Silent Trek part 2
They were out of breath by the time they dove into the 'protection' of the hospital doors. Everything was perfect silence. Perfect stillness. Perfectly pitch black other than the beam of light from the flashlight in Spock's hands.
The once sterile white blanched-ness of the hospital was all gone underneath layer upon layer of grime and flith leaving it soiled black, brown, and red. The trio searched the halls carefully looking for an unlocked room in which to find the nessicary medical equipment.
After perhaps the thirtieth locked door, McCoy's frustration got the best of him and he kicked the closest thing, a gurney, and sent it crashing on its side.
"Goddammit!" He scrubbed a hand through his hair which made it stand up in a way that made him look like he was going mad. Which is what he felt like.
"Doctor..." He noticed that he was now starting to support Kirk more and more as his body became more and more of a dead weight. "Now is not the time for your unnecessary emotionalism. We must find supplies."
"Do you think I dont know that, Spock! If emotions ain't gonna get us out of here maybe you should step up to the plate and... oh i don't know... USE THAT FUCKING BRAIN OF YOURS AND HELP THE FUCK OUT."
"Your over-use of very verbal expiltives is not helping the situation, Doctor. If anything, it is hampering the use of the very logic you seek from me." Spock found himself with a volume and a heated glare that were very unlike him.
"Shut up, Spock. Just shut the fuck up..."
"Perhaps you should take your own advice."
"Guys..." Jim's hoarse voice broke thier fight and he had thier attentions. "Just... Just stop it... I need to lie down... maybe go to sleep for a bit..." His eyes were at half mast and his limbs were growing noticably limp.
"No Jim, if you go to sleep your body might shutdown and you'll..." die. McCoy didn't need to finish his sentence. His unspoken words weighed heavily in the air.
"Upstairs...?"
They tried the stairs door and found it suprisingly open. The second floor was exactly the same as the first floor except there were puddles of dried blood everywhere. McCoy felt heavy in his limbs knowing that this was supposed to be a place of safety and health and now was a horror.
"The hall with the medical rooms are open, perhaps there will be more rooms that we may gain access to inside." As Spock was speaking Kirk's head rested on his shoulder and his eyes were fluttering, trying desperately to stay open. Blood poured down Spocks right side leaving red footprints in his wake.
The door was open. There was a medical cot inside that seemed cleaner than it should have been considering the surrounding area. Gingerly, Kirk was layed down on it with care from the Vulcan.
"Now you two wait here. I'm going to see if I can find anything clean in this damned place." And McCoy stalked off out of the room.
"Please rest, Captain." Spock pulled up a chair for himself, tested its strength, and sat down with care not trusting its durablity.
Seconds seemed like minutes and minutes felt like hours and the only sound heard was the very slight breathing of Spock and the hoarse breathing of the captain. The world slowed down and he watched as Spock's eyes started to lower and close and staring at the sleepy eyes of his first officer made him feel the tired that was deep in his bones and he let his eyes close and darkness take him.
Kirk woke with a start and whipped his head around, blood rushing to his head, looking for any sign of the Vulcan or the doctor. His good hand fumbled for the flashlight that Spock had set on the table next to the cot. He flailed it around looking for his friends when it landed on a figure sitting in a chair facing away from him, in the middle of the room. Kirk gasped until he noticed that the figure had a distinct bowl cut and pointed ears.
"Oh god Spock! You scared the hell out of me! I though you were one of those... Spock? ... Hey ... hey Spock...?"
The figure didn't move. It looked like he wasn't even breathing.
The chair, with Spock in it, turned around on its own without being visibly manipulated in any way. When Kirk caught sight of his face he let out a strangled yelp. His eyes were only large empty holes of pitch black and light seemed to be sucked into them making the room darker. His mouth was another hole of void, slack-jawed in a silent scream.
'Spock' gurgled as cockroaches, centapieds, and maggots crawled from the black mouth. His being flickered like an old film and he was standing in several different parts of the room before he stopped and was standing over the cot. Spidery, sickly hands reached for Kirk, his nails long and yellow and broken. The hands latched onto the sides of Kirk's face and dragged him to look in the chaotic face that was once his serene first officer. His black hole eyes grew larger as bugs scampered, fleeing from his mouth. A long, black, grotesque tongue came from Spock's mouth and slid slowly up Kirk's face and tried to lick his eyeballs. Kirk screamed as loud as he could.
"Captain. Captain! ... Jim." Spock was standing over him, his dark brown eyes showing how worried he was even though his face was a perfect mask of calm.
Kirk, still with visions of the hallucination in his eyes, punched Spock square in the jaw. He stumbled backwards and held his jaw and now bleeding lip. He avoided eye contact as Jim came out of it and realized what he'd done.
"Oh god Spock... I am so sorry... I was... dreaming I guess."
Suddenly, McCoy burst in the door, slammed it shut and pressed his entire body against it. He was sweating and in his hands he held a few bottles of unopened rubbing alcohol, needles, thread, and scissors. They all clattered in his arms as he trembled.
"What is out there, Doctor?"
"Fucking..." he was panting, "... nurses ...or some shit..." McCoy gave Spock a double take and glared pointedly at the growing bruise on his jaw and split lip. "What... the hell happened to you?"
Kirk licked his dry, chapped lips. "I was having a..." he glanced at Spock, "hallucination and I accidently punched him in the face." He could feel his face heat up in shame.
McCoy was more comfortable as he felt himself settle into the position of being first and foremost a doctor that must care for the wounded. He set his mind to the task at hand first dabbing the sterile alcohol on Spock's lips to ensure that it wouldn't get infected. Then he set his sights on Jim.
"I'm not going to lie to you, this is going to hurt. Alot." He washed his hands with the alcohol, scrubbed the curved needle and poured the liquid over the black thread. After the needle was threaded he placed it at the skin at the edge of the cut. He watched as Jim's face scrunched up in the pain he was expecting.
"I may have worked almost exclusively with the dermal regenerators but I do know how to do a proper Suture." And with that the needle plunged into Kirk's skin, curved around and came back out. He pulled the thread through and tied it off in a basic interuppted suture. Kirk gasped and forced a yell back down his throat as he could feel with acute awareness the needle, stabbing slowly though his already throbbing wound. He swore he could feel each of the tiny hairs of the thread as though McCoy were trying to make a suture with an old machete and barbed wire.
oOo
They ventured out into the hallway. Spock held the gun in a white knuckled hand. McCoy glanced over every surface and tried to squint into the pitch black that lay before them. They made thier way as silently as possible to the doors that lead out of the medical hall.
The tricorders and communicators were silent to all of them except for Spock. He froze where he stood and listened closely to the almost inaudable sounds coming from the speakers. It sounded as though someone was mopping the floor with intestines, a slippery, slick, wet sound.
"What is it Spock-" The grotesque sounds got louder until the two human men could hear them. Jim, who couldn't fight very much, held the flashlight in his one, still usefull, trembling hand.
Shrieks echoed down the corridor and a figure came limping down the hall. It was decidedly female as her rotting breasts bulged out of her Starfleet regulation nurses uniform that had obviously been exaggerated to make for an extreme low cut and a very short hem line. Her face was wrapped in bandages, black rot festered in the area of her mouth and maggots burrowed themselves in the weave of the bandages. More black decay seeped down from in between her legs
There was an entire group of them. Just standing there. They turned sharply when the flashlight in Kirk's hands passed over them. They convulsed to life, their bodies wracked with tremors, their limbs seemed to still be stiff with rigor mortis as they made thier way towards the light.
"Turn off the light..." Spock's eyes narrowed at them, curious of what would happen.
Kirk flipped the switch and they were flung into darkness. They could hear the suddering breaths and the tiny moans of pain as the group of nurses came to a complete halt, their bodies shakeing as though they were wind up ballarinas that were at the end of their little dance and were slowing to a stop.
"Fasinating..."
McCoy shuddered. The beings reminded him too much of the young nurses that populated Sickbay. Although they'd never wear something so utterly sexual it was almost... mesmerizing if you took away the rot and decay and replaced it with a soft face and pink supple breasts. He could almost see it standing before him and instead of a bloody, rusty lead pipe, she held a hypospray that would cure any sort of loneliness or broken heart.
They called to him with soft little breaths, moaning his name. McCoy... Leonard... Oh doctor! ... McCooyyyy... Suddenly he wasn't in this accursed place anymore, he was in his Sickbay. His Sickbay with all of these young nubile little nurses. He looked at the one who was closest to him. She had long blonde softly curling hair that went down to her waist. Her uniform pushed up to her waist and she looked him up and down with coy, bedroom eyes as she twisted a tiny locke of pure blonde pubic hair around her pink fingers.
Then her head exploded.
His eyesight reeled and he was back standing in the rotting halls of the Hospital. The light was there and the nurses were tearing to get to him with scalpels and old needles and pipes. Spock held the smoking gun and fired off rounds that took out the nurses, leaving bullets holes in the direct center of thier foreheads. They shrieked and screamed and writhed on the floor until all movement stopped.
"Are you crazy! You were walking towards them! Towards them!' Jim stared at his friend.
"I thought I saw... They were..." He looked at the bodies on the floor. His CMO uniform was stained with blood and rot and death. He reaked of the town. They all did. He looked to his friends who stood there staring at him. He could see bits and pieces of flesh and brain and bone stuck in Spock's normally pristine black hair. Streaks of dirt and grime on thier faces. Sweat and blood, crimson and green.
"Maybe... maybe we should leave..." He coughed nervously under their gaze.
oOo
They tried the door that lead to the stairs. It was locked. Almost as though someone had gone behind them and jammed every door that was once open. They were stuck on that floor.
"Great... Just fucking fabulous." McCoy rolled his eyes heavenward, crossed his arms, and stalked ever forward, retracing their steps over and over again.
"Now listen, there has to be a way out! I get this feeling that we can't just... stay in here." Jim Kirk also crossed his arms which ended up with him just cradleing his useless arm.
"Could that be because there are monsters around every corner we turn?" Even though they had killed all the things on the floor a long time ago. Occasionally they had to step around their decaying bodies that lay strewn on the floor.
They continued walking, onward and onward, backward and backward. The inactivity and dead silence seeming to frighten them more than when there were the monsters. They wondered down the med room hall again, trying door after door.
Spock curiously stepped into the alcove that held what he deduced was an extremely early prototype of the turbolift. An elevator. He passed his arm in a wave in front of him, hoping for an electic eye that would make the doors open. When nothing happened, he gingerly pressed a hand to the doors and they magically slid open making a much too chipper 'ding' for its current condition.
McCoy eyed it. "I've heard of those damn things. Giant metal boxes of death suspended on itty bitty mother fucking cables." He crossed his arms like a stubborn child, "No."
Kirk was coming to the end of his patience. "Just get in, Bones."
He looked over his shoulder into Jim's face, there was a wrinkle that creased his forehead, his mouth was turned down and anger was clear on his face.
"Sorry..." He let the two go first and stepped in the car behind them.
Spock supported the Captain with one side and reached out and pressed each of the buttons. The only one that worked was the last one. Number three. The car shuddered, they could hear the gears and mechanics far below whirring to life. There was a slight jolt down and McCoy braced himself against the wall, hands splayed out, but the car started its slow climb upward.
The speekers in the car screeched and suddenly 50s-esche gameshow music started playing. The trio looked at each other listening as the announcer came over the speeker system. The car stopped moving.
"Welcome to the Silent Hill game show!" The entirely much too estatic voice yelled. "Today is certainly a special day! Please welcome our three special guests!"
There were applause and cheers. Spock straightened up and did the Vulcan equivalent of an eye roll.
"Meet first guest... James Tiberius Kirk, Captain of the USS Enterprise!" Kirk whipped his head around.
"How the hell...?"
"Our second guest... Mister Spock! Enigmatic Vulcan, first officer, and science officer serving on the USS Enterprise!"
"Fascinating..."
"And last but not least... Doctor Leonard McCoy! Chief medical officer also serving on the USS Enterprise!"
"Alright... this is creeping me the fuck out..."
There was deafening roar of applause. The trio just stood, alone and confused in the elevator car. McCoy slammed his hands into the doors, the walls, and mashed the buttons of the system but to no avail. They were stuck between floors and there was no promise that the car would ever move again. Not only that but McCoy was becoming more and more clausterphobic, being stuck in the elevator car with two other people and the sound systems spewing out their names and ranks like it was some sick game show. Which it was.
"Now to get out of the hospital you will have to answer threeeeeee questions!" The mechanical applause came again.
"Oh god..."
oOo
The questions were answered and answered correctly. The car squealed and proceded to continue its accent. They all let out a sigh of relief. The doors rolled open and chimed and they walked into an almost identical hallway that they had entered from except this hall was missing the tell tale dead nurses on the floor.
Jim was the last one out of the car with the flashlight. He swung it around looking for any of the monsters but it caught on something gleaming white that cast a long shadow. He gasped loudly and fumbled with the flashlight, pointing it at the thing again. It was a door with a beautifully painted woman on it, her intricate red robes curled around her and spread to cover almost the entire wall. There were two pairs of arms that looked like they'd been cut off of a maniquin and glued oddly so they jutted out of the door's surface.
He touched the upper most hand gently and it shifted down with a clang of a lock being unlocked.
"Spock, McCoy. Look at this." They looked past the door and saw it lead into a small service stairwell. It only went down.
"Ministers and angels of mercy!"
The light from the flashlight cast eerie shadows as they traveled down to the next level. They didn't even try to open the door with the giant printed '2' on it. They got to the first level only to discover that the door was locked. Kirk shone the flashlight down the long narrow stairs that went to most likely a sublevel. It was so long that the flashlight couldn't penetrate the darkness that crawled up from below.
Spock ran up the stairs, checked the second and third level doors, and ran back down again.
"It appears as though all the doors in this stairwell are locked, Sir. Even the one we just entered through."
"Like some bastard went behind us and locked them." McCoy looked nervously down the stairs to the sublevel.
"Looks like the only way to go is down." Kirk shifted his limp arm. He looked at Spock and pressed his lips into a worried white line.
After a few moments of still silence, Spock sighed through his nose and said, "I will lead."
He bowed his head and started down the stairs, the flashlight reflecting off of the pale greenish skin of the back of his neck and glinting in the grime that clung to his hair. McCoy followed suit quickly, sticking close to the inhumanly strong man. Only two pairs of feet could be heard walking down the stairs. They noticed that the light wasn't following them.
Spock turned first causeing McCoy to almost bump into him. They were far down enough that the light almost didn't reach them. The only thing Kirk could see was tiny glints of light from both Spock's and McCoy's eyes.
"Captain. It would be imperitive for you to join us."
Kirk was not one to show fear. He usually was the one who lead, running blindly into situations and improvising as he went. Spock could see terror and adrenaline that glinted in the Captain's eyes that were oddly illuminated from underneath.
"I... I can't..." he whispered.
"What did he say?" McCoy looked at Spock, "You can see him from this far away right?"
"Indeed. He said 'he can't'."
"Whadoya mean 'he can't'?"
"Jim, please walk down the stairs. There is nothing here."
The flashlight faltered. The sound of boots slowly scraped thier way down the gritty stairs. For a moment the orb of dull light stung their eyes before settling on their chests and illuminating their faces from below. Carefully, the flashlight was pulled out of Kirk's hands and whipped forward, down the stairs.
It felt like hours before they reached the bottom, a plain door standing ominously and innocently within the beam of light.
Jim's breath hitched in the throat. He felt with painful clarity the white hot throbbing of his arm and the cuts on his face. A shakey sigh escaped next to him. McCoy felt it too. They were all cast in darkness other than Spock's glowing white hand reaching out to push open the door.
The hall, like the streets, seemed endless. Impenetratable by light. It was almost like walking through clotted ink.
They took a few steps before a ear pierceing squeal of metal on metal sounded behind them.
McCoy pupils were blown out almost consuming his blue eyes. His body contorted in panic. He didn't even look behind him before he started sprinting down the hall screaming at the top of his lungs. Kirk's body was heavy as Spock half dragged him down the hall. Blood loss was slowing his movements down to a crawl as he pulled him away from the pyramid head creature that followed close behind.
The hall took a turn and twisted around on itself, turning and turning and turning. Spock's head became fuzzy and clouded and it got harder and harder to consentrate on why he was running. That was until he turned a courner that had a mesh screen instead of a solid wall and he saw the massive force that was barreling after them.
Muscels twitching and behemoth. Skin shallow and disturbingly covered in grunge. He seemed to be unsteady, his body swaying as he stormed down the hall. Long, thin, black tongue darted out from underneath the gargantuan helmet. The sword raised, ready to kill. Yet through all this the thing that quite possibly horrified him the most was the obscene bulge in the skirt of sewn rotting flesh.
"Come on! Come on!" McCoy screamed using all of his strength to hold open elevator doors. His shoulders felt like they were going to pop out of his sockets at any moment from the strain.
Then the sword slammed down slicing a ragged line down Spocks back, ripping the black regulation shirt in a wide green gash. He couldn't help but to let out a pained yell. But there was no time to stop and nurse it, the pyramid creature was closing in. So close he could feel the hot, sticky breath through the grates of the helmet.
He shoved Jim inside the elevator car and dove in himself. The doors closed with a delighted 'ding' and started upwards.
Spock's breathing was fast and hard. He couldn't get enough air into his lungs but the force of stretching his diaframe and filling his lungs with precious oxygen tore open the wound on his back bit by bit. His ribcage felt like it was going to burst out of his body and his lungs burned white heat.
He tried as hard as possible to keep his face stoic and cold. But they knew him far to long to see that he was not just an unemotional Vulcan.
McCoy fussed over him gently touching the unwounded skin around the gash. He was thankful that the wound was not as deep as it looked, but a dermal wound over the spine? Fucking ow. Gauze that McCoy had tucked into his pocket was pulled out.
"Take off your shirt." Spock did not argue. He placed a piece over it and then wrapped the rest of the gauze around his thin torso.
Spock then pulled the shirt back on, albeit painfully. Kirk looked over to him and locked their gaze. He shifted slightly closer to him.
"Spock..." He placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"I know."
There was the 'ding' again and they found themselves on the first level again.
oOo
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