[POV: David Wilson]

 

David looked around the room that was probably a control room at one point, but now it was decorated with skeletons in macabre poses. They were pinned to the walls with long blades that were six or seven inches(~15cm) long and looked like a scissor’s blade that was snapped off. From the memories he grasped from the Machine Lord, there would only be two reasons for behavior like this, either it was some unique variation, or it was getting close to evolving into a high-tier monster.

 

The control room was square, with a desk that was covered in claw marks in the center. This desk wrapped around to form a rectangle and was filled with bones from past victims, many of them were probably undead. This room did not have any windows, so the stench of decay was nearly enough to incapacitate David with its strength. All along the walls, various decayed bodies were used as decorations, posed with their arms in the air and their knees bent, as if they were cheering.

 

“Mid-tier undead differ vastly from the low-tier ones, we can see this in their actions. They start collecting things and eventually training lower-tiered undead. They have an insatiable hunger for the energy that the living poses.” The Machine Lord sounded like he was reciting notes. “With undead, it is best to just kill it in the cradle before it has time to grow. Burn every corpse and spare none of them, unless you need them for research.”

 

David instantly felt the blast of cold air that seemed to seep into his bones whenever the Machine Lord spoke, this was because what he had experienced over those 30 years had forced him to watch every action the man had made. 

 

Booom! Crash! Rooooaaarrr!

 

David heard the sounds of the wall being smashed in the ward behind him, it was now in the room he had first woken up in. The roar that sounded was in anger, it could tell he had been in there. Reaching backward, he grabbed the heavy door and shut the ward off from the control room.

 

This should buy me some time!

 

The door to the control room was metal, with thick bullet-resistant glass. David could also tell from putting his hand on it they could only open it from his side without the power. Looking at all the blades decorating the walls, he tried to pull a couple that seemed to be carelessly placed, but he could not pull them from the wall. The blades looked smooth but were grown with a reverse saw pattern. It made them easy to insert but hard to pull out, it also allowed them to do a larger amount of damage to the victim.

 

Unable to take any of the blades that he tried, he made his way deeper into the building. Most mid-tier undead had an area where they fed and an area where they kept their food for later. Recalling the yard filled with walking corpses, he speculated it probably had a way to access the yard area. This also meant that there may be walking corpses wandering around in the building. It also didn’t help that he was barefoot, and the building was dark. 

 

Making his way past the desk filled with skeletal remains, he saw a set of double doors that had been torn off the hinges. They lead to a long dark hallway with multiple doors he could see that were missing. Two other hallways connected to the control room, but they led to the other wards. David ignored them and walked down the hallway past the double doors, he was only going to stop if he saw something useful. The first door he passed looked like a camera room and was filled with destroyed electronics. It had sliced the thin monitors and cables into pieces, none of it was operable.

 

Walking further forward, he saw a room that was worth entering. It was an employee break room, and it was also in a terrible state. Walking into the room, he saw the remains of a table and furniture, but more importantly, he saw a fridge and pantry. The most important thing that he saw was also some lockers and some spare equipment. The first locker he saw had a cheap lock you would see anywhere, and David began picking and tensioning the lock.

 

Click! It shocked him just how easy it was when he could see the inside of the lock and all of its workings. Even in the dark, it was as clear as daytime to his senses. 

 

Boom! Boom! Boom!

 

“Already?” David muttered to himself quietly as he opened up the locker. “Woah!”

 

David pulled out a pair of shoes, which is why he chose this locker, but they were women’s shoes. 

 

“Too small!” David muttered as he pulled them out and tossed them to the side.

 

Clank! Clank! Roll!

 

David turned back over as he heard something come bouncing out of one shoe and begin rolling across the floor. Reaching over, he grabbed it with his hand and felt a foam grip with a metal ball at the end.

 

A collapsible baton?! 

 

Picking it up the only thought in his mind was that he had just scored! A weapon was exactly what he wanted, and it was sturdy enough to break bones. The moment it entered his hand, he instantly knew its condition.

 

This thing has been used to beat the shit out of something!

 

A chill ran down David’s back when he realized this weapon had seen a fair amount of use and was modified. The tip was replaced with lead-reinforced steel, giving it much more weight in the head. This thing was heavily modified for shattering bones with as little force as possible. 

 

What kind of sick bitch used this thing?!

 

Reaching back into the locker, he next pulled out a handbag. Pulling it open, he began rifling through its contents. The first thing he found was a can of bear mace, further reinforcing his thought that this woman was crazy.  It didn’t help the fact when he pulled out a taser.

 

It’s dead…

 

The moment the weapon entered his hand he realized it was useless, and the only other thing he found in the bag was some unmentionables like tampons and pads, as well as makeup. David tossed this bag on the ground and began selecting another locker. The thing he was focusing on was shoes, seeing a pair that looked male he immediately grabbed the lock and inserted his tensioning tool.

 

Wow, this one is really bad!

 

This lock lacked even the most basic of protections, and he was able to stick the lockpick through the pins and past the lock body and directly open the catch, freeing the shackle and opening the lock.

 

I didn’t even need to pick this! Haven’t I used one of these locks before?! I think these were used on the gym lockers in middle school!

 

David was beginning to wonder if locks were only good for deterring honest people. So far in his one hour of lock picking experience, he had opened four different locks from four different manufacturers and the longest one took him less than a minute.

 

I have become a lock-picking undergrad!

 

This thought made him chuckle as he pulled open the locker and went straight for the shoes. Lifting them and pulling up the tongue to inspect them in the dim light, he found a problem with them.

 

Do I want to wear this guy’s athlete’s foot?

 

The smell was intense, this was only magnified by how long they were left to fester. David finally shook his head and tossed them to the side. If the rest of the world was like this asylum, then he would rather have no shoes than risk infection. David then reached in and hunted around in the locker, he found a sweatshirt that had the same smell.

 

The contents are as shit as the lock was!

 

David then hunted for a different locker with shoes in it, but he hit the end, seeing no more pairs of shoes. This led David to only one option, he grabbed the women’s shoes and used one blade trapped in the wall to cut the toes off and fashion them into a set of sandals. This was the best he could do in the situation, they were tight, pink, and made mostly of denim material. His toes also slightly hung over the ends of the shoes. David sighed unhappily as he selected the next locker and began picking the lock, this was another obvious target he saw walking by.

 

Click!! David had gone numb to the shock he felt when he easily picked another lock in less than half a minute. This locker had several cans of food and various snacks inside it, the highlights were three cans of beans and four cans of chicken soup. Several half-finished boxes contained snacks, like pre-packaged donuts and other pastries. This all got shoved into David’s shopping tote, along with the can of mace. The last stop was the fridge, which he didn’t have high expectations of, but what he saw inside shocked him.

 

An unopened case of water?!

 

David broke it open and began calculating how much of it he should carry with him, he decided on six bottles as he didn’t want to be weighed down too much by water. It was more important to run than it was to carry the extra weight at the moment. 

 

I need to move quickly!

 

That was because he could no longer hear the beast banging on the door, meaning it probably had another way through the building. David peeked into the hallway before he began making his way forward after he saw it was clear. The next room he saw was the medical bay, and he almost paused before he moved on. Since he wasn’t trained in medicine, even if he found some pills, he may not know what their uses were. This would just cause him to waste time when he needed to escape the building.

 

David immediately paused as his ears detected something, and he ducked into the room that was directly in front of him at almost rolling speed. This was because he could hear hurried footsteps rushing towards the control room.

 

Damit, it had a way out of the ward! It must have run around and come straight here!

 

David held his breath as he heard heavy footsteps and slowly peeked around the corner to get a look at the creature. It looked like it had been human at one point, but its body had heavily deformed during its evolutions. Its face was just bald skin with an enormous gaping mouth. The nose was flat, and the eyes were just dark blue flames. It had no clothes and had a thin frame with long arms, this gave it an almost hairless primate appearance. That was until you saw the long-bladed claws that grew out of its fingers. 

 

The third joint on the fingers was gone, and instead, a bony protrusion that formed a metal-like bone blade was attached. They looked like claws, and their flesh was a solid white color with no signs of gender anymore.

 

“Butcher Ghouls always appear anywhere that there are lots of fresh bodies for them to eat, the most common place to find them is at graveyards.” The Machine Lord’s voice rang out in his mind. “They are very cruel creatures that are usually born from wicked people.”

 

David used this moment to prepare himself, that was because he had no chance against a creature like the one that he was seeing. Its flesh would easily resist his baton blows, and he could never break its bones. Extinguishing its soul fire was impossible if he could not deal enough damage to its head to disperse it. David turned and began to quickly inspect the room he found himself in, but it was just a closed ward for patients, probably a quarantine room.

 

David turned back and observed the creature from the door frame, its sight would be terrible. He saw it using its nose to sniff at the air, before turning its large 8ft (2.4M) frame and entering the break room he was first in. David waited as he heard it take several steps, then darted silently into the hallway and made for the next room. David glanced around the room and saw the same small window he could never crawl out of.

 

Damit! I need to get out of here!

 

David had to stop himself from panicking, he could not afford an asthma attack now. Taking a moment to get his breath, he realized the creature was taking a while in the break room. David took this chance to leave this office and head to the next room. This was another office, but David saw something that looked promising.

 

A gun safe, this was the office for the security officer!

 

David had to stop himself from cheering before he suddenly grew skeptical.

 

Can I open this without alerting the monster? What if there aren’t any guns in there, it looks like this place was hastily evacuated. 

 

David paused and looked at the baton in his hand, and wondered if he should use more of the information in his head that came from the Machine Lord. This thought left him as he looked back and saw the Butcher Ghoul walk out of the break room. What shocked David was the accessory that the Ghoul was now wearing.

 

Why did it waste its time collecting the contents of the purse?!

 

David suddenly came to the thought that the women who owned that locker might have grown to become the Butcher Ghoul.

 

Are you kidding me?!

 

Suddenly David realized that this place might not have been evacuated and that it was highly likely that there was a gun in that safe.

 

5.56mm might be able to kill it, but if it is only a 9 mil or a shotgun I might be fucked.

 

David took in a deep breath as he approached the safe and placed his hand on it. He suddenly realized a serious issue.

 

I can’t open this quickly!

 

David could hear the Butcher Ghoul in the room he had first ducked into, he realized that there was no way he could escape from this room without alerting it to his presence. David took a desperate look around the room, but all he saw was an overturned wooden desk and the collapsed remains of a couch and chair.

 

David suddenly paused as he saw an air vent that led into a duct. David began to weigh out his options before he quickly approached it and began inspecting the hardware keeping it closed. Turning the tensioning tool sideways, he began to use the flat edge to pull out the screw. The moment it was loose he used his hand and moved the tool to the next screw to break it loose.

 

One down and three to go, need to hurry!

 

David could hear the creature walk into the room across from the first one, David hadn’t gone into that room, so he knew it wouldn’t stay long. Tossing the screw on the ground, he moved onto the next screw and used his hand to remove a second one. 

 

“Ghouls are very territorial creatures, if they think an intruder is in their territory they will search every inch of it very carefully.” The Machine Lord’s voice commented.

 

“Shut up!” David whispered as he began to break the final screw loose. 

 

His fear was rising, and he felt like from the moment he had women up everything had gone to shit. Nothing was making sense anymore and he was being hunted by a giant man-eating monster.

 

What the fuck happened while I was asleep?! How long have I been here, I don’t even know what it is called!

 

David could hear the creature starting to approach the room he was in, this was right as he removed the final screw. Pulling the grate off silently and setting it flat on the ground, he immediately began shoving his body into the thin ducting that ran in the walls.

 

Rooooaaaaar! 

 

The creature screamed as David began quickly shoving his body into the thin ducting. No matter what he did there wasn’t a way to enter it without making a lot of noise. His breathing began to pick up as he heard the creature approaching and he grabbed his bag as he began curling his body around a corner. Right now he was praying that no walking corpses were hiding in the duct since it was a tight fit, and he wouldn’t be able to fight it.

 

These thoughts fled his mind, as he began to try to shove himself into the duct faster when the creature started to enter the room. David had his bag in his hands in front of him, and he could see its pale skin and hairless body. The long bone claws were almost as long as his hand was, and David watched one of these begin to reach into the duct after him.

 

David made it around the corner and began moving backward as quickly as he could, the arm stopped right in front of his face, and one of the claws scratched his cheek in the process. David did not allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief until it was several feet away from him reaching around pointlessly.

 

Alright, now what?

 

He wondered as he held his tote inside the duct that was filled with dust. Moving his shaking hand into his bag, he extracted the inhaler and took a puff to steady his breathing. Instantly feeling relief when he saw the clawed hand retreat followed by an angry roar.

 

Stupid bitch! David smiled with glee, as he insulted it in his head!