Psychics Can Help
“Persephone Bright, twenty-two, brought in with a bad headache and fever,” John muttered to himself as he looked at the patient’s card. He looked at the young woman, pale and sickly in the hospital bed. I swear to god, if they come in any worse than this the cure is going to kill them. John double-checked that he was alone before he injected the garlic solution into the young woman’s arm. And I need to make more of this, too.
She’d probably never realise that he saved her life. Hopefully it wouldn’t need saving again.
The doctors at Pennywrought Hospital were unable to explain why their patients sick with “mystery fever” were recovering, while at other hospitals they only got worse. They were the only hospital able to almost keep ahead of the influx of patients, as over eight thousand had become sick by eleven p.m.
They knew little about the disease, and as nurses kept the sick as comfortable as possible the doctors worked to find a cure, or to organise the city-wide response and call for aid.
John had, of course, already tried to tell the doctors the cure. He had been laughed out of the room – he was only the hospital cook, after all. With all the garlic he put in the food, though, a lot of people had been saved. He was a lot more worried about the morgue keeper; the only person who hadn’t laughed at him.
John wasn’t just the cook, of course. His other job was to keep an eye on Midwel for the IPC; which meant he recognised the blackwing fever, among other things. His assignment wasn’t really as a lookout anymore, not since the IPC had informed him that Midwel was about to head straight into the shitter.
It certainly has, thought John. All of a sudden. He pushed open the morgue doors, and got a nasty surprise. The room was full of corpses – corpses that were standing up. A room full of zombies. He’d been expecting a blackwing, not a damned necromancer. The zombies weren’t moving, and the necromancer didn’t seem to be there, so he reckoned he had a –
“Good to see you, whoever you are. Hunter, psychic, cleric – whatever. This hospital is going to be torn apart by me and my friends here, and you aren’t going to stop me.” The morgue keeper walked out from behind his zombies, and smiled.
“Of course, I don’t really care about you, and since you’re unarmed, feel free to try and run away.” With an aggressive gesture, he motioned the zombies to attack.
Persephone Bright was checking herself out of the hospital when someone screamed out “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” and then rushed past her. She arched her eyebrows at the receptionist.
“He’s a cook. A bit of a strange one. Someone probably played another prank on the poor dear,” the receptionist said. Persephone chuckled, and made her way out of the hospital. As she searched the street for a taxi, she heard a scream behind her. She turned around, and saw the doors behind her slam shut. Through them, she saw the receptionist with her neck torn, shreds of it dangling in the mouth of someone behind her. She saw more people attacking others in the room, heard more screams.
“No-one ever bothers to listen to me,” said a voice behind her; but her eyes were trapped on an old man hammering the glass doors, his eyes pleading and scared, as he was grabbed from behind and then torn apart right in front of her.
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