Chapter Ten.
When Olivia felt certain of herself once more, they set off again. Slowly, at first, as she was unused to carrying the crowbar on her injured shoulder, but soon she had learned to ignore the pain. The more ash on the wound, it seemed, the less it bothered her.
The rubble-strewn room around them appeared to have been victim of the overhead fire as well, traces of fire black against the half-scorched walls hardly visible, over the rest of the filth. Only the carpet remained mostly in tact, scorched holes from falling embers marring the thin rug and exposing the cement slab beneath. The carpeted room ended soon, and as they passed a small, inordinate doorway onto a dirty linoleum tile floor, and Olivia was nearly certain that they were in what appeared to be the basement of the hotel. Old, dripping pipes lined the walls, streaking them with rust, and now and again there was the crunch of a rat skeleton underfoot. The dead rodents disgusted Olivia at first, but soon she grew to ignore them. Walter, however, would let out a small titter of laughter whenever he chanced upon one, as if stepping on bubble wrap.
"Do you think," Olivia commented during the long, eerie walk, "that if we wore masks, things would get... normal?"
Walter pursed his lips in contemplation, then clicked his tongue against teeth, "Probably not immediately. If we are being affected by toxins causing the hallucinations, the poison would have to work its way out of our systems. And if it's in the air, an ordinary face mask simply won't do, we've been exposed too long..."
"Is there anything we can do? An antidote, something?"
"Fresh air and a mohito. But only because I want one."
Olivia paused, and turned sharply on her heel, the flashlight beam stretching out into the darkness from whence they had come, "I heard something."
Walter frowned with worry, "I think it was my stomach. I'm really very hungry, as unorthodox as that may seem."
"No, it's not that. I think... Walter, I think its rain." Olivia turned the flashlight toward the ceiling, "I hear rain."
Walter paused to listen, beside her in the dark, "Yes, I hear it, too."
"That means we have to be outside the hotel," Olivia reasoned, "under the street- it's not from far above us. Maybe there's a drainage ditch nearby-"
"I remember the last time I crawled out of a drainage ditch, no fun," Walter muttered to himself.
"Maybe a manhole or something. A way to get down here to service these pipes. Keep an eye on the walls; look for a ladder or an outlet." She continued down the tunnel with new gusto, but Walter strayed behind, "What is it?" Olivia questioned, turning back to him.
Walter raised his hand to block the glare of the light in his face, "We have to find Peter."
"Walter, we will, we just have to get out of here, before-"
"We can't leave without him!" Walter protested.
Olivia lowered the flashlight with a sigh, "We're not going to leave without him. I've got a plan, alright?" Walter crossed his arms across his chest, seeming unconvinced, "I want to save him too, okay? You said yourself that we might be suffering from hallucinations, so there's got to be something we can take to clear our heads. If we get out of here, we can get to a hospital, and there has to be something there..."
Walter looked a little more enlightened, his mind running on with her plan, "And we can search out Peter unaffected by the toxins. No more of this awful nonsense to scare us..." he looked to her with an approving smile, "Good thinking, agent Dunham!"
Olivia granted him an exasperated smile, "So, deal? We get out of here, get and antidote, and then get Peter?" she offered her hand.
Walter accepted it, "Deal. Let's go."
The rain had become a soft rush on the cracked and uneven cement of the street, grey, dirty water trickling into the dark around them as Olivia braced herself on the rusted rungs of the ladder, heaving up the manhole cover with her uninjured shoulder. More water and small chunks of gravel scattered down as the heavy iron ingress shifted, at last rattling aside as she pushed.
Rain battered her forehead, and she flinched away, at first- it was cold.
Olivia crawled up, onto the street, stooping to take the crowbar and pipe from Walter, as he followed out after her. He watched her quietly as she turned her face back to the rain, letting it wash off a bit of the grime before she rubbed her chin of her sleeve.
"We don't have a map, do we?" he questioned quietly.
Olivia shook her head, "No. Peter still has it."
"I wish he was here," Walter sighed. He raised a hand to block the rain from hitting his eyelashes, and squinted around, "It's so dirty, this place."
Olivia was the first to rise from the warm pavement, using the axe to aide her, "Come on, let's get moving."
Something about the rain calmed her, it somehow felt normal. The eerie snowfall of constant ash had abated, if only for a few minutes, and Olivia sloshed on down the street, enjoying the water on her cold skin without comment. "When we get to the hospital, you should let me have a look at that shoulder, I'll see if I can't find something to treat it," Walter interrupted her silence.
"Oh- it's alright," Olivia replied, raising her hand to it, still caked in ash. She thought about rubbing away the grime, but decided against it, "it doesn't hurt, actually."
Walter shrugged his shoulder as if to say have it your way.
Olivia motioned in the direction they were walking, "The hotel must be in this direction, some place. It's the way we came from, down in the tunnel."
"Is it?" Walter questioned, "If you say so. I don't know where the hell we are."
Now, Olivia paused, stilling in her steps. "You're right," she said, turning around, "It's got to be that way." Walter only watched her blankly, "...isn't it?"
He shrugged a shoulder.
Olivia cursed, pushing her wet bangs out of her eyes, "I don't know! I don't know which way is up or down, in this damn place!"
Walter was frowning, hands stuffed into the pockets of his damp slacks, "We're going to have to cross that bridge, aren't we?"
"What?"
Walter nodded down a side road that Olivia had not seen, before. It ended abruptly to become a suspended bridge, cement supports and deteriorated cables fading into of the rain. A fallen telephone pole blocked it part of the way, torn cords strewn over the street like flat veins, and a rusted pickup, blue color now exposed from under the ash, sat dead at the bridges' edge.
"I think so, Walter," Olivia replied.
Walter looked ruffled, under his messy hair, "I hate bridges!" But he followed Olivia anyways, skirting an overturned dumpster and nearing the old truck.
Glass shattered as a form erupted from the cab, tumbling into the bed and lurching forward again. Olivia threw her arm out to stop Walter, her reflexes finding her between him and the threat, "Walter, get back!"
It was another of the creatures that had attacked Peter in the general store, lithe, bald, pink body melted into a single form, arms ending in wicked claws. It hissed as it wriggled forward on the slick cement.
Olivia readied her crowbar for the attack, before Walter gripped her shoulder, "Another!" He pointed as another one of the creatures slithered from beneath the dumpster behind them, and Olivia turned as another caught her vision slinking from a storm drain.
"Shit!" she hissed. She swung as the first strayed too close, and it shrimped away, her strike barely missing, "Walter, stay close!"
"Oh, just run!" Walter hissed in return, shoulders bumping with Olivia's as he held his pipe before him.
Olivia blinked; "Good idea!" and she grabbed him by the collar, hauling him with her as she sprinted for the bridge. Walter stumbled a few steps and turned, on her heels as they put distance on the creatures.
But quickly they were being overtaken. Olivia could hear the faint clink of claws scraping concrete, and tucked the crowbar under her arm as she continued to bolt with all she was worth.
There it was. A chain link gate.
Olivia stopped on her heels as she crossed the threshold of the gate, gripping the open gate and throwing it shut behind her, "Walter!" she called to him as he stared at her, "hold it shut!"
"What?"
"Just do it!" Walter pressed the gate shut with his hip and shoulder as the first of the things collided with the chain link, talons flashing as pink flesh was mashed to the grid. Olivia bared her teeth as she swiped with the crowbar, striking the creature's claws, kinking them over the fencing.
It hissed as the next two arrived in a similar fashion, and Olivia pinned them with the same method, before driving the crowbar through the fence, killing each in turn.
"Like flies on a sticky trap," Walter breathed in exasperation.
"Good idea, Walter," Olivia grinned as he stared, confused.
xXx
Grape vines cracked the stonework of the town square into uneven slabs and overgrew a twisted iron fence, gripping it and squeezing it until it had nearly fallen. The fruit had long passed its ripe stages (much to Walter's hungry dismay), and even then it seemed to have been stunted, as dry cobwebs clung to withered berries, shrunken on the vine. A tall fountain stood a little ways off from them, figures of stone too withered to tell who they were or what they were doing. A tall cross stood over all of the slim, shadowy figures, one side chipped to expose rebar.
The rain had stopped and a low ground fog had begun to rise, filling Olivia with dread. She was afraid that she would not be able to see any low-to-the-ground threats, and she waved the mist away as best she could, eyes sharp and ears alert. The hospital should be close anyways, as the tilted, rusted street signs had said...
Walter touched her shoulder and she paused, her gaze following his pointing to a tall, old-fashioned building, its many darkened windows looking out over the square, in the mist. Olivia breathed a deep sigh of relief and started forward, her waving and careful progress a little less so, now that her goal was in view. The hospital looked to be about as old as the hotel had been, both massive grey brick giants among the crumbling, newer, lesser structures around them.
She spoke when they entered through the front, stepping through the aluminum frames of the rotating doors, devoid of glass and long since unfunctioning, "Well, we're here. Walter, what exactly would you need to clear our heads?"
"A miracle," Walter answered honestly, "but, seeing as those are in short supply, at the moment, we'll have to make due with any kind of antipsychotic you can find."
"All right. Were would they keep those, in a place like this?"
"If they've got a section eight... a mental ward, probably there. This establishment looks like it was vacated long before the idea of a pharmacy, lucky us," Walter followed after Olivia, his eyes darting suspiciously among the decrepit wheelchairs and scant furniture in the quiet, half obscured by fog, "And, even if I can't get what we need, I'm certain I can whip up something to pass the time a little easier." he smiled wryly as Olivia frowned, then shook her head.
Olivia pushed aside a creaking gurney draped in tattered white sheets to have a look at list of plastic tabs bolted to the wall, smearing ash away to read them better, "I don't see any mental ward listed, here. But information is just down the hall, let's go."
It was harder and harder to see in the dim, and Olivia at last retrieved the flashlight from her belt, clicking it on as they emerged into a small, office-looking room, withered oak desk sitting crumpled in the middle of torn carpet. A pot of dead soil was tipped over in the corner of the room, and papers had been torn from the open filing cabinets and strewn across the floor. Olivia was stooping to shift through them as Walter went to the desk, looking through it idly, "Look at this," he commented, his brows lifting in surprise as he straightened, paper in his hands, "newspaper, would you like to see?"
"No, Walter. I just want to get a map and get on with this," Olivia replied from the floor flatly. But Walter wasn't listening, as he had returned to reading over the tiny newsprint, his lips moving slightly as he squinted.
"I should have brought my glasses. Look here, it's got an article about some fellow that's gone and gotten himself convicted," He looked to see if Olivia was still uninterested, and read on, "for a fire. Something about some children going missing- oh, my, that's dreadful!"
Olivia finally glanced up, anxious, "What? What is it?"
"He's got my name! 'Walter', see? Just awful... but it says that he burned down the hotel, or at least tried to..." Walter frowned flatly, the ancient paper crinkling, under his fingers, "well, this doesn't make much sense at all, does it?"
Olivia sighed, as she returned to her rummaging, "It never does."
"Says here that 'The blaze was started in a room with faulty plumbing, which had since been condemned by the hotel to be unusable'..." Walter glanced up at her, "Is that where is came from, agent Dunham?"
Olivia paused, as she lifted a faded pamphlet from the floor, "from what I could tell. But... why would a fire burn down?"
"Fire doesn't burn downward, what are you talking about?" Walter arched a brow.
"The basement of the hotel... the ceiling was burned out, but the floor was in tact," Olivia opened the pamphlet, but her gaze was still lost in her thoughts, "that doesn't make any sense."
"It never does," Walter replied with a smile, "what's that you have there?"
"A map, I think. But it's hard to read, I can't-" she stilled as there was a rustling from the door, and she turned the flashlight off. She could hear Walter tighten his grip on his pipe, and slowly lifted her crowbar from her side. Barely breathing in the dark, they waited.
A silhouette stilled in the doorway, then moved on, limping.
Olivia gaped, amazed. The form had been tall, slender, but definitely human. And, as she listened to the shuffling steps fade away, down the hall, she motioned to Walter in the dark, which shared her hope. Carefully, quietly, they followed after the form, footsteps nearly silent as they picked their way between the scattered obstacles.
Walter inhaled sharply as his foot struck a rusted scalpel, sending it clattering across the hard floor. The form ahead of them froze, as if listening, and Olivia at last spoke, "Hello?" The form was perfectly still, slumped slightly to one side, possibly in pain. Olivia continued, as she stepped forward, "I'm Olivia Dunham, I'm with the FBI, and this is Doctor Walter Bishop. Are you hurt?" She flipped on the flashlight, beam angling from glass and marble to land of the figure. It twitched in the light, turning toward them.
She wore a greying nurse's uniform, starched angles frayed from blood and ash. Her legs were long and shapely, one of them broken, bone piercing her running hose. It crunched horridly as she moved, her face lifting to the light. No, face wasn't right, as there wasn't one to begin with, it looked as if had been pulled off, and her head twisted shut, a mass of mottled, pale flesh stretched over the mandibles of her jaw, clicking as it worked.
She took a step forward, seeming transfixed by the light, and Olivia and Walter recoiled with horror. But they had been too horrified to hear the other nurses approaching them from behind, and Walter gave a yelp as one brushed his shoulders, "Walter!" Olivia cried, turning.
Walter let out another horrified cry, as he was pressed back against the wall, swathed in pale limbs and broken fingers he struggled to lift his pipe, as bodies smashed against him, "Olivia!" he wailed. He thrashed as best he could, but he was being overwhelmed.
"Where the hell are they coming from?" Olivia hissed, raising the crowbar and starting forward. But as swiftly as she could reach the heaving mass, they shed away, into the shadows, and Walter was gone. She stood alone in the hallway, flashlight beam cutting through the growing darkness as distantly, a siren began to wail, "Walter!"
xXx