My first conscious experience was a debilitating headache unlike anything I have experienced before. Scrunching my eyes shut even tighter I groan in pain as the searing headache overwhelms my recently regained senses. I pull the blanket in my hands closer to my chest, grasping it in an iron grip as instinctively pull myself into a foetal position.

The movement helped lessen the effect of my headache by kindly bringing all my other aches to attention. The muscles in my legs and arms felt like they were on fire and my throat ached due to how dry it was.

Another groan leaves my throat sending me into a coughing fit. My eyes start to water as pain shoots through my chest and a soundless yell escapes my mouth as my coughing stops. I start to focus more on my breathing, taking deep slow breaths in and out so as to not agitate my lungs and send me into another coughing fit.

I don’t know how long I lay there but soon the pain all across my body started to dissipate allowing me to finally think clearly again. My eyes were still closed and the only sensation I could feel was the blanket over my body and the pillow under my head.

Wait… blanket? pillow?

My brain immediately kicked into action as my eyes shot open at this realisation, which I almost immediately regretted. I quickly shut my eyes again as they were assaulted by the light around me making me groan as pain shot through my eyes this time.

My brain was in overdrive trying to figure out what was going on. Slowly I started to open my eyes little by little allowing them to acclimate to the light around me. My mind blanked as I looked around.

The walls of the room seemed to be made of wood and were painted a light bluish colour with darker shades of blue painted in some sort of swirling pattern while the floors were made of what looked like beige coloured ceramic in a checkered style. The curtains around my bed were a whitish-blue colour while those at the windows were turquoise. The sky outside was a greyish brown colour with no clouds in sight. What struck me as bizarre though was how clean and well-maintained everything looked.

There were no piles of trash strewn about across the floor, no blood stains or corpses and no corruption. It almost felt… normal.

What the fuck is going on?

Looking around my bed I spotted various types of medical equipment around me. Again, also in strangely good condition, although they weren’t on at the moment so I could not confirm whether they worked or not. Looking at the contraptions I realised they had some odd design features such as what appeared to be small gemstones attached to the machines.

My attention was drawn away from this though as I noticed some of the wires coming off the machine heading underneath my blanket. I threw it off myself and saw as it tumbled over the bed onto the floor. Looking up and down my body I realised that I thankfully still had all my clothes on and my shoes too strangely enough. The people who brought me here must be idiots considering they didn’t even remove my knife from my belt.

Looking at my arms and legs I see medical pads attached to various exposed points along my limbs with wires attached to them. Safe to assume that those machines work then, that or I am dealing with delusional junkies who wanted to play doctor with me.

Removing the wires from myself I turn to sit on the side of the bed and hopped off to have a look around the small room I’m in. Despite the fact that the building is made of wood; still standing and the fact that whoever lives in this hospital managed to keep this area clean, it looks like any other small hospital room, at least how I remember a hospital room looking.

Right, I need to get out of here and figure out how I got here. Hopefully my bag is around here somewhere.

I start searching about the room checking in the small bedside tables and the lockers arranged along the walls before eventually finding my bag and all my weapons carefully stored in one of the lockers. Okay I can confirm these people aren’t just idiots, they are grade-A dumbasses.

With my MAC-10 on my belt and my bag on my back I can finally get started on figuring out where the hell I am. My memories feel like a coagulated soup with lights and sounds flowing about slowly and out of focus. I remember falling asleep on the couch at my old apartment, but after that I…

I rub my temple with my hand as the headache starts to come back.

Okay memory loss can be dealt with later now I need to figure out where I am and who bought me here.

I grab my axe off my bag and start towards the door opposite my bed which I assume leads further into the building. Reaching the door, I crouch low and peak through the keyhole at the hall outside. The hall beyond has a similar colour scheme to the room, but with white accents and just out of the corner of my eye I can spot an upturned hospital bed.

After listening through the door for a second or two I slowly ease the door open and step into the hall. I remember why I never liked going to hospitals, the creepy silence that you find in an abandoned hospital is so much worse than any other abandoned building. The hall is at least a bit more like what I was expecting with all the medical equipment littered throughout the hall.

Right is there a legible sign here that I can use to find my way out of here.

I look up and down the hall to see if I can spot a sign that could indicate where I was. A small popping sound echoes through the hall and before I know it, I have my gun in my one hand pointing down the hall and my axe in my other. Looking down the hall the sound of tinkling glass quietly sounds from the suddenly darkened corner of the hall.

Just a popping lightbu… Wait

My brain blanks for a second as I finally realise that the lights in the hall aren’t from ouutside, but from lights just above my head.

So, if there are lights working here then this building has power but how! The national grid has been offline for years and I haven’t seen a functional generator let alone a functional engine in just as much time.

Somehow whoever lives in this building had managed to get power back and running for an entire hospital and considering I was hooked up to some of those medical machines then those must work too! Who the fuck are these people!

Taking the more lit up path I make my deeper into the hospital. Hopefully I can find some directions further down. The strangeness of my surroundings still troubles me though. I can’t still be in Glenside as the hospital there had collapsed years ago and if I was in the hospital in Philly my skin would have melted off at this point, so that begs the question, where am I?

Rounding the corner at the end of the hall I enter what looks like the reception area of the building. Small benches line the wall with large pillows on top. Pictures adorn the walls, which are light green in colour with the same swirling patterns of the room I woke up in. I look quickly up and down the large space before my eyes land on something I never thought I would see again.

Is that a… plant!?

Just next to one of the benches sits a large potted plant which should be an impossibility. All plant life had gone extinct years ago having been consumed by the corruption as it grew throughout the world.

This newest piece of evidence threw all my predictions of where I was out the window. Sure, I had barely travelled far fromPhiladelphia in the last few years, but surely if there were still plants around, I would have heard of it at some point!

I slowly approached the plant, running my fingers along the delicate leaves and stems. I never realised how much I had missed the feeling of plants. My mind was filled with a sense of euphoria I hadn’t experienced in years as my fingers danced about the soft skin of the plant, memories of happier times entering my mind that I hadn’t thought of in years.

My blissful state was shattered as an ear-piercing scream sounded off in the distance. My instincts immediately kicked in and I assumed a defensive stance facing the direction of the noise. The shriek came from just behind a glass door to the left of the potted plant leading out of the building.

I waited for a second to determine whether I had actually heard the scream when the same scream tore through the air. The scream was not what I had expected as it had no distortion like what a corrupted scream sounded like. It sounded feminine and from how it sounded the person it came from sounded distressed.

Maybe if I go figure out what’s going on there, I can get some information on how I got here.

Having decided a course of action I stepped out of the hospital and onto a dirt road. Looking around the small courtyard just outside what I could now confirm as the main entrance to the hospital I could see a forest close by with huge trees lining a field of greyish grass on which the dirt path lay. Following the dirt path with my eyes I spotted a small village consisting of wooden houses a few hundred metres away.

Okay this is just getting crazy!

I slowly walked down the dirt path as I became more and more concerned about what was going on. Nothing made sense as everything I was seeing should either be extinct, corrupted or not there to begin with, yet here were plants, trees, relatively well-maintained buildings and no corruption in sight.

This couldn’t be a dream? No, the pain I had experienced as I woke up was too vivid to be a dream. Corruption? But then I would have been experiencing bouts of insanity as all newly corrupted individuals do and I am definitely thinking straight.

I continued walking deep in thought as I slowly approached the village ahead of me. As I got closer, I could see the buildings in clearer detail. Almost every building was an off-white colour with either pink or purple accents. Every house had boarded up windows and the thatch on the rooves had started to fall off leaving holes in them.

As I walked past the houses deeper into the town the feeling of wrongness I felt quickly started to increase. It was too quiet all of a sudden. There was definitely something here if those screams were anything to go by so then, where were the people?

My thoughts were interrupted as a faint clopping sound permeated the air. I stopped and strained my ears to listen. I stood completely still as I focused on the sound. It was getting louder.

A scream tore through the air again coming from the same direction as the clopping noise. Now that I was closer, I could identify something about the scream that boiled my blood in anger.

The scream was that of a child.

Author's Note

Please let me know if I made any grammar or spelling mistakes

Things will probably start ramping up from here

If anyone has any tips on how I can improve my writing please let me know