I continued up the stairs towards the fourth floor, keeping my sword readied by my side. I reached the top step and peeked around the corner towards the right. I noticed a pile of chairs and tables blocking off the hallway leading in that direction, along with a few doors in the hallway. I lightly stepped into the hallway and proceeded to tip toe down it, approaching the stack. I glanced outside at the dipping sun and realized that night time might be here soon, which would cause a multitude of problems for the current situation. I also noticed a bunch of scrape marks on the ground, and assumed whoever made this stack must've taken all the required chairs and tables out of the surrounding rooms.
I turned to stare at the stack before quietly walking forward. Just as I was about to turn and glance into a room, I saw a flash of light come from one of the cracks in the stack, and my world turned into one of almost pure pain. A loud sound that echoed throughout the small hallway had accompanied the light, and I realized what the sudden ripping sensation I felt tear through my shoulder. I had been shot, most likely by some fucking trigger happy idiot!
I immediately stumbled sideways into a wall as my shoulder jerked from the impact. The level of pain that was coursing through me was extremely different to anything I've ever felt before. When I had gotten punched, the pain gradually spread out across the immediate area of the attack, but this pain was like a sharp and hot drill was being pushed into my shoulder by someone far stronger than I.
I slid backward against the wall, my right hand coming up automatically to cover the wound. I could feel the blood begin to seep through my fingers as my lower body made contact with the ground. "I-I-I'm friendly!" I tried to shout out, though my voice came out as more of a coarse whisper. I heard an explosion of activity and talking on the other side of the wall of chairs and tables, and a few of them were moved to the side with loud scraping noises. Between that and the gunshot, I'm sure every shambler in this goddamn hospital knows exactly where the fucking food is.
I saw three figures run at me from the stack of chairs. One of them grabbed my upper body from underneath my armpits, irritated the gunshot wound and caused me to groan and grit my teeth in agony. The other grabbed my legs. Together, they hoisted me into the air as the third figure stood in front of us with a broom handle, holding it up high like it was going to do shit.
They brought me behind the stack, and some other people closed it with a shove. I tried to take in the details around me, but all I could see through the haze of pain were a group of about twenty doctors, nurses, patients, and security guards all huddled around each other and staring at me. The guy who obviously shot me stood there with the pistol held loosely in his hand, gazing down at me with a look of absolute horror and dread on his face.
I felt my hoodie and t-shirt being yanked off of me by someone. I just lifted my arms and let them do whatever they wanted to do. If I was going to get shot anywhere in the world, I'm glad it was in a place where the people who would be able to fix me were conveniently right there.
"HEY, DOCTOR SHEILA, WE NEED YOU!" The female voice of one of the people around me shouted out loudly. They were hushed down almost everybody in the hallway, but the message had the desired effect. A female doctor poked her head out of one of the rooms that the group was occupying and understood the situation immediately.
She ran over, pulling out some blue medical gloves from one of her lab coat pockets, and slid into place over me, intently studying my bullet wound. She lifted my shoulder to look at the back of it, and nodded with a look of slight relief on her face. "Ok, good, the bullet passed clean through, and only hit a meaty part of the shoulder, so you're not going to need any sort of surgery, just stitches and bandages." At this point, I could feel myself starting to pass out from blood loss and pain, my eyes starting to close to the world before me. The Doctor working on me noticed this and began to snap her fingers in front of my eyes, trying to keep me awake. "Hey, wake up! It's better if you stay awake, there's no telling what will happen if you fall asleep!" And so I tried to keep my eyes open, every fiber in my body telling me that I needed to sleep.
"Ok, so, bad news Alaric." I wanted to ask how she knew my name, but I decided that could be answered later. "What? Please, if it's something serious or life threatening, tell me now." She shook her head at that, and proceeded to grab the fiber and needle she needed from someone who was holding them out to her. She began to dab up all the loose blood before readying the needle in her hand. "No, just that there's no anesthesia, so this" She tapped the needle, "is going to hurt a lot."
And with that, she proceeded to pierce my skin with the needle. The pain that I had been slowly getting used to exploded all over again, and I began to scream and grind my teeth in agony. Slowly stuffed a towel in my mouth that I began to bite on furiously, the dipping of the needle in and out of my skin causing waves of agony to sweep over me.
Then I heard the snarls start. A wave of five people scrambled over to the stack of chairs before one of them screamed, "They're here, they fucking heard us!" All hell began to break loose. One of the shamblers leapt towards the stack and began to claw its way through it, trying to reach the other side. Other shamblers were grabbing some of the parts of the stack and were shoving them out of the way, getting closer and closer to breaching the other side.
I grit my teeth and went to grab for my sword by side, before realizing that I had dropped the son of a bitch when I got shot. Fuck! I screamed loudly in my head. I glanced up at Doctor Sheila, and she looked like she had been in this situation a thousand times before. She just continued to dip that needle in and out, slowly bringing the two halves of my skin together.
I struggled to glance back over at the stack and saw the first hand of a shambler making its way through. It pushed and pushed until the whole stack came down with a huge crash, revealing a giant group of the bastards. As one, they all snarled and looked on with glee at the feast before them, all of them ready to dig in. The one in front leapt up on a chair before leaping again, straight at Doctor Sheila and me, its teeth outstretched and ready to enjoy the warm flesh of our bodies. It never made it.
I saw the shaft of an arrow sprout from its forehead, and I was hit with a major case of deja vu. Then I saw Zach, of all people, charge in from behind us and bash one of them on the side of the head with his hammer, sending it flying sideways into a wall.
He looked down at me and said with a smile, "Damn, you look like shit. You're real lucky we came along, huh?"