The Hospital - 1

2806 Words
“Daddy, does Uncle Earle have to come with us?” I groan, carrying my pack to the truck, Daddy carrying his. He chuckles softly before answering, “I know he can be an annoyin’ son b***h but he’s still my brother sweetie.” He smiles, placing his bag then mine in the bed of the truck. Great! The good old, ‘he’s still my brother’ bit. I say to myself as I let out an annoyed sigh, he laughs at my actions, pulling me back into the house with him. “Make sure you have everythin’, we’re takin’ off as soon as he gets ‘er.” Daddy calls after me as I head down the hall to my room to grab my crossbow. “Where the hell is that stupid piece of s**t?” I ask myself as I look high and low for it in my messy room. Outside I hear Daddy talking to someone, his voice growing louder with volume and tone. “You got some fuckin’ nerve callin’ her that!” “What‘d you expect me to say!? She got a mouth on her just like her mother!” Earle... “I don’t even know why you even kept the stupid kid, if it was me I woulda just lef-” His sentence was cut short with the sadly familiar sound of my Daddy’s fist connecting with Earle’s face. “You son bitch.” Earle sneers before the sound of a fight breaks out. s**t. I finally found my bow under my bed, dart down the hall and run outside to found my daddy laying on the ground; blood covering his face, and Earle nowhere in sight. Tears spill out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I use my shirt to wipe the blood away from his eyes and mouth. Checking his breaking before I shake him gently, trying to bring him back to consciousness. “Daddy? Daddy, you have to get up. Come on now. Daddy!” I begin to panic when there’s no reaction from him and begin to shake him more violently, my tears dropping on his face and washing some blood off. His eyes start to flutter open before he focuses on me and smiles, blood staining his teeth. “You nearly scared me half to death!” I say smiling as more tears rolled down my checks. “Come on let’s get your ass cleaned up.” Just as I say that I felt a sharp, unbearable pain in the back of my head as I dropped to the ground. Everything going in slow motion. A small cry escaping my mouth as Daddy slips from my grasp and we both fall to the gravel driveway. I lay motionless a cool feeling washing over me as Daddy punching Earle over and over again. He rushes back to me but I can’t hear anything's he’s saying as he hovers over me, pressing his handkerchief to the wet spot on the back of my head, removing it quickly as it quickly fills with blood, my blood. I look from the red piece of cloth to my daddy before everything goes black and cold... *********************************************************************************************************************************  I wake but my eyes don’t open. I raise my hand but there’s a wire of some sort attached to it. I move my other hand, free of obstructions and bring it to my face, rubbing the sleep out of them1 before I finally crack them open, for what seems to be the first time in forever. My vision is blurry and all I see is white. White walls, a white bed, white gown, even my skin looks white. Lord, I must be in a hospital. I think to myself. I look around the room, most surfaces covered in a fine layer of dust. That’s odd and unhygienic. I remove the IV from my right arm and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My head feels a little fuzzy but I stand anyways, my legs giving out as soon as I put weight on them and my knees buckle, bringing me to the floor but I catch myself on the bedrail. I steady myself, standing to my full height as I search the room for something to wear, ‘cause this hospital gown ain’t cuttin’ it! …That’s odd, normally a nurse or something would have rushed in here because of the IV. I think as I look at the door, no one! I head towards the washroom to get a drink of water, staying under the tap for a minute before I hear something from outside my door. I looked around for something to use as a weapon; chair, wire, vase, pen. I grab the pen and hold it in front of me defensively as I slowly make my way to the door and gently press my ear against it, listening for movement or voices. I hear someone trip over something a curse before pushing whatever it was they tripped on aside. I crack the door open and find the source of the commotion. A man, mid-thirties, medium build, dressed in hospital garb like myself, except he has a very dirty bandage wrapped around his chest trying to move an empty hospital bed out of his doorway. I open the door fully, he notices right away, looking at the pen in my fist, confusion and relief wash over his face. “What’s your name?” He asks me. “Kathryne Dougherty, yours?” I ask him, tightening my grip around the pen. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He says, not making any sudden movements as he raises his hands. “That’s not the answer I was looking for.” I say sternly. “Sherriff Reginald Graves. Wanna give me a hand with this?” Fine. I walked over to Reginald and helped him move the bed. Kicking the brake up and wheeling it down the hall. “What happened over here?” I asked pointing at his stomach. “Gunshot wound.” He explains, looking down at the bandages, almost like he forgot it was there. “What about you?” “I... I can’t remember.” I say as I frown. What did happen? “Well let’s just try to get out of here first before we start playing twenty-one questions.” He jokes, nodding for me to follow him as we walk towards the exit. “Where is everyone?” I ask looking down the dark, destroyed hallway. “I don’t know, but it looks like they were in a rush.” He answers stopping at the nurses’ station and grabbing the phone as I look around, pocketing anything I think would be useful. “s**t!” He curses, slamming the receiver down. “It dead?” I ask, unwrapping a piece of gum and popping it into my mouth. “Yeah.” He nods, running a hand down his face before he starts looking through the things on the desk, finding a box of matches. “Let’s check over here.” He says as we start walking towards the doors separating hospital wings, an ominous flickering light hanging above. I got a bad feeling ‘bout this... I think as stop in front of two glass doors, and in the middle of the hallway lies a body of a woman with little to no skin on her body and blood everywhere. “Come on.” Reginald says, placing a hand on my shoulder and turning me away from the body and walking me down the hall. What-What the f**k was that?! We turn down another hall, the only light coming from the one light at the very end of the hall. Even better! “Look there’s writin’ on the door.” I point as we walked through the hall, getting closer to it. On one side of the hall there is nothing but bullet holes decorating the wall, blood splattering all along the other side. “This place looks like it’s been through hell and back.” I mumble as we reach the end of the disturbing hallway. Don’t Dead. Open Inside? What the hell does that mean!? “Don’t Open. Dead Inside.” Reginald reads. Oh! Good goin’ Kathryne! The door is chained shut, with a few planks of wood to keep it closed for good measure. What the hell are they trying to keep out or in? “What the hell does that mean?” Just as I ask, something starts to push against the door. We hear soft moans coming from the other side, almost human. Whatever’s on the other side continues to push against the door again, with more force each time. More moans escape from the door, slowly slender, bony fingers poke through the crack in the door, wiggling around trying to get more than their fingers through, it’s like they were trying to reach for us, trying to get us. “Look an elevator!” I point, looking away from the strange sight in front of us. Reginald tries to press the buttons but nothing happens. This day just keeps getting better and better, don’t it? Since the elevator is a dead-end, Reginald pushes open the door to the stairwell and just our luck, it’s pitch-black. You’ve got to be fuckin’ kidding me! “Good thing you got those matches, huh?” I say trying to lighten the mood. It seemed to work ‘cause Reginald had a smirk on his face as he lit a match. “Stay close to me.” He says as we start holding an arm out for me which I gladly take as we slowly walk down the staircase. Its smells like something died in here five times over. The smell is so bad both of us are coughing and gagging the whole way, my eyes and nose burning. Reginald has to constantly light match after match because matches are bullshit things to use as a light source. “I don’t think this is the right time to tell you, but I’m s**t scared of the dark.” I say looking at Reginald’s face in the low light, I can tell he’s trying not to laugh because he just smiles and says, “It's okay, I’m here.” As he lights the next match, we see an exit sign and push open the door. “Lord it’s bright out!” He says as we stumble out of the stairway, leaning against the door waiting to regain our sight. We head down the small set of stairs and see the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen all the Saw movies! Rows upon rows upon rows of corpses lying on the asphalt of the staff parking lot, there must be at least a few hundred or so here. “What the hell happened?!” I question aloud as we walk to the end of the hospital parking lot; Reginald turns around and nudges my arm. A helicopter and a helicopter means people, right? We start walking towards a helicopter on top of a hill just outside the hospital. It looks like they set up camp or something ‘cause there are tents and vehicles everywhere. But where is everyone? At this point, I’m just following Reginald because I’m too confused to process what is happening. We walk around and he eventually finds a bicycle with a big basket on the front and about ten yards away from the bike is a body, or should I say half a body. He reaches down to pick up the bike but a hand moves up, scaring the life out of me and I jump up. “Reg!” I yell as I grab onto his arm which causes us both to fall. He looks confused and frustrated as he glares at me, I’m too scared to talk but I point at the body which slowly begins dragging itself towards us, growling and snarling like an animal, like it’s trying to eat us! Reginald, the adult of the two of us pulls me to my feet, grabbing the bike and commanding me to sit in the basket before he pedals away from the-the, I don’t even know what that was, the hospital getting smaller and smaller as Reg rides off.   *** “Where are we goin’?” I ask extremely bored sitting in the basket, “My ass is getting’ numb!” I complain from sitting like this for so long. “To my house.” He explains as we ride up a hill, large colonial houses coming into view. “We’re here.” He says stopping in front of a nice white house, I quickly hop out, stretching my legs as he throws the bike on the grass and runs up the porch steps and into the house. I quietly follow as he runs through the house, calling a woman’s name, Irene. “Irene. Irene!” He calls, looking everywhere, every room and nook and cranny, calling out Irene and now Clyde. “Clyde! CLYDE! IRENE!! CLYDE!!” I just stood in the doorway watching him lose his grip, he fell to the hardwood floor of the living room crying for who I assumed to be his wife and son; who were no longer here and it looks like they haven’t been here for a while. I sit behind him and rub his back as he continued to cry, trying to comfort him. “Is this real? Am I here?” He asks feeling the floor. “Yes Reginald, it is,” I say placing my hand over his, what else is there to say. Just as I finish my sentence; he begins to hit his hand against his head, harder and harder each time. I quickly scoot away from the man who just found out that his family is gone. But it didn’t look like they were gone gone, it looks like they left like they got what they needed and took off. Reginald goes through his mental breakdown before he composes himself, we walk out of the house and sit on the steps looking around the neighborhood. We see a man walking on the road and Reginald waves to him but he didn’t wave back. Weird, the first person we’ve seen since we left that hell hole of a hospital and he couldn’t give a rats ass ‘bout it. As we sit on the steps watching the man, a tree branch snap from behind us and as we turn Reginald gets hit in the face with a shovel and not shortly after I am too. “Daddy! Daddy!” The kid who hit us yells. “Clyde? I found you?” Reginald questions. “What the hell?!” Is all I manage to say, rubbing the goose egg forming on my temple. “Daddy I got this son b***h,” the boy says, “I smacked him dead.” As Reginald and I turn to where the boy is looking we see another man, he shoots the other in the head and runs towards us. “They say something? I thought I heard them say something?” The man asks. “He called me Clyde.” The boy says. “Son you know they don’t talk. Hey mister what’s the bandage for?” He asks pointing his gun at Reginald. “What?” Reginald mumbles out, confusion and shock written all over his face as he stares at the now dead body in the middle of the road. “What kinda wound? You answer me damn you. What’s your wound? You tell me or I kill you!” The strange man says as he loads his gun and aims it at us, I look at Reginald frightened as he goes unconscious and the man points his gun at me. “What type of wound does he have!?” He yells. “Gunsh…” Is all I say before everything goes black.  
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