NYC Midnight Contest 2010

Title: Woodchopper

Synopsis:"Waking up in the hospital with a mysterious wound, the woodchopper searches for answers and finds himself thrust into a gruesome scene of horror."


I woke up in the dark. In an unfamiliar room. My head throbbed and it felt like my brain was trying to burst through my skull. I lay in a bed with my upper body propped up. I scanned the room as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The only light came from a solitary window in the wall to my right. Moonlight filtered through the light material of the curtain, casting faint shadows across the room. My head continued to pound. I swivelled my head to the left and came face to face with a tower of machinery. Tubes and wires dangled like tentacles down to the floor, with no host to connect to.
"I must be at the hospital," I murmured softly to myself. Deer Mountain, a small clinic that served the few thousand spread out residents of the area. I started to panic. How the hell did I get here? What happened? I strained my memory trying to come up with any sort of answer, but drew a blank. The last thing I could remember was cooking a can of beef stew for dinner. I had finished eating and gone outside to split some logs for firewood. I closed my eyes and replayed the actions in my head. Adding more detail each time. I wore my down vest. Plain black toque. Hiking boots because a couple inches of snow had fallen. It didn’t help. There was nothing else.
I opened my eyes, and realized I was not alone in the room. Another bed, with its own bank of machines next to it, lay in the corner across the room. I could make out the form of a body lying beneath the sheets. The feet poking up at the end of the bed.
"Excuse me....are you awake?" No answer.
"Excuse me bud.....I don’t mean to disturb you but...." I was interrupted by a gurgling noise.
"Shit....are you alright man?" Again I heard the disturbing sound, as if he was attempting to talk with a mouthful of water.
"HELLO?! IS ANYONE THERE!? HELP!" I screamed into the silence. No response. I realized that the machines in the room weren’t beeping or lit up in any way. The power must have gone out. What the fuck is going on, I wondered. Don’t hospitals have back up generators or something for this sort of situation?
"Hold on, I’m coming! I’ll get you help."
I raised up from the bed and let out a scream. I quickly fell back against the pillow clutching at my left side, just above the waist. It felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to my skin. I pulled in deep breaths of air through gritted teeth. My eyes squeezed shut. Tears somehow managed to escape and rolled their way slowly down my cheeks.
I raised my hands to my face, blowing air through them, willing the pain to go away. They were covered in a warm, sticky liquid. Blood. I risked a look down. I wore a hospital gown and nothing else. It was covered in blood. I reached down and pulled the gown up from my knees, and with a great amount of caution, over my wound. Despite the darkness, I could see that the bandage and gauze had soaked through, looking more black than red. I stared at the ceiling, and gingerly, I pulled on the edges of surgical tape holding the bandage in place. I slowly pulled back the bandage, wincing each time the gauze refused to peel away without a fight.
I looked down at the wound. The ragged edges and dark interior were easily visible in the low light, with my pale skin providing the perfect backdrop. It no longer bled freely, which surprised me given the chunk of flesh that was missing. Faint strands poked up along the edges. Stitches which had pulled out or broken at some point. It was only about an inch and a half wide, but stretched at least a few inches along my side. I said a silent prayer for the extra ten pounds of beer weight I carried around my mid-section. Without it, the gouge might have hit something vital. Instead I now carried just one love handle instead of the normal two.
The choking noise invaded my conscious. I cursed myself silently. My grim fascination with my own problem had distracted me from the man I shared the room with. And he was dying. I screamed for help again. Nothing. It would have to be me. I quickly replaced my bandage. An unused chair lay to the right of my bed. I pulled it closer, placed my hands on its seat, and managed to lower one foot to the floor. The hole in my side seared with pain and I felt a trickle of blood roll across my belly. I managed to lower my other foot and rose to my feet.
"I’m coming man....hang in there," I managed to say weakly.
I limped across the floor closing the distance between us slowly. I kept most of my weight on my right side, and managed only minuscule steps with my left. It took me about a minute to cover the short distance between our beds. Faint bubbly breaths and occasional chokes told me he was still alive.
His head lay facing away from me. His throat torn wide open. The sheet and front of his gown spattered with dark stains. The pillow soaked through with blood. I stood and stared in horror. I had no idea how he could possibly still be alive. A gurgle broke the silence, coming from the hole rather than his mouth. A faint hissing noise followed.
"Fuckin’ hell....." I whispered.
The man’s head turned suddenly, his eyes shooting open. A spray of blood squirted from his throat catching the side of my face. He stared at me with terror in his eyes and started choking. Gobs of mucus mixed with blood sprayed, then oozed from his mouth. It came to an end as quickly as it started. His head fell back to the pillow and he lay still. No more noises. He was dead.
I felt sick to my stomach. I stared at the fresh corpse. I couldn’t help but imagine the suffering he had endured before the end. Goosebumps broke out along my arms. This man had been murdered in his bed. The power was off. And most disturbing, was the crippling silence that hung over the darkness. I wanted to return to my bed. I wanted to place the blankets over my head and sleep. I wanted to wake up hours later and discover it was a nightmare and nothing else.
Instead I limped slowly towards the door to the room. A long, thin, vertical window above the door handle, revealed nothing but darkness in the hallway. I opened the door. I had visited the hospital only once before, maybe a year ago. A splinter from my axe handle had lodged itself deep in my hand. I had been too stubborn to do anything about it, until it became infected. I tried to recall the layout of the hospital before stumbling into the dark. I knew it was a single storey building. A bank of glass doors at the entrance. A large lobby with a reception desk straight ahead. Two long hallways on either side of the large receiving area. They both traveled in straight lines to the rear of the building before turning towards each other and joining. All I had to do was pick a direction to walk and eventually I would end up in the lobby.
I stood in the dark hallway for a moment and took a good look in both directions. To the right was pitch black, but to my left it seemed like there was a faint glow of light at the end. I went left. I let the fingertips of my right hand graze along the wall as I limped along. After a minute of slow progress, I noticed the light had grown stronger. Then my left foot struck something on the floor. I braced my right hand against the wall for support, as a jolt of pain from my wound shot up and down my left side. I decided not to investigate the mysterious object. I had a feeling I knew what it was.
I continued inching along. Finally the front doors of the hospital became visible as I reached the end of the hallway. A few streetlights lit up the emergency drop off area outside the front doors. The light cast an eerie, fuzzy, glow inside the lobby. I dropped to my knees and unleashed the contents of my stomach all over the floor. The carnage was insane.
Mangled bodies lay strewn across the floor. Pools of dark, thickening, blood surrounded many. A man’s head, more detached than connected to his body. A young, brunette woman, missing half an arm and the lower half of her body, her innards spilled in a mess on the floor. I continued to dry heave. Each retch sending intense spasms of pain from my side, outwards to the rest of my body. Tears poured from my eyes. I struggled to hold on to my sanity. I felt dizzy and wondered if I was going into shock. I took deep calming breaths. If I passed out now I wasn’t entirely sure I’d wake up again. I kept my eyes closed, continued regular breathing, and tried to push away the mental images that kept swimming into my mind.
I needed to get help. If I was alive maybe there were others. I kept my eyes focused on the floor and managed to rise to my feet. I headed for the front desk. I pushed through the waist high wooden door that lead behind the reception desk. A woman wearing pale blue scrubs lay on her back, eyes still open, an expression of terror frozen on her face. Four identical deep gashes, spread evenly apart, ran from one shoulder to the opposite hip.
The length of the reception desk contained three work stations. The two on the ends, had two monitors, while the one in the middle had four. Two of which were large widescreens with an elaborate keyboard below. I realized they controlled the security cameras. All the screens were dark. Several phones lay along the length of the desk. I picked one up, and not surprisingly, there was no dial tone. I figured there had to be some sort of emergency back up power. A button or a switch somewhere. I searched the area but found nothing. My eyes came to rest once again on the fallen nurse. One arm lay outstretched. Reaching. I followed the direction of the arm and found a red button below the ledge against the back wall. The button was labeled, "Back-Up Generator: Use Only In Emergency." I pushed it quickly. A faint humming noise started then died away. I pushed the button again and held it. The noise started up again and this time grew louder. The lights above flickered on, off, then on for good. I released the button as the building came to life.
I turned back to the front desk. The computer monitors each read, "Emergency Start-up, please wait....." One of the security screens was blank, while the other flashed a request. "Restart Security System?" I pressed Enter on the strange keyboard. The security system started to reboot and I quickly grabbed for one of the phones. Dial tone. I dialed 9-1-1.
"9-1-1 what’s your emergency?"
"Hello! Yes....I’m at the hospital....you have to send someone....everyone’s dead!" I stammered my request, for some reason it felt strange to hear a human voice amidst all the death surrounding me.
"Ok calm down sir. You are calling from Deer Mountain Hospital I can see. Tell me what’s happened. I’m dispatching units now."
"I....I don’t know....I woke up here....and it’s just fucked.....everyone is dead and I don’t know what happened.....I don’t know if anyone is alive except me....."
"Sir please, you have to calm down. Tell me what you see. Are you in danger?"
"I don’t know....I don’t think so....I haven’t seen anyone else alive. I haven’t heard anyone either....and it was so quiet. I see.....I can’t look.....there’s a shitload of dead people ok! Send someone!" I screamed. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the security cameras spring to life. There were eight cameras, each screen broken into 4 quadrants showing a live feed.
".....stay on the line and keep talking." I only caught the end of the operator’s sentence.
"What? Oh...yeah....ok. I’m looking at the security cameras. I don’t see any movement or anything.....but I think I can playback....like rewind or something.....I can find out what happened....."
"Sir that’s not a good idea. The police are on the way, evidence should be left intact. Just stay on the line and keep talking until they arrive."
"Just a sec...." I ignored the operator’s request and placed the receiver down. Urgent static spilled out the earpiece.
I focused on the security monitors. Each view was labeled with a small number in the corner. Camera two was the lobby. I found a playback button on the keyboard and pushed it. A menu appeared in the middle of one of the monitors. "Select Camera to Playback". I clicked on Camera 2. A frozen image filled the screen. The lobby exactly as it was now. Bodies everywhere. I searched for a rewind button but found nothing. I tried the roller ball and flicked it hard to the left. Too hard. The time counter in the bottom corner flicked back several hours. I stared at the frozen image of a doctor leaning on the counter talking to a couple nurses. A few people sat in chairs waiting their turn. I rolled the ball to the right, always watching.
I found what I was looking for. I pressed play and watched. A large, wolfish creature, hair sprouting in patches from its body. Grotesque features, huge claws, massive fangs. It set upon the victims in the lobby. I watched as it tore them to shreds without mercy. It turned towards the camera and I paused the playback. I stared at the beast. I stared at me. The familiar features. The heavy bloodstain on the left hip, not so obvious now with the blood of so many others competing. I looked down at myself. My gown was covered in blood. Too much blood.
My mind flashed back to chopping wood earlier. A flash of teeth. I swung my axe. A yelp of pain. Something bit me. I looked back to the monitor. I stared in disbelief at the snarling wolfman frozen in time. Urgent, unrecognizable words spilled continuously from the phone on the desk. The faint wail of sirens sounded in the distance.