We had spent the previous day resting in the room, as Marri definitely needed it.

It was primarily about getting adjusted to broken sleep patterns and waking up every couple of hours to feed or change Lone, but also to have some time to process the last few days.

I had taken charge of nappy changes and ensured she had food and water.

Duties in which I gave my 110%!

It was such a surreal experience as we tried to ignore the terrible distant noises that could be heard during the daytime, making it very clear that this was happening on a wider, much larger scale than we initially thought.

Overall we tried to have a normal ‘fresh new parent’ day and it felt pretty good compared to being attacked by nightmares.

Again, there were a few crashes, bangs and distant screams that made us near shit ourselves, but we were starting to get used to it at this point and it got to the point where it was becoming more irritating than terrifying.

A testament to the human mind's resilience…

..

.

It was now day 6, early morning.

Which meant that today we would discuss what we would do next and perhaps longer term strategies.

Marri was still sleeping peacefully with Lone, but since I still couldn’t find my phone, I didn’t actually know what time it was.

It was probably something like 08:00 and Lone had made hunger cues 4 times throughout the night, where I would gently assist him to latch onto the boob and he would feed and then go back to sleep.

Marri woke up each time briefly but quickly fell back asleep.

I didn’t feel that tired so I pottered about and had another look around for anything useful as it was getting light.

I started to notice something peculiar as I explored the room and stuff inside, which was..all the electronics were half gutted or just gone.

I’m 100% sure that we had more machines and things, hell, you could see squares in the surfaces where there was something there before, stopping the dust forming or sunlight bleaching.

Naturally there wasn’t a single item that could pass off as a decent weapon either.

Well, this is a hospital, not an army base. What kind of weapon would I hope to find here..

I was peering out the window, observing what I could of the outside.

The entire hospital site was surrounded by thick, tall trees which didn’t allow me to see far, however, looking up at the sky it was clear there were a vast number of plumes of smoke rising from all directions.

Well, darn.

It must be some kind of british thing to be this blasé, to encounter such traumatic situations and then be confronted with evidence that suggested the world was experiencing the ‘end of days’ or perhaps someone had opened a portal to the hell dimension or maybe there it was an extremely advanced invasion from another country or a biological experiment gone wrong and spread through the population.

I really, reaaally don’t want to have to fight those creatures every night. And if it’s demons?

Well, again, darn.

Yeah. It must be some kind of British thing.

Keep calm and carry on good sir!

I bet there were a bunch of Brits, queuing up for the demon portals, no chains necessary, politely waiting their turn to be enslaved for eternity, since what else could you do but make the best out of it!

“Ooh, sorry, excuse me but there’s a queue here Sir!” I put on your classic polite British voice.

Would probably be like a builder or barmen.

“Oh goodness me! I beg your pardon my good man!”

He would be the chipper polite train conductor who was close to retirement and was a bit old school.

“No trouble at all mate…heh....Soooo, weathers not too bad at the moment wouldn’t you say eh?”

I chuckled to myself.

It felt strangely better after accepting that there was nowhere to go except onwards, making things simpler to plan if you had just a few goals in mind.

You can either die trying to live, or die not trying to live. The universe will get you eventually.

Marri woke up, possibly because of my bizarre monologue and I brought some of the supplies over to munch whilst I filled her in - (no hentai) - on all the observations I’d made.

And ultimately, the difficult decision ahead we had to make regarding our escape.

We both agreed that there was no logical reason for what was going on so we’d just accept it and stay open minded.

Use any observations when needed to help keep us safe.

The main priority was to get out of the hospital and get to the car.

We broke the whole thing down into 3 stages.

First stage, which was really crap:

I would have to go out and Marri would have to lock the door behind me whilst I checked the best route to take.

The Second stage, which was also, really crap:

I would hopefully return and we would decide and if yes, prepare to leave all together.

The Third stage, which was the crappiest of crap:

We would make a break for it, at a quick pace but ready to retreat back to the room if needed. We would leave the key in the room on the inside, but take the rest of them with us in case we needed to take shelter in another room or if we were in a rush we could shut the door and lock the room.

That was it really. Lone didn’t have any input except dropping a poo during the conversation.

Things could change if we actually came across any of the staff or other friendly people, but based on the fact we hadn’t heard much apart from distant thumps, crashes, wretched distant screeching…

I won’t hold my breath, let's say.

Our discussion on what we thought was going on was pretty varied though, Marri thought this had to be biological since the creatures were humanoid but deformed and manic.

Whilst I was on the demon portal side of the fence, as I was influenced from all those fiction fantasy books, games and movies I..used…to…

That dream I had! How the heck did I forget that! The bloody message I’d seen before waking up literally stated I had points and….

Nahhhh. Nnnnno…It couldn’t be…could it?

Surely this wasn’t some kind of dungeon or system apocalypse type event surely??

Naww, It couldn’t be..there wasn’t any global message or warning…

“HEY Godu! Are you even listening to me? Helloooo titface? Anyone in there-”

I’d completely missed what she had been saying as I tried to process my crazy dream.

“Marri! I completely forgot to tell you about the dream I had when I was conked out!”

“What? what dream?” she said, mildly irritated that I had not been listening.

“So it was…a hmm, how do I explain it...A void type place, with stars and streams of light and there was this large portal type thing that-”

She flinched and widened her eyes.

“-You touched and saw shapes and symbols.” she said slowly and paled.

“Uhh….did I tell you already?”

I briefly raised one eyebrow in puzzlement, I glanced off to the side, squinting, trying to recall when I’d told her.

“No, but..” she sighed. “..I didn’t tell you either...”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

“At first I thought nothing of it, since it was just a dream. But it was really vivid and I felt pain in the dream which I can’t recall ever happening to me before.” she shook her head.

This was starting to freak me out.

“Okay. Oooooookay.” I took a deep breath.

“Tell me exactly in detail what you saw in this ‘dream’ and then I’ll tell you mine in detail. Then we can compare and decide if this was just a big coincidence, maybe some kind of shared trauma coping mechanism?”

“Or….if it is the completely absurd notion that, we’re witnessing the same kind of shit that has been the concept of games, movies and lots of books.”

“Oh boy” She rolled her eyes. “What kind of games or movies explain what's happened in the past few days?”

“Yes it sounds mental, but let me give you some examples and I’ll explain the similarities.”

And I did.

I gave a few examples of games where it was typical to fight creatures and then grow in strength afterwards.

She understood the concept since she wasn’t some kind of technology hermit who hadn’t at least been exposed to games.

Then I went on to talk about some of the movies that showed the earth being merged with another world or dimension and with that came sorcery, powers and creatures that weren’t native to earth.

She was pretty doubtful about that, since I explained that traditionally in those narratives, the human race would be transported for training or given safety nets such as safe zones or at least some kind of guidance or training.

What we had experienced so far just felt fucking brutal.

I was starting to doubt the whole concept since the more I talked about it, the less similarities there were…until I had finished explaining my dream and she explained hers in great detail.

We had experienced everything exactly the same except we had touched different symbols and we saw different text. I also had experienced the insane pain, whilst she had only had to deal with some minor pain, but was still damned uncomfortable she sharply pointed out.

She had touched a symbol that was a circle with complex symbols inside, a pair of wing-like structures surrounding the circle, and then a pair of lines going down from the circle into half arrow heads.

Her favourite she said..

Afterwards she had been shown two symbols, different to my experience, but one had been an upside down triangle with wavy lines going through it from the left, then up and out to the right.

The other, which was the one she had touched, was an upside down triangle with lines going through it from the bottom and up, that joined up and formed a semi circle dome on the top flat part and inside the dome were crosses, donuts and hexagons.

The text she had seen…she couldn’t recall anything explaining a skill, but she definitely could remember the ominous message:

Attribute points available [1].

Please assign attribute points in the next [??].

She had played MMOs before but it was ones where you didn’t really do attributes, more skills, quests and fancy combos with action combat etc.

Neither of us had done anything even close to assigning points or attributes or whatever, so we were a bit stumped.

And we didn’t feel particularly stronger or faster…and although I closed my eyes, strained to imagine a stats screen, shouted a ton of mental commands.

Even trying “DOT QUESTION MARK”...to no success apart from making Marri snort at some of the random words I was saying.

“HELP..hmm nope. MENU. Nah. GUIDE. CHARACTER. Nope and nada. Oh! STATS…grr-”

“pEniS sTaTs pLuS fIvE iNcheS” Marri childishly put on a nerdy voice and started snorting in uncontrollable laughter.

“Really Marri?” I sideways glanced at her unimpressed.

Nothing I had tried worked.

“Right. Let's just park this for now.” I grumbled.

“Aww Diddums I was only joking!” She winked and blew me a kiss.

I smirked and waved a hand to signal for her not to worry.

Avoiding the obvious trap where I’d reply with something like ‘you weren’t complaining last night’ and she’d reply with something juvenile like ‘can’t complain with such speedy service’.

Damn woman, I’ll defeat you one day.

Truthfully this was no time to be pissed off, or pissing about, considering we had more important priorities.

Such as getting out of the maternity ward and getting somewhere safe.

For a short time, I must admit I felt something different to stress, perhaps slightly excited at the idea that maybe we were suddenly going to have adventures, quests and be able to wield “sorcery” and all kinds of crazy skills...but as usual, reality sobered me up and I focused on the dreaded task…

I straightened up, rubbed my face quickly and put my serious cap on.

“We’ll stick to the plan. I’ll go out right now. Scout the escape, and then when I come back we’ll decide what to do next. Either we try our luck today or wait until tomorrow and I just have this sinking feeling that the longer we wait, the harder it will be...”

She looked at me fearfully but nodded, then beckoned me to come over to her.

I hated how we embraced as if I was going away for a long time.

It made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach, the thought that I was leaving my team alone.

My family…

Before I could change my mind, we had moved the barricade and were at the door…and I turned the key.

Click.

Cold fear spread through me as adrenaline started seeping into my system, making my hands uncontrollably shaky.

I froze once the key clacked the lock open, listening in deathly silence for any noises.

Nothing.

I slowly turned the handle and put my foot in front of the door.

An attempt to stop it from suddenly being smashed open.

Cracking the door open I noticed I was breathing heavily and tried to quieten myself.

I peeked out through the crack.

Nothing, all clear.

The hallways were cast in shadows and shade but there was enough light coming from windows and other open rooms along the hall.

I opened the door a fraction wider, up to my planted foot.

The hallway went right and left and they went around the building to make an outer square, with nurse stations in the middle square and the birthing rooms, NICU and recovery rooms were all dotted around the outer square.

We were on the bottom side of the square, opposite from the entrance/exit, but there should be fire escapes on each side.

At least, I hope so.

I had full visibility of the right part of the corridor.

No movement or sounds.

I opened the door wider, moving my foot, enough for me to peek out and round to the left.

*snuffle*

I froze.

What was that noise?!

I glanced over at Marri who nodded to Lone.

Oh gosh don’t do that to me boy.

Relief washed over me and I relaxed a little.

Taking a deep breath in and out I stuck my head fully out the door and I peeked round to observe the left section of the corridor.

A couple of feet in front of my face, was an oversized grin and a pair of yellow bulging eyes staring right at me. Grinning widely, mouth quivering and salivating.

IT IS FUCKING STANDING THERE, SILENT. SHIT. SHIT.

It seemed to move slowly as I froze, like a deer in headlights.

As to try and not make it attack straight away, I slowly pulled my head back into the room, my hands were clammy and I was shaking like a leaf.

It continued to follow, staring at me but also darting its eyes around, scanning.

I slowly shifted around the door, gesturing to Marri to move far away and I started to tense and shift my body into position, ready to slam into the door.

The top of its head came first, silently into the room.

It’s shifting oversized eyes came in and observed me.

They flickered behind me as I heard Marri gasp.

The eyes widened and bulged.

It darted in, bringing it’s stupid ugly grin into the room and started to make a hungry salvating hissing noise, more than likely excited at the sight of Lone.

Die Fucker.

I slammed my shoulder into the door, smashing into its chin, knocking the creatures head into the doorframe with a *thock* and its eyes started to roll around.

I let go of the door and grabbed onto its neck with both my hands, pulling it into the room.

Its slimy disgusting neck.

Ramming it’s head against the wall and then falling onto the floor, I used my knee to pin it down as I smashed its head onto the floor again.

It instantly went limp, so I jumped up and slammed the door shut and locked it.

What the fuck was I doing taking such an insane risk!

I was shaking like a leaf from adrenaline but my body had reacted with such confidence, as if the fight was merely a game of tag.

In the daylight, I briefly registered that this creature had lighter hair and red eyes.

I grabbed the thing's legs and dragged it over to the window.

I didn’t want to neck-stomp it, I’d just let gravity do the work for me.

At the window I hauled it up from under its arms and shoved it onto the window sill.

In my twisted mind, I somehow managed to think the words “yeet” as I tumbled the legs out and winced as I heard the sickening smack when it impacted onto the floor.

I was panting as I looked over at Marri and gave her the okay sign with my hand.

She responded by pulling a yikes face and returning a half hearted thumbs up.

“Fuck sake that’s grim...” I whispered briefly looking back out the window to make sure the thing wasn’t moving.

It wasn’t.

It was a bit of a mess since it had landed on its head first.

“Had to deal with that now rather than later.”I said.

Marri just silently nodded grimly.

“I’m going to try again, I didn’t see anything else but I’m going to still take it slow since that bastard was just standing there silently.”

Wanting to waste no time, I collected myself again as me and Marri got back into position.

Once again, I opened the door a bit whilst scanning and listening.

All clear on the right side.

Opening further to check the left, I braced myself to fight…but it was clear.

I let a minute or so go by whilst I tried to stay as silent as possible and cupped my ears to pick up any small sounds.

There were some distant shouts echoing faintly down the halls and the occasional thuds & thumps.

I thought I may have heard very faint muffled tones that sounded like human voices..but the tinnitus in my ears started to roar as I continued to listen to the general silence.

Something is not quite right..it is overly quiet..there is some ambient noise missing..

I glanced back one last time at Marri holding Lone, she had wide open glossy eyes, but she half smiled at me in encouragement and whispered “good luck”.

I smirked back and whispered “Just popping out for some milk and bread, be right back” as I stepped outside and closed the door behind me before the temptation to stay became overwhelming.

I heard a muffled snort and “you better, you tit” from behind the door.

Smirking to myself I headed out to the right, towards the kitchen area I had looted before.

I figured either I’ll find a map or perhaps I would need to grab supplies and drop them outside the door in the event we need to stay or perhaps if I fucked up and got myself killed then at least those two would have something to keep them going a bit longer...