I woke up to a terrible splitting headache.
"Ah my head" I mumbled, holding my hand to my forehead and clutching it tightly. I grimaced from the intense pain and curled up, desperately trying to rid myself of it.
But alas, it didn't go, so I was left with the unfavorable option to bear with it.
I tried to remember where I was, and instantly the events came rushing back to me. My friend..that street..the car crash. Wait, exactly how long had I been out?
With a little effort I opened my eyes, and instantly shut them from the merciless attack of the seemingly blinding light which felt like knives to my eyes.
"Oh god, that light" I muttered in annoyance. "Why do hospitals place it there?"
Soon enough though, I squinted open my eyes again, but luckily this time I managed to keep them open, barely if not a lot. And when my eyes readjusted themselves to the light, I was greeted by the familiar face of my allocated hospital room: the TV in front of me, the nurse's phone on the wall, and the surgical table to my right which had a manner of nightmare inducing instruments on it.
As it should have been, everything was in it's proper place, and everything felt alright. The atmosphere was also the same, pleasing yet uninviting, warm yet cold.
So why did something feel..off?
Call it a gut instinct, or just a silly thought that a fourteen year old boy would have, but I couldn't deny that something did in fact feel odd.
But I wasn't going to sit in bed and lounge about till the nurse came to check on me. No indeed, I was most definitely not that type. If I wanted answers, I got them myself.
Gingerly I slipped my legs out from under the sheets, and then the rest of myself, before letting out a little yawn and stretching my arms.
With a slight smile I got up and immediately the sleeves of my clothes fell down, covering my entire arms and legs. I sighed and thought of how ridiculous I must have looked there and then, wearing clothing material three sizes too big for me. This was courtesy of the hospital staff, but though it admittedly was a little bit of a nuisance, I didn't want to put any blame on them. After all, it wasn't their fault they didn't have clothes my size, and I wasn't the type of person to make someone else feel guilty for a mistake that person couldn't be held accountable for.
I grabbed the phone off the wall, and dialed in the number for the front desk.
The bell went, and..it went on for a while, before the call ended by itself.
"Huh" I thought to myself. That was odd. There was always someone at the front desk, always, every hour of the day, every day of the week.
"Perhaps I should go outside" I said to myself, unsure if I should leave the confines of the room or not. It didn't seem right that no one would be there to answer my call, and there was another thing I had just noticed.
The place wasn't this quiet. It hadn't been this quiet even at 3 am in the morning, and I knew that. Not to say the place was chaotic, but there always was the light sound of walking, or some nurse rolling a table across the hallway, or the guy in the room adjacent mine watching television in a volume which was a tad bit too loud. Whatever the case had been, there had always some sort of sign there were people here.
But right now there was neither of those signs; not a single sound, not one.
I stood in debate with myself. Part of me told me to exit the room and search for someone, but the other, larger part of me told me to stay in bed and sleep away this weird situation.
As much as I wanted to do just that, the first part of me kept urging me to go on and open the door that stood but a few paces ahead of me. But I was scared, and the sudden surge in speed of my heart's beating showed it.
I placed my hand on my heart and tried to ease it by taking long but slow, deep breaths.
"You can do this Zack" I reassured myself, "You can do this"
And I looked up at the door, now absolutely certain that I wanted to this. But before I walked even two steps forward, the lights went out.
"Oh god no" I whispered, now more scared than ever. "Not this, please no"
But this was the reality, and now I found myself engulfed in total darkness.
Now I was almost trembling, but suddenly I remembered that the nurse kept my phone in one of the drawers in my room.
Trying to keep my cool, I walked over to where I figured the dressing table was, and sure enough, I got there. Except I walked straight in to it.
"Ah!" I gasped, bending over from the impact.
This was why getting injured in hospitals was an equal possibility as opposed to getting injured outside of them.
I ran my hand across the dressing table and eventually came up on the handle of the drawer. "Yes!" I celebrated, pulling open the drawer.
I poked around and eventually felt something that seemed to be my phone. I pulled it out and pressed where the home button should have been, and like a miracle the phone turned on.
I flinched from the attack of the light and looked away, covering my eyes.
A few seconds later I squinted open my eyes and not too much time later my eyes had adjusted to the light emitted from the phone.
Now I had to find the power switch to the floor I was on.
I turned on the flash and went to the door, hesitating just momentarily before opening the door slowly.
The door creaked open, shattering the silence that was in the hospital. I cringed, praying that no one heard that. A few seconds later, when I was certain no one had been disturbed, I walked out of the room, closing the door much more carefully than I had opened it.
Now that I was in the hallway, I had to decide where I had to go to get to the power switch. From the general knowledge I had, I knew the hospitals in the area had a power switch for every floor, and all of those were controlled by a central power switch connected to the generators, with the central power switch on the first floor, and the generators in the basement below.
I didn't exactly know where the power switch to my floor was though, so I had to resort to roaming around, scared out of my mind.
The floor I was on was like an endless maze, with seemingly infinite corridors. All I could do was take random lefts and rights, hoping to get somewhere.
That's when I remembered the rooms on my level each had a number assigned to each other, and that the first room number on the floor was the floor number times hundred. So based on that memory, I aimed the flash at the room numbers, and I followed them as they decreased.
763....757....730
A few minutes later I was at the door of room 700, and the elevator lay just a few steps ahead of me.
The power switch had to be here somewhere.
I stepped forward cautiously and examined the walls, trying not to tremble from the fear of being alone in the dark.
"Come on come on please show yourself quickly" I begged silently, aiming my flash at all parts of the wall. I could feel myself shaking slightly, and I might have even been pale.
But thankfully that's when my eyes met with a glorious sight.
"The switch!" I whispered in excitement, momentarily forgetting how scared I was. "Yes!" I aimed the flash at it, ready to switch it back on.
But wait...what? The switch..was on?
"M..maybe the switch works in the way opposite to normal switches" I suggested to myself hopefully, but that thought was proven false when I pulled the switch back up, and then back down again.
I sighed in defeat and looked down. The problem did not originate from here then.
"Oh god no" I thought, almost crying from the realization, "Please no"
But what I had realized was true, and that truth told that the problem came from downstairs.
I now had two options: I could go back to my room and lock myself in, hoping that the problem fixed itself, or I could go down and fix it myself.
The choice was an easy one.
***
I sat huddled in the bed of my room, under the covers, trembling.
"The light should have come back on by now. It should have" I thought, burying my head in my legs, too scared to care that a normal 14 year old would have never acted this way.
I turned on my phone. The time read 11:40 pm, and the day was Sunday. I hopelessly tried to check any emails I could have received, but of course there was no service.
"Great" I thought, turning the phone off and sighing.
A few seconds passed, before my mind said, "Go out Zack, you need to be strong and do this. Don't act like a child would."
I sighed again, realizing the thought was right, and though I was very scared, I soon had my hand on the door handle again.
This time, I opened the door carefully, and walked swiftly towards the place where I had gone before. This time though, I was armed, with one of the surgical instruments in my pocket which would serve very nicely as a dagger. And when I got there I boldly reached for the stair rail, knowing the elevator obviously wouldn't work without a power supply.
I grabbed the stair rail and directed the flash downwards, descending down the dark and gloomy staircase with determination.
As I descended the flights of stairs I kept note of the floors.
7..6...5...2
And finally I reached the very first floor, or ground floor.
My heart was beating out of my chest, and my hand was shaking slightly. The silence was horrific, and it seemed like something would jump at me out of the darkness.
Voices seemed to come from all around me. Dark, scary voices, eating away at my courage, and they got louder and louder and louder until...
I heard a loud crash near me, and I jumped from fright, clamping my hand over my mouth so that no sound escaped.
Shaking all over, I shined my flashlight at where I had heard the sound come from, and when I directed the light to where the noise had come from, my heart stopped dead.
T..this couldn't be..
It was..a zombie?
It was standing just a few feet away from me, it's mouth buried within the stomach of a dead body.
I barely stopped myself from screaming; I could even hear the sick sounds of the dead man's insides being devoured by this undead creature.
I suddenly felt very nauseous and wanted to throw up, but before I got a chance to do so, the zombie looked up at me.
I froze, paralyzed with fear.
For a few agonizing seconds, none of us moved. With my shaking hands, I slowly grabbed the instrument I had grabbed earlier.
The dead thing's eyes followed my hand, and the moment i grabbed the weapon in hand, it let out the most blood curdling shriek I had ever heard, and pounced at me.
I screamed and jumped out of the way, barely avoiding the zombie as it flew past me. It skidded and crashed in to one of the tables, knocking it over and creating a huge noise.
I turned around to see it pounce again at me, but this time I was too slow and it knocked me to the ground, the weapon and phone slipping out of my hand and skidding across the ground.
"Get off me you freak!" I yelled, trying my hardest to push it off of me, using all my strength. But alas, it was futile. The undead man seemed to have an unlimited amount of power and I could feel my arms getting pushed back to the ground, and the nightmare inducing face of it getting closer and closer to me.
It's face came so close to my own that I could feel it's raspy, dry breath on my skin, and I was looking it dead in it's pale yellow eyes.
I grabbed it's neck with my hand as it attempted to bite me. I nearly felt sick as my hand came in to contact with it.
A quiet squelching sound came, and a drop of it's victim's blood which was dripping from the zombie's mouth fell down on to my face.
I almost threw up and tried desperately to get it off my face while holding the zombie at bay.
"Get..off me you undead mother.." I panted, pushing upwards. For a moment, i managed to push it's face away.
But before I could celebrate victory, the zombie lifted it's hand and grabbed my throat, pressing down hard.
"Ah!" I gasped, struggling for air as I desperately tried to get rid of the vice grip around my neck while fending off the merciless undead man. My heart was beating insatiably fast, and I could feel the precious air leaving my body. My vision was becoming blurred, and I just lay my head against the ground, beaten.
Then in those last precious moments, I saw the familiar dagger like instrument sitting right next to me. Weakly, I let go of the zombies neck and grabbed the instrument, swinging it backwards in a feeble attempt to stop my neck from being bitten off.
I closed my eyes in that moment, and instantly I heard a squeal and a cold liquid splashed down on to me, followed a sudden jolt of the zombie landing on me.
"Gross!" I said in disgust, pushing the body off me weakly and spitting continuously.
It didn't take me a moment to realize that the gross liquid that fell on me was the zombie's blood.
"Holy shi-" I choked, clutching my chest tightly and throwing up, not being able to handle the sheer gore. I coughed and sputtered, wiping as much of my face with my shirt sleeve as I could, before looking away in disgust, seeing the thin, black liquid oozing down it.
Even in the almost complete darkness, I could see it, and I could smell it, and not caring about anything else, I took the shirt off and threw it away. There would be other clothes available in the hospital anyways.
But now that I had that issue resolved, the trauma and fear instantly returned to me, and I scrambled to find the phone, which luckily, had not broken, and ran up the stairs, stumbling over the stairs and shaking from fear, just wanting to get back to the safety of my room more than anything now.
Every passing second seemed like an eternity, and I kept stumbling and looking back, expecting to see a zombie pounce at me and bite me.
But I finally made it to my room, and trembling wildly now, opened the door and stumbled in, locking the door behind me.
Then, I got in to my bed, and all the emotions finally getting to my head, I lay my head in my hands and began to cry silently, not being able to handle what I had just been through.
I just..i just couldn't..
And with that, I fell asleep, for better or worse