Episode 41: Dark Medicine

Through the darkness, Amy and Desiree heard a strange squishy thud, and then a grunt.

“That wasn’t the door,” Hunter said as he rose to his feet.

“Oh, good.” Amy scoffed and held on to Desiree. “The alien can’t see in the dark.” Desiree giggled softly.

“Come on,” Hunter grunted. “It’s these damn bodies. You can’t see in both the dark and the light at once.”

“Well then maybe you should switch over,” Desiree chided weakly.

“Oh, I suppose it’s that easy for you, is it?” The alien yelped back at them.

“Hell no,” Desiree said. “But I’m not expected to ‘minimize casualty,’ now am I?”

“Not by your nature,” Hunter growled. “But you’re going to help me.”

Amy pulled Desiree closer to her, to prop her up more easily. She now had her hand just beneath her best friend’s left breast so that she would be the first to know when Desiree stopped breathing. Desiree didn’t mind the hand at all. “That tickles,” she whispered quickly to Amy. Amy grinned and stifled a chuckle.

“He’s right, though, Desiree. We have to help him out.”

“Well, okay. But I’m still going to mock him.”

“Oh, nothing wrong with that,” Amy grinned. The two had now advanced slowly, so as not to run into any walls, to Hunter and the general area of the door. Amy groped for the doorknob with her free right hand, and after a moment pushed the door open. The two of them limped forward into the hall. Hunter grabbed onto Desiree’s shoulder to follow. They paused and looked in all directions.

“It’s fucking dark,” Desiree said. Hunter and Amy both slowly nodded in agreement.

“How are we going to get down?” Amy asked, looking towards where she thought Hunter was.

“Your gun flashed light, didn’t it?” Desiree offered.

“That’s a very dangerous way to see,” Hunter said. “I could accidentally vaporize the staircase.”

“Not if you fire it at us,” Amy said suddenly.

“Wait, what?” Hunter asked.

“It’s programmed not to harm any living flesh, isn’t it?” She asked. She barely hesitated, but Desiree jumped in to complete the explanation.

“So it should just hit us and do nothing but light up the room!”

Hunter stared at them, his eyes adapted enough now to the darkness to see their silhouettes. They looked back at him, with a slightly lower amount of adaptation. After a moment, he opened his mouth to speak.

“You goddamned brilliant humans!” He cried happily. “I would have just sat here for the twenty minutes it would have taken me to reshape my eyes that finely, but your non-linear thinking just… solves it instantly! I love you!” He giggled.

“Fire at me,” Amy said as he raised the weapon. Desiree spun her head to stare at her. Amy smiled at her, though the injured woman couldn’t see it. “I’m not ready to risk him hitting part of you that’s already dead.” Desiree smiled faintly.

“You’re amazing,” she said quietly.

“You’re my best friend. You’re my soul mate.”

Hunter shook his head. Soul mate was a term that had always made him feel iffy. He fired the gun at Amy, and the hallway lit up for a few seconds.

“That felt really good,” Amy said happily after it got dark again.

“I could feel that warmth from here,” Desiree added.

“You should market that thing to lonely women,” Amy called back to Hunter. “Give us another flash, and let’s start heading down.” He did, and they started moving down the stairs.

* * *

Nole cried out when Fiona bit his shoulder, from pain and from love. The scream slowly fizzled out as she chewed, and as she ripped away from him, he fell. Camron erupted into a guttural growl, his hands clenching into fists.

To everyone’s surprise, Fiona stopped chewing when Nole hit the ground. She turned her head slowly and awkwardly to stare at his body. The room froze as she seemed to kneel down, her eyes seemed to soften…

And Nole’s eyes opened. He scrambled to his feet. There was a moment, where he and Fiona seemed to stare at each other…

And he turned and hissed at everyone in the room. Nole and Fiona shambled forward.

The lights went out. Nole and Fiona grunted shortly, then moaned a hiss together. No one could see them advancing.

There was a scrambling of feet. Joseph felt a crushing blow to the back of his head-and he was unconscious. Andy yelped as he felt a similar blow, and crumpled to the ground. Nurse Lotus heard them, and called out to the darkness, “What happened?”

Silence responded, and then she heard the gentlest voice she had ever heard. “I’m sorry,” Dr. Mabus said to her softly, just before he knocked her unconscious with the butt of Joseph’s rifle.

* * *

Darkness. Total darkness. Pain. Echoes…

Oh, ow. Oh, that really hurt.

Andy opened his eyes, to the bright triage room. He shielded them instinctively. He stood up, slowly remembering where he was, already ready to run. He allowed his eyes to shift to where they could handle the light.

There was no one there. He was completely alone. The power was back on. He rubbed the back of his head, and found a highly sensitive bump. He groaned.

In the center of the room, Andy recognized blood stains. From… stomach-wound-girl and wolf-boy, he recalled. He turned. Where the Nurse had been, there was a small pool. Then there was a thin trail of blood, along where she dragged herself and stopping near the other pools. On his other side, there was a very small spattering of blood on the ground where the angry man with the rifle had stood. Andy turned to where the Mexican boy… Mario? had fallen. There was a horrible mess of blood, and a small spattering of brains, but no corpse.

He was the only body in the room. And he was alive. He was having trouble deciding whether or not this was good news. He also debated whether the lights being on again was good news. That, he decided, was better. At least he stood a chance of running without hitting anything.

Eventually he began to walk. The stench of blood in that room was overpowering, and not for the first time he was noticing the stains on the walls and ceiling from the initial cleansing of the hospital. He shuddered and quickly went up the stairs.

There was still no one in sight, but all the lights were still on too. He was shivering now, and the throbbing at the back of his head was getting worse. He shoved open a door, and jumped back yelping.

There was nothing inside. At least, nothing he could see. It was dark. He jumped in and flipped on the light, then jumped back yelping again. There was still nothing inside. He sighed in relief, and stepped back. He tried the room directly across from that one in exactly the same manner. Still nothing. He began working his way down the hall, falling into a rhythm of pushing, yelping, jumping, jumping, flipping, yelping, jumping, sighing, advancing. He got all the way down that hall, around the corner, and to the next corner.

When he turned the next corner, a wild-eyed man pointed a silvery gun at him and fired. A wonderful, familiar, warm sensation filled his body, temporarily alleviating his fear. When the wild-eyed man lowered his gun sighing in relief, the sensation vanished, and Andy became terrified again.

“Oh, good. You’re safe.” Hunter said quickly. “Get behind me.” Behind him, Desiree and Amy, the latter still holding up the former, smiled cautiously at Andy. Andy looked around nervously.

“Er?” he asked.

“Er? Look, just get behind me. We don’t have time for these complicated questions like ‘er’ right now.”

“Uh?” Andy couldn’t find any words. He was staring at Hunter’s gun now.

“Oh, for crying out… Amy, tell him what’s going on.” Hunter shoved past Andy, and Desiree, with her free hand, grabbed onto him and began dragging him along.

Amy turned and smiled at him, then turned and smiled at Desiree. Desiree smiled back and let go of Andy’s arm. He walked briskly beside them.

“The dead are rising from their graves,” Amy began quickly. “It is an apocalyptic situation organized by some enemy of Hunter’s people. Hunter is an alien whose mission is to minimize casualties in apocalyptic situations. He has a ray gun that vaporizes most things including the dead, but it doesn’t work on living flesh and we’re not sure about undead flesh. When we went downstairs, everyone but you was gone, and we didn’t have time to wake you up, because Hunter decided we had to go find the others. Now we’re looking for them. Oh, and for a while, the lights were off.” She smiled at him again.

“Geh?” Andy asked.

“Gun. Not kill. You, asleep. Not awake. We didn’t wake you up. Now you’re awake. Now you help us find everyone.”

“Oh.” Andy still didn’t understand, but no one was giving him a straight answer, so he gave up. His head was really bothering him anyway.

“You find anything in those rooms down here?” Hunter asked abruptly as they turned back around the corner.

“Nothing,” Andy understood that.

“All that’s left, then, is the basement.”

“Morgue seems most likely,” Amy offered.

“Nah, too likely to get attacked,” Desiree said much more strongly than Andy expected her to be able to with the way that she was being carried. “We barred off the morgue when we first moved in, remember?”

“Opposite the morgue, then,” Hunter said quickly. The four went downstairs together, back into the triage. “What happened down here, by the way?” Hunter said quickly. “I count at least four dead and one wounded.”

“Uh? Oh. Um. There was a crazy Mexican kid, Mario…”

“That’s our mystery rapist,” Hunter said happily. Andy stared at him in utter bewilderment. “Go on, then, what happened?”

“He shot the Nurse and, um, that girl. Then Lee Harvey Oswald shot him and took the little girl.” Amy and Desiree stopped moving, but Hunter was unfazed. Andy kept pace. “The Doctor came down, and the girl died, and she bit the wolf-boy, and then they came at us. Then it went dark, and then it went darker.”

“So, Oswald’s been here, eh?” Hunter chuckled, moving through the triage room at his original brisk pace. “That bastard fucks with everyone’s plans. Damn Illuminati is lucky that he didn’t stop them entirely.”

“Wait, what?” Amy asked, she and Desiree catching up. “The Illuminati?”

“It’s complicated,” Hunter pushed open the doors on top of the stairs down to the basement, “But for now, it’ll do you to consider them the bad guys. They are responsible for the zombies.”

“Well, then, they’re definitely the bad guys,” Desiree said. Hunter stopped on the first step from the top and turned to her.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then shut it as if he had thought better. He stared into Desiree’s eyes for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said, before turning and descending down the stairs. The other three followed him without further question. Andy touched the back of his head gingerly again.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and stared at the paint on the wall. It was a deathly blue, whereas the walls were a sickly green and resembled smoothed stucco. Both were arrows. The top one pointed right, and above it was written MORGUE. The lower one pointed left and beneath it was written AUTOPSIES. Hunter pointed left.

“That way,” he said quickly. The four of them turned left, turned a corner, and went through the double doors that Hunter pushed open.

Inside, there were two slab-like tables, short ends facing the doors. Strapped to the one on the left was the completely stationary body of Fiona, stripped naked and hacked to pieces. On the other one, a body writhed, growling clearly. At the navel, Doctor Mabus stood with a scalpel and a pair of tongs. As Andy, Hunter, Desiree, and Amy stood in the doorway, the Doctor lifted out some unidentifiable organ and set it gently in a scale. He glanced at the reading, scribbled it down, and went back to cutting Nole’s writhing body. Desiree swallowed her vomit.

“Jesus Christ…” Amy whispered.

“Please sit down,” Doctor Mabus said casually. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“You have t…” Hunter began to speak.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Andy screamed in interruption.

“He won’t listen,” Nurse Lotus’s voice came from the left. Andy was the first to turn, then Amy and Desiree. Hunter continued to glare at Doctor Mabus. To their left, there were two metal chairs. Tied to them were Nurse Lotus and Joseph, both of whom were awake. Joseph had a large blood stain on his upper-right-arm, and Nurse Lotus had a large mass of white bandage wrapped around her neck. A spot of red was visible on one side. Both were tied to their chairs. “He’s lost it,” Lotus said sadly. “He’s lost his mind.” Joseph nodded in agreement.

“Run,” he growled.

“Doctor, you have to stop this now.” Hunter said.

“No.” Doctor Mabus said, not looking up from his incisions. “I’m researching.”

“You have to shut down his brain. He’s going to kill everyone in here.”

“The Doctor will continue what he’s doing,” a bitter voice said from the darkness beyond the tables. Camron stepped forward, Joseph’s rifle leveled at Hunter’s head.

“Oh, fuck,” Hunter groaned and raised his hands. Amy and Desiree followed suit. Andy stared around dumbly.

“You should have run,” Joseph growled at them.