Silent Gulch Chapter 9
Sister and Caboose continued to run down the hospital hallways, completely lost. They couldn't understand how the nurses were catching up to them.
The pair stopped at a set of hallways that split off in two directions. "Which way?" Sister asked.
"I don't know. Church is not here to tell me." Caboose was frantic. He hated making decisions when the Blue leader wasn't around; it always made his head hurt. "I need him to tell me the way."
"Well, which way is he?" Sister asked. Caboose just stared at her. "I was just asking."
"Well, it's not helping," Caboose stated.
The two soldiers were nearly scared to death as the door beside Caboose burst open and a nurse grabbed the blue soldier.
"Argh, mean lady!" Caboose shouted, trying to get away. It was useless, though, as the nurse held onto the private, raising its needle to strike.
"Hey, let go of my friend, bitch!" Sister swung a metal tray she had grabbed from a rolling tray that was turned over in the hall. The impact dented the tray and stunned the nurse. It lost its grip on Caboose and the soldier moved away from it.
"Run!" Sister urged, grabbing Caboose's wrist and pulling him down the left hallway. The soldiers ran until they ended up in what looked to be a surgical room. "I think we lost them," Sister said.
"Yes, I think we are safe now," Caboose agreed. "Thank you for saving me back there."
"It was my pleasure," Sister replied. "Besides, I wouldn't want her to stick me, either."
~Tucker~
"Then how about I stick you, bow chicka bow wow," Tuker said, sitting up quickly. The teal soldier gripped his head in pain. "Holy hell, how much did I drink?" he asked the emptiness around him.
"Blarg," a voice replied, bringing Tucker back to his reason for being in the hotel.
"Junior," Tucker muttered as he stood up. He marveled that none of his bones were broken from the fall. "Come on boy, let's get out of here." Junior looked at Tucker for a moment, then ran down the path. The alien slipped through a set of double doors leaving Tucker alone.
"Why do I even bother?" Tucker griped. Tucker then noticed the plant life around him. He had no idea how, but it seemed he had fallen into a garden. He had landed on a stone path with plants to either side. Vines clung to stone walls and looked as though it had been weeks since their last watering.
"This is the worst hotel ever, of all time," Tucker commented as he started to walk after Junior. He figured that running was just pointless.
He had made it halfway down the path when the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Layers began to peel away from the area around him. It peeled away to reveal old, worn stones, and the plants began to die rapidly. "What's going on?" Tucker asked aloud. The light tinted red, bathing everything in an odd red glow.
"Oh great, red," Tucker muttered before continuing forward. He pushed one of the doors open and entered the next room.
The room he entered was a large circular greenhouse. At one time it would have been a beautiful place with series of bright and colorful plants, but now there was nothing but patches of dead leaves and wilted flowers. The stone path weaved though the bits of death and decay repetitively, connecting to a section in the center that circled around a large tree. Tucker walked along the path toward the tree, looking at the dead plants around him.
"Blarg honk," Junior's voice said, snapping Tucker's attention to the tree. Beside the tree stood Junior and a rather beautiful woman.
"Hey baby, why are you in a crap shack like this?" Tucker asked, moving toward the tree a bit faster. The woman turned and frowned at Tucker. She moved behind the tree and Junior followed.
Tucker rounded the tree to find nothing. He nearly shouted in frustration. "Everything here is just an illusion!" he said before swinging the pipe. It slammed into the tree and bounced back with enough force to knock Tucker down.
The tree began to shake and large hunks of meat on chains began to drop down. The trunk of the tree lifted up out of the ground. Two long skinny arms appeared and it pulled itself up out of the ground to revile a grotesque head that was partially covered by a black growth. Tucker stared at the thing in horror.
"This could not get worse," he stated as he picked himself up off the ground.
~Church~
Church was really starting to get annoyed by the darkness. The hand on the wall kept him from running into things, but his palm was now coated with a substance that made his skin crawl. He guessed that he had been walking for about five miles, but there was no way to really judge distance.
He wasn't expecting the path in front of him to suddenly end or that his next step would send him falling. He tried to grab at the wall, but his hand couldn't find purchase and he fell forward into the void. He cursed his carelessness as he plummeted down though the darkness.
He fell into a seemingly bottomless pool of liquid. Seconds after entering the pool he wished he had hit solid ground. The force of hitting the liquid hurt and he opened his mouth to shout in pain. As the air exited it was replaced by the liquid filling Church's mouth with a disgusting copper taste. He struggled to the surface in desperate need of air. He broke the surface gasping for air as he flailed about for something to grab. His hand grabbed something, but he released it right away. What he had grabbed was cold and felt like flesh and had only made his stomach turn more. He moved away from the body and soon his hands met metal. He grabbed onto it for dear life and began to pull himself up. Once he was up on the metal platform he started to cough up the liquid in his lungs.
"What are you doing?" a voice asked. Kneeling beside Church was a young black-haired boy.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Church snapped. "I'm recovering from the shock of falling into a pool of blood while coughing up the blood I breathed in."
"Well, why did you fall in?" the boy asked. "That was a stupid thing to do."
"I didn't mean to. I couldn't see where I was going," Church replied as he coughed up a bit more blood.
"Well, why didn't you bring a flashlight?" the boy asked curiously.
"Because I don't have one; there was one on my armor but it disappeared." Leonard reached up and wiped away the blood from his lips.
"You really shouldn't be wandering around here without one." The boy put a flashlight on the ground beside Church. "You can have mine. My brother gave it to me. He said it would keep the darkness away."
Church took the flashlight and looked up at the boy. He had already turned and was walking away. "Wait," Church said as he slowly stood up. "Who are you?"
The boy turned and looked at Church blankly. "My name is Joshua," he answered. "What's your name?"
"Leonard, but most people call me Church." Joshua turned and walked away into the shadows. "Hey, where are you going?" Church asked, shocked that the boy would just walk away considering how dangerous this place was.
The boy didn't answer and instead vanished into the shadows. Church grabbed the flashlight and flicked it on before pointing it in the direction that Joshua had gone. The beam of light fell on a rusted metal wall and nothing else.
"Why the hell do people keep doing that?" Church complained. He sat for a few minutes, deciding on what to do. He had no idea where he was or what to do. He sat back and felt something poke into his back. He reached back and pulled the book out of where he'd stashed it. The cover was soaked with blood but when he flipped through it the pages they were completely clean.
"Why is it that everything that happens to me lacks logic?" the cobalt soldier asked the black void around him.