Al's Rabbit Hole
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Tie the Noose Chapter 16
🕑 Added 2025-11-01 03:16:33 +0000 UTCDaniel could hear the plant-zombies outside the maintenance room, their claws scraping against the rusted metal door. The sound was rhythmic, almost patient, like they were waiting for him to step out into their embrace. The door itself held firm, though, the old steel still strong despite the decay spreading through the rest of the building. It was a small mercy, and he took it for what it was. Inside, the room was mercifully quiet, empty of anything that moved. The air was damp and thick with the earthy smell of rot. Moss spread thinly over the floor tiles, and small vines crawled out of the ceiling cracks like veins from an open wound. The ventilation duct on the far wall had long since been choked off by roots, their fibers clinging together in a tangled knot that twitched faintly when he watched it.
The space was cramped, no more than twenty feet across, with two doors: one leading out toward the hospital interior and another to the yard where the infected had gathered. It looked like a cross between a locker room and a supply closet, lined with dented metal doors and overturned benches. For the first time since he’d entered the grounds, Daniel had a moment to breathe. He sat against the wall, exhaled through his mask, and began reloading. Empty magazines clinked softly as he laid them out. He’d burned through far too much of the five-seven for comfort. A hundred and fifty rounds gone already, with about three hundred fifty left in the pack and five loaded mags still on his belt. It sounded like a lot until he thought about how many of those things were waiting outside.
He checked the Saiga next. Four mags of slugs, two of buckshot, with enough spare rounds for five more mags of each. That combined with the case of specialty shells and his four flashbangs felt like enough to keep going, but not enough to get reckless. He was still running heavy from the hike and fight up the mountain, and fatigue made his arms ache as he worked. The worst part was knowing how hard those plant-things were to kill.
He’d seen one soak almost a mag’s worth of 5.7 rounds and still keep moving, only going down with half a mag of slugs to the head. Another took two slugs to the head and kept coming, only bleeding that thick resin for the trouble. Something was obviously different about these infected. They were concerning resilient, and what had worked before clearly wasn't going to moving forward. The thought made him grimace. He needed to test the Dragon’s Breath rounds, see if those would do the trick any better. Trees hated fire, right? And that seemed to be the theme here. The only problem was setting the building on fire in the process. Magnesium burned like the devil's own hell, and he didn't want to torch the place. Yet.
He checked the outside access door again, but it held. The silence let him take stock of the room. A faded bulletin board hung crooked near the exit, covered in brittle papers that flaked when he brushed them aside. Most were old shift notices and staff memos, but one caught his attention. A warning from ’93 about strange blooms forming in the gardens. The description matched the pulsing, wet flowers he’d seen spreading across the mountainside. The notice mentioned that disturbing them released some kind of pollen, and that patients and staff had experienced choking fits, burning lungs, blistering rashes inside the throat, and hallucinations after even mild exposure. One had even suffered full respiratory failure. The memo advised filtration masks at all times when handling them.
He was glad he'd brought double the filters compared to last time. His HUD still showed around eighty-six percent filter integrity, even though he'd stumbled straight through that field earlier. Not as corrosive as the white mucus from Hargreave's lab, then, but still... it was worryingly fast for something that had lasted maybe two minutes, start to finish.
A rack of old respirators lined the wall nearby. Most were missing, but a few still hung there, intact despite the years. He stepped in for a closer look, brushing off the dust to check the model number. They used a different thread type, totally incompatible with his own gear, but still worth noting. He raised his gloved hand, used the Gridlink’s haptic input to tag the location, and watched as a quick marker blinked to life on his HUD. It worked exactly like it had back at the hideout during testing, and the familiar pulse of tactile feedback through the glove gave him a small surge of satisfaction. One small thing that worked the way it was supposed to.
The lockers offered little else. Most were jammed shut, rusted out, or already forced open. A few still clung to forgotten fragments of life, an old thermos with a cracked lid, a child’s drawing smeared with water damage, a photo of a family standing together under a summer sky, an abandoned lunchbox and the more. That photo in particular caught his attention. They looked happy. Clean. Safe. It was jarring, the contrast between that frozen moment and the stinking green hell around him hit like a hammer. That place, wherever it had been, didn’t exist anymore. It didn’t belong in here with the rot and the vines and the dead things scratching at doors.
He stared at it longer than he should have. People didn’t leave pictures like that behind unless something had gone very, very wrong. It was clear they'd had to evacuate fast, and that was telling enough, but the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. If it had been a standard containment failure, Umbrella would’ve cleaned it up, or burned it to the ground, paved over the crater, and pretended it never happened. So why was it still here? Why had it been left to fester and grow?
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t a good one. It implied a number of things beyond mere incompetence. It meant someone decided it was worth leaving like this, and doing it intentionally, and that was what made his skin crawl.
He shut the locker and moved on. Dwelling wouldn’t help. The plan was simple enough: search for data, samples, anything worth salvaging, while dealing with whatever disaster Umbrella had left to fester. Not a great plan, admittedly, but enough of one for now. It's not like he could foresee for nightmare plant zombies, along with whatever other horrors waited for him here.
He turned toward the exit, but something green caught his eye near the cracked tiles by the wall. It looked familiar. A sprig of green herb, growing straight from the fissure, its leaves soft and faintly luminescent. He crouched, brushing a finger along the stem. The HUD flickered with a quick scan notice- Viridiphylla arklayensis. Green herb. Wild, but genuine. He let out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. Of all the places for one to sprout... but he wasn't going to complain. He harvested what he could into a pouch. Fresh wasn’t as potent as his dried store, but it wasn’t toxic either, and that was good enough.
He stood, checked his weapon, and adjusted the seal on his mask. The low hiss of the respirator filled his ears as he tested the hallway door. It turned easily, the latch clicking open with barely any sound. He paused, took one long breath, then pushed it open just enough to peer through. The hallway beyond was pitch-black. The last traces of daylight were gone, the hospital swallowed in shadow. He used his haptic to switch on his low-light, and the night vision came to life, painting the corridor in pale red. The world shifted into ghostly relief, all broken tiles, hanging vines, and dark splotches along the walls, mixed in with the toppled desks and chairs. He raised his P90 and stepped forward, the soft hum of his exoframe the only sound to follow him into the dark.
000
The hallway was thick with overgrowth, a suffocating press of vines and foliage that narrowed the walls into a tight, unnatural tunnel. The air was thick with a sour tang that clung to the inside of Daniel’s mask, sticking to his tongue despite the rebreather. His night vision bathed everything in an eerie red light, turning the world surreal and grainy, as if he were walking through a corrupted photo negative. Branches drooped from the ceiling like tendons, dripping with moisture that caught the light and gleamed like blood. Leaves shimmered in impossible hues, the heat of the environment rendering them hazy and indistinct, constantly writhing at the edge of clarity. Every surface looked wrong... slick and moist, the once-sterile tiles beneath his feet cracked and smeared with black moss that squelched faintly under his boots.
Every so often he would reach into a pocket and pull out a glow stick, cracking it and dropping it, marking his path. Getting lost here was the last thing he wanted to do. He didn't know how many blocked passages or collapsed rooms he'd need to pass through, and having his route covered would keep him from backtracking. Good as the Gridlink was, it lacked pathing, and he'd learned that there was wisdom in redundancy.
Patient room doors stood half open, their frames forced apart by root systems that crawled from between the cracks, their tendrils clawing across the hall. Daniel kept to the center of the corridor, careful not to touch anything that looked like it might twitch. Some of the bulbous flowers nestled in the vine beds seemed to move, petals trembling at his passing, tracking his presence like slow, blind predators. The silence was broken only by the hum of his exoframe and the occasional scuttling behind the walls, a wet, clicking shuffle that made the hair on the back of his neck rise. He stopped each time he heard it, breath caught, weapon raised, until the sound faded again. Whatever lay behind the walls, it hadn’t decided to show itself. Not yet.
When he found a room not yet overrun, the sight inside made him stop cold. The beds still held the bodies of patients, orwhat was left of them. Their torsos had fused with tree-like growths, skin and bark merging into a grotesque imitation of nature. Their limbs had become roots, their faces buried in hardened layers of resin. The bark gleamed wetly, almost organic, more flesh than wood. Clipboards still hung at the foot of several beds, the pages yellowed and brittle. The notes spoke of medications, chemical infusions, and injections of compounds he didn’t recognize. All of the patients had been admitted for late-stage cancer, all within the same few weeks. Whatever had been happening here, it was clearly experimental. He slid the charts into his bag, each one another piece of evidence in the mountain of horrors Umbrella had left behind.
The small altars were harder to ignore. Nearly every room had one- a flowerpot, a carved symbol, sometimes a personal trinket left before the decay claimed it. One held a gold ring, a wedding band, though it had no other markings, then some earrings, and even a rough-cut topaz. Every one of them had been arranged with the kind of precision that spoke of obsessive, ritualistic love. Daniel took the valuables without thinking about the former owners. He couldn’t afford sentiment here, and they had no use for it. Still, as he moved back into the hall, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the dead here had worshiped something... or been made to.
The layout looped on itself, the corridor winding toward what should have been a central stairwell, according to his Gridlink, but the path forward was blocked by a full collapse. That left him circling the outer wings. The deeper he went, the more the atmosphere pressed against him. There was a sickness here, one that had spread throughout the building, or had been let loose to thread it's fingers through the hospital. Honestly, knowing Umbrella, it could have been either or in the end. Then, just as he passed a cluster of tangled vines, something grabbed his shoulder.
Instinct took over. Daniel spun, ripping himself free with a violent jerk that almost toppled him. Above, the ceiling cracked open in a shatter of tiles and rot, and what he had taken for a curtain of hanging roots dropped like a corpse. The thing that landed wasn't just grotesque, it was a perversion of the human form, stretched long and skeletal, with limbs like warped branches and skin split into peeling layers of wooden scale. It struck the floor in a heap, but never paused. Its torso lifted at an unnatural angle, the flowering mass of its head twitching as if trying to scent him. Daniel fired without thinking, the P90 barking three bursts into the creature's strange, flowering head. The impact staggered it, popping the strange bud, but did nothing to halt its advance. Its arms flailed in slow, mechanical sweeps, dragging its tangled vines toward his legs. He stepped back, cursing, and transitioned to the Saiga with practiced speed.
The shotgun boomed. The first slug caught it dead center, knocking it sideways; the second clipped its shoulder and sprayed the hall behind it in sticky plant mass and resin. That should’ve been enough to end it, but the body kept moving. The creature crawled forward on broken limbs, vines latching onto the floor like insect legs, clawing for traction. One grasped his boot, trying to coil around it, to hold him in place. He grunted and kicked free, raising the Saiga again. Its torso flexed and twisted in ways a human frame never should, its headless stalk still tracking him with blind determination.
"Fuck! What does it take to make you die?" Daniel shouted, slamming another slug into the creature’s chest. The shot hit hard, caving in the sternum with a wet, meaty crunch. The impact tore through whatever core had been powering the undying nightmare, and a gush of oily fluid poured from the split, thick and foul, spreading across the tile in a wide, shimmering pool. The creature convulsed violently, its limbs flailing one last time in jerky, unnatural movements. Its fingers clawed at the air, trying to reach him even as its midsection collapsed inward.
It lived for just a few more seconds, twitching like a puppet with its strings cut. Vines spasmed, tightening and retracting, the fleshy stalk atop its ruined neck writhing aimlessly. A wet, rattling gurgle escaped from somewhere inside its chest, a final breath that sounded almost like a death rattle, almost human, but not quite. Then the mass curled up like a dying spider, slumping to the floor with a sodden thud. Daniel stood over it, chest heaving, the Saiga still trained on the corpse. Only when he saw no further motion did he let the barrel dip. Even in death, it reeked of something alien.
Daniel stood over it, breathing hard. The stench burned through his filters, making his stomach twist. The puddle shimmered faintly under the red light, and for the first time he noticed the separation in its structure. The plant was one thing; the fluid sack inside was another. He wasn't sure about the function of either, but he knew the plant zombies wouldn't stop until both were destroyed. He slung the Saiga and swapped in another mag. He had his answer, at least for now. Shoot the head, shoot the chest. Simple enough, even if it was mostly conjecture. The only question now was if he could pull it off without wasting all his ammo.
He moved forward again, weapon raised, scanning the ceiling for more of the hanging shapes. The thought of these things crawling through the ducts above sent a cold crawl along his spine, but how they managed to get up there whirled through his thoughts all the same. Each step was cautious, his footfalls measured, patient, watching for signs of more unwanted guests from above.
The corner was tight, a mess of tangled overgrowth that he had to force his way through in inches, the tight space pulling at him. It was a slow, difficult process, that left him all but popping out on the other side. he took a deep breath, free from the gap, only to stop dead as two more of the plant-men came into view. They saw him the moment he saw them, their limbs jerking into motion with spasmodic, insect-like twitches. Daniel dropped to a knee, lining up his sights instantly, knowing he'd never make it back through that gap before they were on him. He took aim at the closer one, walking the reticle up the chest, and squeezed off several tight, controlled bursts. The rounds stitched through the sternum in a clean line, the impact spraying out a thick gout of pressurized filth. The creature gave a dry, rasping wheeze that might have been a cry, but it didn’t slow.
As he adjusted to fire a follow-up burst, the second creature’s arm split apart at the elbow, tendrils flaring from the ragged stump. They lashed out and coiled around a steel beam in the ceiling, using the leverage to sling itself forward. Daniel pivoted as the thing hurtled toward him, switching targets mid-motion. His next burst caught it across the face, chewing through bark and resin, splintering pieces of what might’ve once been a human skull. But the plant didn’t stop. It landed on the ground only a few feet away, its limbs scraping for traction, twitching as it tried to right itself. He fired again, and again punching into the neck, but it wasn’t enough as the trigger locked.
With a kind of fluidity that only came with laser focus, Daniel dropped the empty mag. It clattered to the floor as he snatched a fresh one from his rig and slammed it home, tacking the bolt just as quickly. He immediately re-engaged the creature at close range, aiming lower this time, tracking center mass. Trying to finish it off before the other closed, the P90 bucked against his shoulder as the rounds drilled into the bloated sack of fluid at the monster’s core. The thing jerked, black slurry spraying across the floor, but it still wasn’t down. Its limbs spasmed wildly, twitching in place, but it kept coming.
“Damn,” he hissed, retreating a step when he heard it coming from behind. Sharper. Faster. Skittering across the overgrown tile in a way that raised every hair on his body. He spun toward the noise, gun up, instincts firing on pure adrenaline.
What emerged from the shadows made his stomach knot. It was huge, at least the size of a doberman, but it moved like an insect, low to the ground and impossibly fast. Its body was covered in thick, black chitin that gleamed wetly in the red hue of his goggles, each segment shifting with unnatural fluidity. The head was worse- no eyes, just a cluster of twitching, fibrous feelers like worm-filled vines wriggling in all directions. Its rear curled upward, ending in twin, jagged pincers that clacked open and shut with the sound of shears. The thing moved with single-minded aggression, and it made no sound save for the sharp clack of its armored feet against tile.
Daniel opened fire immediately, the P90 roaring in his hands. Sparks erupted across its carapace as the 5.7 rounds hammered into its back. Plates cracked, some even split, but the monster didn’t slow. It hit him full-on, claws scraping over his boot, crawling upward with terrifying strength and speed. He shouted and kicked hard, the heel of his boot catching it under the thorax. The creature flipped with a screeching hiss, legs slicing gashes in his pants as it tumbled across the floor. It landed hard but righted itself in an instant, its body folding and snapping like a spring-loaded trap. It let out a hiss, a sharp, pressure-splitting shriek as it reoriented itself.
He fired again, three bursts into the underbelly where the armor was thinner. The rounds punched through the soft tissue, spilling some kind of thick fluorescent ichor, but it didn’t stop. It didn’t even flinch. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t like the shambling horrors he’d faced so far. This was raw aggression wrapped in armor, hostile from the first second, not driven by hunger or instinct, but with some kind of almost human cunning and an urge to maim.
Daniel fired again, rounds chewing into its softer underside, but his attention was dragged away as the tentacles from the jumper caught his off-hand, jerking him around. The plant-zombie had closed the distance, dragging him off balance. He twisted and jammed the P90 into its torso, firing four bursts in rapid succession. The weapon’s muzzle flash lit the hallway like lightning. The plant-thing collapsed with a wet sound, its chest cavity turning inside out.
He barely had time to breathe before the earwig lunged. It slammed into his back, pincers locking onto his shoulder plate. The blades scraped against the armor, trying to dig in. He struggled, grabbing for it, but the feelers had wrapped around his arm like a vice, locking it up and anchoring it to him. The P90 fell out of his grip under the crushing force, and trying to pull the clamping pincers off was impossible. With no other option, he threw himself backward, slamming his full weight onto the floor. The impact jarred his teeth. The insect screeched, the pressure on his shoulder snapping loose. He rolled off, drawing the Jericho as he came up.
The pistol barked, several times. One, two, three rounds into its side. Five more into its thorax. The last two hit the feelers, blowing the head apart in a spray of black pulp. The body twitched once and went still. Daniel didn’t wait to watch it die. The last of the plant-men had closed the gap, its hands clawing toward his legs. He slammed a new mag into the Jericho, raised it, and fired three rounds in quick succession. The first two slapped off the bark-like skin of it's skull-bud, but the third split the core of the plant clean in half. The creature froze, shuddered, and toppled.
The hallway was silent again, save for his ragged breathing as he tried to calm his hammering heart. He looked down at the mess. The two plant zombies had gotten close, too close, and that... that earwig that had come out of seemingly nowhere, too huge to have hidden easily yet still fast enough to catch him off guard and those pincers... they'd left thing gouges in his shoulder plate. He didn't want to think about what would happen if they caught him somewhere less armored. Somewhere that they could dig in.
It seemed like this place wasn't done giving him new, fresh and interesting things to be horrified of, he thought bitterly as he picked up his P90. But what else was new? The question was a cold, bitter comfort as he glanced back down the hall once more, and sighed tiredly, before heading once more into the breach.
000
The automatic doors to the Radiology department groaned as they parted, one side stuck halfway in the track, screeching as Daniel forced it open. He slipped through with practiced ease, the P90 sweeping in smooth arcs ahead of him, tight to the shoulder. Each step was measured, controlled, as his HUD began streaming information across his visor: high ambient humidity, spore and microtoxin levels elevated, airborne particulates rising sharply. The numbers climbed in steady pulses, a digital reminder that the deeper he went, the worse it became. Despite the cold outside, moisture clung to everything here. Condensation pooled on surfaces, collecting in muddy patches across cracked tile. It was a growing swamp in the bones of a dead hospital.
The room stretched wide into a hexagonal chamber, its walls lost behind sagging shelves and dead monitors. The ceiling overhead looked like something dredged from a sunken wreck, tangled with slumped cables, rusted pipes, and thick roots that drooped like wet ropes. Leaves fluttered weakly from the growth, hanging like garlands, some so still they looked fossilized, others twitching gently as if disturbed by unseen breath. Moss and dirt had layered the tile so thickly that each step let out a faint squelch. The air was still, but everything about the place felt like it was alive and seeking something. Daniel moved slowly, carefully, silently, and increasingly aware that this place was as much alive as it was ruined.
The place looked like it had been abandoned for decades, not the handful of years that it had been. Tables lay overturned, x-ray stations smashed to pieces, and monitors with shattered screens sat draped in a thick layer of grime. Cables sprawled across the floor like black serpents, many of them fused with root systems that pulsed faintly underfoot. Shelves had collapsed beneath the suffocating weight of vines and moss, and every surface was littered with the detritus of a once-functioning facility; broken glass from beakers and light fixtures, twisted metal brackets, unspooled reels of printer paper, and scattered folders gone soggy with age. It looked like the staff had fled in a panic. It left a vile taste in his mouth, seeing it for what it was. The doctors and nurses, and any other staff who were present, they had fled, leaving the patients to whatever horrors consumed the hospital proper. Just one more damning confirmation of how this place had fallen to it's own hubris.
He crouched low, brushing grime off a film packet that had fallen under an overturned tray. The x-ray image inside showed a pair of lungs, cancerous, heavily so, in fact. The notes detailed something rooted and unnatural had grown from within, spreading like a seed once she had been administered a number of experimental drugs. Another packet nearby contained a full progression of scans. The name at the top read Lester, D. The early images showed subtle irregularities, small nodules in the lower lung. Then came the branching filaments, creeping like ivy through her chest, overtaking the ribs. The final scan was nightmarish. Her thoracic cavity was gone, and all that remained was just a mass of vascular stems, some already cracking the bone from inside.
A handwritten label beneath the final scan read: T-JCCC203 Injection Testing. The last note, scrawled in near-illegible panic, read: Unable to continue scans; excess growth obstructing imaging. Daniel stared at it for a long moment before slipping the packet into his bag. There was no question anymore. Human experimentation using a bevy of mutagenic cocktails, not even useful, or sane, or anything resembling moral. It was a testament to just how demented the program here was, sighed and stamped by some faceless higher up, pushing for more results, more data regardless of the human cost.
The silence in the lab was absolute, broken only by the slow, deliberate crunch of Daniel’s boots across glass and fractured plastic. Every motion felt amplified under his respirator, each step too loud in the still air. He paused near a rusted first aid box hanging crookedly from the wall, its metal warped and speckled with corrosion. Most of the contents were ruined or missing, but a small set of vials still clung to the back panel. Daniel leaned in, brushing grime away until the faint Umbrella logo peeked out. Green herb mixes, dried but still incredibly potent. Finding a few in usable condition was a stroke of luck.
That seemed to be the limit of what was worth digging through here. Most of the cabinets and shelves were barren, and the rest held bits of medical equipment and what remained of paperwork. Ready to leave, he made his way towards the exit on the opposite side, the way back going nowhere. The place felt far too much like some kind of labyrinth the deeper he went, the closed off curtains of roots, collapsed halls and sealed rooms feeling almost deliberate in how they tried to lead him done one path or another.
That said, as he reached the exit, he found a a dead body hidden in an alcove, seemingly having crawled there to die. It wasn't infected, or even consumed, but the body was well decayed. Just a human husk, mutilated and hidden from sight. The sockets were hollow, the mouth open in a permanent grimace. Beside it sat a tattered hiking pack. The body’s clothes, a dark jacket and torn pants, suggested a hiker or urban explorer.
The wound that had killed them was clean, almost surgical: a single vertical gash from shoulder to chest, splitting their ribcage open. Whoever they were, though, they were tough, at least enough to hide here before bleeding out, avoiding the fate of seemingly dozens of others, though it was odd how the plants had seemingly avoided them in the interim, at least mostly. It made him wonder if this was a new body, despite the desiccation, and what they were doing here to begin with.
Daniel crouched and searched the remains with deliberate care. The body was long dead, but he still tried to respect it even as he looted it, his hands quick but quiet. A belt holster still held two 9mm magazines, both full, which he slipped into a side pouch without hesitation. Then he turned his attention to the hiking pack nearby. Inside was a full climbing kit: pitons, a coil of synthetic rope, a grapnel hook, harness clips, all in good condition, newer than he expected, their metal edges still catching the light from his visor.
He paused, frowning. There weren’t any serious climbs in the area. Arklay was rugged, sure, but not vertical; no deep ravines, no high ridges, nothing that would call for a full climbing kit. Which raised a bigger question: why bring this much gear into the hills at all? This wasn’t recreational. It wasn’t accidental, either. Whoever this person was, they had come looking for something. Maybe they planned to descend somewhere, or climb down into something not visible on any topographic map. A mine entrance? A sinkhole? Some place Umbrella never meant to show up on satellite photos?
It didn’t sit right. The gear was clean. Used, but cared for. Not the sort of thing someone inexperienced would buy, much less know how to use. And if they’d brought this much in, odds were they had a reason. Daniel zipped the pack shut and left it where it was, unease twisting in his gut. Someone else had been exploring this place before him. And whatever they were after, they hadn’t made it far.
He eased around the bend of the narrow L-shaped hallway and stopped just short of the threshold to the main lobby. From there, he took in the scene: the once-pristine glass entry doors were buried in a writhing knot of root and branch, thick as a man's thigh in places, sealing off the exit with a natural barricade. The reception area lay choked under moss and overgrowth, the furniture long since claimed by thick vines and spongy creepers that wrapped over chairs and counters alike. Up above, the second floor was visible through a haze of filth-streaked glass, a walkway hidden behind warped panels that caught no light. He scanned slowly, noting movement. Three of the plant-zombies stumbled about inside, twitching erratically. In the center of the room, half-embedded in the floor, pulsed a massive root sac, veined and distended, swollen with whatever it was using to birth more of the creatures. It looked just like the ones he had seen in the back lot. He clenched his jaw. There were too many to deal with in a drawn out fight.
Daniel weighed his options with grim calculation, slowly reaching to eject the loaded slugs from his Saiga. Going in with traditional rounds meant methodical shooting, controlled spacing, and a lot of movement. But that root sac meant more would just keep coming. He wasn’t sure how many were dormant inside, but he didn’t want to find out mid-fight. The Dragon’s Breath shells would be loud, messy, and far more dangerous in this kind of overgrown space. He’d risk catching the place on fire, or worse, trapping himself in a blaze. But they’d drop the creatures fast. He didn’t like the tradeoff, but against numbers like this, playing it slow was a good way to get torn apart.
He pulled one of the magnesium-loaded mags from his hip and slid it home. Dragon’s Breath didn’t work like most imagined. It wasn’t just fire. The shell mixed birdshot with powdered magnesium, and when fired, the ignition created a spray of burning metal, a white-hot wash that clung to whatever it hit. The shot tore through outer layers and gave the flame a place to bite. Daniel had seen what it did to dry brush and soaked plywood back at his range; it nearly started a fire he couldn’t put out. Against these plant-infected husks, their barklike skin and dry, cracked tissue looked like perfect tinder. He wasn’t sure how the root sac would react, but if the thing was half as flammable as it looked, he could end this fight before it really began.
“Alright,” he muttered, tightening his grip. He shifted into a crouch, sliding just past the corner with his knee braced to the floor, letting the angle give him cover. The lobby creatures reacted at once, heads turning in jagged unison as if pulled by the same string. He was already tracking them. His Saiga barked, and the first shot found the lead zombie’s chest, a white cone of fire exploding outward. The creature staggered, then caught fire entirely, its limbs spasming as flames poured from its mouth and eyes. He adjusted, and fired again, another shell, turning another into a screaming torch. Even before the third could take its second step, it was already alight. Daniel didn’t wait. He pivoted and put two rounds into the pulsing sac. The impact lit it up like a signal flare, flames racing through the vines feeding into the floor, crawling like a fuse through the belly of the hospital.
The fight was over in seconds. The root ball and its brood were nothing but charred ruin. Unfortunately, so was everything else. Furniture and vines along the walls caught fire almost immediately, flames spreading fast up the brittle growth. Daniel cursed, slinging the Saiga and grabbing for the nearest fire extinguisher. The canister was rusted, but he yanked the pin and squeezed. A stream of foam hissed out, coating the flames nearest to him. It sputtered but held. He moved quickly, stamping out the smaller fires and smothering the rest until the last embers dimmed.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wiping his mask with a shaking hand. “That could’ve gone bad.” He swapped back to slugs, sliding the warm Saiga mag free and slotting in a fresh one with a smooth, practiced motion. Three Dragon’s Breath magazines left. That was all. It didn’t feel like enough, not for what might still be crawling deeper in. Worse, he’d barely covered a third of the first floor, and there were several levels ahead of him.
Worse, the fire had made one thing clear: this building was ready to go up like dry tinder. One mistake, one careless shell in the wrong corridor, and he wouldn’t be walking out. Every wall, every ceiling tile, every curtain of roots and old paper was a hazard. If something went wrong while he was deep inside, the fire wouldn’t wait. He’d burn along with whatever monsters he managed to kill. That tension stuck with him, cold at the edges of his nerves, even as he moved on.
He stepped into the now-blackened lobby. The area was enormous; reception counters, overturned chairs, and what had once been a café all drowned under the tangle of growth. There was a central shrine that drew his attention immediately, propped up against the far wall. It was crafted from wood and bone, the detail obsessive in it's precision, and embedded in its surface were gemstones that gleamed faintly in his light. At its center lay a delicate gold hair ornament, designed in a leaf pattern, small emeralds glittering in its filigree. It looked almost sacred. He worked it free carefully, pocketing the ornament and a few loose stones, four in total. It was a monument to whatever plant god the madman worshipped, but Daniel saw it for what it was. Pure lunacy.
The rows of terminals behind the desk caught his eye next. Old computers, their casings yellowed and cracked. He set his pack down and pulled the first drive free, connecting it to his laptop. The drives were intact, but the data was fragmented, and most of the system files refused to load, encrypted under an old Umbrella OS that his software didn’t recognize. He cursed under his breath, transferring what fragments he could. He’d need to find a functioning terminal somewhere deeper inside and get a copy of that OS to unlock the rest. For now, he gathered the two hard drives in the best shape and secured them in his bag.
He glanced toward the elevators, their lights dead. The stairwell sign sat dark under a cracked emergency bulb, long dead and depowered, like everything else in this place. His leg burned where the earwig’s claws had scraped through his pants earlier, every step a dull throb, but he ignored it, pressing on. He could worry about it when he found somewhere safe enough to take care of it, and he'd yet to find anything that even hinted at being secure enough to take his mask off for a bite of herb and a bandage.
The stairwell was mercifully clear, though the third-floor landing had collapsed beneath a gurney entombed in vines. He paused at the second-floor landing, resting against the railing, listening to the silence of the dead building. One floor at a time, he thought. Always one floor at a time.
000
The cement steps groaned under Daniel’s boots as he climbed, every step radiating heat through the soles of his boots. The stairwell stank of mildew and moist stone, the air thick with stagnant humidity that clung to his mask like a second skin. Faded, rust-caked signs and ancient cinderblocks loomed on either side, barely visible in the dim glow of his HUD. The handrail had long since been overtaken by vines, a mess of greenery and fungal blooms coiled around the rusted metal, slick with condensation. Above him, roots pushed through the cracks in the ceiling, dangling like ropes and twitching ever so slightly in the breathless air. The deeper he went, the worse it felt, like he was trapped inside the guts of some great beast.
At the landing, he tested the door handle first, giving it a twist. It barely moved. Gritting his teeth, he shifted his weight and slammed his shoulder into it. Rusted hinges shrieked, the frame groaning as the door finally cracked open, vines tearing like wet rope as they gave way. The second floor was worse than the first. The air was dense, the stench of damp vegetation nearly overwhelming. Whole corridors had been swallowed by the green, vines crawling in from every corner and pooling like curtains from the ceiling. Thick roots split the floor tiles into jagged shards, the uneven footing a twisted web of organic mass. Sickly, bioluminescent flowers pulsed with faint light, their fleshy petals twitching when his flashlight passed. He didn’t see any shambling plant-men, but that just meant they were hiding... waiting above, or just behind the walls.
He eased into what had once been a nurse’s station, the metal frame of the desk buried under layers of green. The cubicles had been choked with vines, monitors long dead, papers reduced to mulch. He swept his weapon across the room, advancing step by step. A sudden burst of motion, too fast to follow, came from the plant matter. He jerked back as a black, segmented form sprang toward him. The creature hit the wall just past his shoulder, landing with a heavy thud before vanishing behind a desk. Daniel steadied himself, finger on the trigger, pulse hammering in his ears. He circled wide, eyes flicking between the gaps in the floor and the walls. Then he saw it, a hole the size of a man’s head, ringed with moss and tangled vines. He exhaled slowly.
“Great,” he muttered under his breath. "Another one of you." He'd seen the holes before, but hadn't put two and two together then. He understood it now, or rather, it came up and slapped him in the face.
As he backed away, something caught his eye under a tangle of weeds near the desk. He knelt, tugging hard until an old EMS bag came free. The nylon fabric had resisted the worst of the decay, but most of the contents were ruined, all except one. His fingers brushed metal; a First Aid Spray canister, the Umbrella insignia still visible under grime. It was full. Heavy. He turned it over once in his hand before jamming it into his pack. He knew the marketing, and if nothing else, he believed the hype.
He didn't carry any with him, despite their potency, for a number of reasons, the largest being the size, the weight, and the biggest one- the need for skin contact. Herbs were better, in that regard, and the cans were single use only by design. Hit the button and it fired the whole thing in one go, in order to give the full dose even if the person using it wasn't able to keep hold of it for whatever reason. It also was hellaciously expensive, costing upwards of a few hundred dollars per can, so he had no doubt that whatever else the reason, the cans being one-and-dones was at least half deliberate. Fucking Umbrella.
Daniel was pulled from his thoughts by the sudden scuttling of talons against the tiled floor. He froze, listening, scanning the corridor. Nothing at first, but then- there! That faint tick-tick of segmented feet skittering out of sight. He moved quickly and quietly, sweeping the ground as he advanced, trying to get a bead on it before it blindsided him. Something darted across the floor to his left. He pivoted, his P90 barking a sharp burst that chewed into the tile where the creature had just been. The bug vanished into a hole in the wall, trailing a dark smear of ichor. Daniel hissed in frustration, trying to control his breathing. His HUD flickered as he swept the crimson-tinted hall. He knew it had to be somewhere.
He caught motion again, too late. Another earwig burst from the shadows and clamped down on his shin, its serrated pincers grinding against the exoframe's titanium supports. Pain shot up his leg as metal met chitin, sparks flaring. Gritting his teeth, Daniel dropped his center of gravity and fired straight down, the P90 roaring in a deafening staccato. Armor-piercing rounds tore through the creature’s back, ripping into its segmented shell until its grip slackened and it slumped. Daniel staggered back, wrenching his leg free, the pain a searing reminder that these things could punch clean through the rip-resistant fabric on his legs as he felt the trickle of bloody heat run down his leg.
He slammed a fresh mag into the P90, the motion rough and desperate, the spent one clattered across the tiles as his eyes tracked movement down the corridor. Another flash of motion! It was another giant earwig, darting low, fast. He fired again, the short bursts barely keeping pace with the creature’s speed. It hit him full in the chest, dead weight knocking him backward. He hit the floor hard, the breath rushing out of him, the gun still firing until the monster stopped moving. The air filled with the stench of the giant bug, bitter and sour. He shoved the thing aside just in time to see a third one emerge from a hole in the wall, its feelers writhing wildly. He leveled the P90, flipped it to full auto, and emptied a dozen rounds into its head. The weapon kicked hard, but he held firm, the burst walking up the creature’s skull until it collapsed in a heap. Then... silence.
Daniel pushed the carcass off, chest heaving. His leg throbbed, his back screamed, but nothing else moved. He dragged himself to his feet, staggering back into the nurse's station and shoving the heaviest desk he could find in front of the large hole in the wall. It wouldn't stop one of those things, but he'd hear it trying to shove it out of the way, which would give him a chance at least.
“Shit, that little bastard got me good," he muttered, the sound of his own voice grounding him against the silence. He reached for the mask toggle and lifted it just enough to retrieve a vial of dried herb from his kit. He forced it down dry, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste. The pain in his leg still throbbed sharply, so he took another.
Almost immediately, a wave of heat surged beneath his skin, flushing through his muscles like liquid fire. His shoulders loosened as the pain melted away into a warm, almost intoxicating haze. He could feel it working, but the sudden spike in body temperature under the mask set off warning bells in his mind. Sweat dripped down his temple, soaking into the padding. The herb was doing its job, but it was also pushing his system. He’d have to watch how much more of it he took, or it might end up doing more harm than good. Still, the cuts on his legs were gone, for the most part, and the twinging pull in his knee from when the earwig wrenched his joint had faded.
He grabbed the loose mag he'd dropped, glad that it hadn;t been damaged from the rough handling, and began slotting rounds back into it, topping himself up again from the dwindling supply in his bag. The routine steadied him, let the adrenaline drain off and the heat die down, leaving him feeling heady. The stink of the place was in full force with his mask up, but the steady stream of sweat was better drained away, and he wiped his face down to brush away the worst of it.
Glancing down, he saw that the exoframe was intact, but the Kevlar shinguard he wore under his pants was mostly sliced through. That was close. Too close. Those armored earwigs were insanely dangerous, even with all the precautions he took. He shook his head, dragged the mask back down, and let the cooling system hum against his skin. The hall beyond was quiet again, the three carcasses unmoving, their fluids already pooling across the tiles.
He started moving again, carefully at first, testing his leg, but eventually he felt confident that it had been indeed healed. Checking each door along the corridor, he found every one was sealed with the same mechanical locks as the first door. They were solid too, sitting in their tracks. There was no way through without power, he'd realized. The place was decrepit, though, and he had to hope that there were backups somewhere. All hospitals had them, just in case of a power out, but the question remained if they would still work, even if he found them.
He swept further down the hall, eyes catching on the signs above each door. The Surgery door was clear of overgrowth, and so were the Archives. Those were promising, if and when he got the lights back on. Following the mass of closed off halls and rooms, he found the Elevator Bay. Three were inoperable, roots and vines sticking out of them, but the fourth... The panel was pried open, the car gone. A quick glance inside told him that it was stuck on the third floor, but the path down was clear. Pity about the ladder recessed into the wall. Most of it was rusted out, and rungs were missing, enough so that he wouldn't risk it.
Lying nearby was another body. A man, dressed like the other explorer he’d found earlier. This one had been decapitated. Daniel crouched beside him, scanning the remains. The dried gore told him the death wasn’t recent, but it had been sudden and brutal. Still, this was the second corpse he'd found out of place, and he wondered what they were doing here. A quick search found him no wallet or ID, but it did net him a handful of shotgun shells, half a dozen of then, and another pistol magazine of 9mm. He also found a note, bloodstained but legible, in the jacket of the headless looter.
PWR OUT, generator on B1, Elv 2F access. Bring climbing gear.
Daniel exhaled, and glanced back down to the bottom of the shaft. In the dim light he couldn't see anything, so he cracked another glow stick and dropped it down, illuminating the drop. About forty feet, if his guess was correct, and at the bottom he spotted what looked like a shattered shotgun and a backpack, lost or tossed he didn't know, but he thought back to the other corpse. That one did have an awful lot of kit. Mystery solved, Daniel guessed, and stood.
Backtracking through the cleared halls was slower than he liked, careful not to disturb the bodies of the dead shamblers he’d torched earlier. The scorched remains of the spawning sac in the center of the lobby still smoldered faintly, a burning ruin of twisted bark and desiccated limbs, but thankfully no new movement stirred in its wake. Despite the chaos and noise from the earlier firefight, nothing else had come looking. Daniel sighed in quiet relief.
Grabbing the bag and heading back to the elevator, he set the hook around a sturdy-looking root, the knotted rope falling deep into the darkness as he tossed it down. It was a decent climb, and the drop would be bone-shattering at best, but that wasn't going to deter him, and in all honesty, it wasn't the height that bothered him. It was the fall and the sudden stop at the end if he messed up.
Daniel swallowed a breath and stepped to the edge of the open elevator shaft, the void below swallowing the meager glow from his visor without so much as a shimmer. The drop was deep, deeper than he wanted to think about, the faint illumination from the glow stick feeling very tiny and very distant now that he was facing the drop. His hand hovered near the rope, heart pounding not from fear of the height itself, but from the consequences of slipping, of hitting bottom in the worst way possible.
“Guess it’s this or nothing,” he muttered, his voice low and steady in the claustrophobic silence. He wasn't sure who he was talking to. Maybe just to himself, to build up his nerve, and force himself to push on. He clipped the carabiner into the grapnel’s hook, gave the rope a sharp tug to test its anchor, and planted his boots against the side wall. With one final glance downward, he began the slow, careful descent into the dark below.
000
Alyssa slammed into the metal door hard enough to rattle the frame, her shoulder screaming in protest as the heavy latch clicked into place. The instant the lock engaged, something massive struck the other side, the whole door buckling under the impact. The sound shook through her bones, an ugly, wet rhythm of fists and claws pounding steel. She staggered back, heart hammering, and pressed a trembling hand against her throat as the next blow landed, and then another. The pounding became a steady rhythm, a grim drumbeat that matched the racing of her pulse. Her throat burned as she tried to suck in air, each breath scraping raw from the strange, oily pollen that filled the air. It clung to her hair and clothes, thick and cloying, and she could feel it eating at the back of her throat. It was like inhaling fire.
She pressed the crook of her elbow to her mouth, coughing hard, but it barely helped. Her little penlight trembled in her shaking hand as she turned and stumbled away from the door, the dim beam cutting across the tangled hallway ahead. Every step was slow and deliberate; she could barely see a few feet in front of her. The pounding at her back grew quieter, but the echo of it stayed in her chest. The roots underfoot made the ground uneven, like walking through a dense jungle. The air was hot and sticky, the humidity cloying, and she could feel every bead of sweat sliding down her neck. It had been two hours since the sun went down, and the building had become a maze of twisting, suffocating hallways. Every path she took seemed to lead her deeper, the vines curling tighter, the light weaker. Her little flashlight was barely enough to keep her from tripping over the crawling tendrils of vegetation that wound up the walls and ceiling.
She had thought she’d escaped the Axeman. She really had. The first time she saw him, she hadn’t even been sure he was real. A tall figure in the distance, broad-shouldered, walking slowly through the woods, dragging that monstrous axe that glinted maliciously whenever the light caught it. She had run, fast and desperate, and thought she’d gotten away. But he had found her again. And again. Every time she turned a corner, every time she thought she’d lost him, she would hear that low scraping sound, the grind of metal against tile, somewhere behind her. The bastard never ran. He didn’t have to. He just walked, focused and patient, like he knew the layout better than she did. The hallways here looped in impossible ways, stairwells collapsed or blocked off, corridors curving back on themselves. It was like the hospital was working against her, feeding her straight into his path.
The worst part was that he wasn’t the only thing stalking her. The building crawled with horrors she couldn’t put a name to. Those shambling plant-things that used to be people, their heads replaced with pulsing flowers that opened and closed like breathing wounds. Giant insects that scuttled in the walls, the size of dogs, their carapaces scraping against plaster as they hunted. The Axeman was bad enough, but those things, the ones that hissed in the dark, that clicked and twitched just outside her light, those were the ones that made her skin crawl. She’d emptied almost two full magazines into them already, her little pistol jerking in her hands, muzzle flash lighting the green walls for half-seconds at a time. The rounds stopped some of them, but not all. The ones she didn’t kill kept coming, dragging themselves across the floor until she had to stomp them out, and even then, it was an exhausting effort.
If it hadn’t been for the hikers, she would have run out of ammunition hours ago. Except they hadn’t been hikers at all. Mercenaries, judging by the gear she’d found. The weapons were ruined, useless, and most had come wearing armored vests and spare ammo and all the things soldiers wore. They had come prepared, and it hadn’t saved them anyway. Some of them were still mostly whole, but others were already half-consumed by the plants, roots twisting through their ribs and skulls like vines through a trellis. She'd scavenged what she could from them, reloading whenever she found a quiet corner. But there was never enough. Never enough bullets, never enough time to search the bodies, or grab some of that armor for herself. It would have been better than nothing.
The silence was almost worse than the noise. Every so often she’d hear gunfire echoing through the walls, faint and distant. She’d tried to follow it once, but it had only led her to another blocked corridor, another dead end swallowed in overgrowth. She was starting to think the shooter was trapped, maybe on the other side of that heavy mechanical door she’d found on the second floor. She’d shouted, beaten on it, begged for an answer, but nothing came. If someone was behind it, they weren’t opening it for her. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they were already dead.
From what she’d pieced together from the papers she’d found, this place had been a hospital. Or at least, it used to be. She had found files, reports, and handwritten notes scattered across desks, most of them stained or half-rotted. They talked about experimental treatments, about a therapy for cancer using something called T-JCCC203. From the look of it, it was some kind of retroviral compound... something meant to stimulate cell regeneration. It had worked too well, too fast. The growth hadn’t stopped, hadn’t stayed contained. The experiments had spread, devouring the patients, the staff, and finally the hospital itself. What was left now was a garden of flesh and bark, a sprawling nightmare that didn’t stop growing. She could see the evidence of it everywhere: veins of vine running through walls, the floor tiles cracked open by roots thick as her arm. The flowers that bloomed in the corners pulsed faintly, as if in rhythm with her heartbeat.
And then there were the hikers, though she'd found out pretty early on that they were really mercenaries. Under their hiking gear had been body armor and magazine pouches for weapons long destroyed, as well as a bevy of other equipment that hadn't survived the years. One of the men, the leader maybe, had kept something of the actual mission brief with him. They had come here escorting someone that they'd only referred to as the Doctor, a man that had been seemingly driven mad with guilt over something here. Mad enough to drop several tens of thousands to get these men marching through the woods, at least.
Then they found whatever it was that did this to them, scattering them through the building, picking them off one by one. She never found anyone who looked like this Doctor the brief mentioned. so maybe he had gotten further in, but maybe not. It didn't matter now. Whatever had happened had gone unremarked and unremembered, and the soldiers with it. Now it was just her, the Axeman, and the puppet corpses that only seemed to want to make her join them.
The pounding behind her door had stopped. She froze, staring back at the silent metal surface, every muscle tight. The quiet stretched, heavy and suffocating, until she could hear nothing but her own breathing. That was when she heard it- a faint scraping sound, metal dragging across tile somewhere down the hall. Her heart sank. He was coming. She didn’t need to see him to know it. The Axeman always followed the noise, and the doors seemed to be little more than a suggestion to him.
Her flashlight jittered in her trembling hand. She turned and started forward, trying to keep her steps quiet. Every sound she made seemed too loud, every scrape of her boot against the floor like a gunshot. The walls closed in, narrowing into a choke point where the roots hung thickest. Her tank top clung to her skin, soaked with sweat. Her jacket was a long forgotten memory, having been reduced to tatters by the gripping hand of her stalker. Her jeans were ripped at the knees and caked in sap and resin, and her hands were raw from gripping vines as she pulled herself through gaps too small for comfort. She had found a First Aid Spray earlier, thank God for that, but it hadn’t lasted long. One quick spray and the can had emptied itself, sealing cuts and bruises and pulling some of the burning from her chest. The relief had been instant, but fleeting as she had to drag herself through one narrow escape after the next.
She reached another intersection and pressed her back to the wall, listening. Nothing. No footsteps. No breathing. No sound but her own heartbeat. Her throat ached from the pollen, her lungs raw from panting. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nearly gagged at the taste of dirt and copper. She didn’t want to think about how much of this stuff she’d inhaled. She didn’t want to think about what it was doing to her.
She forced herself to move again, one step at a time, until the dim beam of her flashlight found another door. Her heart leapt, but the hope was short-lived; it was chained from the other side. She cursed under her breath and stepped back, running a hand through her sweat-soaked hair. The pounding had started again somewhere in the distance, dull and rhythmic. He was close. Too close. She had to move.
Her mind raced, searching for a plan, any plan. If she could just find another stairwell, maybe she could double back, find a window, something. But she’d been in these halls too long. She knew what she’d find, and it left her heart sinking. She could feel panic clawing up her throat, trying to choke her, but she pushed it down. Crying wouldn’t help. Panicking would be worse, and she needed to keep a clear head.
She straightened, took another shaky breath, and started forward again. Her flashlight’s beam cut through the dark, catching flashes of movement that weren’t there when she looked twice. The air pulsed faintly, like the building itself was breathing. Her hand tightened on the pistol, the metal slick with sweat.
“Come on, Alyssa,” she whispered to herself, the sound barely audible over her heartbeat. “You’ve made it this far. Keep moving. Don’t stop now.”
The pounding behind her grew louder again, echoing through the corridor like a drumbeat calling her name. The Axeman was coming. Coming for her, for her head, to add her to the macabre scenery and rotting vegetation.
Comments
Alex Piskura
Holy shit this is perfect. Gotta get the Shrek remix to make it official.
stephen lyman
Now we need Danny to save her to the tune of I need a Hero
