They Hunger – Start of Episode Three
You’ve managed to destroy the crazy Doctor and hopefully the shriff… right? Maybe it was just a dream… thankfully, the Nurse wakes you from your nightmare and you slide gratefully back to sleep.
Then you wake up again hours later, hearing a baby crying. And you know something is horribly wrong.
You’ve levered yourself out of bed, feeling a lot better than you have for days, except for that horrible feeling of fear building in the pit of your stomach. Because this ward is deserted. It’s the middle of night, but still, nobody is here? You can’t find anybody.
And so, you start to make your way through the hospital, searching for anybody you can find, the crying baby in particular. All you can find is a radio, broadcasting something disturbing, about eating your fellow man. And it isn’t easy going getting around. The building exits, in fact most of the doors, are locked. The elevator isn’t working. You can’t go up the stairs because they’ve been boarded up. So you go down.
By now your skin is crawling. Something is very, very wrong.
Trying to open all the doors on the way down to no avail, you reach the basement. The elevator here isn’t working either. Turning on the nearby radio, you start hearing some disturbing preaching, but the signal so bad you can’t really make it out…
“And ye may eat the flesh of kings … and the flesh of mighty men …”
Finding the circuit breaker, you pull the switch and the elevator hums to life. You press the button, but although the door opens, the lift is clearly broken, with a hole in the roof and the cables snapped. But those very cables supply a way up. You start to climb, your intestines flipping over repeatedly in your stomach.
You’re about halfway up when you hear the baby crying again. It’s much closer this time. You stop climbing, and wait until your heart starts beating again. Then you reach the top and jump into the corridor.
At one end there’s another door. Locked. So you go the other way.
You’ve reached the nursery. You tense, knowing something is very wrong about this situation. and then a nearby phone rings.
You pause for a moment, then answer. Whoever it is hangs up.
That’s scary enough.
But why didn’t the nurses try and come out to answer it?
Your hands are trembling.
You try the door to the nursery but it’s locked. Good. You try the other door here, and it opens… but it’s just the staircase you were in earlier. Looking around, you see a button to call the nurse. Well, it can’t hurt, right? Right?
You press the button.
For a long moment, nothing happens.
Then the curtains draw back.
Ah, thank goodness. The nurse is fine. And you can see the bulge in the blankets where the baby is sleeping. The nurse looks at you a bit oddly, but never mind, you’ve been acting a fool, that’s expected. She’ll probably come and talk to you now.
Then the nurse turns around, and you can see the long bloody scratches and teeth marks on her back.
Horrified, you pull back. And she smashes the nursery door down. A zombie. And you have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, and nothing to fight with.
The former nurse lurches towards you.
“You’re going to feed the little ones…”
