Ancient Awakening (The Ancient) by Matthew Bryan Laube

  *****

  It had been a particularly rough shift. Officer Jessica Jones was trying to keep herself going for as long as possible. She knew that once she stopped and curled up in bed, the image of the mutilated girl would come back to haunt her. She had never seen anything like it and hoped she never would again. Poor Mike Samson had known the people, discovered the body, and even seen the perp.

  She was in her patrol car, filling out more paperwork when the call came in. “Gang shooting at College Hospital.”

  “College? Isn’t that where we sent your buddy Samson this morning?” Andrew Fox, Jessica’s partner, asked. Andrew had been busy snacking on a doughnut. This habit of his made Jessica’s eyes roll. She only ate fruit on the job, just to break with silly stereotypes.

  “Buddy? I know the guy, ok? He’s a fellow officer, and I heard he lost his wife in some sort of accident a few months back. I just feel for the guy, you know?” She had truthfully only met Samson a few times and had really only spoken to him at length once at a Christmas party. His son, Sam, had been there, and had been the one to make the lasting impression on her. “We should check this out. It’s not far from here.”

  “Jessie, our shift ended an hour ago. We need to go home. My wife is going to kill me as it is.”

  “You know you don't want to go to bed anymore than I do.”

  Andrew sighed at that. He had three little girls at home, all at school by now. “No, not really. Okay, let’s go.”

  The hospital was only five minutes away and when they arrived, four other squad cars were already there. The other officers were getting out of their cars. Jessica and Andrew quickly hopped out to join them.

  “You guys still on shift?” someone asked Jessica.

  “Yeah, a bit of overtime. What’s the situation here?”

  “We're still working that out. There’s no response from the hospital front desk at all.”

  “Not good,” Andrew grunted.

  “We received a call from a security guard and from one of our own, Samson.” Jessica started at the name. Damn, she had hoped he would be home by now.

  “But no gun shots, no hostages, nothing?” Andrew asked.

  “Not yet. I'm guessing we're going to have to take a look,” the officer said. Several more officers had drawn guns and were approaching the front door. Jessica made to follow them.

  The inside of the hospital was dim. All of the lights were out, except for one that was hanging from the ceiling by a cord, flickering on and off. As the officers moved through the front doors they saw no one. The place was a mess of papers, overturned chairs, and garbage tossed around the floor. The sunlight of the front windows only just penetrated the darkness of the waiting room. Beyond a certain distance, darkness filled the area like a pool.

  “No one home,” Andrew whispered, his gun out and pointed forward into the darkness.

  Another officer raised his voice. “This is the police! Is anyone here?”

  Jessica flinched at the sudden noise. “Great. Just let the bad guys know what to shoot at,” she muttered under her breath.

  No shots came. There was nothing but terrible silence.

  “Looks like we're going to need to go further in. Someone see if they can fix the lights.” The man who spoke appeared to be the officer in charge.

  Jessica pulled out her flashlight and followed the others deeper into the building. She kicked at the random papers and hospital equipment that was scattered across the floor. She found a rag which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the top of a nurse’s uniform. It was so badly shredded that it took her some time to recognize.

  “What the hell?”

  Somewhere in front of her and to the right, a man screamed. The sound cut through the silence like a knife. Andrew yelped and everyone pointed their guns in the direction of the noise.

  “I think it was over here,” she waved the flashlight to her right. Several officers rushed to her side. Taking the lead with her gun in one hand and her flashlight in the other, she moved quickly. She could not understand how it was so damned dark in here in the middle of the day.

  She entered the room that she believed the sound had come from and started to cover as much area with the small beam of her flashlight as possible. Something wet caught her eye and she flipped back to double-check. It was blood all right, and it looked like it was coming from…she panned the light over to the right. It was one of the officers that had walked into the building just a few moments before her. Or, to be more precise, it was his body. His empty eyes stared blankly at her from across the room. She moved the light just a little to the right, and revealed someone chewing on the body.

  “There!” she shouted. Several of the other officers pointed their lights at the same spot. It looked like a young boy, but he was horribly misshapen. He was very broad across the chest and his arms were large and covered in hair.

  “Freeze!” someone shouted. The boy’s eyes snapped up at the sound of the voice and looked in the general direction of the officers. His eyes were empty, black pools. He hissed at them like a big angry cat and jumped to the right.

  “Good God, what’s wrong with him?” someone shouted, as Jessica desperately tried to follow the boy with her light. He moved incredibly fast. Her light exposed two more creatures like the boy. These were bigger, obviously adults, with the same black eyes glinting in the dark. Another officer to Jessica's right yelled and fell over. Guns fired into the darkness as more screams rang out. With her flashlight, Jessica tried to find a safe target. An officer was being dragged away by one of those things. She squeezed off four shots, three of which hit the creature. It jerked with each hit but did not stop dragging the officer away. At that moment she felt a hand grab her ankle. Jessica dropped the beam of light to see what had gotten hold of her. It was Andrew.

  “Jessie, help,” Andrew pleaded, “One of them has my leg.”

  “I got ya, buddy.” Biting the flashlight in her mouth to free up a hand, she reached down and tried to pull him up. The creature was too strong.

  “Aggh! It’s ripping my goddamn leg apart!”

  Jessica fired a random shot into the dark where she thought the creature was. It had no effect. Moving the flashlight with her teeth, she found the beast’s head. It looked like a cavewoman. Jessica lined up her shot, fired, and hit the creature in the bridge of the nose. Its head snapped up and it howled in pain. Andrew came free and tumbled back through the door with Jessica. The force of the fall was enough to knock her flashlight free of her teeth and it dropped, rolling across the floor.

  She picked herself up and grabbed at Andrew's shoulder to drag him away, but something else got to him first, yanking him hard into the darkness. He was gone instantly.

  “Jessie, help...” the sentence ended in a horrible gurgle. Jessica turned to run back into the light. As she did, she snatched out her radio and began shouting into it.

  “Officers down! I have several officers down. There are some kind of creatures here, maybe, I don't know...”

  Something knocked her down, ending her sentence. Her radio flew one way and she flew another, spilling onto the floor. She rolled over quickly and tried to stand back up. Now, back near the main entrance of the hospital, she could see her attackers. They were flowing out of the darkness like water. There were too many of them, furry beasts with black eyes. Some had clothes on and were dressed as doctors, nurses, EMTs, and regular street folk. They surged forward like a terrible tidal wave.

  Jessica managed to scream just once before they reached her.

  Chapter 13 - Darkness

  The Four of Us Are Dying – Nine Inch Nails – The Slip