"Shit."
The small patient room smelled heavily of iron, antiseptic, and fresh blood. Outside the thick oak door, the muffled, frantic thumps and hollow screeches of the bone-thralls echoed down the tiled hospital corridor, but for the moment, the reinforced door held firm.
James quickly stepped across the slick floorboards, gripping his Wind-attuned Tommy Gun tightly in his right hand while using his shoulder to yank the heavy linen window curtains shut. The sudden darkness closed in, lit only by the faint, eerie crimson glow emanating from the blood locks I was weaving.
I brought my remaining left hand to my lips, biting down hard on my thumb with my sharp fangs. Squeezing out a fresh stream of arterial vampire blood, I raised my palm against the doorframe and channeled my Blood Manipulation. The crimson fluid surged over the iron latch, rapidly crystallizing into a dense, rock-hard deadbolt that sealed us in completely.
Chris collapsed against a metal gurney, gasping for air, while James slumped against the wall with his weapon resting on his knees. They immediately began speaking in hushed, somber tones, gesturing toward the door and whispering quietly to one another… completely oblivious to the fact that my eardrums had fully regenerated when I blasted the thralls outside.
I leaned back against the closed door, letting out a long, quiet breath.
"Don't worry, guys, I'm not deaf anymore. My healing fixed my ears." I said, my voice cutting cleanly through their quiet murmurs.
The entire room froze.
Aisha's eyes went wide, her mouth agape as she stared at me. Chris blinked in total disbelief, and James let out a breathless, exhausted chuckle. Before I could even adjust the strap of my shotgun, Aisha threw her arms around my neck, burying her face straight into the thick canvas of my cloak.
"Eirene! You can hear us! I thought... I thought we were completely lost out there! And Hugh... Hugh is..." she sobbed, her whole body trembling as heavy tears soaked into the fabric over my chest.
I gently patted her back with my single hand, letting her vent the sheer, crushing terror she had been holding in since the Town Hall collapsed.
James stared down at his blood-stained knuckles, his expression darkening into a grim, reflective mask.
"Back at the rubble... the moment Hugh looked at that wound from Lukreia, he knew he was done for. The infection spreads too fast. But instead of sitting there waiting to turn into a monster and tear us apart from the inside, he chose our survival."
James took a sharp breath, looking up at me with a heavy, respectful gaze.
"He told us his final words while you were clearing the crawlspace. He said that a man doesn't get to choose how he enters this world, but he damn well gets to choose how he leaves it. He calculated that his one life was a cheap trade if it meant giving the rest of us a fighting chance to get out of that deathtrap. He said he was going to run into the open, scream as loud as he could, and draw every single winged bastard in the district away from our position so we could make a break for the hospital." James continued softly.
Aisha wiped her face against her sleeve, stepping back from my cloak with red, tear-streaked eyes. She looked down at my left hip, where the leather scabbard Hugh had bound to my waist hung securely.
"When Hugh approached you right before he kicked the wall open, Eirene... he knew you couldn't hear him, He strapped his sword to your waist and told us to tell you... 'Keep it. Use it to protect the kid and get everyone out of this hellhole alive.'" Aisha whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.
I lowered my hand to the hilt of Hugh's arming sword, my fingers brushing against the worn leather wrapping of the grip.
"Hugh... you racist, serial-killing bastard," I thought, a strange, bitter wave of respect mixing with the dark absurdity of it all.
Back in the Dodorant Citadel, Hugh was a brutal, hardened criminal with a dark past that made normal men shudder. Yet when the world descended into absolute horror, he didn't die as a mindless monster or a cowardly victim. In his final thirty seconds of humanity, he operated on pure, unadulterated philosophy.
"He did his job, He bought us our lives. We aren't going to waste his sacrifice." I said quietly, my thumb tracing the pommel of his blade.
"Then we make sure his death counts, Because if we die in this filthy hospital room, Hugh died for nothing." James muttered, his jaw set as he checked the magazine of his Tommy gun.
A loud, violent CRACK suddenly rattled the heavy wooden door, instantly killing the conversation.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The impacts came in rapid, erratic thuds… not the mindless thrashing of a couple of isolated thralls, but the dense, heavy weight of an entire mass pressing against the wood. The blood-crystal seal I had placed over the frame creaked under the immense pressure, small hairline fractures webbing through the hardened crimson material.
A cold, familiar dread settled in my chest as I listened to the frantic screeching outside.
Of course. A hospital.
Back on Earth, in every zombie film or apocalyptic lore I had ever consumed in my past life, the hospital was always Ground Zero. It was the absolute worst place to seek shelter during the initial hours of a biological outbreak. The moment people started exhibiting symptoms… fever, violent spasms, erratic behavior… their families brought them straight to the emergency wards. They collapsed in the waiting rooms, turned in the crowded corridors, and slaughtered the staff, converting entire medical centers into dense, multi-story incubators for the infected.
We had sprinted into this building blindly out of sheer panic, but we had effectively walked straight into the highest concentration of thralls in the entire district. We were sitting in a death trap. If the horde broke through that doorway, they would devour us down to the bone in seconds.
"We can't hold this room, Staying here is suicide. We're surrounded on all sides." I said, my voice sharp and cutting through the panic.
"The door is completely blocked! If we open that, they'll flood in!" Aisha squeaked, backing toward the far wall as the wooden panels groaned again.
"Which leaves us with the same problem as the janitor's closet back at the Town Hall and the blood dome, we're trapped in a small, windowless perception of safety. So what about the window?"
I turned toward the heavy fabric drapes covering the exterior glass.
"Chris, check the window! See what's waiting on the street side!"
Chris immediately stepped over, grabbing the edge of the thick curtain and yanking it open to inspect the courtyard below.
The moment the glass was exposed, everyone gasped.
Plastered directly against the outer pane were three horrifying, grey-skinned thralls, their bloody faces squished against the glass, their tongues literally licking the blood-smeared surface. Behind them, dozens of winged, skeletal horrors were perching on the window ledges and hovering in the open air outside. The moment they saw Chris through the glass, they began violently slamming their calcified elbows and heavy fists directly against the frame.
SPIDER-CRACK!
Long, spiderweb fissures instantly rippled across the thick window pane.
"They're going to break through! We can't go out the window! The courtyard is full of those winged bastards!"
There was no alternative left. No side tunnels, no vents, no windows. The only way out was straight through the front door.
I unslung my Death Chant shotgun, racking the heavy slide against my hip with a sharp, metallic CLACK.
"Change of plans, we push through the hallway. Get your firearms ready right now!"
I turned my gaze straight to Aisha and James, eyeing the enchanted Death Chant Tommy guns gripped tightly in their hands.
"James, Aisha! You take the left and right flanks the second I blow this door open! Full automatic fire! Don't conserve ammo, don't aim for the chest… sweep their knees and crush their skulls! We breach, we clear a path to the main stairwell, and we do not stop running for anything!"