Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
A/N: I'm really nervous about this chapter, since it is so long and filled with so much. If there are any mistakes or glaring inconsistencies, please let me know and I will look into it. Thank you.
Chapter 4: Things With No Names
Sam was in a darkened hallway, which stretched the entire length of the building. He could see the faint trace of light coming from a small doorway window on the far end of the hall. Turning on his new flashlight, Sam started walking down the hall, his footsteps ringing out in the empty silence that permeated the place. His light cast an eerie glare over everything it hit, adding to the terrible mystique this place had going on.
He got about halfway down, reaching a t-junction that broke off to the right, when impatience overtook Sam and he ended up breaking into a jog. The greater speed and the increased adrenaline only heightened his fear, causing him to run even faster. It was a vicious downward spiral that only got worse the more he let it. Reaching the end of the hall, he practically slammed into the door in his strong desire to open it and get to the other side. Unfortunately, it didn't budge and his body shook with pain at the impact. The door was locked tight, barring him from his easy exit.
"Damn," he whispered, turning around and weighing his options. Thinking quickly, he looked around and zeroed in on the nearest door. It was on the left and made of what looked like solid wood. Walking up to the door –his breath heavy with fear –he tried to open it, only to discover that it was also locked. A sign on the door read: Use other Door, Please –with an arrow pointing to the right. "Of course," he said.
The next door down had a plaque fixed to it that said: Redi-Smile Dentistry; Marcus Barron DDS. Trying the handle, he was pleased when it gave way and opened up. The room inside was completely dark and dependent on his light to be illuminated. In here, he saw a small waiting room, with a door to the left and another on the far wall. Trying the door to the left first, he discovered that it wouldn't budge. It felt like there was something heavy on the other side, keeping it held firmly in place.
Sam walked over to the other door, opening it without trouble. It led into what looked to be doubling as a dental records archive and a store room, a narrow corridor was made from the shelving units that traced the left wall. There was a door there, but it seemed to be blocked, as well. He was about to give up, when he noticed another door at the far end. It was smaller and was stained by a dark and suspicious substance. Only after seeing the stain, did he take notice of the faintly rancid odor that was redolent throughout the space. Something bad had happened here, he was certain of it. He was running out of options though, and couldn't really turn back. There had to be a window in the other room that he could climb through and continue on his way. Why he thought he could get through what appeared to be a utility closet, he was uncertain.
Upon getting closer to it, he saw in the flashlight glare that the stain had to be blood. Whatever had happened here, it centered around that closet. Why was he going to open it? What good could it possibly bring? He felt like a puppet held aloft by a series of strings, being led to the door and made to open it. The knob felt cold to the touch, almost freezing. Taking a deep breath, Sam opened the frail little door, his gun in hand. What he saw in there caused him to take a step back. He had to choke back a scream at the sight of it.
The closet was empty of anything mundane, containing instead a harness made of chains and leather. A human torso was kept suspended in the harness, soaked in blood and ichor that had ended up being smeared all over the walls and floor. Drops of blood fell lazily to a sizable pool directly underneath the memberless body. His focus was so entirely on the horrific sight that he almost missed the hole in the wall on the left hand side. A streak of blood trailed through the hole into the room beyond.
It wasn't the first time he had witnessed something terrible, but never had it been so visceral or inhuman. Not even the Devil had subjected him to something quite like this. Bile raced it's way up his throat too fast to fight back and he had to rush to the first available place to empty the contents of his stomach. Sam could feel the burn in his esophagus and the painful clench of his gut every time he heaved, like some sort of perverse heartbeat. Tears flooded his vision and his head pounded with the ferocity of a war drum. Countless minutes ticked by as he stood doubled over in complete and utter misery at his predicament. The smell just wouldn't leave him and he wished with all his might that it would.
He didn't notice when he had collapsed to his knees or when he had toppled to his side, leaning against a shelving unit. Tears fell freely from his eyes and his breath hitched with every sob. Sam took no notice of his own strangled moans of misery. Was this the price of knowledge? The loss of his mind and his soul? In his mind, he had been reduced to nothing more than a small child, terrified by the monster under the bed. This place wasn't hell-on-earth, it was hell, period.
Like a computer, his brain had to reboot before he could even begin to think about anything but his own suffering. His first clear thought was that he had to get back up, being on the floor like this was dangerous in this environment. Gathering the gun he had let go of at some point, he clumsily got to his feet. He was physically disoriented, his head felt stuffed full of cotton. Sam spared a single look at that wretched closet and thought about what his next move was. He knew he needed to continue his mission, which meant getting through this place and back onto the streets again. There was simply no turning back. With the closing of that thought, he turned his attention back to that little hole. It looked like it would be large enough for him to fit through, but did he want to go through with it?
Sam took another five minutes to be racked with indecision, before swallowing his fear and his disgust and moving cautiously toward the cramped space of the closet. The air was foul in there and threatened to propel him into another fit of vomiting. He didn't think he had anything left in his stomach to lose and refused to let himself dry heave. Biting back the gag reflex, he crouched down and pressed himself into the space. His face was right next to the torso and he had to force himself not to look over at it. He doubted he could do this if he looked at it again. Holding his breath, he stuck his head into the hole.
His flashlight was useless going in, as it didn't give him any light in the right direction. If he was going to do this, he had to move quickly. The unfortunate part was that he was coming in at a really poor angle. He would have to shift his whole body to get in. Trying this, he pressed a knee into the pool of blood. It was cold and thick against his leg and made him think of syrup or molasses. That wasn't the worst part though, seeing as that his side was pushed into the hanging torso with it. Sam had to physically restrain himself from jumping back into the room.
Steeling himself, he forced his upper body through the tight space of the hole. It was a tight squeeze, but he thought he could make it. Using his feet to brace himself, he pushed himself further in. His free hand managed to grasp the other side of the wall and he used that to help pull himself. Everything seemed to be going just fine when he suddenly got lodged in halfway through. Oh God, I'm stuck, he thought, seconds away from spiraling into a chasm of terror he would never get out of. He desperately scrabbled for more purchase and a greater degree of leverage, absolutely clueless as to why he couldn't go any farther. It was in that moment that he realized that his backpack had gotten caught on the upper lip of the hole, holding him back.
"Shit," he muttered, wriggling around to free himself. It was tough going for awhile, since he had no wish to move back any. It was bad enough that he was left utterly exposed in this position, but to back up into that closet of horrors was totally unacceptable. In the end, he had to roll over onto his side and slide up the rest of the way. Free at last, he managed to get to his feet and take a good look at the room he had found himself in, gun held out in front.
The area directly to his left was taken up by a massive stack of dentistry equipment, all pushed up against the wall haphazardly. He briefly wondered why that was done, before refocusing his attention elsewhere. The rest of the room was fairly standard for a dentist's office, with the obligatory chair and light array set in the center of the room. There was nothing suspicious here that he could see. The door to the records archive was completely blocked by the equipment, but another door on the wall to the left was accessible. Ignoring all this for a moment, he turned his attention to the bank of windows and the opposing wall to him. The blinds were shut, blocking the majority of outside light from getting in. Still, a dull glow shone through, casting everything in an odd shade.
Walking up to the nearest of the windows, he opened the blinds and looked outside. Defeat pulsed through him, like poison in his veins. He could see a large stone retaining wall directly across from him and a vacant space where the ground should've been in between. This was getting ridiculous; there was no good reason for any of these setbacks. Sam looked in all directions, desperate for a solution to his predicament. At first, he saw nothing that would get him across the divide and on his way again.
To the left, way up high, coming right up next to the far end of the third floor of the office building, he could see the upper arm of a fire truck ladder. Now that's convenient, he thought, sarcastically. It seemed like such great lengths to go to get across, that he almost dismissed it out of hand. But desperate times called for desperate measures and he wasn't in any position to be picky. He would have to get to the third floor and into the office at that far corner to do it, but he was sure it was possible.
Sam walked up to the only door in the room that he could get to and pulled it open. It led into some sort of examination room. He couldn't remember what his dentist's office looked like exactly, but he was reasonably certain that it wasn't set up like this place. Shaking his head of such pointless thinking, he walked across the room to the door at the far end, the door to the waiting room being barricaded by planks of solid wood. This door had to lead back into the main hallway, where he had started out. On this side, he could see the lock quite plainly and unlatched it.
It opened out into the hallway as expected and he turned his attention to finding the stairwell. Walking down the hall, his light hit the glare of a glass case fixed to the wall on his right. It was a map of the building. He took a moment to study it thoroughly; the office he was looking for was suite 306. The bottom two floors were uniformed with a solitary hallway containing the various offices and a tertiary corridor breaking to the right with the elevators, the restrooms, and the stairwell. On the third floor, there was a third corridor, extending to the left over where the back half of the parking garage was located. Suite 306 was located in this hallway.
He walked over to the stairwell, trying the elevators quickly as he did so (they were inoperable, it seemed). The stairwell door opened without trouble and he made his way inside. It was pitch black in here and he was extremely grateful for his light. It didn't do much to comfort him, but at least he was reasonably safe from tripping and breaking his neck. The stairs looked steep and he was already feeling absolutely physically drained by this point. His stomach was still a knot of burning discomfort and his body was still sore from his run-in with the giant bat thing. Cursing himself as weak, he started up the stairs, bypassing the second floor and continuing up to the third.
Pretty much everything was the same up here, except there was a large bank of windows along the wall that faced the parking garage. He looked down through the window briefly, before deciding there was nothing down there to hold his interest. So far, he had not come across anything that had directly hinted at danger in any way, save for the bloody torso in the utility closet. Sam reached the divergent corridor and followed it to it's end. Soon, he was standing in front of the door to suite 306.
A plaque on the door read: Richards and Donaldson; Attorneys at Law. Below that there was a message taped to the door. The message read: Went to 301, be back soon, E. Richards. The door was locked, as it turned out, with a thick heavy-duty padlock. Sam had sold enough of this brand at the Work Bench to know that if it was damaged it wouldn't unlock at all. These had to be cut and replaced, something he was unlucky enough to have dealt with before. The locking plate it was attached to looked too sturdy to be knocked off or shot off either. He considered trying to bust the door off it's hinges, but ultimately dismissed that notion after giving it an experimental shove. The door was too thick and sturdy for him to knock down, so he had to find another way around the problem
Looking at the note again, he memorized the new suite number and decided on making his way there in the hopes that E. Richards had left the key behind there. He felt like a rat in a maze, being led around through a variety of stimuli. It was frustrating, but he could think of no way around it. Suite 301 turned out to be the Silent Hill Dance Studio. The door to it opened up obediently and he found himself in a narrow hallway that stretched out to the left and the right, both sides opening up at the end and leading into the studio.
Randomly choosing a direction, he entered the studio. The room was empty and spacious, with two doors on the far wall. Large mirrors were set up on each wall with balance beams attached to them. A solitary wooden chair sat askance in the direct center of the room. The chair's positioning bothered him somehow, it was all wrong in a way he couldn't put into words. Sam walked up to the chair and looked at himself in the mirror. God, he was a mess. Blood had streaked down his face, dried and clotted against his skin and his shirt. The wound suffered at the wings of that creature had clotted awhile ago and was beginning to scab over a little. More blood smeared his jeans and the lower half of his shirt and jacket; it was mixed with dirt and grime and whatnot, His eyes were blood shot with deep bags under them. His hair was dirty and stuck up all over. He looked mad, and maybe he was.
Sam was about to look in the back room when something in the mirror's reflection stole his attention. It looked like something red and thin was creeping down the mirrors and the floor in the rest of the room, but when he looked around at the room itself, he saw no sign of it. The other mirrors were showing the same thing, but again he didn't see it occurring in the actual room. The weird red tendrils started to snake up his pant legs in the mirror, racing upward steadily. He was beginning to get freaked out when they reached his face. That was when his head began to feel funny. Sam could feel the beginning of a headache and his vision started to go red. He could almost hear a strange sound, like ringing in his ears. It escalated steadily in volume and pitch and soon all sight and sound was drowned out by redness and the shrill ringing. Just as he was starting to lose sense of himself, he thought he could pick out the sound of some sort of horn in the distance. It sounded so familiar to him, but he couldn't place it anywhere just then. Sam lost himself completely to the sensations and knew no more.
Sam came to, lying on the cold floor of a room he didn't recognize. It was strange and horrible to look at. He was confused about his location and briefly wondered why he wasn't in his bed. It didn't take long for him to remember what had happened though, and cursed his luck. This room had the same layout as the dance studio except the mirrors were gone, replaced by lime and rust-coated cement walls. His flashlight illuminated the place well enough to see, but did little for the terrible atmosphere he was faced with. The floor was made up of rusted metal grating, keeping him suspended over a dark void of unknown dimensions. With a groan, he realized that he was in a place that resembled the weird courtyard he had found himself in, in what felt like a lifetime ago. He had bad memories attached to that courtyard and was not very pleased at the prospect of a repeat performance. The doors leading to the back room of the studio, and the wall closing off the room, were gone, replaced with a cage with no floor. Chains were suspended at bisecting angles in the cage for no apparent reason. This entire room had a bad vibe to it and the less he stayed in here, the better off he would be.
The wall that divided the studio and the entryway had something engraved in it, a strange black substance had dripped down from the scratches at some point. It was a message that read: My bones reside in the place of 2 and 3, please come find me and be set free. "What in the world does that mean?" he asked himself. It appeared to be a riddle, but he couldn't think of what it meant just then. His mind was too distracted to give it enough clear thought. He searched his jacket pocket, digging out a pen. He got out the map of Silent Hill that had dutifully remained in his back pocket and copied the message down on the backside of the paper. Returning the map and the pen to their respective places, he made his way to the door leading out of the studio.
He noticed several things at once upon leaving the room. The first thing he noticed was that the floor at the end of the hallway to his left was missing, opening out into empty space. On the far wall in that direction, a mutilated body could be seen suspended in a complex array of chains. It swung back and forth ever so slightly. He could also hear that strange static coming from the small radio that was miraculously still attached to his belt. His nerves, while tense before, were screaming at him now. The last time it had emitted static, he was attacked by something. Sam turned his attention to his right where the hallway stretched on. His flashlight briefly illuminated something moving in that direction. He raised his gun in that direction and walked toward it slowly, the static from the radio steadily increasing in volume as he went.
Now he could hear the sounds of something moving in that direction. It shuffled oddly, clanking only a little each time. Sam kept walking forward slowly, not daring –even for a second –to take his eyes off of where he could hear it coming from. His light hit it once more and he could see the vague outline of a figure. It seemed to have noticed him as well, as it began to shuffle unsteadily in his direction. The thing looked vaguely human, but without any arms. Instead, it's upper body was bulging like it had arms trapped in it's own skin. It walked awkwardly, shuffling like a gimp on broken legs. The thing had no face, he realized.
He had seen enough of this thing to know that he had to kill it. Aiming the gun with both hands, he squeezed off a shot that hit it in the shoulder. It looked like it felt it, but continued forward anyway. Sam unloaded two more shots that didn't seem to phase it too much. It got into close range of him and reared it's head back and swung it forward. Something sprayed out of it from an orifice he was unable to identify and he jumped back in response. Something told him that he could not afford to get hit by that stuff, whatever it was. The mystery liquid hit the metal grating that served as the floor here and began to dissolve it. Shit, he thought, quite appropriately. That could've easily happened to him. With that, he unloaded what remained in the clip at it and scored a headshot.
The creature cried out in pain and fell to the floor, blood pouring from it's wounds and dripping through the grating to the abyss below. Sam jumped over the carcass and continued down the hall, his mind already hard at work suppressing the worst of that encounter. He heard a scraping sound behind him and turned around to see the thing moving it's head and it's legs, trying to get back up. Sam rushed up to it and brought the heel of his foot down upon it's temple with crushing force. A solid crack resounded out in the hallway, as the skull gave way and his foot reached the floor. Blood splashed out in a circular pattern around the crushed head, coating his shoes and pant legs in the thick viscous goo.
Grimly satisfied at the sight of it staying motionless, Sam turned away and moved on. The point where the corridor split to the right, where the elevators and the stairs were located, ended abruptly. The grating dropped off there, preventing him from going straight forward anymore. He could still take the right and he did, stopping again as soon as he started. The path to the stairwell was gone, leaving him with the only available option of the first elevator. It wasn't working when the place didn't look like the dominatrix parlor of a schizophrenic, so he wasn't expecting much better this time around. Pushing the button, Sam was a little shocked when he could hear the cab start up and begin it's ascent to his floor. There was something oddly comforting about hearing the mechanical whirs and clanks of the machine, some aspect of normalcy that reached him. Soon, the cab reached his level and the doors slid open, revealing a cramped dimly lit interior.
The elevator cab was dank and smeared with a cocktail of brown, green and red stains. It smelled slightly rancid and everything had a sour yellow tint to it. Sam reluctantly entered the elevator and turned to the control panel. The door slid shut and a loud silence ringed in the air. Seeing the list of floors on the panel, Sam had an epiphany and quickly pulled out the map while slipping the gun into his belt. He read the message written on the back, before putting the map back, and thought about it. He understood that apartments were listed by floor number and then room number and he figured that the same held true for office buildings. The message said "the place of 2 and 3," so it reasoned that it meant suite 203.
Sam decided to go there and see if it panned out, besides, he didn't have any better idea at the moment. Pushing the button for the second floor, he pulled his gun back out and withdrew the empty clip. He replaced it with one of the spares, pulling back the slide to cock it as the movies told him to, and deposited the used clip into his pocket. It was always possible that he would find a box of ammunition later on that he could load it with. All he had to figure out now, was which room was 203. Nothing in this Otherworld was labeled except the elevator controls, so it wasn't merely a matter of looking above the doors. But, he did sort of remember a little about how it was set up. If he was correct, then it was on the north end of the hallway.
The elevator reached it's destination and the doors slid open. He peered into the corridor, before stepping foot in it. It was set up in much the same fashion as it's counterpart upstairs. He exited the cab and headed right. The radio wasn't sounding off, so he was hoping that it was safe. Sam started walking and soon heard a faint crackle of static. It really got noticeable when he passed what must've been the first room to the right. It was little more than an exposed doorway into a floorless space. Chains were bolted to all corners of the chamber, converging on to a bizarre sight in the center. He wasn't really certain what it was, except that it was somehow alive. The thing was a mass of oddly colored flesh. It writhed and undulated in what could've been interpreted as pain from being chained up in such a cruel way. If he had been feeling a little more generous, Sam would've put the damned monstrosity out of it's misery. As it was, he had very little ammo and he wasn't entirely sure if it was worthy of such relief. For all he knew, it deserved it's fate.
Sam moved on, making his way to the next doorway, which had an actual door. It was starting to look a little promising. He was reasonably certain that this was suite 203 and tried the doorknob. It opened with a loud creak and he entered the room. Inside, he came to realize that most of the room was cut off from him. Chain link fencing flanked him, running the entire length of the room. The other side of the fencing was empty with no floor, as was usual in this place. The only things visible on either side were bodies stretched out by chains hooked to the limbs, one on each side of him. The skin on each body was flayed and stretched out into grotesque wings, attached to each of the four chains. He crossed to the opposite end and opened the door on the other side. To think, just maybe an hour or so ago, he had had a minor mental breakdown over a torso in a closet.
The room he had entered was mostly empty. The floor was made of cement like the walls. He was happy to actually not be able to see through the floor to that horrid abyss. His imagination left him wondering what it would be like to fall into that nothingness and he shuddered at the thought of it. The cement was caked in lime deposits and rust from a series of pipes overhead. Rusted scraps of metal were clustered in a couple of the corners of the room, with a dented steel desk set up on it's side to the left. A tall metal shelf was pushed flush with the right wall, a pile of barbed wire resting on top of it.
Sam got about midway through the room, when he heard something scrape against the floor behind him. He turned around and was forced back a step at what he saw. There, in the flashlight's glow, someone was standing in the door way. This specter was tall, vaguely male, and wearing a giant iron pyramid on it's upper body. A thick rubber apron, the kind used by butchers, adorned it's frame. In it's right hand, it loosely gripped a ridiculously massive blade, the dangerous end of which was resting on the floor behind it. The thing gave off such a sense of evil and malice that he froze with fear.
It started moving in his direction, it's free hand joining the other to grip the hilt. Hoisting the blade onto it's shoulder, it prepared to swing it at him. Sam managed to shake himself out of his state and rolled to the side just in time to avoid being cleaved in two, his light flashing wildly throughout the room. His shoulder flared in pain when he landed on it wrong, but he pushed that aside as best as possible. He got up as it was pulling the blade back to get it back into position to swing again. He started firing off shots at it, as he was backing away. Some of the shots ricocheted off the giant helmet, but some made their mark and burrowed into flesh. If the thing felt them, though, it was very good at hiding it.
Sam was forced to dodge the blade again and it smashed into the upturned desk, splitting it in half. The two pieces of the desk fell to the floor and slid away from each other in roughly opposite directions. One of the pieces hit him in the leg and he was swept off his feet and fell to the floor himself. The bizarre looking man was standing almost directly in front of him now and getting ready for yet another swing. He rolled onto his stomach, got his feet underneath him, and jumped forward as far as he could possibly go. The blade swung down just in time to nick his right leg. Pain blossomed out from the wound and reverberated throughout his body. Sam screamed in agony, instinctually dropping his gun to clutch his wounded appendage. The thing started walking closer to him, the blade scraping noisily on the floor behind it.
He didn't have the time to grab his weapon and still get out of the way, so Sam abandoned it for the time being and opted to roll out of the way as far as possible. The blade crashed down on the floor once more, producing a fountain of sparks on the cement. Bits of concrete flew into the air, some of them hitting him in the face, stinging him. Sam stopped rolling when he smacked into a pile of junk in the corner, producing more pain for him to deal with. Getting to his feet was difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever had to do in his young life, but he managed to support himself on wobbly knees. His breath was coming up in short gasps and his muscles quivered and ached with the need to just rest. But there was no rest for him at the moment, there was a good chance that he would never get to know rest ever again. The injustice of it all was truly phenomenal, yet he couldn't escape it.
Trying to think as quickly as possible, his eyes darted around the room, looking for something to use as a weapon until he could get to his gun again. The shadows danced wildly as he looked around, desperate for anything that could help him. Sam saw an old rusted shovel sticking out of the pile of scrap and grabbed it. The weight of it comforted him a little, in that it was hefty enough to use as a weapon. Brandishing it as such, he returned his focus to his enemy. The thing was just in striking distance from him and readying itself to do just that. He thrust forward, putting as much strength as he could muster together into his strike. The blade of the shovel was driven into the monster's midsection, blood spraying out from the wound. Sam didn't stop there; he continued to force the shovel blade deeper into it's bowels, hoping to force it off it's feet.
The thing staggered back several feet, the blade somehow staying in it's hand. The shovel ended up going with it, staying buried in the middle of it's gut. While not quite the degree of victory he was hoping for, it was a whole hell of a lot better than he was expecting. Sam hobbled away, trying to get to his gun. The creature grasped the handle of the shovel with it's free hand and pulled it out, dropping it. The sound of the garden implement falling to the floor rang out through the room.
Sam reached the fallen hand gun and crouched down awkwardly, favoring his injured leg, and grabbed it. He turned around and fired off a few more shots, this time aiming low. The abomination was staggering in his direction, the severity of it's condition now apparent. Two of Sam's shots scored it in the waist near the shovel wound and the third went wide. The gunshots did little in the way of slowing it down any further and he decided that the gun just wasn't all it was cracked up to be in this situation
Getting out of this predicament would take a little more ingenuity than a point-and-shoot philosophy. Looking around the room again, his eyes fell on the shelf with the large tangle of barbed wire on it. If he could lure the thing in front of the shelf, he could push it over on it, hopefully pinning it down long enough to maybe kill it. Without a better plan surfacing in his mind, he set about to make it happen.
Limping in the direction of the shelf, Sam tried to keep an eye on the monster. It wasn't the easiest of tasks, seeing as his light didn't follow the turning of his head and he wasn't heading in the direction of the damned thing. He could hear the scraping of that wicked-looking blade on the floor again. Fear shot through his body; his speed was drastically reduced and he was worried that he wouldn't be fast enough. Throwing as much energy as he had left into it, He forced himself to go faster. His leg was burning with agony and he has completely out of breath. Sam managed to reach the furthest side of the shelf and slipped the gun back into his belt; he turned around to see it standing almost right behind him and it was almost in range to attack.
Working quickly, Sam grabbed the side of the shelf and pulled it from the wall with all his strength. It was shockingly heavy and went a little slower than he wanted it to, but it did begin to tip over. The huge mess of barbed wire slid smoothly off the top and fell onto the thing squarely, instantly getting entangled around it. The full force of the shelving unit smashed into the pyramid crown of the creature and drove it to the floor. Sam, while pleased that it had worked out so well, didn't allow himself the time to rejoice. He, instead, began looking for the shovel, his light catching it just about in the middle of the room.
Sam propelled himself toward it as fast as he could, feeling like he may just manage to do this. He reached down and picked up the shovel, using it as a cane to push himself back up. He could only hobble feebly now, but he saw that the creature had not managed to get free yet. It looked like the combination of the barbed wire and the heavy weight of the storage shelf was enough to hold it down for a little while. Still, it was foolish to trust in that staying true for long; he needed to finish this soon.
He reached it and stepped on that huge angular tub of a helmet; the pain in getting up on it was almost unbearable. The monstrosity was writhing and shifting underneath him, but he managed to keep his balance and bring the shovel up into the air with both hands. It was aimed down at a small exposed strip of it's body. With his weapon gripped tightly in both hands, he drove it down with complete abandon. A primal part of his psyche that he had never really accessed before howled in mad glee at the sensation of breaking resistance, as he impaled the beast. It felt gratifying in some way that he knew he should feel shame over, yet he wasn't in the mood for caring in that second. Blood sprayed up and hit him in the face and painted his clothing deep red. It was cold, he realized numbly; somehow, that seemed wrong to him, unnatural even. Sam brought the shovel back up and then thrust once more into it's soft part. He did this over and over again, soon losing count of his strikes. The thing then bucked up fiercely in a great burst of strength, launching Sam and the shelf off of him and snapping the barbed wire in parts that had been drawn taught around it.
His body flew several feet in the air and he landed painfully in a battered heap on the floor, the shovel flying from his hands. He saw the abomination get back up, taking the giant blade with it. What happened next took Sam completely by surprise. The damned thing just started walking slowly to the door and left, closing it behind it. Sam could only lay there and listen to the scrape of the blade on the grating in the other room and the heavy footsteps it produced, begin to fade.
As Sam stayed motionless on the floor, he could feel the adrenaline fade from his system. He lost all awareness for an unknown stretch of time, his body shutting down on him. When he came to, his entire body protested the strain it had been put through and he groaned loudly. Opening his eyes and giving them the time to put everything in focus, he looked around to notice he was still in the same dank room he had been in. It was hard to push aside the disappointment, but he had more important things to think about. He needed to sit up; it was decided that he would start with that.
The task of getting up was a monumental struggle at first, but got a little easier as he went. Eventually, he was on his feet and he took stock of his surroundings. Sam noticed that his radio had been smashed at some point in the fight, but his flashlight had survived. He still had his back pack and his gun, so he started looking through the contents of the room. It was difficult to move and his wounded leg was beginning to throb oddly. Sam made a discovery in one of the scrap piles. A skeleton was buried in the pile of junk, it's bones yellowed and stained brown in places. It had a chain around it's neck that had something hanging from it. Taking a closer look, he saw that the object was a key. Reaching down, he pulled the chain off it's neck and took the key. In that instant, the world grew fuzzy and everything started looking red. He could hear the blasting of an air raid horn in the distance, as his head throbbed in pain and everything went away.
Agony was all he knew waking up, it was his whole universe. He was lost in a spinning cyclone of suffering and his entire body hurt too much to move even an inch. He let himself stay there for just a little while longer, before opening his eyes to see that the floor was carpeted. Sam groaned and pushed himself up, slowly getting to his feet. The world had gone back to normal.
He was standing in some sort of office, right next to a plain wooden desk. Light was shining in from the windows and looked brilliant at that moment. Sam saw a white dress shirt hanging from the door and hobbled over to it. Grabbing it, he yanked it down and pulled it free from the hanger. He tore it into strips and used one to tie around his leg, just above the cut. It was time to move on; he had to get out of this place.
Sam left the office and went through the front room, entering the hallway. The place was empty and he was able to move at his own pace without distraction. There was nothing easy about it, as he had to focus all his attention on putting one foot in front of another. Eventually, he reached the stairwell, needing the handrails to pull himself up. After what felt like an eternity of struggle, he made it to the third floor landing and opened the door. He navigated the hallway all the way to the attorney's office, using the key to unlock the padlock.
A minimal amount of attention was paid to the business, just enough to find his way through it to a large office. The window was open and he could see the outermost portion of the ladder facing him. He made his way over to it and reached out. His hands grasped a hold of the sides and he pulled himself onto it. The fog-filled air felt wonderful on his face, as he ever so slowly made his way to the ground. Sam reached the fire truck and climbed down to the ground, before continuing on his way.
