Episode 35: Minimize Casualty

“Send her over here and let me kill her, or I’m going to shoot you, Hunter. Amy, by the time you could get over here, I’ll have had enough time to turn and cut you. Desiree, well, you aren’t even armed and I’m going to chop off your head anyway.” Corwin had a firey look in his eyes, a passion that none of the other three had ever expected to see in him. Most of the group had begun to believe that Corwin couldn’t be passionate about anything.
“I dropped my dagger in the hall,” Desiree said guiltily.
“Corwin, you don’t want to do this,” Hunter said forcibly. He was slowly raising his gun, hoping that the action would go unnoticed by Corwin. In the meantime, Amy was pushing Desiree behind her, so that Corwin would literally have to go through her to get to Desiree. She stared at Corwin with an intensity similar to that in his own eyes. Desiree looked down towards her feet sadly.
“Hunter, leave that gun at your side, or else...” Hunter gritted his teeth and raised the gun and puleld the trigger quickly three times. A moment later all four of them opened their eyes; Hunter was unharmed, and Corwin was unarmed and unharmed. He stared at his empty hands in bewilderment. Desiree and Amy stared at his empty hands in bewilderment as well. Then, Corwin looked back up and glared at Hunter. Amy did something quite similar.
“What the fuck, man?” Corwin screamed. “This isn’t over!” He turned and ran into the darkness of the hospital. Hunter sighed; Amy continued to glare at him.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” She screamed. Hunter turned and looked at her with sadder eyes than she had seen outside of fiction.
“My mission.” He said simply.
“And what is your mission?” she verged on sounding sarcastic.
“To minimize casualties.”

“All of them appeared to be one entity,” Dr. Mabus said as the descended the stairs almost calmly.
“Stop saying that,” Nole growled, still holding his stomach.
“We should’ve stopped to look at that,” Camron said to Nole.
“I said no,” Nole barked. “We should get back to the others before they send another group out to find us.”
“The doctor looked at it,” Joseph offered. “Wouldn’t be coming down if it wasn’t something he had to do up there.”
“How can four individuals be one entity?” Dr. Mabus continued, repeating himself. The others couldn’t tell if he was trying to talk to actually talk to them, or if he was just talking to himself. Either way, the conversation was rather disconcerting. “Some sort of shapeshifter, as well. A shapeshifter who can become four of himself. And if it was a human, it must have also been insane. If we did not succeed in killing it, it may return. If it isn’t dead, how can it be killed? And why would it be traveling alone? There is likely to be another one nearby.” The others tried not to stare at him in astonishment. All three of them knew that if there was another one nearby, it would be more careful than the one they had just killed. It would protect its forehead. Camron shuddered involuntarily at the thought of another one. Nole and Joseph controlled their shudder impulses.
They reached the stairwell that led to the triage lobby. They began descending that stairwell without any hesitation, just as they had with all of the others. Suddenly Nole stopped, sniffing the air. His eyes grew wide, and his mouth grew dry. He stopped holding his stomach, and he bolted down the stairs into the center of the room. The other three hesitated, but quickly followed. Dr. Mabus was the first to realize what was happening. He dashed ahead of the others, into the center of the room.
“Fiona, Fiona!” Nole wailed, his voice empty of its growl, filled with only concern. She smiled up at him, weakly.
“Nole,” she rasped.
“Fiona...”
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Dr. Mabus said, examining her abdomen. “I need... Lotus? Where is Nurse Lotus?”
“I’m right here, Doctor,” she was returning from the hallway, with several blood bags. Dr. Mabus sighed in relief when he saw her, and returned to working on Fiona.
“I could repair this wound if it weren’t losing blood so fast,” he grunted. “She must be a hemophiliac.”
“No,” Camron said sadly, looking on the scene. “No.” He shook his head. “She’s not a hemophiliac. Nole won’t stop bleeding either.”
“Or me,” Joseph suddenly noticed that his arm was still losing blood where Gacy had cut him.
“Blood’s stopped clotting,” Dr. Mabus said quietly in his detached voice. He looked up at Nurse Lotus.
“Feed the blood into her,” he ordered. She nodded and hooked a tube into Fiona’s arm. She hooked the other end into the first bag of blood and began feeding it in.
“There’s a lot of internal damage,” Doctor Mabus said suddenly. “We probably can’t save her.” He looked up at the people around; First Camron, then Joseph, then Nole, then Andy, then Nurse Lotus. “Or anyone else.”
“Nole, I...” Fiona coughed, and a small amount of blood came out.
“Fiona! Fiona, don’t die, don’t die...” She smiled up at him again. “Fiona, I love you...”
“I” cough “love you too.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen, Fiona...”
“But it’s how” cough “It is happening...”
“Fiona?
“Nole... Survive...”
“Fiona? Fiona?” He leaned down and looked into her empty eyes. “Fiona!” He howled aloud.
Doctor Mabus shut his eyes, stood up, and began to step away from the body. “Nothing to do,” he whispered. The others stepped back reverentially as well, bowing their heads.
Andy, however, only bowed his head for a brief moment. And then he remembered something.
“Doctor, the little girl’s father came,” he said suddenly. Dr. Mabus stopped bowing his head as well and turned to look at Andy.
“Lee was here?” He asked. He smiled faintly. “Well, Dinah’s safe. Dr. Ruby would be happy.”
“So, he really was Lee Harvey Os...”
“NO!” Nole’s voice erupted. Joseph had pointed his gun at Fiona, ready to fire should she rise. Nole had pounced up and swatted the gun away with his roaring cry. To Joseph’s surprise, it had gone skittering across the room, leaving him unarmed. Now, Nole faced him down, his arms from his sides as if ready to gore the man. Nole’s nostril’s flared. Joseph smiled a knowing smile.
“You have probably killed us all,” he said quietly. He raised his arms to show they were empty, took a step back, and sat down in one of the black chairs. Nole growled at him once more before turning to Fiona, who, to Nole’s twisted delight, had begun to stand.
“Fiona!” He said happily, not growling at all, perhaps even verging on whimpering.

Sounds. Not dark. The Notdark. The Notquiet.
Scent. Scent. Familiar. Good. Charming. Food. Food... Coming! Food coming! Eat, Eat, Eat!
Sound. Sound. Loud sound. Pain Sound. Happy sound? Happy pain sound? Other sound. Not like the Quiet Dark. Make new sound. Food, not food. Food cold. New food.
Other! Other self! Food? Not food. Friend.
Darker.

“To minimize casualties?” Amy asked
“Yes. My mission, and that of my race, is to minimize casualties in apocalyptic situations.”
“Apocalyptic situations?”
“Why don’t you just prevent the situations?” Desiree asked smartly. Hunter sighed.
“Because they are essential to the... I can’t tell you that,” he changed his mind mid-sentence.
“You can’t tell us that?” Amy roared. “You can’t tell us that? Is it some sort of Government Secret? A Cosmic Secret?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“It’s a secret of my government. It is a secret of the cosmos.”
“Oh, fuck off!” Amy roared. “Corwin is dangerous, and you know it! Killing him would probably have saved dozens of lives! And you couldn’t do it!”
“Hey! I wanted to! But because of my mission, my weapon is programmed not to harm any living flesh!”
“Any living flesh?” Desiree asked. “At all?”
“None.”
“Dead flesh, though?”
“Yes.”
“What about undead flesh?” Desiree looked up at him. He paused and narrowed his eyes curiously.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s great,” Amy sighed.
The room went dark.
“That’s greater,” Desiree said sardonically.
Screams erupted from far beneath them.
“And that’s greatest,” Hunter sighed. “Come on.” He bolted for the door.

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