2
HOSPITAL ROOM - LATE AFTERNOON
Ianto, a young man in his twenties, wearing pale green hospital pajamas. He has a month's beard, is disheveled and asleep.
Ianto is lying on a hospital bed, in a private room. Connected to his arms are multiple drips, a full row of four or five on each side of his bed. Most of the bags are empty.
Ianto's eyes open.
He looks around with an expression of confusion. Then he sits up. He is weak, but he swings his legs off the bed and stands. The attached drips are pulled with him and clatter to the floor.
Ianto winces, and pulls the taped needles from his arm.
"Ow..." His voice is hoarse, his mouth dry. Massaging his throat, he walks to the door.
The door to Ianto's hospital room is locked. The key is on the floor. He picks it up and opens the door. Ianto moves into a corridor.
At the far end, a sign read: COMA WARD.
There is no sign of life or movement.
"Typical" he mutters to himself "What are you in now?"
Ianto walks down the corridor. One of the doors is half-open. From inside, there is the sound of buzzing flies.
Ianto moves as quickly as he can through the hospital, still weak, but now driven by adrenaline. All the wards and corridors are deserted. Medical notes and equipment lie strewn over the floors, trolleys are upended, glass partition doors are smashed. In a couple of places, splashes of dried blood arc up the walls.
He reaches A&E.
On one wall is a row of public pay phones. He lifts a receiver, and the line is dead. He goes down the line, trying them all. In the corner of the A&E reception is a smashed soft-drinks machine, with a few cans collected at the base. Ianto grabs one, rips off the ring-pull and downs it in one go. Then he grabs another, and heads for the main doors.
Ianto moves and walks out into the bright daylight of the forecourt.
"Hello?"
Aside from a quiet rush of wind, there is silence.
No traffic, no engines, no movement.
Not even birdsong.
Ianto walks through the empty city as daylight begin to fade, from St. Thomas's Hospital, over Westminster Bridge, past the Houses of Parliament, down Whitehall, to Trafalgar Square.
Cars sit abandoned, shops looted. Ianto is still wearing his hospital scrubs he found, and carries a plastic bag full of soft-drink cans.
Ianto walks.
Night has fallen. He needs to find a place to rest...He pauses. Down a narrow side street is a church. He walks towards it. The front doors are open.
Ianto walks inside, moving with the respectful quietness that people adopt when entering a church. The doors ahead to the main chamber are closed. Pushing them, gently trying the handle, it is obvious they are locked. But another open door is to his left.
He goes through it.
Ianto moves up a stairwell.
Written large on the wall is a single line of graffiti: REPENT. THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH.
Ianto moves into the gallery level, and sees, through the dust and rot, ornate but faded grandeur. At the far end, a stained-glass window is illuminated by the moonlight. Ianto slinks in, stands at the gallery, facing the stained-glass window for a moment before looking down...Beneath are hundreds of dead bodies.
Layered over the floor, jammed into the pews, spilling over the altar.
The scene of an unimaginable massacre. Ianto stands, stunned. Then sees, standing motionless at different positions facing away from him, four people. Their postures and stillness make their status unclear. I
anto hesitates before speaking.
"Hello?"
Immediately, the four heads flick around. Turned. And the next moment, there is the powerful thump of a door at the far end of the gallery. Ianto whirls to the source as the Turned below start to move. The door thumps again - another stunningly powerful blow, the noise echoing around the chamber.
Confused, fist closing around his bag of soft drinks, Ianto steps onto the gallery, facing the door...and it smashes open showing an Turned Priest - who locks sight on Ianto, and starts to sprint.
"Father?"
The Priest is half way across the gallery
"Father, what are you..." And now the moonlight catches the Priest's face. Showing clearly the man's eyes. The blood smeared and collected around his nose, ears, and mouth. Darkened and crusted, accumulated over days and weeks. Fresh blood glistening.
"Jesus!"
In a movement of pure instinct, Ianto swings the bag just as the Priest is about to reach him - and connects squarely with the man's head.
"Oh, that, was bad, that was bad... I shouldn't have done that..."
He breaks into a run down the stairwell...into the front entrance, where the locked door now strains under the blows of the Turned inside.
"Shit."
Ianto sprints down the stone steps. As he reaches the bottom the doors are broken open, and the Turned give chase.
Ianto runs - the Turned have almost reached him.
"Shit" he repeats as he wonders if this is hell.