Tessa turned all of the knobs in the kitchen stoves to max along with the ovens and left their doors open. Then she walked out of the kitchen, tore a strip from her shirt, lit it with the candle lighter and threw it at the flesh wall before sprinting out. The pulsating flesh was surprisingly flammable and burned ferociously. It gave Tessa bit of a fright as she wasn’t sure if the stoves and oven used gas and would explode; it was only her guess from movies. She rushed out of the cafeteria exit and ran without looking back as the fire was spreading far faster than she estimated and the worms would definitely notice it. She managed to hide in an open university branded bus before stopping for a break. Finally turning back, she saw more than a few dozen students and teachers standing around the burning cafeteria with black worms waving in the air from their mouths.
***
Trembling from fear, Tessa watched in absolute horror as hundreds of students and staff gathered at the burning building from her hiding spot on the bus. Their black worm-like parasites crawling out of their bodies and waving in the air as if to mourn the losses of their brethren while a familiar figure stood at a higher ground level in front of them. An even larger worm waving from the figure’s mouth and making screeching calls.
Her eyes grew wide as the recognition set in. The figure was so familiar because she grew up with her and came from her. Tessa’s mother stood among the infested and screamed out commands to the surroundings, sending them off in all directions to find the culprit of the arson. The sight of the numerous infested humans scattering made Tessa’s blood run cold as she shrank back in the bus and half-stood, half-crawled to the other side of the bus and exited out of the back end, farthest from the scattered students and staff.
As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she sprinted towards the parking lot entrance leading to the street. The majority of her running path was blocked by the university bus, only becoming visible within the last few meters to the open wall that surrounded the university as a whole. It was during that short fraction that one of the students saw her running away and began screaming out before chasing her down with a speed exceeding his physique. Tessa felt all of the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she increased her own speed. Her legs pumped faster and faster as she dodged into an alley after crossing the street, the chasing student only having just arrived at the parking lot entrance. He stared fiercely at the fleeing figure but made no move to continue the pursuit as if he was waiting for further orders.
Tessa continued to sprint and dodge into different alleys until her heart felt as if it were going to explode before she finally stopped. Her back bent forward as she clutched onto the alley wall with her right hand and tried to catch her breath. She hadn’t kept track of her surroundings as she ran, only paying enough attention to ensure that her direction wasn’t leading back to the university. As she caught her breath and looked up, she saw a large hospital complex in front of her and felt more relieved. She recognized the building as the same one that she noticed from the university. It was also in a similar position from her own memories of the hospital complex and university in real life.
Taking in a deep breath, she began moving once more and walked towards the hospital building closest to her. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping to find inside, maybe a normal person, maybe nothing more than a safe place to stay or lose the university’s infested. Somewhere deep in her subconscious, maybe she even wanted to find a way to remove the worms and save her mother, even though she knew that it was only a fake. Tessa bent her knees slightly as she made it to the door and rubbed her thighs, relaxing her muscles slightly before opening the hospital entrance door at the Emergency Room side.
Cold air hit her face immediately as the automated doors opened before her. The silence of the emergency room lobby sent a chill along her spine. After the oddity with the university, she felt extremely suspicious about any oddities in her immediate environment. Her eyes scanned the lobby for any movement and after finding nothing, she walked farther in and began checking the reception desk. Tessa wasn’t sure what she was looking for within the desk, only that she needed information, especially a map of the departments or the pharmacy. She had worked as an EMT in the past so she knew some medications that would be useful, such as painkillers, anticoagulants, antihistamines, and others. She wanted to create a first aid kit that would be useful in most situations. She also wanted to get something to help her calm down in case she stopped long enough to have a panic attack.
Tessa spent nearly ten minutes searching before she found what she was looking for within the desk. There was a laminated map of the complex inside a binder beneath several other documents. It also included the list of phone numbers of each department and several on-call doctors for the ER and ICU. The pharmacy was located in another building and floor, so she began to move again with the same level of caution as before. The chilly air of the hospital made her skin itch a bit as she followed the map to the fifth floor and then began crossing the buildings using the walkways.
The eerie silence accompanied her throughout her journey through the hospital all the way to the pharmacy where it was finally broken by a slow drip. Slowing her steps even further, Tessa approached the room and peeked in, only to see no one inside. Scanning the room twice with her eyes, she approached the door and entered, still wary of the noise. The room was small, no bigger than a regular hospital room and the door lock had not been reset after the last person left. Open bottles of various pills lay scattered across the floor in a mess with the strange dripping noise finally in sight, it was coming from an empty cage beneath the pickup window where a pool of gray liquid slowly drained out.
Feeling uncomfortable staying any longer than necessary, Tessa searched for the medications that she felt were required for an advanced first aid kit. After some struggle and frustration at the indecipherable sorting system of the pharmacy, she managed to pull together everything she wanted with few exceptions. Packing it together inside her cloth grocery bag, she got up to leave when she heard a scream from somewhere upstairs and froze in place. Wasn’t the hospital empty?
Swallowing back her fear, she made her way towards the stairs and headed up to the next floor, pausing only slightly at the elevators before shaking off the notion of using them. Anything that could make someone scream would not be something she wanted to meet in an enclosed space like an elevator, she felt confident in escaping through the stairs at least. She had already run away from a whole campus full of monsters after all, how many more could exist in this world?
Tessa stepped onto the sixth floor and crossed a short hallway and corner only to see a young woman in bloody sheets, a man with a broken mask and another man with his back towards her. The masked man lunged forward as soon as she came into his view, catching the young man off guard since his target was not either of the original two. Tessa froze in place as the masked man charged towards her, only to be intercepted by the young man who jumped in front of her after noticing the new presence. Both men struck out at the same time as they collided into one another and a loud grunt was heard from the younger man.
The woman covered in blood wearing the sheets turned and charged at Tessa in rage after seeing the young man being hurt. Her fingers clawed Tessa’s face in her anger as she screamed at her for aiding the raven masked man. Tessa fell backwards, swinging her cloth bag full of pills and canned goods into the woman’s head in an attempt to force her away. The bag made a loud cracking noise when it hit her head and the woman sagged to the ground in shock, even as her nails carved lines in Tessa’s face.
On the other side, the raven masked man fell on top of the young man with blood spraying from his neck. The young man held his left eye with his empty hand, the other still waving a bone saw at the falling man. A scalpel protruded out from the young man’s left eye as he backed away, allowing gravity to take effect undisturbed.
