Arc II, Chapter 39: The Unveiling

We moved as quickly toward the hospital as we possibly could. Isaac was slowing us down. He was bleeding out. Unfortunately because of his sedation and the tropes that he had equipped it was nearly impossible to tell exactly how close he was to death.

A few times I actually thought he had died but the red wallpaper confirmed that he had not yet, though his Dead indicator status had lit up briefly once or twice, sending Cassie into tears.

As we moved, I tried throwing out ideas of what we would do when we got there. Trying to string together some motivation for our characters was difficult. This storyline made it difficult the moment we decided not to just run for the hills.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “Don’t try to kill him.”

I had other ideas on how we would get his magic little wake-up gun out of his pocket. Unfortunately, they relied on Isaac to survive until we found the good doctor.

On-Screen.

“Everyone down!” Willis screamed.

I hit the ground.

I heard gunshots firing. I heard the sound of things dying though I could not exactly call them screams. It was Antoine shooting, not Willis.

“Move!” Willis cried again.

Off-Screen.

“It’s a dance,” Willis said. “Don’t just bam bam bam kill every enemy you see. Shoot one duck behind the car then pop out and shoot another. Let it rush you for a few feet, and shoot again. Make it entertaining.”

“I just stop shooting them?” Antoine asked. “They were coming right for us. I’m supposed to just let them get closer?”

“You evaluate, you make a judgment, and you give Carousel a nice piece of footage. Never let the audience know when things are easy, or they won’t be.”

Antoine sounded frustrated.

We kept moving forward, a half block at a time. The frogs were everywhere, strategically placed so that they were behind things in your line of sight, only to jump out at us as we moved forward. Most of them weren’t serious threats. Some didn’t even attack us. A lot chased NPCs, but they never did that close enough to us for us to intervene.

On-Screen.

“Hospital’s half a block further,” Willis said. “He still cracking jokes?”

Isaac moaned.

Kimberly was helping him along. She looked him over and said, “We don’t have long. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“There they are!” Dina said. “Going in the back way.”

She pointed toward the hospital. Our detour with the giant frog hadn’t taken us much time On-Screen. Halle, Cecilia, and Bobby must have slowed down for us to catch up for continuity.

“We’ll deal with him late,” Willis said. “We need to get to the emergency room. My money says it’ll be packed.”

That was a bet he lost.

We made it across the final street to the hospital.

The emergency room was to the right. The direction Halle had gone was to the left.

“I’m following them!” Dina said. She picked up speed and took off toward him.

“We’ll be right behind you,” I said.

As she left, she made notes on the red wallpaper using Pen Pal. I could only see two before she got too far away for me to see the rest.

We couldn’t go after her yet. We had hoops to jump through.

“Oh my god!” Kimberly said as we rounded the building toward the emergency room.

I might have said the same thing.

There were dead NPCs everywhere. More than I had ever seen. It was raining, but the water that flooded over the ground of the parking lot was thick with blood.

“And you were worried it would be crowded,” Isaac said.

We rushed to the door. It was locked.

Antoine banged on the door. It was an automatic, but they had disabled it and piled chairs in front of it.

“Hello!” Cassie screamed. “We need help!”

A lone nurse poked her head over a stack of chairs. Her nose had been bleeding and she looked scared out of her mind.

“Help,” Cassie screamed. “My brother’s hurt. Please let us in.”

That was a slip-up. They hadn’t been established as siblings in this story. Perhaps the audience will think she is lying for sympathy.

The nurse looked tempted to help and even started moving a chair, but then she got a full view of Isaac’s face.

Fear overcame her.

She turned tail and ran.

We watched her as she faded into the distance.

Oh well. We tried. At least it was an excuse to get to the hospital.

As the nurse faded into the distance, she stopped, turned, and started running toward us. We saw through the glass windows as a swarm of frogs the size of dirt bikes started chasing her back toward us.

As she got to us, she tried unstacking the chairs to escape, but she was too late. I saw her get dragged backward and that was the last of her.

“We need to move,” Willis said. “There’s a hospital west of here. It’s smaller, but it might be safer.”

“No!” Cassie said. “We have to save him. We need the doctor. He’ll help.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“That quack is the one who did this to him,” Antoine said.

Cassie started to cry. “He will help.”

“Plus,” I said. “That woman Cecilia is with him. She knows something about Geist.”

“How can you think about that right now?” Antoine asked. “That was a publicity stunt. Who cares who killed the lonely rich guy?”

We had gone with Antoine being the skeptic who argued against our ideas. We needed someone and he seemed like the most down-to-earth character we had.

“Dammit,” Antoine said. “If he turns me into one of…,” he shot a glance at Isaac. “If he does that to me, kill me.”

~-~

We followed Dina’s notes on the red wallpaper right back to Halle’s office. That was little surprise. We found her hiding in the shadows and watching as Halle packed a bag. We had been Off-Screen for a bit.

When I got a clear view of Halle’s office, I saw why.

On-Screen.

“Why didn’t you find me, Bobby?” Donna, his NPC wife cried. “I waited so long. I knew you were out there somewhere.”

She had found him at long last. He was crying, but he couldn’t reciprocate because his tongue was unnaturally long.

He hugged her. She ran a finger over his odd scars, his deformities. She didn’t seem the least bit deterred by his grotesque appearance.

As they embraced, she suddenly fell into his arms.

Halle stood behind her holding a syringe.

“She knows our little secret now,” Halle said. “I told you that if she found out she would join us, didn’t I?”

Bobby growled. He sounded like a dog.