“Now that is useful info,” Lloyd muttered.
We slipped silently through the darkening day, hurrying through the deepening shadows as we stayed low and scurried across the ground. Lloyd reached the doors first. He didn’t hesitate, as I would have, before plunging into the dark interior. Bret followed swiftly behind but Jenna balked slightly before disappearing after them.
I took a deep breath and plunged forward, half afraid that something was going to snag me as soon as I stepped inside. Instead, I entered a world of utter chaos and destruction. I skid to a halt behind Bret; the squeak of my sneakers on the linoleum floor as loud as a gunshot in the eerily silent hall. I winced involuntarily, bracing myself for something to come rushing at us out of the dark. Nothing moved, nothing stirred; there was nothing left to make a sound.
“What the hell?” Jenna whispered.
The hall was a mess. There didn’t appear to be one inch of floor that wasn’t littered with some type of debris. Papers, medical tools, clothes, blankets, mattresses, pillows, and so many other numerous things covered the floor that it was hard to differentiate one from another. It looked as if a bomb had gone off, but I knew it was something far worse and far more sinister.
“My God,” Jenna breathed her hand flying to her mouth as she came to the same sickening realization that I just had.
It wasn’t a bomb that had gone off in here, but a feeding frenzy that had left the halls devoid of any life, devoid of any hope.
“Let’s get this over with, quickly.” Lloyd’s words made sense, but no one moved.
I didn’t want to move through the blood that splattered the walls and floor, didn’t want to pick my way through the discarded clothing; didn’t want to touch the remnants of the dead. I wanted to close my eyes and block out everything before me, but it was now seared permanently into my mind. I did not want to hear the resounding screams that had once filled this hall, but they echoed through my mind. I was shaking as I took a step back. The blood, the horror, the massacre that had occurred here nearly drove me to my knees beneath the crushing weight of despair that was trying to consume me.
The pain. Remnants of it lingered on the blood streaked walls. Remnants of it pulsed with an answering rhythm in the very marrow of my bones. The horrendous agony of what these people had experienced would forever be absorbed into the sterile white walls of this institution. The place felt haunted, as if the lost souls were trapped here. Forever ensnared within the last horrifying moments of their lives. I could feel their lost souls brushing against me; feel their misery and torment as they remained caged within this awful place. For eternity. They’d had no chance, no hope of escaping. Whatever had swept through here had been rapid and it had been devastating. And it had relished in hurting them.
Almost as bad as the lingering agony, and lost souls, was the smell. The copper tang of blood filled the hall; it was potent within my nostrils and on my tongue. There was something rotting somewhere, multiple something’s probably, multiple things that I did not want to see. Jenna was so pale that the blue veins in her eyelids were sharply visible. Her lips were nearly the same color as her face as they trembled; her eyes were filled with unshed tears.
Lloyd had started to move, but his steps were hesitant, weary. Bret followed behind but Jenna and I hung back for a moment. We had not come through the front door; these rooms all belonged to patients. These doors held endless possibilities, and none of them were good. It was like a funhouse, but this one was full of horrors straight from hell.
Slowly we began to follow Bret and Lloyd down the hall. I tried to keep my gaze focused ahead, but every once in awhile it would stray into one of the rooms. So far they all appeared empty, devoid of all human remains, but judging by the increasing rancid smell I didn’t think it was going to stay that way. The three of them were lucky enough to be able to pull their shirts up over their noses, I wasn’t so lucky. I knew I sure as hell didn’t smell good right now, but I definitely smelled better than this damn place and I definitely preferred my own odor over the hospitals right now.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Jenna whispered.
“There’s no going back now.”
Bret’s tone of voice was far harsher than normal, tension radiated off of him; there was a bleakness in his eyes that I despised. Jenna recoiled slightly, wounded by his cold attitude and demeanor. I wanted to reach out to her, to soothe her, but I could barely keep the gun in my shaking hand let alone comfort someone. A strange buzzing reached my ears; I frowned as Lloyd stopped suddenly. His face turned three shades of green as he gaped into the room on his right. His hand trembled as he reached forward and pulled the door shut. I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to see what was in that room as I now understood the source of the buzzing.
Flies.
“Please don’t let us find the maternity ward,” Jenna whispered.
Bile rose up my throat; I gagged softly but somehow managed to keep it suppressed. My hands were shaking. My palms were so sweaty that I was beginning to fear I would not be able to keep hold of my gun if something did attack us. The thought of stumbling across innocent babies was atrocious; I wouldn’t be able to handle it. For the first time I realized that there were children out there, completely defenseless children that had died when The Freezing had occurred, and not all of their deaths had resulted at the hands of the aliens. Some of them had occurred because there had been no one left to care for them, no one left to feed, bathe, and change them. They had been alone, frightened, and unable to defend themselves against the monsters that had taken our world from us.
A sob lodged in my throat, I blinked back the tears that clogged my eyes. I hadn’t thought of the defenseless before. There hadn’t been time through the all consuming need to survive. There hadn’t been time through my own grief and loss. Now, I could not shake the thought, or the fury that came boiling up with it. The aliens would be made to pay, one way or another, I would help find a way to make them pay for everything they’d done, and everyone they’d hurt.
I just didn’t know how, or where, to start. As long as we stayed alive there was always hope, always a chance that we would one day destroy them as surely as they were destroying us. We just couldn’t let them succeed first.
Lloyd took a turn in the hall, going in low and fast as he moved swiftly to the other side. He nodded to Bret before sweeping further down the hall. We moved more rapidly through the hospital, driven swiftly on by the hollow emptiness and desolation surrounding us.