Uncharted Shifts

The group moved on towards the center of the building. The shaking became less frequent and intense, but still lingered on. C peered cautiously left to right, half-expecting the building to collapse on top of him. He suddenly started to hear out of place tapping, but calmed down as he remembered that the parasite zombies were outside the door. He put one of his hands on his forehead.

The trek towards the middle of the building was going well, until they reached a familiar metal door. A few soldiers went to investigate it, but found no way to open it without damaging the building's structure.

"Guess we'll have to take a detour again." One of the soldiers said with a sigh.

Before the group could move far enough, C examined the nearby hall. He saw a lab coat sticking out from under a door to the left.

"Hey, over there." C pointed towards the coat, "Maybe that has something useful on it."

C went to the coat and tried to pull on it, but it barely budged. C let go and turned to the soldiers, then heard a creak coming from the door. He looked back, and saw that the door opened inwards. He looked at the soldiers again, causing them to look at each other. Two of the soldiers walked to the room, and peered into it. The room was almost pitch black, with the only source of lighting being from the open door.

"Do you guys have flashlights?" C asked.

"Already on it." One of the soldiers replied, tinkering with a part near his rifle's muzzle.

A beam of light sparked up from the attachment, illuminating the room by itself. The two soldiers went in and looked around for any object of interest. C decided to look through the lab coat at the door, and found an I.D. card. He glanced at the two soldiers, who were checking the room's cabinets. One of the soldiers found a key ring, but continued looking.

"What about this?" C asked them, waving up the I.D. card.

"Perfect," The soldier said as C handed him the I.D.

The soldier went to the door and swiped the I.D. through the keypad to its right. This surprised C, as he had not seen the keypad initially. The keypad flashed for a while, seemingly broken, until the door opened slowly with an audible whir of an engine. The rest of the group stood there, puzzled, before they decided to enter. As C walked into the next hallway, with the door closing behind them, he realized something. "Why was there a lab coat here?" he thought to himself

As the door closed, the group realized that there was no light source inside the hall. In the inky dark, a couple of soldiers fumbled with their rifles, looking for their flashlights; one of the soldiers managed to turn their's on, and flooded the hall with light. The flashlight was bright enough to light up most of the room, although the area outside the cone of light was just barely enough to see.

With the room now visible, an uncanny sight was revealed. The set of double doors to the center area was covered in an odd layer of gooey, green liquid, as if the building itself was starting to be taken over by a plague of some sort. The soldiers looked amongst each other, as if to say, "No, you go check that out." After a period of silence, a single soldier went over to investigate. The soldier took out his gas mask from his helmet and slid it over his face, before fastening it in place. He approached the pile of sludge and shone his flashlight on it. The mass remained static, not reacting at all to the intense light. The soldier went and opened one of the double doors and peered inside.

"Its clear." The soldier announced, "Er, do any of you have spare gas masks?"

A couple other soldiers went to see what he was talking about, also putting on their gas masks. Behind the doors was an even larger mass of the gooey liquid behind the doors, covering the walls, floor, and even parts of the ceiling.

"Was this here earlier?" One of the soldiers asked.

"I hope it isn't corrosive." Another one commented.

After the gas masks were handed out, the group ventured into the next room. The group waded through the sticky slush on the floor, and several of the soldiers pointed their flashlights around, looking for a door to the outside of the room. The building shook again. This time, it was strong enough to cause several pieces of plaster to fall from the ceiling. The debris landed next to a seemingly limp body, which caused it to stir.

One of the soldiers noticed it, and told the others to get the civilians out of the room. The person got up to their feet, and started to slowly stumble towards the soldier. C saw that the person's leg was twisted in an unnatural angle. The soldier pointed their rifle towards the person, but that did little to halt its advance. The soldier aimed for a few seconds, before C realized that he was hesitating.

"Damn it, where is the rest of it?" The soldier nervously mumbled, noticing the tail wrapped around the person's neck.

C noticed a lump behind the person's shirt, and realized that the parasite was hiding underneath it. C aimed his gun, and fired at it. The parasite ejected its tail from the person's neck, creating a sickening gushing sound and forcing the person to emit a loud, haunting scream. The parasite fell off of the person, both of them now lying dead on the floor. C paused for a moment, and looked at the group. Most of them were turned away, and several of them were covering their ears.

A moment later, the soldiers finally managed to locate another door. One of the soldiers scraped off the goo from the hinges, and the door was easily opened. The group went through, some of them still shaking from the earlier incident, and ended up in a long hallway. The hall was not in any better condition than the room, and had the unknown sludge covering the majority of it.

"Think that the parasites are creating the sludge?" C asked one of the soldiers, attempting to get his mind off of the event prior.

"I don't think so," the soldier responded, "If they were, we'd have seen much more of it earlier."

The group stopped for a short period of time, until the building started to shake again.

"All right, let's move onward." A squad leader commanded.

The group moved cautiously through the thick sludge, trying to get as little on them as possible. C heard ominous scrapping from the insides of the doors to his flanks, but they were sealed shut by the sludge. C tried to not notice, until a soldier looked at him perplexingly. The soldier looked at the doors, then to the group, putting his finger near his mouth to signal them to silence. The group moved slowly through the hall, with the only noise they made being the slight slushing of the goo beneath their feet. As soon as everyone made it in the next room, the soldiers shut the door behind them.

C investigated this next room, and saw only the sludge in even denser volumes than the hallway before. Right as C was about to comment, something rose out from the sludge. C pointed his gun at it, and it eventually revealed itself to be another parasite zombie. The zombie wasted little time and ran towards C right away.

C fired three shots at it, but they did little to halt its charge. C blocked the zombie's rush with his rifle, which it grabbed and threw into a puddle of sludge. As the zombie prepared to swing at C, the other soldiers fired into it almost simultaneously, making it drop to the floor. C snapped back to his senses, and tried to search for his rifle. He went to the sludge pile and took out the soaked rifle.

"Dammit, be more careful!" one of the squad leaders scolded, "At least put on gloves!"

C paused and evaluated the situation. He turned to one of the squad leaders.

"The closer we get to the center, the more dangerous it seems to become. Are you sure we should still go on?" C asked hesitantly.

"Of course, otherwise we'd be sitting ducks to the charger and a much more massive herd of zombies." The leader rationalized, "The center is the safest place as of now, understand?"

C nodded slowly, and got back up with his rifle.

The group trotted on towards the center. With no more zombie encounters, they reached the exact middle of the hospital in record time. The soldiers started building up reinforcements immediately.

"How long do you think the reinforcements can last?" C questioned Fredrick.

"Hopefully long enough so that we can get some sleep." Fredrick responded with a yawn.

Fredrick was quick to fall asleep, being only the second one to take out a sleeping bag. C noticed that some soldiers stayed up to guard the area, but was too tired to worry about the zombies. He was also quick to fall asleep, blacking out almost the instant he laid down on a mat.

C woke up a while afterwards, feeling more confident about the situation than earlier. He got up, and was surprised to see almost all of the soldiers asleep.

"There's not much guards, are there?" C asked.

"No zombies came to visit last night, so we dropped our defenses quite a bit." A soldier explained, "Looks like they don't even know we're here."

C looked at the makeshift barricades - untouched ever since they were put up. He looked around, and did not see much else other than file cabinets and drawers. He decided to wait, and tried to fix his damaged rifle as he did so.

"How would you repair a waterlogged, er, 'sludgelogged' rifle?" He asked a soldier.

The only other awake soldier looked at the rifle, "It looks like the chamber is completely clogged up with the stuff. I don't think you could fix it with what little we have."

C inspected the rifle, then asked, "Do you guys have another spare lying around?"

"Probably not."

C sighed to himself, and put the rifle down. He noticed movement in the other room, and a couple of soldiers walked out.

"You guys are up early." C guessed, based on how little soldiers were awake.

The soldiers went through a duffel bag on the floor, and took out MREs.

"You should eat too, while the rest of them are still asleep." One of the soldiers told C.

C decided, "Why not?," and took out an MRE bag. He noticed the soldiers starting sit around in a group, and decided to join them.

"So, how'd you end up here?" One of the soldiers asked C, "After everything went to hell."

"I got knocked out for a couple of days, then wandered here in search of the military." C answered in a straight-forward manner,

"How about you guys?"

"From the start…" One of the soldiers started, "I was drafted into the military a couple months back. Couldn't find a job otherwise, so I endured through training. Became a Coast Guard, and got stationed at Long Beach. Once the invasion started, and we started getting the crap beaten out of us, I was pulled up to eastern New York with the rest of the military forces. Hopped through several bases, before I settled with these guys."

"Good thing, too." Another soldier noted, while chewing grain in his mouth, "He almost got stationed at Eastpoint Base, right before the reaper turned the place to scrap."

This suddenly sparked C's brain, waking him up fully.

"Shoot, almost forgot about that," C said, springing up from a slouch, "All of you, tell me what you know 'bout the reaper."

"Not much," a soldier chuckled, "The tech boys are keeping a close eye on it with drones. The rest of the military avoids it like a plague."

"Nothing we throw at it seems to hurt it. Damn thing's built like a bunker." One of the other soldiers added.

A short silence brewed between the group, with the soldiers focused on eating their food. C sat in intense thought for a moment.

"What if we use their own weapons against them?" C asked with a sudden raised voice.

"No can do," said a soldier with a partially full mouth, "The weapons researchers can't even wrap their heads around those."

C slumped back down, with his one good idea shot down. The soldiers and C finished their meals, and it was not long before almost all of the soldiers awoke. They packed up the supplies, and prepared to mobilize out of the hospital once everyone woke up. The civilians were the last ones to wake up, especially the children, who were eventually woken up by the noise of the heavier supplies.

As soon as the last people were up, the group moved back out towards the edge of the hospital.