You froze the moment you turned around after stepping off the ladder.
You were now in a narrow hallway with concrete walls and floors, the bright lights flickering every once every few seconds. Their were various wires and pipes of all different sizes decorating the ceiling and hanging along the walls, spewing water or various other liquids along the concrete walls. You thought the faint sewage smell was bad, but the sight in front of you was a lot worse.
A tarantula, with black and white striped legs was sitting against the wall. What frightened you terribly was the fact that the size of the spider was more than the size of two large dogs, shocking you to your core.
You contemplated on shooting it right away, but you had only so many bullets left. You could stab it, but it's not like you wanted to get close to it anyway.
You couldn't just stand there either, you had to keep on going and hopefully find a way out of this place.
Taking a deep breath, you forced yourself into a run, turning the corner quickly to avoid getting anywhere near the fuzzy body of the spider. To your horror, another tarantula was waiting for you around the corner, raising its front legs and extending its large fangs. It's body almost blocked your entire path, the large metal door leading to somewhere safer just behind it.
You had halted upon seeing it, but thinking fast you forced yourself to continue running, forcing yourself past the spider's legs as you felt it's eyes follow you. The tarantula could've been moments away from striking you if you hadn't moved any faster, and thankfully you got to the door and closed it behind you as you caught glimpses of it turning itself around.
Your boots splashed in the puddles of water that pooled on the ground from various leaky pipes, the flashing lights doing you a disservice as you continued your brisk walk. You heard rather sluggish footsteps in the water puddles somewhere ahead, letting you know their were enemies down here. Just as you turned the corner, you were met with a tall undead man with torn bloodied wet clothes and wrinkled skin, as if he had been laying dead in water for hours before coming back to life. You could've ran into him if you had been running, but that didn't stop him from wanting to attack you.
He lunged to you, his grimy bony fingers gripping ahold of your shoulders. You struggled to aim your revolver to him, leaning away from his head as it got closer in an attempt to bite at you. You reached over to grab your knife from its sheath, thrusting it up underneath the zombie's jaw feeling the bones of his skull scratch against the blade. His face stiffened, his eyes rolling as you pulled out the knife and watched his body fall to the floor with a splash. A strange murky slush of blood followed the blade, streaming down the handle nod mingling within your fingers, making you almost audibly gag.
You stepped over the body and continued along your way, looking around to make sure no other zombie was around. You quickly wiped your knife at the bottom of your pants near your boots, running your fingers through the dirty water on the ground. As awful as the smell sewer-like smell was, it was better than to have sticky rotting blood all over your hand.
You continued walking along the narrow hallways and turning corners, finding more pipes leaking water along the walls and from the ceiling, pooling the floors with every step you took. Surprisingly, you came across a fuse box surrounded by pressure gauges and thin pipes that connected to random places. Their was a bright red light next to the main fuse box, along with a green light that wasn't on. Pulling open the door to the box, their was a switch that was flipped off.
Wondering what exactly it was for, you flicked on the switch to see the red light flick to a bright green, causing something to buzz. All you could that happened was the lights had stopped flickering.
"Guess that's something." You turned around and continued on your way, finding another door which you hoped would lead somewhere promising.
You came to a dimly lit room with the walls covered in tiles, a large metal set of shelves to your left holding lots of steel and copper pots and pans.
A horrid stench permeated the air: A coppery rotten smell, like someone left a lot of corpses lying around in the sun. In front of you was a large steel table with a basket of rotten fruit or vegetables. A few cutting boards were laid out with cleavers, and a massive stew pot covered with its lid.
The unsettling thing about the almost industrial sized kitchen was the blood that littered the floor and the table. The wooden cutting boards, the cleavers, the pot even had streams of blood along the top and traveling down the sides.
What is this, Hannibal's kitchen? Who knows what's in that pot, or who's in that pot.
Your thoughts were quickly cut off as your boot slid awkwardly in the blood puddle you stepped in, causing you to slip. Thankfully you caught yourself by grabbing onto the table, feeling relieved you didn't fall completely into the disgusting mess.
You left as fast as you arrived, leaving through another door and traveling a small set of concrete stairs coming into a well familiar darkly lit hallway complete with the old looking carpets and almost musty retirement home smell. It wasn't as great as fresh air, but it was better than everything else you've just been though.
You picked up a set of footsteps as you slowly walked along, making your heart jump a beat as hope sprang from your chest.
"Hello?" You called out, "Chris?"
The footsteps picked up almost immediately, but the murky olive green beast that turned the corner was not who you were expecting. You froze in place immediately, lifting your revolver fast to shoot at the beast. Your bullet pierced where it's right eye was, causing it to screech and violently thrash its head. You fired again, only for a possible to bang to be replaced with a click!
"Shit!" You quickly reached to your pockets, but you knew you had no bullets left. You thought you kept count in your head how many shots you had left, but you miscounted. The beast recollected itself faster than you expected, launching itself towards you like a frog out of water.
Your back harshly hit the ground, your gun flinging out of your hands.
One of its claws dug heavily into your shoulder, the other being held back by your trembling left hand.
The weight of the beast kept your legs pinned to the ground, not only making you cry out in the uncomfortable pain, but also making them almost useless in an attempt to kick the beast off. It's mouth opened immediately, revealing a row of sharp dark teeth. Before it could snap your head off, you forced both your hands forward to grab ahold of its jaw, using all the strength you had to keep it away from you. You felt one of the claws from the hand you were holding back create a deep slash against your shoulder, Along with it's teeth digging painfully into the skin on your hands, making your screams even louder as the beast attempted to close its own jaw, but struggled against your quickly failing strength.
Bang! Bang!
Two loud shots came from a shotgun to the back of the beast's head, killing it in a few seconds. The beast went limp ontop of you, it's jaw relaxing along your grip. You trembled from the weight increase of the body on you and your fear, slowly pulling your hands away from its teeth to find them blotchy with your blood.
"(Y/N)!" Chris ran towards you immediately, practically throwing his shotgun aside as he knelt down beside you. He made quick work of pushing the beast off of you, the body slouching awkwardly on its side against the wall.
Chris stared down at you with a worried stare while regaining his breath, taking off into a fast run the moment he had heard your screams.
"Thank God I showed up just in time, any second later and I wouldn't imagine what would've happened." Chris scooped his arm underneath you, helping you sit up slowly from the ground. He examined you for injuries, seeing the way your small hands stained with ripples of blood trembled as you cradled them to your chest, your wounded shoulder becoming quickly noticeable as the blood stained your skin and shirt.
"You okay?" He asked, though he knew from the way your shoulders trembled in his grasp and your pained expression, you were in a sort of shock.
"(Y/N)," He spoke your name more gently this time to get your attention, "Hey, you alright? You think you can walk?"
You turned your head to acknowledge him, looking up at the worried man. You failed to realize your legs were tingling as if they had both fallen asleep, which made them a bit difficult to move. You winced as you raised your left knee, letting out a small breath of air you didn't realize you were holding in.
"Here, Come on." Without any warning, Chris brought his other arm underneath your knees, getting a secure hold on you as he lifted you up off the ground, causing you to mentally panic at the actions.
"We're near the old medical closet, I'll take care of you there." He abandoned your weapons on the floor and proceeded to walk down the hallway towards said medical room, all while you were silently horrified.
He's carrying me-WHY is he carrying me!? I'm fine! I could walk!
Of course, you didn't voice said thoughts. You only kept silent as Chris kept a firm hold on you, staring on ahead. You refrained from looking up at him, but you were certain he would hear how fast your heart was beating.
He used one hand to turn the knob and pushed open the door with his foot, closing it behind him to bring both of you into the small medical room where you spent time watching Rebecca tend to Richard.
Chris set you down on the now empty bed, leaving you to slowly relax your tensed up body.
"Thank you." You finally spoke, seeing the man give a small smile and nod his head. He turned away to look towards the medical supply shelves, giving you a moment to examine your hands.
They were covered in a gross mixture of your sweat, the beast's saliva and your own blood. You looked separately at each finger to find a few deep cuts, but it looked like the bleeding had stopped.
"How bad do they hurt?" Chris asked in an attempt to strike up conversation, returning to you with a couple of items.
"Not too bad," You replied while moving aside slowly, allowing him a spot to sit next to you, "Could still hold a gun and fire."
"That's good, you may wanna remove your gloves." Chris sat down and placed down his items: Bottled water, gauze, some small packets and bandages.
You made work to do what he said, slowly slipping your gloves off your fingers. You hissed at the feeling of the material against your tender skin, but Chris said to be slow, and eventually they both came off.
"May I?" He asked as he opened a water bottle and kept it in one hand and held out his other hand for yours. You nodded and allowed him to take your hands, leaning over off the edge of the bed to pour the water onto them, rinsing off the blood.
"I'm sorry," you began, having him look over to you in question. "What for?"
"For going too far," you looked up at him, seeing his brows furrow slightly as he cleaned your hands, "I didn't stop, and eventually I got kinda stuck in this place underground and ended up almost being killed. I could've stayed to help you but I ran out of ammo-"
"It's alright (Y/N)," Chris slowly interrupted as he began to use a gauze to wipe away any blood that resisted the water, "You did what I told you to do. My only regret was not running after you sooner, but I'm glad you're alright."
You kept quiet as Chris continued working. For a tall strong man like him, he was incredibly gentle with your hands. The only pain you'd feel is if you'd bend your fingers a little too much.
"Something wrong?" Chris asked after seeing your head bowed, your mental train running off the track for a moment.
"It's.. just silly thoughts."
"Shoot."
"When you carried me... I felt like a child."
Chris couldn't help but chuckle at the idea, not really seeing it like that before. "Trust me, it didn't feel that way to me."
You smiled for a second before it instantly faded. Chris noticed this and quickly realized you sounded serious on the matter.
"What's wrong with that?" He asked, seeing you look up a little to him after a moment.
"It's just... I don't know, You could say I joined the task force so I wouldn't be looked on as a small kid anymore." You shrugged your shoulders, "It's sounds silly coming from me, but dealing with what I've dealt with from my parents and just seeing how everyone looks at me, it's just become a pet peeve at this point."
"I see." Chris continued to bandage the cuts that needed it the most, still taking great care in being focused with your hands while listening.
"What happened with your parents, if I may ask?" He asked slowly.
"I know people think that just because I grew up with everything that I must've had a good life, but in all honesty they were just stuck up people with high standards that kept raising the bar every time I failed at something or did something they didn't approve of." You spoke words that you hadn't told anyone else, to someone you honestly felt like you trusted more than anyone else you've known. Chris kept quiet as you spoke, listening all while wondering more about you. His thoughts before when he first learned about your story began to change, especially when he paid good attention to your hands.
He froze a bit in his actions while you spoke, and while you were talking you didn't know what he was staring at, but he didn't think it was a good time right now to point it out.
"I felt like I got along a lot better with my father than my mother, but my mother's hysteria became his too. So after a while I just couldn't take it anymore, so I ran away."
"You ran away from home?" Chris asked, seeing you nod in agreement.
"Yeah. I couldn't handle it anymore, being raised to do things I had no other choice in doing and refrain from what I could never do. I could never be myself, and I was never treated like I was anything more than a child. So I left, went to the police academy, and now I'm here.. with you, in a mansion full of things that want to kill us."
He now began to understand the mystery of you that he wondered about when you first arrived. You weren't some dumb, young girl jumping into something you weren't prepared for. No, you were a young woman that suffered in silence among the luxury you were raised in. The luxury part would've easily blinded people like it did with him, but hearing what you told him, and seeing what he's seen, in a way you were like him.
"You know, growing up I had lost both of my parents," Chris began to speak up as he finished bandaging up a deep cut on your pinky finger, "It was just me and my sister, Claire. We raised each other for a good while, and through that time I thought that the world was just up against us. Instead of just waiting around for things to get better, I went out and did something about it. I joined the Air Force, got into a lot of problems with my senior officers-"
"Got into problems?" You pitched in, seeing the man smirk a bit. "Yeah, they didn't like me. Got discharged, and now I'm in the task force. If anything, I should be sorry."
Sorry? You looked at him with pure surprise and shock.
"Why?" You asked in disbelief, seeing the way he slowly let out a sigh as if he was ashamed.
"Because I misjudged you (Y/N)," he proceeded, "You went through things I have that I never thought you'd understand, but you do. The highs and lows of it. You're not a child, I'll never see you as one."
His words were more than enough to melt your heart, making your cheeks feel warm and a smile stretch across your face. From what you thought was gonna be an awkward talk with Chris turned out to be the most heartfelt chat you've ever had with anyone. It made you personally adore him even more as you sat next to him.
"It's funny," you smiled with a small giggle, "When I first met you, you looked like you wouldn't talk all that much Chris." It was his turn to laugh, making your heart beat even faster.