she said it was hellish, graphic and extremely violent..They ended up getting stuck in this room over the next few days, whilst the others slowly broke away and went off on their own missions to get back home, look for others, or they were staff trying to return to their posts or patients…But not a single one ever returned. Erza had dared to venture out in the beginnning, but had witnessed firsthand the nightmares stalking the corridors and quickly returned, deciding to wait for either Lyra’s mum or any sign of the authorities..After that, they stayed a couple more days until only they remained, but they didn’t have any food or water at this point so she was faced with a horrible decision...
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
They would either starve or they would have to flee and risk being slaughtered.
They ended up leaving the same morning we had and it hadn’t taken long until she was attacked by one of the grinning, bulging-eye nightmares whilst they attempted to get down the closest stairwel, and she had managed to fend it off and send it tumbling down the stairwell after blasting it with a lighter and can of fun-breeze air freshener, but the commotion had attracted more of them and they could hear something terrible coming up the stairs, so they had to backtrack and rush down the corridor to the Maternity Ward in desperation, which was where we saw them cornered by the Janky nightmare..
After she had finished her story, I gave them a very brief rundown of our experience in the room and how we hadn’t seen a single human soul apart from them since it all began..not much else needed to be said, and I didn't see the point in letting them know about some of the darker things I'd witnessed..or done.
We were interupted by Lone making chomping noises, the classic sign for “gimme some food right now parents or else” so Marri got him settled feeding. The sight of her nurturing him made me grin and feel happy, probably due to some primitive instinct in our DNA that helps us keep our babies nourished. I felt even more resolved to do whatever it took to give them food, shelter and safety; the thought made me glance at Erza in paranoia, wondering if she'd try anything to steal my car or remaining supplies..
Psch, I don't think so..just being paranoid.
I then tried to red pill them and share my theories around how we could grow stronger like in video games, if we killed the creatures.
“So this will sound very far-fetched but Marri has experienced extremely similar things without us discussing them, right Marri?”
She nodded.
“Right..well I'll just cut to the chase. I've had fight a few of these monsters and each time I go to sleep afterwards, I find myself in this very vivid dream where there are symbols and ‘choices’ that need to be made.”
“Sorry..but are you trying to suggest that something religious is occurring?” Erza gave me a puzzled look. “Or rather, what kind of symbols and choices have you witnessed?” She questioned politely but I sensed she was starting to worry I was a nutjob as her eyes briefly flicked towards the door handle.
“Ohhh, no no no. Nothing like that." I shook my head. “I don’t think it's religious. Even considering the circumstances..It..no..I don’t think there could be anything…like that…well definitely not anything such as…well you know, some kind of rapture or apocalypse.” my confidence started waning as my mind pondered on the likelihoods.
“Okay it could be, but I highly doubt it..” I scratched my head, feeling awkward.
Never really was good at explaining my ideas...
“Well, putting that aside, the symbols and tablets are like buttons that make you stronger or give you abilities. Urm, if you’ve ever read a book or played a game revolving around RPGs then it's like the skills or attributes or classes…in…those...” I blushed a little because saying it out loud sounded dumb, it sounded ridiculous. But the evidence was there and I didn't know how else to articulate it.
“Riiiight…urm.” She looked sideways at Marri, seeking confirmation, possibly both to my exotic theory and my sanity.
To which Marri responded with a shrug and sympathetic nod. "As weird as is sounds, I've also seen it all."
“I..See. And you say you’ve both experienced these ‘vivid dreams’? What ‘options’ have you both elected for? And what ‘abilities’ have you acquired? Can you demonstrate any of them to me?” She was definitely sceptical, but she glanced at my equipped hands and appeared to have an internal voice reminding her she’d seen shimmering smoke turn into my gauntlets.
“Well, I don’t think we know how to yet, sorry..So far, for myself, I’ve seen something that I think is regeneration and physical combat, but it isn’t very clear. It is all very vague and information provided is extremely limited…But!”
I held up my hands and waved them.
“The fact that these appeared, is strikingly similar to a typical interaction where you get item drops after you…uhh..’defeat’ an opponent.” I pursed my lips.
She winced with confusion.
This is a bit frustrating. How do you explain obscure RPG mechanics that have suddenly appeared in reality?
“Have you ever played any games where you level up or fight things to get stronger?” I was getting desperate.
She shook her head.
Ughh. Okay fair enough. Those games aren’t everyone's cup of tea.
“Okay nevermind, I suppose it doesn’t matter as it’s not completely the same-”
Screw it, let's focus on the useful info.
“-but in summary we know that there are nightmares, monsters, creatures, however you want to call them, and we've seen how after I killed one-”
I saw her eyes shift nervously when I said ‘killed’.
“-the shimmering smoke materialised these gloves.”
“And there was one other experience where I was wounded during a fight and the ‘shimmer’ flew into my face and made me cough out black crap, but my wounds healed way beyond what is possible. So for now the ‘shimmer’ could be considered an item drop, or regenerative, or overall some 'reward' type mechanism? And at the end of the day, when you sleep, you get to make choices based on that day's total experience or points gained..Perhaps..”
Looking out the window, her face was scrunched tight like someone performing complex mathematical equations on condensed matter physics. I scratched the corner of my mouth waiting for her to finish her calculations, and waited for a response.
And here I was hoping for some useful information back..bollocks..
After a few moments of silence, she blew out air and deflated like a balloon. “My word…it’s all just too bizarre.”
You’ll experience this sooner or later I mentally answered.
“But I shan’t dwell on it further considering the situation, rather, may we please kindly ask for a lift back to our home? Perhaps we’ll hopefully be safe enough to contemplate our next moves." Erza’s voice was polite and sincere, which was well appreciated since manners cost nothing and if you were polite you would automatically earn yourself brownie points with me.
I smiled and nodded. “Sure thing, no problem. I know it’s absolutely mental and maybe I’m wrong, but let's get out of here and see how things go..Maybe we'll find some police or army and get some proper answers.”
I pushed the start button of the car with the intention of setting off and the dashboard lit up, running it's usual pre-checks.
“Okay-wait.No no no…don’t do this to me…” panic evidence in my muttering words as it flickered on, and then flickered off.
Something jolted my hands, like a hefty static electric shock. I hissed and shook it off then tried again..This time the dashboard didn’t light up, but the aircon was running which was usually a sign that the system was ready to drive. Apprehensively, I twisted the switch to drive mode and pressed the accelerator.
The car started to move forward.
We all collectively breathed a sigh of relief. “Haha phew! Oh that would have ruined my day big time.."
The dashboard was broken but we were still moving, the infotainment was also dead… but we were still moving!
I was overflowing with relief and optimism, it just felt so much safer being in the car moving. Moving away from the nightmares and insanity that lurked around the hospital.
“Alright then we’re off!” I grinned. “Erza, lead the way!”
..
.
The extremely dark grey clouds slowly moved overhead, blanketing the sky and reducing visibility a significant amount even though it was probably just after midday. It had become so gloomy in fact, that the car's automatic headlights had tried but failed to come on, forcing me to drive extra carefully.
Last thing we need is to have a crash.
As Erza guided us, it was clear that there was an extremely noticeable lack of vehicles. Normally in the UK, with its small windy roads, it was usually a test of nerves and perception where you would have to overtake people parking opposite T-Junctions and on the edge of mini roundabouts, just because there was so little room for proper parking spots in estates and built up areas..But we saw perhaps 5 or 6 other cars remaining parked whilst driving down residential roads.
That isn't right. Maybe a mass evacuation really has occurred.
“Do you think there's been a mass evacuation or something?” I opened the question to the car.
“There must have been…I can’t think of where else the cars could have gone..” Marri responded, sounding deeply troubled in thought.
This is giving me the creeps.
There was also not a single soul in sight, possibly due to the miserable looking weather. Or perhaps it’s due to fucking monsters lurking around? I laughed internally at my stereotypical disposition, reflexively expecting the weather to be people’s main driver in all things corporeal.
The quietness became self explanatory as the houses we passed had various degrees of damage; some looked normal, some only had smashed windows but then some had entire chunks of walls smashed in, and then we started to reach the extremes where houses were burnt down to piles of rubble and ash. In most places it looked like a warzone, but there were a few houses that looked okayish, mainly the ones that had been clearly reinforced by the occupants; boards and other strong materials filling windows and doorways, but I hadn’t seen a single person navigating outside.
There was a sombre silence as we continued to pass clear signs of fighting and I grimaced as we passed sections of pavement heavily caked in dried brown stains..
“Take the first right after the sign for Wood of the Squirrels, then follow all the way to the end and then finally a right at the T-Junction.” Erza quietly gave me the last directions.
“Roger that..” I casually confirmed with a nod, keeping my eyes peeled for danger..or for people.
“Krrrrrchhh Over. Tally-Ho. Roger Dodger.” Marri mock-imitated me with a pilots voice.
Honestly the woman was audacious, joking at such times…But I still snorted, shaking my head, trying to stifle a laugh..Which prompted giggles from Lyra...Which then turned into laughter from Erza.
Well done Marri, well done..but still, my poor ego.
The roads were surrounded by trees and it was clearly a newbuild area; I could see construction had been ongoing as well as a site map which basically looked like a half circle fortress, but with houses. The front of the estate had two entrances and as we drove onwards, nearer to the back, I could see that there was a steep drop down toward a row of trees and then after that a motorway. The houses on the estate had barely any damage, with only a couple of houses looking ransacked but the rest looked well reinforced and occupied, in fact, the whole area was wonderful looking.
We pulled up at the end of the road and parked in the front drive of a large detached house. I got out and noticed that the side of the estate also had the ditch going down.
“Does this ditch go all the way around?” I asked Erza.
“Um, yes. I do believe it does. The Left, Bottom and right sides have a sound proofing high fence located at the top side and then at the bottom of a rather steep slope, there is a chain link fence.” She responded.
“Hmm, very cool..I was just thinking, it’s quite a unique location, on top of a hill surrounded by trees..” I mused.
“This all used to be part of a very old hospital buildings. A huge part of the area was the old hospital estate. All the trees you see were planted to protect the buildings from high winds coming in. But over time however, it has been segmented into sections of estates for housing.”
Erza had carefully scanned the front windows of the house, before moving over to the door and unlocked it whilst explaining the history of the area.
“Wow, yeah, really cool. It is a really nice place to-”
A gigantic, cosmic scale, volcanic like roar rumbled the ground and pierced the horizon and interrupted us; everyone clutched their ears and Marri crouched down protectively over lone, covering his.
The horrendous sound bellowed out for an endless 15 seconds before simmering down to faint echoes.
“FFFFFFFUucking Hell!” I exclaimed, after it finished.
Glancing over at Lyra and Erza I felt a bit bad for being uncouth.
“Excuse my language, apologies.” I bowed my head at Erza.
“N-nope. That was exactly my thoughts too…That..came from that direction, London, I believe..” Erza absentmindedly trailed off..
We were all staring in the noises direction, which, if it was London, it would also be a similar direction as to where home was, in Bracknell.
Fuck..Not sure if it's even safe to head home-
The sky started pulsing with flashes of light, accompanied with faint booming sounds which started off quietly but was escalating, like the build up of an epic thunder and lightning storm.
"Kind of looks like a warzone or something..holy hell.." I muttered out loud.
We stood there, mesmerised by the distant multi coloured flashes that lit up the clouds.
Until a bright purple white light scorched the sky.
“Ohhh No, Ohh, OHH NO! WHAT. IS. THAT!” Marri shrieked.
A dark mushroom cloud blasted up.
Shit! That can’t be a nuke surely?
We watched in stunned silence as the light started to fade out, but I started counting.
If it was a nuke, we’d certainly fucking hear it at least and that would give us an estimate of the distance.
A memory surfaced of a video I’d seen explaining how to measure the distance of sounds, like thunder and lightning.
Count the seconds.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand.
Then take the seconds and divide by 5.
…
…
121..122..123..
“I..think we should go inside now, please do come in.” Erza pleaded as she ushered Lyra into the house and beckoned Marri in.
155..156..157..158
I put my thumbs up and backed up towards the door, nodding and quickly said “Just counting distance” returning to counting the numbers under my breath.
188..189..190..191..
They went inside and I continued staring at the growing cloud. The sky had started to form thicker, bulbous clouds and was beginning to darken even further, reducing light levels alarmingly so.
244..245..246..247..248
Hmm maybe it was a building collapsing or a fuel refinery explosion. Not strong enough to-
Overhead in the distance, movement caught my eye and I squinted as I realised a layer of the thick dark clouds was being eerily blasted apart heading in our direction-
*Shhhhhhrrrrrrrrwum*
There was a sudden loud rustling in the air before it went deathly silent for a split second-
*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.*
A cataclysmic boom slammed into the sky as a secondary visible air wave raced past, tilting trees over, rattling windows and blasting dust and debris in its path, including me.
The noise was simply terrifying and it left my ears ringing and my mind reeling as I fell backwards.
I scrambled inside the house and shut the door.
...
..
.