The Last Stand
I jerked around as Trager cut the distance between us, his foot falls now audible in his sudden sprint. He raised the shears and jabbed them out. I dove aside, stumbleing as I raced around the bed and the corpse.
"Hey, nobody likes a quitter!" I could hear him tear his weapon free and resume the chase.
Follow the blood. Follow the blood. I reached the open door and slammed it behind me, I didn't stop as I sprint down the hall. Need distance, need to hide someplace. Need time to think.
What did I need to do? That key couldn't be on Trager, the sick fuck had no pockets. I stopped before turning into the last room, and looked at the door stacked with spare beds. It was blocked, but was it locked? Was the reason it was blocked because it couldn't be locked?
I crawled under the table, slipping the camera into its pack before bracing my feet to the grate and gripped the tables legs with my hands. I pulled, pain burning in my side but there was no turning back. I had no time to rethink, no time to lose. Trager was rushing down the hall to meet me, I could hear him!
With enough space behind the beds, I wedged myself between them and the door, then forced it away. Dots pulsed at my vision, until I had enough space to open the door fully.
Against all odds, I took the handle and flung the door wide. As I whipped around, Trager was lunging around the table slinging the blades towards my head. I hauled the door shut as I sprang backwards, falling to my ass as Trager slammed into it with an ear splinting crash, that seemed to make some of the plaster crack off the walls.
"Aren't you a slippery little fucker?" His pause was brief, he unhooked the shears and drew the door back smoothly.
I flipped over and ran. A patient shackled in the hall began shrieking when he saw us fly around the corner. There was a door on my right, but my focus went straight to the halls end where I spotted a shattered vent in the ceiling. A few boxes and a broken wheelchair were stacked beneath, offering my only rung into the thing. I leapt up catching the inner rim in my fingers, I snarled in pain as I dug the wounded digits against the metal, kicking and clawing my way through the opening. I flopped on my side and scooted along, trying to get my body to work and get away from that psycho fucker.
"Oh, come on buddy, we're not done yet."
Fuck you. Go choke on glass.
I fumbled to get my camera out after I knocked the side of my head on the flues side. The vent wasn't chilly, but my coat was moistened from the mist enough to make me uncomfortable. My fingers slipped in the fine dust coating the thing as I shuffled along, but the sounds of Trager had faded. It felt like I was actually getting somewhere, the vent curved and I scooted trembling against the elements, from the effort, and low blood sugar content. I turned the camera off when I reached an opening revealing a soft glow from below, and leaned down staring at the wood floor.
I blinked and thought I saw something. A dark shape, and images from the sewers blew through my mind.
No. Needed to stay focused. What happened down there was staying down there. There had to be a way out of the area, needed to get out of Trager's territory and find out where in the asylum I was. The Male Ward was my only route out of the sewers, but after my escape from the variants I had seen no indication if that's where I did end up.
I dropped down to the floor and paused, listening. No sign of Trager, only the soft patter of rain on glass. It sounded close. Windows would be nearby, I doubt they had a ladder leading down in the unlikely event one was smashed out.
A bathroom was behind me, I inspected the interior before I entered fully and found the usual, per the Asylum. Stalls, urinals, blood stains on the walls and floor, and Walrider written across the shattered mirror along with an vague shadow painted beside it. Below, a bucket of dark blood sat with a head floating in it, the exposed skin black and blue with decay. I barely glanced at it before checking the few stalls, locating nothing I turned to leave.
The hall led into another room in disrepair, beds had been lined towards the back in rows. Three near the windows were occupied by patients sitting up, their limbs shackled down with heavy chains, their wrists bloody and their hands white like bone.
"The Scales on Sauls eyes. The Scales on Sauls eyes…."
On the other end of the room awaited the usual double doors I'd come to expect, this room a near replica to the two I already visited. I judged all the rooms shared the design, as formerly a mental institute for the patients. From what I could tell this section was still in use despite its condemned state, this saved Murkoff expenses over building new areas to 'treat' their patients.
I slipped through one of the doors and shut it behind me. They weren't going anywhere, but I always felt disconcerted leaving a door open behind me. After Martin caught me off guard, I took every opportunity to avoid that situation.
I sighed, and took the left side of the hall. It led down a dark corridor, the NV revealed a few upturned bed frames and a large cabinet fallen across the hall, easy enough to get by.
The drip of water was magnified in the open hall, and when I hopped over the obstacle I found a crimson puddle at the ceiling dripping on the corpse of a clothed man. His face had been brutalized, the skin stretched back revealing a portion of his skull and nasal cavity. The vacant eye sockets seemed to stare deep into my soul, accusing me of interrupting his eternal rest. His body was strewn across the hall, forcing me to step over if I wanted to advance. I couldn't shake it but I felt those empty sockets follow my movement and continue to watch my retreating back as I ventured deeper into the dark. The sensation was eerie and haunting, I felt a tremor climb my spine in my stubbornness to avoid glancing back.
The door at the inevitable end was boarded up, I didn't bother to try the handle and made the return trip. I tried not to look down as I stepped over the broken body, but the sockets still watched, still followed my movement as I retreated from this area. I paused as I heard sounds, and only then did I chance to look over my shoulder but refused to meet the skulls gaze. There was nothing, not even a corpse.
At the other end of the corridor there wasn't much to enlighten me, just a filing cabinet and some medical equipment jammed between the walls. A small office was situated on my left, where a phone hummed its dial tone. I crawled inside not paying mind to the details, billboards on the walls were pinned with notices, files hid the floors with pages of muggy notes. Some of the pages had oddly familiar hand writing detailing how unsightly Mount Massive was, and a few mentioned the big ugly fucker. My skin began to crawl and if I paused to listen hard enough, I thought I heard the rattles in the pipes.
It made me uneasy to stand here, listening to the false sound. I stepped through a cracked door and made my gradual way down this short hall to another set of double doors. One was left ajar, and I peeked through the crack and listened for Rick Trager. There was no sound of his shears, no footsteps. I had no idea where he was, but he wasn't here. If he was, he'd make himself known with a friendly tone and run my way, and I would repay in kind by darting the other way.
When I had rushed through the gate, I had not gotten a good view of one room that had been on my right. It was unlikely Trager would be in that area, he would be looking for me where he decided I would have gone. He had to suspect I'd eventually return to this side, where the elevator was located. But he couldn't know which rooms the flues opened into, the vent interiors were segregated with reinforced wiring that prevented patients from getting lost inside them.
The sound of shears snipped, but I saw no sign of Trager, or where the sound had come from. I reasoned that it was just the patient with his leg restraint, the shackles also sounded like the metal scissors when shifted. Numerous patients within the room continued to fight their restraints, I strained my eyes to see them at the far end. It sounded too much like the friction of rusted blades.
Without further debate I hopped over the bed I had pushed back, and entered the next corridor. The patient that had shrieked when we ran by, now had a large red hole in his lower abdomen. Blood spilled into a puddle on the floor, but his eyes watched as I walked by. He took shallow breaths, unable to do a thing until his body succumbed to blood loss.
There was nothing I could do but leave him, the door was a few feet from where he lay. It was a shower room, broken tile and dirt everywhere, lockers and sinks lined the walls and at the side were the stalls. The key to the elevator could be in one of these, it was well out of mind and difficult to reach. Though at the time I wasn't really focused on how Trager would have dropped it off here, he seemed to have access to most the rooms in these parts.
I began going through checking each locker, the larger ones first since there were less of them, then moved to the smaller ones. Each compartment contained very little, a few pairs of shirts dank with dust and mold, some expired snacks and a pair of shoes from an era beyond my time when word first got out the place was shutting down in seventy-one. I was also keeping an eye out for a spare medical kit, but no luck in that matter either. Everything had been against me tonight.
The task began to feel redundant, and I was beginning to rethink this. The key had to be elsewhere, but if not here then where? Or maybe I should have reasoned in the first place, what would possess a sociopath to hide a key in a locker room far from his territory? I had no excuse for my desperation, only disappointment. I'd go back and revisit the other rooms, I missed something and I would tear the walls apart if I had to.
The snip-snipping of shears came from the shut door, before I had the chance to finish searching all the small cubbies. I shut a few of the large ones and climbed in one as the door creaked open, I pulled the locker shut and huddled down.
"Always want results, right from the get go. These things take time, I always tell them," Trager murmured, as he began going down the row opening lockers. "They just don't pay attention, you have to cut their eyelids off first."
When he was near my locker and opened the one beside it, I threw the door open with a loud clang and flew out.
"Buddy!" Trager was quick though, and swung the shears up as I ducked barely missing my nape. "Hold up a second!"
The door was left wide open, preventing me from snagging the edge as I skid out. Trager was right behind me lashing with his weapon, smashing my bad arm. My vision flashed harshly as I staggered sideways, skimming off the hard wall and swept around the corner headed for the door.
When I was a few steps from it a sharp pain connected with the back of my head. It was instantaneous, I had a momentary lapse in motor functions as I tried to keep my legs mobile towards the door. It jerked out of sight as a thin arm wrapped across my chest and snapped me backwards, coupled with an unnerving sensation that swam through my torso. A large obstruction snapped my ribs apart and ripped through my lungs, my breath hitched as my innards churned to a halt. I looked down as hot fluid spilled down my stomach, and met sight with a thin pair of knives jammed through my chest. My hand trembled as I tried to reach up and touch it, make sure that this was real. That what my failing sight had fixed on was indeed there. I hardly felt any pain but for a scorching sensation spreading up my neck.
What happened?
When I took a shallow breath I immediately gaged, vomiting up the hot fluid. Only then did my chest burst with agony as the shears jerked free, and everything they had torn loose was all but dragged out after them. I collapsed on my back as the room spun further and further away. Trager knelt over me saying something about Billy.
Then the black salvaged my sanity.