The Discovery

Jack and Connor continue trying to find Nick and make an interesting discovery withing the bowels of the burning hospital

Ch 5: The Discovery 

The tunnel is endless. It seems as though we trudge along the inside of a great, stone serpent. The dark doesn’t help either, making figures appear where there are none.

“How much longer you think it goes?” asks Connor after what seems an eternity of silence,

“I wouldn’t have a clue, but shut up,” I reply, fearing the enemy.

Finally I spy a faint blue light, glowing some distance down the hall, slowly growing. Then the light splits in two, rectangle windows,

“Double doors,” whispers Connor, making the same realization as I am. I point him to the left door while I go right. We lean against the wall perpendicular to the door, the blue light now illuminating farther down the hall which is revealed to be only a common hospital corridor. 

“It’s amazing what the dark could do to your head,” Connor tells me, following my confused eyes to the doors that we passed, “It could make monster out of nothing, and miles out of yards,”

“Breach on three,” I say back, wanting to get back on track. We both hold up three figures to the other and slowly bring down the fingers to two, to one. We kick open the doors simulations, with the ease showing the doors weren’t locked. Inside a group of men dressed in white, long coats stand around someone on an operating table. The square room is only illuminated by a giant bulb hanging from the ceiling and a light the doctors use to maneuver over their patient. Men in black uniforms stand alert in the opposite corners, three on each side. Their faces concealed by helmets I do not recognize, tiny yellow slits for eyes and two tubes coming from where their mouth should be to somewhere on the back. They also sported some impressive looking rifles with steel-plated body armor covering their chest, and shoulders.  I look to my left and right and see the same situation for our side as well.

“Move!” I yell and we diverge to the nearest respective corners. The three men in the corner I’m charging at raise their rifles but to late as I already mow down the one on the left. The other two begin to fire as guards opposite us fire. I slide in close to the second guard and fire a bullet into his knee-cap. As he falls I rise up to hit the last guard under the chin with the butt of my rifle. Still holding the gun upside-down, I push a orange button on the side of the barrel and send a grenade that hurls itself at the group of soldiers still firing at me. The explosion forces me to take cover behind some medical equipment that falls on top of me. I slide the mass of metal of me and look at where my grenade went. A portion of the wall is gone leaving a gaping hole large enough to drive a car through. 

“Hey! I can use a little help here!”, I turn to Connor to see him fighting to keep up his rifle while the last guard pushes violently down with a knife aimed towards his neck. 

A quick burst from my rifle sends the man down, with half his neck gone. Connor falls on his back and rebounds back up, kicking the carcass of the fallen foe. I scan around the remnants of the room to see the dead, black suited soldiers and a few of the doctors laid among the rubble. The last, few survivors huddled in the corner across the room from me, shivering with fear.

“Nick!” hollers Connor as he straps his rifle back over his shoulders and runs to the operating table. I follow close behind, close enough to hear his gasp. The man on the table is indeed Nick, but his eyes are stapled open with a metallic tube sliding up his nose and coming out from a hole in the corner of his head. Wherever the tubes led had been destroyed in the firefight, but the machines still keeping Nick alive remained mostly unharmed,

“We have to get him out of here” says Connor, with notable sadness in his voice.

“ We will. We just have to unplug him. He’ll been fine,” I reply. I see the tubes coming from his arms and his chest, leading into machines that I can’t understand even though its in English.

“Any ideas?” I question,

“We have to get this thing out of his head. Then maybe we can work on the rest. Suddenly, the building shakes. Chips fall from the ceiling and I can feel the floor has begun to slope a little.

“That would be the fire,” I say “We have to work fast”.   

I pull out my knife and cleanly cut the tube about an inch from where it enters Nick’s skull. A purple liquid oozes out of the tube and I spot Connor almost petrified with a look of horror on his face.

“He’ll be fine,” I tell him. I can’t have him lose his wits now, I need him to have my back. With a nod he continues to scan the machinery linking to Nick’s vitals. With a look of determination on his face he pushes some keys, flips a lever and yanks the tube out of Nick’s arms. This time blood flows out. Connor’s face changes to thankfulness since he realizes Nick hasn’t been transformed into a monster. With a swiftness that could only be fueled by purpose he scavenges among the debris to find the medical supplies and begins to patch Nick’s arms. I turn my attention back to Nick’s head and think over how to get this thing out. If I mess this up, Nick might as well be dead. As I ponder this over, Connor gently wiggles the tube protruding from Nick’s chest out and pushes a white cloth over the remaining hole. 

“Hurry up and get that damned thing out!” yells Connor at me, still pushing with all his weight on Nick’s chest,

“And turn him into a vegetable! I’d rather think it over a bit more!” I yell back. 

Connor’s face turns red with anger, and I know he is about to go berserk when suddenly, Nick’s eyes opened. Connor’s rage vanished in an instant as he look with awe at he awakened soldier. 

“Nick! Can you hear me?” I yell at him. He doesn’t even seem to hear me, just a blank stare at the bulb on the ceiling. 

“Oh my god he’s gone!” moans Connor as he stumbles back.

“C’mon Nick come back to us,” I say with a soft pat to Nick’s cheek. Nothing. I take a step back, the thought that we lost him enters my mind until he springs up to a sitting position. With eyes filled with unknown terror, he lets out a blood curdling scream. He points at the glowing blue, bulb and yells,

“The bulb! Oh my god the bulb!”.

With a single pull, he yanks the tube out of his head and throws it at the light. The metal tube breaks the glass of the bulb and lets out a streak of blue light that hits Nick, causing him to scream again and then roll off the table. He hit’s the ground with a thud, passed out. The building shakes again, this time more powerfully. The bulb gets loose from its holdings and plummets to the ground. I slide over to Nick and cover his head with my body as the bulb hit’s the table. Shards of glass shoot everywhere, my back impaled by dozens of the little knives. The pain is immense, but I can work with it. When the shaking stops again, I get up with a yell as the muscles in my back are cut by the glass. Connor runs over and begins to pull some shards from my back. This hurts even more, but at least I can move without destroying my back.  

“Let’s get out of here,” says Connor, looking down at Nick.

“Agreed,” and so I lift Nick up while Connor ties the remainder of the medical cloth around his head, stopping the leakage of blood that has left a puddle on the floor. We both take a arm, lift Nick up and begin to trudge out of the hole in the wall from my grenade. We emerge into another hallway which is thankfully lit. This time however, the heat of the impending fire is beating against our skin. 

We continue to move along until Connor stops and say, “Look! An elevator!”

“This building is on fire you idiot!” I reply, “I don’t want to be in a metal death box while plummeting into an inferno!”

“ Do you think we can go up all the way to the roof by the stairs with Nick before the fire catches up? It’s the only way!”. Sweat glosses Connor’s face as I feel my own sweat gathering up on the collar of my armor.

“Make sure the elevator comes from the top floors. Or else we’d be dead before we even go up a floor,” I say while admitting being wrong. Connor maneuvers over to hit the button and luckily we see the elevator coming down. The elevator reaches our floor and when the doors open the back is riddled with bullet holes and blood splatters,

“Hopefully Capt didn’t come up in this one,” I say. We get in and I kick the roof button. The elevator doesn’t budge. I continually kick the button until I feel my toenail coming off. Then I hear the cranking of gears, the buzzing of machinery. Then we drop. Stories fly by in instants as we are forced to the floor of the elevator. Then the bang of metal on metal deafens me as the elevator caught itself. The heat is comparable to the tunnel when we first entered this hellhole of a hospital, unbearable. The walls of the elevator begin to shimmer and distort itself as we melt away into oblivion. The elevator then makes a terrible cranking noise, then shaking, finally it slowly begins to ascend. We all let out a sigh of relief as the mutated numbers above the door slowly glow as we move up.

“You’re an a*s,” I say to Connor as a catch me breath,

“Yea I know,” replies Connor.

“ We have to get up. There might be more on the roof,”

“Damn it, I was beginning to like it down here,” and so we rise weakened and lift Nick back up. The cloths along his cheat, arms and head now have a light brown border, showing how hot it was down there. Finally, the “R” at the end of the line of numbers becomes illuminated and the doors open. The cool air hitting my skin was ecstasy. I was immobilized by the pleasure of the coolness seeping into my body, as well as Connor. Still, we push ourselves to continue. Vents snake along the roof  as huge fans stand squarely above us. As we thread our way among this jungle of metal, gunfire erupts from our left. We take cover behind one of the fans and lay Nick against it. I ready my weapon and peek around the corner. Before me I see more soldiers dressed in the same garb as the ones in the lab. They fire from behind the cover of the vents, onto the empty helipad. Using the raised helipad as cover, the rest of the outnumbered Delta Squad steadily fires upon the opposing force. Static begins to ring in my ears as we come back in range of Capt’s radio.

“Captain! Captain! Jack and Connor here and we got Nick. He’s in bad shape,” I say into my earpiece, pushing on the talk button.

“Glad to hear your voices soldiers! How bad is Nick?” replies Capt Sean,

“ He’s been through some medical testing. He has wounds on his arms, chest and a nasty one on the side of his head. He’s out though. Not sure if he’ll make it sir,”

“Alright. First priority is to get him to safety. Where are you now?”

“Behind enemy lines, taking cover behind the fan closet to your position at 12 o’clock,”

“How many badies do you count?”

“ I have six in front of me and a force of around ten are going around your right trying to flank you,” I call out. Within seconds, I see Jake bull rush towards the flanking force. In moves too graceful for his size, Jake hops over the vent the soldiers are behind and swings his mini gun to and fro, like a bull swaying his head, mauling the first few, then he crushes the skull of a soldier with a huge swinging hit from the barrel of his gun. As the momentum spins him around he plants his foot and brings the mini gun down and chops down the rest of the group in a storm of bullets. Seeing their comrades being destroyed by the hulking mass of meat that is Jake, they go to the corner of their vent and begin to open fire. Jake manages to dive behind what’s left of the hospital’s water supply.

“Captain, I need you to send somebody to our position to pick up Nick. Connor and I are going to advance on the enemy,” I say into the mic.

“Rodger that I’m sending Tony and one of the rescues,”

“Thanks Capt. Connor! Let’s move!”

So I begin to charge at the soldiers while spraying bullets while Connor stays back to pick them off. Connor immediately nails the soldier farthest from the corner and closest to us while I tear up the second closest from foot to neck with bullet holes. The rest of the group notices what’s going on and then turns there attention to me. The third closest manages to get a flesh wound on my leg, causing me to fall over. In a tumbling descent, I shoot a few rounds at the remaining three. The front man goes down easily enough while the middle is skillfully hit in the head by Connor. Continuing my falling spiral I make a semi-circle of bullet holes across the last man’s chest. I hit the ground hard on my back, pushing whatever pieces of glass Connor missed deeper into the tissues of my body. 

Connor comes over to lend me a hand up, smirking, 

“That was a good example of turning a negative into a positive,”

“Did Tony get Nick yet?” I ask,

“He should’ve by now,”

Then gunfire appears behind us.

“Cowboys! Run!” yells Tony as he fireman carries Nick back to the helipad. One of the rescued soldiers, a blonde man wearing a torn up military uniform. He uses what looks like to be one of the cowboy’s ragged rifles to hold of the enemies not yet in view.

“Andrew c’mon!” yells Tony as he continues forward with bullets whizzing by his hair. 

Andrew lets out a battle cry and continues to fire, standing in plain sight. A barrage of bullets shoot through Andrew’s body. He shakes violently as what seems a never ending supply of fire ravages his body. After the volley ended, whatever was left of the body sagged to the ground, unrecognizable as a human’s. Connor lends me his shoulder as I hop my way to the helipad. I look back and see the huge force of cowboys that is streaming from the stairwell. We finally make it and I slump on the backside of the helipad with all the other rescues.

“Good to have you back,” says Jake with extremely painful pat to the back. I let out a yell of pain that starts the giant.

“Don’t ask,” I tell him after the pain had mostly subsided.

“Capt, when’s evac getting here?”

“ It said ten minutes an hour ago,” replies Capt, closing one eye and firing away.

“We’re gonna get over run here sir,” says Connor who joins in on the battle.

“Just hold on men. This can’t go on for much longer,” replies Sean.

Tony finally manages to scamper over the rest of us. He lays Nick down on his back and joins in as well. After tearing off the bottom of my pants and tying it around the wound, I reload and take fire. A sea of people come from the one door, some with modern firearms, others with makeshift swords. No matter what, we halted there advance at the vents. The entire cowboy army must be coming up those stairs yet we hold them back, even more so when Jake comes back and unloads his mini gun on them. I feel invincible. Nothing can overcome us if we stick together. But then some of us get wounded, then we start running out of ammo. Hundreds of corpses must be strewn across the roof but the tide doesn’t stop. They just keep coming and coming. Jake gets a new scar and Tony gets his first. The rescues start screaming and praying which isn’t helping the situation. Finally, the whirling of a heliship appears, sending a cheer among the rescues and a cry of anger among the cowboys.

Static starts up again as the heliship comes into radio contact.

“This is EAO-47 coming for evac of Delta Squad come in?” says a new voice.

I see Sean take cover and push his earpiece,

“This is Captain Sean of Delta Squad thank God you made it,”

“No problem Capt but the landing pad it too hot you’ll have to clear it up some if you want us to land,”

“God damn it man can’t you see the entire CPC army is right in front of us! Don’t you have any arms?”

“Yea but that’ll level the building sir! With you on it!”

“This building is going down anyways! Just do it!” screams Capt as he points towards the advancing army. At this point the cowboys are starting to get past the vents and into a clear area. Then huge bangs erupt from behind us, followed by larger bangs on the opposite side of the roof, taking out that entire side. The stairwell is gone but the building begins to shake more violently then ever. The roof then begins to crumble to the floors below. The cowboys are helpless in escaping the enlarging hole since they’ll be running right into our fire. Jake moves to the left side of the helipad as Capt Sean and Tony move to the right while the heliship lands. Connor and I first lift Nick into the heliship, then we herd the rescues onto the ship. 

“Captain! We’re all good here!” yells Connor over the gunfire.

“Alright Delta! Get on the ship!” orders Capt. 

Connor and I immediately get on through our side and give cover to Tony and Capt who slide in beside us. Jake then sits on the floor with his legs dangling out the other side while rest the minigun on his lap, still firing. 

“Alright pilot we all in!” says Capt as the pilot gives us the thumbs up. Slowly we move up while the remaining cowboys start to huddle around the helipad, where we were just moments before. Then from the gapping hole, more cowboys begin to climb up and join in the attack on out heliship,

“Tough sons of b*****s eh?” says Tony, firing out the back window.

“Pilot!” says Capt, “ Bring the building down!”

“Yes sir,” replies the pilot as he banks us hard left so as to face the building,

“Fire everything!” I yell,

“With pleasure,” comes back the pilot as he flips levers and pushes buttons. Then he flips open the top of one of his largest levers revealing a large, glowing red button. With a powerful thumb, he pushes the button and the entire ship rocks like a boat in a storm. The amount of firepower crammed into this heliship is incredible, and it all fire on the corner of the hospital. The explosion was magnificent, the explosion of the missiles and plasma canons combined with the raging inferno at the base of the hospital created a masterpiece of fire. The devastation was immense, the building was almost cut in half and soon it began to tip over. Delta Squad and the rescues let out a cheer in unison at the destruction of the building that caused so much pain, ironically. I look through the opposite door of the heliship to see the rising sun, explaining why I was so tired. We had fought through the night, this mission consisted of almost twenty-four hours of intense fighting.

“Good work today boys,” says Capt. Sean over the radio,

“Now lets go home,” 

Author's Note

Im having this problem in having so many ideas that I want to get out and the fact that the actual process of putting the words on paper is so tedious to me. I have no idea but I just wrote this this morning since I woke up extra early. Tips and reviews are encouraged!