My left hand was trembling a little when I crouched and started walking behind Jonathan. I should had not expected much from the hospital in the first place if the street outside was already creepy and terrifying to begin with. Fortunately for me, I managed to swallow my fear inside me and therefore I could calm myself before I started to take a glance around my new surroundings, with the flashlight as my only light source.
Shortly before we entered the hospital, I had not crossed in my mind to find out how tall the building was. However, based on what I recalled I could see that there were 3 windows lined up vertically just beside the opened main entrance door. Therefore, I believed that it was quite safe to assume that the hospital had at least three floors.
Back to the main lobby where both Jonathan and I currently were, the distance from the floor to the ceiling was perhaps somewhere close to ten foot, with several hanging lamp installed on it. The distance between the lamp and the floor was probably around nine foot since there was one of it lying and broken at the floor near us, and the length of the hanging lamp was roughly one foot. That lamp was most likely had loose from the ceiling and fell to the floor.
The next thing that I came to notice at the main lobby was that the shape of the room strangely did not have the rectangular shape like most of other rooms would have. Instead, it had a hexagonal shape. I was curious about it at first because based on what I had looked from outside, the hospital did not look like it would have the entire lobby, if not the entire room layout for all of its floors to be hexagonal, as opposed to rectangular.
If I was to describe the entire layout of the hospital lobby, I would map in my mind that we entered the lobby from the main entrance door located at the bottom line of the hexagon. In chronological order, the next thing I noticed was that two restrooms were located right on our left side, which would put it on the lower left diagonal line of the hexagon.
When I looked at my right side, I noticed that the elevator and emergency stairs right beside it was present there. It would be located on the upper right diagonal line and lower right diagonal line of the hexagon respectively.
Right across the elevator, was none other than the reception desk, circling around the main pillar at the center of the hexagonal shaped lobby room. Then, across the reception desk was the doorway to the morgue which would put it at the upper left diagonal line of the hexagon.
The last room further in front of us which would be located at the top line of the hexagon, seemed to be the hospital drugstore. Since our task at the hospital was to obtain medical supplies, we should definitely head there right away.
"That is where we should look for them, right?" I asked Jonathan with a low voice as I approached him.
Jonathan did not say anything and just gave a nod once, before he started to walk towards the store. At first, I thought it would be another creepy and terrifying experience inside the hospital. However, once I realized that the hospital had an unusual design, I felt like my terrified feeling of being surrounded inside the hospital somewhat partially subsided. I did not lower my guard of course, since I had my submachine gun held on my right hand rightly against my surroundings at all of the time.
We opened the drugstore door, to find out that while some of the medical supplies such as aspirins, and ulcer medicines were low on supplies, the rest of the others seemed to be quite stocked up on the cabinet. Jonathan had not mentioned what kind of medical supplies that we might need, but it also did not seem that he would know it exactly in the first place.
"Better than nothing…" he said, as he opened up his backpack and began to put some of the medicines inside it.
I proceeded to do the same, starting with the three plastic bottled alcohols inside the glass cabinet in front of me, continued with four small packs of steri-strips, two packs of antibiotics, and three band-aids. I realized that I could actually pack more of them inside my backpack, but I had the feeling that it was already enough for me, at least for that time. I also noticed that Jonathan packed few activated-carbon medicine packs as well as some bandages inside his backpack.
As we eventually finished packed the supplies inside our backpack, we were about to head back outside and to the station again. However, it was also at that moment that we heard something from the direction of upstairs.
It was a couple of metal banging-like sound which probably came from the second or third floor. For a brief moment I was not really sure whether to ignore the noises and to just head back to the station, or to investigate upstairs instead. I was just about to ask Jonathan, before he decided that it would be better for us to check where it came from and what caused it.
"Let us check it out first…" he said with a low voice, as he crouched again and started to walk outside the drugstore.
I followed him to the emergency stairs door, and opened it slowly and silently as we entered the stairs room one by one. As we were ascending the stairs, I noticed that the hospital had five floors instead of three when I looked at how far the stairs spanned above us. Just when we arrived at the third floor, a couple of other noises were coming from the other direction of the exit. The first one was the same metal banging noise, while the other was the very familiar thudding sound.
I realized almost instantly that the thudding sound would most likely the alien's footstep, and with that in my mind, I felt like the decision to come and investigate the source of the sound could be the right thing to do all along. I had the sudden urge to rush to the source of the sound, but my mind held me against the urge, as it reminded me times and again regarding the recklessness that I did earlier at the first gun store.
As I completely intended not to repeat the same mistake, I managed to hold the urge and stayed still beside Jonathan, who started to reach his left hand to the emergency stairs exit door handle. Of course, I was not surprised at all when I looked at Jonathan who seemed to be completely calm and undisturbed at all as he slowly started to open the exit door while readying his rifle with his right hand. When the door finally opened, we crouched and walked slowly again towards our new surroundings.
The layout of the third floor was more or less similar if compared to the lobby, particularly the hexagonal shape and the presence of a pillar at the center of the room. The only two notable differences that I noticed as soon as I took a glance were that the top line of the hexagon was the doctors' office at the third floor, as opposed to the drugstore at the first floor. The upper left diagonal line of the hexagon was the doorway to the patients' rooms at the third floor, as opposed to the morgue at the first floor.
When I thought about it, the hospital probably had another elevator on each of the other side of the patient's rooms and the doctors' office. In the case of the patients' rooms, perhaps for the deceased patients to be able to get transported to the morgue more quickly, while in the case of the doctors' office was probably to send the doctors' note for necessary medications to the drugstore more efficiently.
As we had arrived near the center pillar, Jonathan stopped for a bit, before continuing to the direction of the patients' rooms. Just when we entered the hallway, we realized that most of the doors were left opened, as if someone had entered and exit each of the rooms without closing the doors again. However, that was not the thing that surprised us.
It was the faint smell of blood that we picked up as soon as we entered the hallway. When we approached the nearest door, the smell was getting stronger that we had to take a look inside the patient room. What we saw right after was indeed not the sight that we could share with most of the rest of the survivors at the station.
It was the sight of a middle-aged male dead body, his bed was covered with his blood and a hole on the back of his head that immediately sent chills down my spine. I had to admit that I was very shocked to see the sight of the poor man as soon as I lighted him with the flashlight. I gathered whatever courage I had left inside me, to make sure about what I had in my mind. As it turned out, I was right to have my assumption.
I realized as soon as I lighted his hole closer, that his brain was also absent from his head. The horrifying sight instantly reminded me of what happened earlier when I was on my way back to the station from the second gun store with Della. My left hand trembled very hard as my mind confirmed that it was no doubt indeed, that the poor man experienced the same fate as the dead bodies that was raining down the foggy street.
I forced myself to look away from him, and the first thing that came to my mind about the direction that I should look at was Jonathan. I could faintly see him clenching his teeth behind his closed mouth, with a somewhat angry and horrified expression drawn on his face.
"At least it was a good thing we did not check the morgue first…" he said with a low voice, as he tightened his grip on his rifle and breathed a little heavier.
I closed my eyes very hard for a moment, before starting to take a few steps back from the poor man and headed outside, with Jonathan shortly followed after. He then stopped his steps for a moment, before telling me to stay behind him and to not enter the other rooms except for him. I did not question anything, and so we walked to each of the other rooms, until we had checked seven other rooms that Jonathan finally decided to skip the rest of the remaining rooms.
If I was to assume the reason behind Jonathan's decision, it would most likely because he had realized that all of the patients inside the room were no longer breathing, and that they all shared the same poor fate. It must be definitely already hard for anyone to continuously see dead bodies in a horrible state, let alone had their organs missing from them. Realizing it, I was also at lost for any other words to say to make ourselves felt any better.
Just right after that, another metal banging noise was heard again, and it seemed like it was coming from the right side of the T-junction just on the corner of the patients' room hallway. However, the noise was not the exact same as the previous ones as it was banging continuously, and also clearer.
Jonathan crouched while walking silently as I followed him from behind and took the right turn from the T-junction. As we had just turned, a couple of thudding sounds were suddenly heard. We stopped and crouched, before aiming our firearms in a hurry. In almost an instant, I faintly saw one gigantic creature showed up from one of the rooms, walking slowly outside towards the other end of the hallway.
At first I could not notice what kind of a creature it was since it was completely dark and I had to conceal the flashlight unless I wanted to give away our position to the creature. However, I could be faintly sure that the creature was holding some sort of a large bladed object on what seemed to be its right hand, and the similar mace-like object left hand on its left arm. Therefore, I assumed that the creature was of other variety of the aliens.
I realized that the best thing for us to do, was to avoid any confrontation with the creature, as opening fire could almost guaranteed us to alert the other aliens and their aircrafts outside the hospital. Jonathan also seemed to be thinking the same as he did not took aim with his rifle towards the back of the creature's head.
We proceeded to sneak behind it very slowly and carefully, as we passed one patient room and another. Just when we were in front of the fifth room door, Jonathan suddenly stopped and turned his attention towards the room. Very shortly after he signaled me to open the door very slowly, yet it did not look like he was about to take aim with his rifle. Nevertheless, I still opened the door slowly until I could push it inside the room.
Jonathan proceeded by entering the room first, and I followed right behind him. As I lighted the room, it seemed to also have an elderly male patient on its bed. Suddenly someone barged him from the left side, but fortunately he was able to restrain the person swiftly, with only his left hand. When I lighted the person with the flashlight, it was revealed that the person was a young female nurse.
Just by looking at her facial expression, I could read the panic and fear in her eyes. She also groaned while she was being restrained by Jonathan, and thus he had to hold her mouth as he attempted to calm her down.
"Sshh! Hey, easy easy!" Jonathan said to her with a low voice, as he was holding her mouth with his left hand from behind her.
The nurse finally started to calm down, probably because she also felt a bit of relieved to know that there were other people besides her surviving the ordeal. However, perhaps due to her groans just earlier, the thudding sounds were heard again and also headed to the room. In reflex, I decided to hide below the patient's bed. From there, I could see both Jonathan's and the nurse's feet were heading towards the corner part of the room where they would be hidden by a cupboard.
Just as they had arrived to their hiding position, I saw a faint sight of what seemed to be a couple of gigantic and monstrous feet right in front of the door. I immediately realized that it was the very same creature that we saw earlier, and it was entering the room. As its feet had reached just in front of the bed it stopped moving and stayed idle, indicating that perhaps it was checking around the room.
Since that was not my first experience of having to hide right below something to survive, I did not feel as terrified as I was during my first time. Instead, the next things that the creature did were the ones that definitely put me on the edge of my courage.
First, the creature slowly approached the right side of the bed, before stopping again. Shortly after, the elderly male patient right above me started to groan weakly and helplessly as I heard metal clanging sounds from the same direction.
Then, a sudden and brief skull cracking sound was heard, and almost immediately followed by a couple of larger groan, and then a weaker groan, and the last weaker groan, and no more groan. I should have not expected to be relieved sooner, as not long after that I could feel some sort of a liquid dripping down from the right side of the bed.
I immediately realized that it was the poor patient's blood rushing down the bed sheet and dropping onto the floor as the flow of the liquid was rapidly increasing. However to be honest, that was not the sickest thing that I realized at that time.
It was the faint sight of the creature, as if smearing the floor near it with the dropping blood with its feet. I could not even determine if I felt disgusted, or angered, or even terrified anymore at that time. All I knew was that if we did not have to worry about alerting the aliens outside about our presence I would shoot at it right away.
It might be shorter than I felt, but it did feel like it was taking very long before the creature started to head outside, with a blood footstep following it. I waited for a bit longer before I began to see both Jonathan's and the nurse's feet were stepping out from their hiding spot, and thus I decided to get out from below the patient bed as well.
When I had finally stood up again, a sudden hard feeling hit me as I looked at the patient's condition. Even if I had not directly witnessed how the creature did it, I already had the faint picture on what caused the hole behind the dead bodies' skull, as well as their missing brains. I could even barely look at the nurse's face, but I obviously did not need to look to find out if she was shocked or not.
Since the door was still opened, I decided to close it as I was struggling to clear and calm my mind about what had just happened. However, Jonathan told me that we should not close the door, as we had to head back to the station as soon as possible instead.
"No… that will not do us any good. In fact, we have to get out of here immediately." he said with a low voice, as he started to guide the nurse slowly on her trembling feet outside the room.
At first, I thought that it would be better if we were to calm ourselves first inside the same room. However, I shortly grasped that perhaps what Jonathan meant was not for us, but rather more for the nurse. Indeed we might had been shocked on what was shown before us, but we should also put into more consideration about her, as that was probably the first time she had witnessed something horrifying like it.
I followed them outside the room, and fortunately, I no longer heard any thudding sounds, even faintly anymore. I also decided to look at my watch as I took out the flashlight to light it, and it showed the exact time of 01.00 a.m.
When I forced myself to look at the bright side, at least we succeeded in obtaining several necessary medical supplies from the hospital, and another survivor that could be of advantage for us especially regarding our medical needs. I just hoped that we would not have to encounter the same creature anymore, at least not for a short while…