David was crouched down next to the blonde woman, her breathing was really weak, and she smelled like the room did. David noticed her skin was clammy and covered in a cold sweat, reaching down he started pulling her out of the pile of clothing. 

 

She was probably about to starve to death…

 

David glanced around and realized that she had gotten lucky, a desk in a corner was broken into, and from the wrappings, he could tell she had been eating the food inside of it. For water, he could assume she had broken the connection to the washer and drank from the hose, a thin layer of water on the ground in the corner proved this. Having finished removing her from the clothes, he started carrying her out of the laundry room and towards the control room.

 

The only useful thing is a bunch of parts, I’m better off making a way to the second floor.

 

David began to make his way through the section of the wreck that the blast had cleared when he looked down and noticed the woman was staring at his face. Looking down he saw that the woman had a flat expression, her eyes were a light blue. If he hadn’t seen a reflection coming from one of her eyes, he wouldn’t have even noticed she opened them. 

 

“Can you understand me?” He asked her.

 

She didn’t react at all, David felt a chill run down his back. Remembering the Wight and the voices in his mind he had heard, he could only sigh in relief. The lock in the Laundry room had been locked behind her when she was inside, probably working based on her clothing. The woman had on a dirty pair of black cargo pants, but she had removed her shoes and was just wearing socks. Her shirt was a white blouse that wrapped her emaciated frame.

 

Making his way into the control room he found a clean corner and set the woman down. She was so skinny currently she didn’t weigh nearly what she should have. The woman had a blank expression, throughout everything it had not changed in the least. David frowned as he started going through the food he had stored, and grabbed some light pastries. David had sat her against the wall, kneeling in front of her he began ripping away the wrappers.

 

“I’m not sure if you can understand me, but you need to eat something.” David told her.

 

David began to carefully feed her one pastry after another, her expression didn’t change, and she ate mechanically. David sighed in sadness when he saw this, her mind looked like it had been strongly eroded by the Wight. At mid-tier the Wight had a chance to become a Lich, these were creatures that also eroded the minds of their victims, they were also the best at controlling large groups of undead. 

 

“Shockingly, you didn’t kill yourself,” David muttered, as he fed her another piece of pastry.

 

David shook his head sadly, as he finished feeding the woman. David used some hand sanitizer to clean his hands, then used a wet wipe to wash the woman’s face.  David pointed at the destroyed corpse of the Wight that the Butcher Ghoul had mostly eaten.

 

“The creature that tormented you is dead now, I am going to take care of these bodies.” David told her as he walked over to the control room desks.

 

David sighed out sadly, looking up a large hole that could be seen in the roof that was letting light in. The roof above the desks led to a skylight and had made David think that the building was only one story.  The outer shell of the desks was all metal, and David had a lot of corpses to dispose of. 

 

“In case we end up stuck here for a while I need to get rid of all of these bodies.” David muttered in sadness.

 

The young blonde woman was just staring at him, she looked like one of the many corpses that had been decorating the room. Reaching down to the concrete ground, he began tracing out the basic flame rune, using a small portion of his flagging mana a small flame appeared and caught the alcohol.

 

“Yep, this is going to suck!” David said as he stood with and felt a bit lightheaded.

 

David hopped over the wall of the desk and out of his makeshift fire pit, stretching his shoulders he walked over to the corpse of the ghoul. David reached down and grabbed its ankles, and got into position to drag it. Squaring his shoulders, he gave a heave and dragged the detached limbs easily to the fire pit. Earlier when he had made his weapons the first thing he did was cut this corpse into pieces in case something in the building was capable of raising it from the dead.

 

“A lot of people will tell you that you should never desecrate the corpses of your enemies. Those people probably died from this undead calamity. A lot of our weapons are designed to cause as little damage as possible to the body, but when dealing with the undead it is best to thoroughly destroy their corpses.” David told her resolutely. “Once soul fire has infested a corpse, it makes it easier for another soul fire to reside inside it. The new moon will naturally allow soul fires to travel around freely in the energy it provides them, or one of the various undead who can create a similar phenomenon.”

 

This was mostly information that the Machine Lord imparted on him during the awakening, but repeating it helped David make the knowledge feel like his. Now that he was no longer being tormented by the voice of the man, he felt like he needed to quickly move past him. It would be like ripping the bandage off of a trauma. 

 

“I am pretty sure there is a Corpse Mother here, or the evolved form which is a Corpse Herder, this is just me being optimistic of course. The Hospital has a wall around it, but we are surrounded by undead from what I saw.” David said as he began to contemplate. “For now, this section is fairly safe. We need to get to the second floor of the hospital and see what is up there. I don’t think there will be any strong undead but you can never be too careful when dealing with the corpses.”

 

David had tossed the body of the Ghoul and the Wight inside of the fire, both bodies had been cut into pieces to make it easier to move them and herder to revive them.

 

“Alright, I am going to go and get the rest of the corpses so they can be burned,” David told the blonde woman. “Just wait right there ’princess’ and I will be right back.”

 

David stood up and began to make his way towards the hallway, he had corpses to dispose of. What he didn’t see was the blonde woman looking down at her knees. She reached over with one of her bony hands and traced on the floor, a small flame appeared briefly from the rune she had copied.  Her lips began to move slightly, she was muttering a single word over and over, it was the word “princess.”

 

-

 

“Fuck off!” David muttered angrily, as he tossed the headless corpse into the fire.

 

Disgusting blood that was filled with clotted chunks had gotten on his when he was dragging this corpse/

 

“That was so gross!” David said in disgust, as he stripped to his underwear and tossed the clothes in the fire.

 

David turned to see the blonde woman in the same position she had been in before.

 

“Whatever, she isn’t paying attention to anything.” David said as he took some wet wipes and began to clean himself off.

 

David was covered in small wounds from all the fighting he had been doing over the last couple of days. His elbows were skinned, his face had scratches on it and he had a bite wound on his ankle. Using a bunch of topical creams and hydrogen peroxide, he quickly took care of his wounds.  Bandaging and cleaning them for the second time, he started changing into some clothes he found in the laundry room that belonged to a security officer. It was a pair of dark blue pants that were made of synthetic fiber, as well as a black T-shirt that said “security” on the back.

 

“Now if I could only replace these damn shoes.” David muttered.

 

David turned and looked at the emaciated woman, suddenly a conflicted expression crossed his face. She looked sick, this could be seen from her pale and clammy skin. David looked back, the room was getting quite hot from the bonfire burning in the middle of the control room. 

 

“Alright, let’s get you clean.” David muttered.

 

David took out the disinfecting wipes and began to remove her clothes. What he saw was a pitiful sight, her ribs were all showing, and this trend continued to her arms and legs. She looked like a skeleton, and even her eyes were slightly sunken. David felt no lust, just sadness when he saw her skeletal form.

 

This is what I should have looked like!

 

If David had woken up in this state then he would have died for sure, this was not something he had any doubts of in his mind.

 

“I’ll take care of you, okay?” David reassured her. “I have never seen someone who has been starved to this degree before, but we do have a good amount of food at the moment.”

 

David looked up and saw the smoke passing through the skylight to the roof, it was starting to get dark. He had looted most of the floor, the only room he hadn’t was the one the security had used.

 

“Alright, I have a room I need to check.” David told her as he finished putting clean clothes on her, they were a little too big.

 

David grabbed a chair leg that he had turned into a torch, he then made his way into the room that had all of the monitors in it. This room had been torn up, more than he expected. Walking over to a row of metal shelving units, he took out his picks and began working the locks.

 

“I almost don’t understand why I have always felt so safe because of these things…” David muttered. 

 

David’s torch kept flickering from the inside of the cup holder that he had stuck it in that was built into the desk. Feeling the lock turn to the unlocked position, he stood up and grabbed his bladed club. Taking a few steps back, he used the tip of it to pry the door open. Seeing the two sides of the shelving unit swing open, a pleased expression appeared on his face.

 

“Hell yeah! Tools!” David commented happily.

 

This was mostly mounting equipment for monitors, and various toolboxes filled with cables and tape. The thing that made David happiest was finding some cable cutters and steel wire. He also found a soldering iron and some silver solder. David took a large plastic toolbox that he decided he was going to take with him when he left. He found two other identical toolboxes and decided he would stack the three of them to make a backpack. David walked over to the next large shelving unit and began picking the lock.

 

Now that David had seen the inside of one of these large containers he wasn’t worried someone could have gotten inside of one. It took David far longer to get through this lock than any other he had tried so far. 

 

“Oh come on!” David muttered angrily.

 

Click!

 

“About time!” He muttered.

 

Pulling open the doors of the shelving unit, he was shocked to see countless cords running through it.

 

“This is where the footage was all stored!” David said in wonder.

 

Looking at the modified shelving unit, he could see that it had been turned into server storage. This wasn’t what made David the happiest though.

 

“Woah! This is a way bigger baton! Did this belong to that nurse’s father?” David saw a toolbox near the bottom that he was going to dump, but as soon as he picked it up he felt that it was tightly locked. “Huh, this might be the best lock I have run into yet, why is this on a toolbox?” 

 

David walked over and sat the toolbox on a table, he could hear lots of different things rattling around, it sounded like metal. David quickly began attacking the lock with his picks, and it took him almost ten minutes to finally open the lock.

 

“Now that is a lock, what brand is this, I want one!” David said as he pulled the lock off and inspected it. “Kraplock, no wonder I have never heard of it, what a bad name…”

 

Opening the toolbox with a smile, his face soon froze.

 

“Monsters!” David muttered in rage.

 

Inside the top of the toolbox were pictures of female patients that were forced into different positions. David’s teeth grit, and he punched the steel cabinet to vent some of his fury.

 

Bang!

 

“Pieces of shit! You better hope you are fucking dead!” David muttered in rage as he punched the cabinet again.

 

Looking back down he could see a picture of a blonde woman with wide hips and full breasts, she had a dead expression on her face in the picture. All of the pictures were likely printed in this very room. Judging by the small cameras and USB drives this had been going on for a while.

 

“He had to have had help, I bet there were several people in on this!”  David’s mind burned as he looked through the evidence in the toolbox. 

 

David thought about the women whose shoes he was wearing, suddenly he wondered if the two were connected. Making up his mind he decided he would get rid of them at the first possible moment. David closed this toolbox and shoved it back into the locker, if the military came back they could deal with this horrible sight.

 

“Fuck, she has had it so rough…” David said as he placed his hands over his face.

 

This wasn’t a state she had developed because of the Wight, but it certainly didn’t help. David was about to close the cabinet, then he stopped. Reaching forward he grabbed the small toolbox with a determined expression and carried it with him, along with the other toolboxes and his club. Making his way back into the control room he set the items down and grabbed the small toolbox, he then began making his way over to the blonde woman. David sat in front of her and opened up the toolbox, and set the pile of pictures in her lap.

 

“You're currently the only survivor I have found who can testify to this incident. I will let you decide what to do with this stuff.” David told her this as he placed it all in the toolbox, then clipped the lock around it. “I was training to be a lawyer before this happened, I originally wanted to be a prosecutor. This might sound insensitive, but I am going to pretend that I haven’t seen any of this. I don’t know how to help you, but I won’t judge you for what you have been through.”

 

David told her this seriously as he left the box where it was. 

 

“I am going to create another weapon, I need to make something that can deal with creatures that are as powerful as that Ghoul was.” David told her with a serious expression. “You can do whatever you want with this.”

 

David told this to her, as he stood up and moved over to the tool chests, he also dragged over a blanket that he had recovered from one of the ward rooms. David began messing with the tools he had used before and the new baton he had found. David began making blanks as he did before, but this time he packed the extra gunpowder into the casing. Each casing could hold twice the amount of gunpowder that it did if you removed the bullet. David used a piece of paper to plug these up. 

 

Clatter! Crash!

 

 David turned as he heard a sudden change in the fire pile, and looked over to see a good portion of it had burned down. David stood up and started grabbing some wooden chairs that were destroyed and tossed them on top of the fire. David suddenly stopped when he saw the pink purse, and walked over to it, and picked it up. Suddenly he stopped when he felt something hard inside, pulling it open he found a key.

 

So this is how it was getting around the building! I bet it only works on certain doors!

 

David smiled as he took the key and chucked the empty purse in the fire, what he didn't see was the small toolbox that the purse landed on. A hole had been burned through the top using a rune and it was clear something was pulled from it. The blonde woman was watching the man who continued to make an arm-mounted weapon.  It looked like he was turning the Baton into some kind of battering ram that would fire if it was hit hard enough against something. A strange light was flashing through her pale blue eyes, and her pupils could be seen expanding and contracting as if she was experiencing massive emotional waves.