Oh Mary, Jesus, Joseph, and the donkey that took them all to Bethlehem! This is so fucking late I'm so sorry! Heh, now it doesn't look like it'll be done in time for Halloween 2015…
I'll try though! Maybe come September I'll just not update anything else and just make it.
You know what, just go read this; you've waited long enough. I'll talk more at the end.
...
"What the actual fuck?!" Stelios exclaimed, dragging Arthur behind him. Hunapo, to the pair's horror, broke into a run, stumbling and hobbling, but managing to keep their prey within their sights. Their growls made Stelios' skin crawl.
"Okay, maybe Niran wasn't talking complete bollocks!" Arthur replied.
"You think?!"
Stelios threw himself around the corner, and the canteen door came into sight, near the far end of the corridor. A chance. If they could just make it to there… He saw Alin leave with his little brother, and Stelios yelped.
"Get back inside!" he called, letting go of Arthur and cupping his hands over his mouth, "it's not safe! There's a monster coming!" The brothers looked at him in confusion, but it was at that moment that Hunapo chose to burst into view, snarling and spitting.
That caught their attention, at least. Alin grabbed Andrei by the shoulder and pulled him back inside, slamming the door shut. The two doctors linked arms once more, Stelios pulling the shorter man along. Both were absolutely terrified, too scared to even question why a colleague was trying to kill them, and only knowing that's what would happen if they were caught. Even now, Stelios was hoping this was a stunt. Maybe Hunapo found some make up and did their face up to look like a monster for a joke? It looked too real to be make up though. Maybe they were injured and was just making the most of it, by scaring the ever-loving fuck out of their friends? But really, they'd never cause such a disturbance in a hospital full of sick and vulnerable people. Yet he half-expected to hear the footsteps slow down and Hunapo to start laughing, but they didn't.
It just wasn't someone they could do any more; the only thing in their mind was destruction and feeding their ravenous, unrelenting appetite.
Arthur tripped and fell, yanking at Stelios' arm and would've pulled him down too, had he not had the sense to let go.
Stelios wheeled around in time to see Hunapo pounce, sinking their teeth into his leg and pulling him back.
"Run, dipshit!" he yelled, hissing in pain.
But Stelios couldn't, and just stood there, frozen. He couldn't just abandon him! They didn't get along, but a human life was still a human life. Though what could he even do to save Arthur?
Hunapo stood up straight and darted towards him, but Arthur grabbed their leg and pulled them back down.
"Leave me! You have to warn everyone!"
Stelios forced his legs to move, taking off in the direction of the canteen and trying to drown out Arthur's shouts.
When he chanced a glance behind him, Arthur was deathly still whilst Hunapo had broken free, and was back to running at full pelt. He yelped and didn't look back.
He slammed into the canteen door and tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge. He rattled the handle before throwing his whole body against it, battering it with his fists, but it was useless. He looked through the window to find Alin holding it shut.
"What the hell?" he cried, "let me in!"
Alin shook his head, eyes wide.
"Let me in, please!" he sobbed as Hunapo drew nearer, "I'm not a monster!"
But the fearful Alin wouldn't. He held the door shut, no matter how loudly Stelios pleaded and screamed and threw his weight against it. He was not jeopardising his brother's safety- or the lives of anyone else in the canteen- for one man.
"I don't want to die!"
All the while, Hunapo kept coming closer, slowly, hungrily sizing him up. Why rush? He wasn't going anywhere. Their tongue hung from their mouth, dripping blood and saliva. Down the other end of the corridor, Arthur began to stir.
"Please," Stelios whispered, resting his forehead against the glass. His trembling hands couldn't form fists any longer, and rested weakly on the door either side of his face, cool wood under his fingertips. He glanced up one more time to see Alin elbowed away from view and Mohammad's face glaring back at his own with a mixture of horror and outrage. He wrenched open the door and Stelios tumbled in, hitting the floor with a harsh thud and turning around just in time to see half the canteen's population throw themselves against the door to stop Hunapo following.
"Get something to barricade the door!" Érzsebét cried, and more people rushed forward with chairs and tables, Kim-ly and Cheng even pushing over the vending machine. Eventually, everyone backed away, flinching at each little thud as the zombie threw its weight against the door, but thankfully it didn't budge.
"What the fuck was that?" exclaimed Carlos after a long moment of silence.
"Hunapo…" Stelios swallowed as he tried to still his trembling arms. His whole body shook uncontrollably and he could barely form words. Everything seemed to fall into silence as time came to a halt. Dr Davies tried to kill him? The doctor he looked up to, the one who had been a lifeline these troublesome few months, had tried to kill him? Had killed Dr Kirkland?
"What is it?" Mohammad leaned down in front of him, "what happened to Hunapo? They're Dr Davies, right?"
He didn't want to say it. Any minute now, that little prick would start laughing from the other side of the door, exclaiming that Stelios' expression was the funniest thing ever, but he could only hear growls and snarls, two sets now. Had Arthur turned into a zombie too?
"They're a monster," he squeaked, "they were horrible and drooling and their teeth were weird and they tried to kill me!"
Mohammad frowned, "they what? But monsters don't exist." Even he didn't look convinced though, and Stelios knew he was thinking of what Dr Kirkland had said just before they'd left: that Niran had seen a monster. It was all too much of a coincidence. He wondered where Niran was now.
"Where's the other doctor?" He tried.
"Arthur? I think he'd dead," Stelios felt sick as he said that. "Dr Davies- Hunapo- they pulled him down and bit him. He's probably a monster too now."
"What do you even mean by monster?" asked Eduard, "aliens? Vampires?"
"Zombies," Stelios covered his mouth as he nodded, "yes, that's what they looked like, undead zombies with horrible mad eyes. They smelt of rotting flesh, like they'd been dead for ages!"
"Dead for ages?" Alfonso raised an eyebrow, exchanging glances with Carlos, "rotten? Like that lot in Canterbury?"
"What's this about Canterbury?" asked Eduard.
"Something odd I read," Carlos shrugged, "apparently everyone in a school was killed but we don't know how. Tragic. Absolutely tragic."
"Do you know which school?" Eduard looked a little ill, though Stelios wasn't paying too much attention.
"I'm afraid not, why?" Carlos pulled out his phone.
"Well," looking down, Eduard began playing with his apron, "my girlfriend works in Canterbury as a teacher. She didn't come home last night, and I'd assumed she needed to work late and stayed at a hotel... but... You don't think it was that school that was attacked?"
"I honestly can't say. I'll check now!" Just as he was about to access the internet, the thing went dead and Carlos scowled, smacking the screen and clicking the start button, but the thing remained blank. "Piece of shit!"
"Well you were on it all lunchtime," Alfonso commented.
"It shouldn't die this quickly!"
"Excuse me! There's a zombie outside, apparently!" cried Kim-ly, "I think that might be more important than your phone."
"Is it more important than my girlfriend though?" Eduard glared over at her as she peered through the window on the door, past piles of furniture. The tiny square of corridor she could see was empty of life- and un-life, for that matter. Where was Dr Davies now?
A face smacked into the window and she screamed, but it wasn't Hunapo.
Dr Kirkland drooled and snarled at the crowd inside, but the door held fast, despite his and Dr Davies' attempts to break it down. Kim-ly forced herself to keep looking, despite that unnerving neon acid that was supposed to be his eyes, and even as she watched, more of his skin peeled and rotted, and his teeth twisted and sharpened to points.
"Horrible," she muttered as she stepped away. "I don't think we'll be leaving from there, at least."
"But we will be leaving, right?" asked Andrei. He looked up at his brother, and Alin nodded.
"Of course!"
"Well it won't be from here either." Cheng shut the other exit and Érzsebét pushed a table in front of it, only moments before there was a thunderous rattle as several zombies crashed into the door.
The occupants of the canteen huddled in the middle of the room, on the few tables and chairs not being used as barricades. They tried to process what they'd just seen, this whole situation just too unreal to believe. But it had happened. There were monsters outside trying to kill them. Why?
"Thirteen people," Alin commented, looking around, "all trapped in one room? This is a bad omen if I ever saw one."
"Shut the fuck up," snapped Érzsebét, and the group fell into silence once more.
"What do we do now?" Elise piped up for the first time.
"Well there's a door in the kitchen," Eduard replied, "it leads outside, in fact!"
"What are we waiting for then?" cried Alfonso, "let's go!"
"I'll go first," Kim-ly told them firmly, standing up and walking over to the kitchen area, "to check there's not more of those things."
"What do we do when we get outside?" asked Roderich.
"Call the police?" replied Yao, "what else would we do?"
"How about getting the patients out?" Roderich had opened his mouth to reply, but found Érzsebét had already answered with what he was going to say.
"I think the logical thing to do would be to get us outside and let the police deal with the rest," Mohammad scratched his chin. "I mean, what can we do?"
"Well according to that news report, the police can't do a lot either," Carlos commented as Kim-ly returned.
"It's locked," she stated, hands on hips, "and I don't have the key. We'll need some people to break it down.
"I'll help," Érzsebét stood up.
"Great, we have some tenderisers we can use," Kim-ly told her, as Carlos and Alfonso made their way into the kitchen to help. Érzsebét shrugged.
"I'd prefer to just kick the thing down."
"I'm not leaving," Roderich told anyone who was still listening. "You can't make me."
Stelios, meanwhile, was still sprawled on the floor, staring up at the door as his adrenaline levels still continued to make him feel sick. What the fuck had just happened to Hunapo and Arthur? They'd been turned into monsters? Killed? Why hadn't he been able to stop that happening? And what divine energy had intervened and allowed him to be spared?
Next to him, Mohammad reached over and stroked his hair, unsure of what to say.
"This wasn't covered in Med School," Stelios whined, "none of the textbooks mentioned zombies."
"That might be because they're not meant to exist," Mohammad looked up at the door, still being pummelled by zombies.
"Hey guys, you might want to come here for a second," Kim-ly called, and everyone besides Yao, Elise and Andrei rushed into the kitchen, Mohammad picking Stelios up and leading him past the counter.
"What's up?" asked Alin, though it was pretty clear from the scene laid out before them.
Two meat cleavers and a tenderizer were embedded in the fire exit, and Carlos was struggling to pull one of the handles out. Next to him, Érzsebét had only just succeeded in removing the sole of her boot from the ice encrusting it.
"What the hell?" Stelios walked forward, brushing his fingers against the bar and wincing at the chill. "Okay I'm starting to think I'm too sleep deprived, or is everyone else seeing this?"
"Well I got a good night's sleep and the door still appears to be frozen," Cheng added.
"But why?" said Alin, "and why can't you open it?"
"It's locked, like I said," snapped Kim-ly, "and now for some reason we can't break it down."
"I don't want to alarm anyone," began Mohammad, "but it seems someone might want us trapped here."
"What?" Stelios laughed nervously, "what are you saying? We don't even know what's going on yet."
"Except that there are monsters who want to kill us," Mohammad spoke calmly, slowly, firmly, "and we have no means of escaping. I could take a pretty wild guess."
"But who'd pick on a load of ill people?"
"Someone who wanted easy targets?" Roderich slid to the floor, unable to stand on his trembling legs. "You know, people who can't run away or fight back?"
"People attached to machines and in wheelchairs," added Eduard.
Carlos rubbed his chin. "How are we supposed to get everyone out?"
"How are we even supposed to get out?" Alin studied the door closely, "cause it's certainly not gonna be from here."
"Front door it is then," said Alfonso, and was met with a wave of protests.
"Oh, right, we can't get out this shitty door but the front one will be fine!" Kim-ly rolled her eyes.
Alfonso shrugged, "it's better than the idea of us not being able to get out."
"Well I'm not going anywhere until I find my son," Érzsebét told them, "so you all can do what you want, but I'm going to tear this place apart until I get to him."
"Your son is the one on life support, isn't he?" muttered Alfonso thoughtfully, but he was ignored.
"I'm coming with you," Roderich spoke up, "he's my son too and I can't let him die!"
"What can you do?" Érzsebét almost scoffed, "just get yourself out and let me worry about Franz."
"No!" Roderich pulled himself up, puffing out his rather feeble chest, "I love my son and I'm not leaving without him!" The two glared at each other for a moment, before Érzsebét's eyes narrowed.
"If you love him so much why do you hardly visit him?" she spat.
Roderich recoiled in offense. "I'm sorry I have a job that requires me to actually work hard!"
"How is your job more important than your child?" Érzsebét almost screamed.
"It's not but I don't have a choice in it! How can I help Franz if I've been fired?"
"How can you help him if you're not there when he wakes up?"
Roderich didn't reply immediately. "I can't," he finally muttered, "I just can't. That's why I have to come with you."
"Should we say something?" Stelios whispered to Mohammad, who shook his head.
"But you're fragile," Érzsebét muttered, "you'll get killed."
Roderich sighed. "If that's the price I have to pay to save my son, then so be it."
"I wish I had some popcorn," Mohammad murmured.
"Look, I don't want to leave the paediatric ward patients to fend for themselves either," Carlos spoke up, and Alfonso nodded.
"Those are our patients and we can't leave them."
"But that could be said about everyone in the hospital," Stelios interjected, "I don't want to leave anyone behind."
"I don't want to either," said Carlos, "so this is what I propose. Dr Angel, you take everyone to the front door, evacuate as many people as you can, and call the police. Dr Martinez Cabrera and I will take the Edelsteins to the paediatric ward and evacuate the children, and as many people as we can, and join you later. If we arm ourselves, we could get past the zombies outside."
Stelios nodded. "That could work."
"Okay everyone," Carlos clapped his hands together, "Everyone not coming with me to the paediatric ward, you go with Dr Angel there. He's the most senior member of staff in your group, so do as he says. Anything you'd like to add, Dr Angel?"
Most senior member of staff? Stelios gulped. That was never a good thing to hear under normal circumstances, let alone a disaster like this.
"Yeah," he replied with a shaky voice, "I'm dangerously under-qualified for this level of responsibility."
...
"We're almost there," were Niran's hopeful words, awash with relief that they'd yet to run into a monster. His patients seemed to perk up at that, still shuffling along quietly, timidly. He was still terrified, and that wasn't going away anytime soon, but now they had hope. If they could just get outside, then the patients could be moved to another hospital and the police called.
A small boy took his hand as he led them through the reception, grinning up at him, and Niran gave him a warm smile. He could mourn his friends and see a counsellor later- and he certainly would do both- but right now he had patients in his care and nothing was more important than that.
He glanced over at his desk; funny to think only hours ago he'd been sitting behind there, answering phone calls, telling off Stelios and occasionally being verbally abused by ill and injured people. It was odd seeing people look up to him for support and answers, and under normal circumstances, he'd have revelled in such a situation. But now? Well, the only reason people were listening to him was because he worked here, even though he knew no more than they did.
The doors were right before them now, but to Niran's surprise, there was someone there, closing the doors as someone on the other side placed a device on the glass. And before their eyes, the glass clouded and a click resounded through the room.
"I'm sorry sir, but this hospital is in the process of being evacuated," Niran began, stepping forward and trying to muster as much authority as he could. The child holding his hand didn't let go, but moved behind him to hide from this stranger.
The stranger, who had their back turned to the group, laughed, a low, lazy, drawling laugh. "Is it now? Shame, really. You see, I'm afraid it won't do any good."
"What do you mean?" Niran frowned, glancing around for something- anything- that could be used as a weapon.
"Well," the stranger turned around, but Niran still couldn't see his face, only a glittering mask, "what are you even running for? To survive another few years? You could just as easily die tomorrow, and all your running will have been in vain." His voice was slow and calming, and under any other circumstance, Niran would describe it as kind, but the words he was saying sickened the young receptionist.
"In fact," continued the masked man, "I believe some people here might even be terminally ill. Why are you running?"
"Now listen here!" Niran was furious now, "that's not for you to decide, is it?"
"But I'm allowed to ponder, am I not?" the stranger leaned against the door, "we all die eventually, some sooner than others, and what for?" He stood up straight, walking towards the crowd. "Everyone has a different idea, of course, but we'll never know until we actually die." Now in front of Niran, he rested a hand on the man's shoulder. "We do know one thing though: it will be better than what we have now. I mean, even if beyond death is nothingness, it has to be better than the constant pain of life, right?"
"Well, maybe, but life isn't so bad. And you could always be reborn as someone with a nicer life. Life goes on, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I say let it; life is good."
"You can still say that after seeing death every day?" Under his mask, the man raised an eyebrow, walking past Niran and his band of patients. "Luckily for you, the Liberator's here to help."
"Unless you called the police and have a zombie-killing weapon in that hoodie of yours, I fail to see how you can help," Niran wheeled around and jogged to the door. He didn't have time for weirdos and their ramblings, not when they needed to get out. The sooner he could get some real help, the better chance that Kim-ly and the hospital's other residents would have.
He tried pushing the door, but it held fast, and he only succeeded in burning his hand on the ice crystals forming across the glass.
"What on earth?" he frowned, turning back to the Liberator. The man was now surrounded by more zombies: horrid, hobbling beasts, what-was-Arjun among them. But they didn't lunge or charge or rip the Liberator to pieces. They didn't turn him or tear his head from his shoulders or pull out his heart or whatever else he'd seen the monsters do. Instead, they shuffled past, hungry eyes fixing on the A&E patients, and Niran's legs turned to lead.
"You call yourself the Liberator," he spoke up, voice cracking as he realised what was happening, "yet you want to trap and murder people?"
"Indeed. Because in the end, it will set you free," the Liberator glanced over at what-was-Arjun.
"Kill them."
...
So yeah, I really don't know what happened here. I just… didn't update. I'm so sorry though, and I promise to keep this going more! And luckily, I'm going somewhere with no internet [Ireland] for a week so I don't have to hear how mad you all are just yet. Nah nah nah nah nah!
Wow you know their plan suck's though, because it doesn't involve going to the Winchester, having a nice cold pint and waiting for all this to blow over.
...Sorta kicking myself for not calling this fic Stelios of the Dead.
On a lighter note, I've been rereading previous chapters in order to avoid plotholes [and because they're rad] and I've developed a habit of reading 'the liberator' as 'the vibrator'... a habit I can't shake. Still, I think it's safe to say Cyprus running away from a giant vibrating dildo for 20 or so chapters would be a far better waste of everyone's time.
I also keep reading Niran Mookjai as Niki Minaj… Can we all just... take a moment to imagine APH Thailand singing superbase? ...I might be a little tired.
I'm not giving any clues as to who the liberator is though, other than they're someone I'm really having to think about in terms of writing them as the antagonist. Still open to suggestions though, even though I'd probably be really annoyed if someone guessed who it was [despite the fact that it's screamingly obvious] and probably sulk for a bit.
That's all I'm saying.
Bitchass white boy out.
