Chapter 12

The first breakout happened on my second-last night shift. I’d already put in my letter of resignation and to be honest, I wasn’t all that unhappy to be leaving. Connie was starting to look like a hippopotamus with a gland problem, and Andy had started seeing someone exclusively (well, exclusive except for me. Nurses are sort of like that ... be warned). I just put my nose down and finished my time there, not letting anyone know I was leaving. I didn’t need cake or a beer-and-wings night at the local bar.

Hospitals for those with mental issues are odd places. You get those who come and stay there forever, seeming as boring as you could imagine but who once killed a kid with an axe handle. You also get those who literally wouldn’t hurt a fly but will smear their own shit all over their body to ‘block-out the Voodoo’. That being said, hearing a scream or two at night wasn’t a big deal.

Hearing a half dozen of them and then hearing those screams cut-off abruptly was more than a little worrying.

The first two spiders I came across were at the far end of the hall as I came around the corner with a mop and rolling bucket. I’d been called to one of the ‘smear guys’ rooms and they were about 60 feet away when I finally figured out what was happening. I pulled my axe, then my ‘Ring of Poison Prevention’ and slipped it on. Spiders had a toxic bite, and I hoped the ring (which was already identified when I stole from the ‘Cleaver’ guy) would help out since I’d never fought anything like them without a backup. I’d also never fought anything but the Ghoul and Zombies with my axe before.

These spiders were very normal from what I’d seen before. When there was more than one of them, they spread to opposite sides and dove in while your attention was on the other one. Since I’d seen this before, I ran towards them and to one side of the hall preventing them from easily surrounding me by engaging the one in front. The axe lacked a bit of reach, but cut through them with almost no resistance, even their tougher backs.

I dropped the first two with no damage and went further on while fingering my walkie-talkie. “Greg here, I just killed two giant spiders, and I mean fuckin’ giant ones. They look like they came out of a portal. Anyone out there got any idea what’s going on?”

I turned the next corner to find two more spiders, these two were too close to ‘divide and conquer’ and I had to fight them simultaneously. At one point, I managed to actually block a bite from the one on the left (on a backswing). Its mandibles seemed to catch on the smooth side of the axe before breaking off and I caught a quick glance of some odd symbols that flashed up on the side of the blade.

Refocusing, I caught the head of the one on the right and split it. Kicking back the left one, I wrenched the axe free and split that one’s head from its body too. My shirt was ripped and covered with goo by now and I quickly took it off. It was sticky with their goo and hindering my movements. It wasn’t offering any protection anyway.

I ran down the hall towards the rest of the screaming and turned the last corner to find eight more spiders in the process of killing some patients and orderlies. One of these was a real monster, the Boss of the group I figured.

Pulling the fire staff, I chucked it with all the skill of a grade 10 student who was shown how to throw a javelin once. I speared the big guy and managed to annoy him (her?) at the very least.

There was another fighter at the other end of the hall, they had the attention of four of the spiders and I silently wished them luck as I lit into the first of these eight-legged monsters with everything I had. These things were not creative and I managed to kill or critically wound three before I was surrounded. After that it was a fight to the finish with me instantaneously swapping weapons a few times (axe for knife & shield) when I needed to block a particular attack that the axe just couldn’t do.

Fighters get in a certain ‘zone’. People who’ve never done it won’t recognize what I’m talking about, but anyone who has, can understand why we train our bodies and our minds separately. When you are in a fight, you absolutely cannot allow your mind to interfere. The brain takes time to observe, evaluate, formulate a response, send the signal to the body, and observe the effect.

Too slow. Way too slow.

Your body knows what to do. Train the shit out of it and stay the fuck outta its way. You’ll be fine ... or at least as fine as you can be.

It feels like you are a passenger in your own body. Resisting the temptation to ‘grab the reins’ is really hard, but I’d had a few years of practice. My body was literally doing everything it could, as fast as possible, to save our lives. A million years of evolution piled on a dozen years of hockey, then some three years of boxing training, topped off with some ‘weapon magic’ turned me into a frenzied whirling machine.

With an axe.

At one point I thought I something fly in and strike one of the few remaining spiders, but I ignored it and focused on ‘keeping my hands off of the wheel’.

In the end, all the spiders died, I got two good scratches, and my arms were so tired that I thought they might fall off.

The figure at the end of the hall turned out to be one of the Night Orderlies. I’d met Leslie before, but I’d obviously not been anywhere near her since I’d gotten the Book of Thieves. She had three major bites on her leg and at least one good scratch on her arm. I glanced through her inventory. No healing potions. I thought of looting her and leaving her to die. She had an unopened silver lockbox and a key. What the fuck? What the hell was she waiting for? I thought back to that stone she threw, maybe there were two, it’s hard to recall. She’d tried to help me, even knowing that she’d been bitten already.

Sighing, I took one of my potions, poured a little on each of her wounds and the rest down her throat. Her breathing stabilized and her colour got a bit better, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

I glanced at my own scratches, they were really minor and so I ran to the janitors closet and washed them out as best as I could before returning to Leslie pulling off her shoe and putting my ring on her toe. The description on the ring read ‘+35% poison Resistance’. My arm started burning like hell after I took the ring off, so figured it’d been helping me and therefore it’d help her. The walkie-talkie still worked (despite a really deep gouge in it from a fang that would have totally fucked up my hip if it hadn’t been in the way). I called in to the Admin desk, no answer. Same for every channel available to me with the exception of channel 6, maintenance.