Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 69: Not On Speaking Terms

Chapter 69: Not On Speaking Terms

The light! How could I be so stupid? It was probably attracted to the light!

I pushed the lamp closed and slipped the handle over my wrist.

As soon as the room was dark again, two things happened at the same time.

The first thing to happen was that I jumped up on my desk, jumping up so I could push the ceiling tiles above it open.

As soon as it moved, a rope ladder fell down toward me. It had taken a lot of finessing to make that happen and a lot of time spent on making sure it happened consistently.

But I was crazy, and time was something I had a lot of.

The second thing that happened was the sound of the glass on my door shattering and the angry roar of the creature outside my office.

Knowing that my time was getting limited, I pulled myself up and then pulled up the ladder, replacing the tile so no one could see anything amiss.

I held my breath, waiting to see what was going to happen next. It was stupid of me. I should have just taken my go bag that I kept up here and left, but I... froze.

There was the softest of clicks as the lock on my door was disengaged, and that was my cue to leave.

I grabbed the black hiking bag and threw it onto my back as I crawled through the space between the ceiling tiles and vents.

Unfortunately, I knew that I would have to hurry. If I spent too long in just one place, the entire ceiling would crumble under my weight. It wasn’t built for what I was doing, but there were enough support beams that I could spread out my weight on them and not fall through.

I took a right, knowing the layout of this space just as well as I knew the layout of any other place I considered to be mine.

I needed to get to the other end of the hospital and the staff exit.

I might play a nice girl, doing whatever anyone else wanted, but I did have some sense of self-preservation, and I was not going to give up my life to try and save people who would just as soon feed me to the wolves.

Or the monsters, as the case may be.

I heard a roar following me through the small tunnel I was crawling in. My heart pounded at the idea of the creature managing to follow and corner me up here.

My mind went through all the different scenarios that could happen, but I managed to breathe a sigh of relief as I heard a huge crash as the creature managed to fall through the ceiling.

Pausing for a second, I stripped out of the hazmat suit. It was useless now that it was ripped, and it did nothing but slow me down.

I back tracked to the intersection that I had gone right and threw the suit down one of the other tunnels. If the creature went by scent, hopefully, this would be enough to distract them for a few minutes.

Even a few minutes could be the difference between life and death.

Turning around, I flattened myself even more across the support beams and continued to army crawl until I got to the next intersection.

I went right again, knowing that I was finally going in the right direction. Now, it would just be a matter of going straight until I got to a dead end.

Then all I needed to do was drop down to the floor without breaking anything, sneak through the back door, and then get my ass home.

Simple.

I nodded my head, wishing I had something to distract me. Anything.

It’s not like it was quiet under me. Far from it, in fact.

All I could hear was the screams of my colleagues and patients and the roars of the creatures. I don’t think I would ever stop hearing those screams.

But I couldn’t stop.

One arm forward, two arms forward, one knee forward, pull. Repeat that until I couldn’t go on.

One, two, one, pull.

One, two, one, pull.

I could do this.

Sweat dripped off of me, and any hopes I had about concealing my scent from the creatures were gone. I could smell me, and while my sense of smell was still as good as a bloodhound, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide.

A good mud pit would have helped a lot, but I couldn’t think of everything.

Well, I could. And I did.

But the problem wasn’t that I didn’t consider it... it was that I had no idea how to store mud in the ceiling of a hospital without it becoming obvious when it leaked through the ceiling.

All of a sudden, it was like all of the sound had just cut out. Like I had gone deaf.

I froze, not sure what to do next.

I had to get out of the hospital. If nothing else was clear, it was that there were now monsters taking over the place, and if I wanted to live, I couldn’t be here.

But as much as I hated the screaming, it was loud enough to be able to disguise the sound of me crawling through the ceiling.

And now it was quiet.

I laid down on the 2x4 under me, my fingers gripping each side as I placed my ear carefully onto the foam tile under me.

Chewing.

They were eating.

I moved enough that I was no longer touching the tile and went back to crawling as fast as I could. I maybe had 100 meters to freedom, and if these creatures were like the animals on Earth, then they wouldn’t be willing to risk a scavenger taking their kill to chase something that it may or may not be able to catch.

As long as they were eating, I should be safe.

I sent up a prayer to whoever was listening that they would be content to nap after they ate their full, and I wouldn’t be of much interest to the creatures.

But destiny and I weren’t on speaking terms since I transmigrated into the body of a six-year-old, so I wouldn’t hold my breath that things would work out in my favor.