(Untitled)

[thewalkabout]

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[itllhurtifido]

For all that he'd packed an entire arsenal in the trunk of his car, he only planned on bringing a minute fraction of it with him into the hospital. (Mainly, he packed heavy in case he either met with a large group in need to ordnance, or had something following after him on the way out.) Ultimately, what he took with him was his usual pair of pistols, one of the Tommy guns, and several magazines for each in suit coat and trenchcoat, along with a knife and a flashlight. A good load of firepower without weighing him down

[thewalkabout]

When he sits up, Locke also feels a conspicuous lack of weight where there were weapons before. No knife, no handgun... and yet neither his hands nor his feet are bound, he feels no wound pain, and rubbing a hand over the back of his head just yields mildew and sticky gunk from the floor. "How....?" An incredibly incompetent mugging? But that still doesn't answer how an unknown assailant not only snuck up on a seasoned tracker, but also cleanly rendered him unconscious, to say nothing of how his well-trained, maybe even better-trained, companion fared no better. John Smith appears similarly taken aback, though at least he also looks similarly unhurt upon cursory inspection.

Dammit, this can't be how it was supposed to go. His stomach sinks at the thought. Locke quickly pulls himself up to one knee, surveying their dim surroundings with wide eyes struggling to adjust to the light. He can't even pinpoint where that hideous stink might be coming from; the whole room reeks right up to high heaven. "What's your status?" he

[itllhurtifido]

Awake now, Smith rolls to his feet, not quite in one motion but pretty close. (He hadn't lost much in the years between the Great War and Jericho, and even less since then, thanks to his slowed aging.) He looks about quickly, to see if maybe his gear had just fallen out and landed nearby, but is disappointed.

"Unarmed, but unhurt. You?"

His eyesight adapts pretty well as he looks about. Being already fully on his feet, he sees the dangling corpse. No matter his acclimation to death, the stench of it gives even his stomach the tiniest of flips.

[thewalkabout]

He pats his waist and the small of his back just to be sure. Yep, no weapons. Empty holster and empty sheath. "Same. Did you see anyth...?" But then Locke looks up. Mother of God... Luckily, given the lady's unfortunate circumstances, he doesn't air that curse aloud. He's instantly on his feet, but that's the end of springing into action. It's quite plain quite quickly that there's going to be no helping this poor soul; the woman suspended from the ceiling is already a corpse

[itllhurtifido]

Having gotten over the moment of physical revulsion, Smith becomes fairly calm about the body. He's seen corpses, some mishandled in some truly gruesome ways, and has no religious illusions. Instead, he reaches up and brushes the hair back, getting a look at the face.

"No. At least, I don't think so. No one I've met, anyway." He looks behind her, eyeing the hook. "As for the whos and the whats, I've no idea. Presumably, who or whatever has been calling us here... well, that's not exactly what even I would call 'normal,' so I don't expect this'll be, either."

Speaking of which, he seems to notice something. Standing facing one side of the body, he tilts back and for a few times, looking first at the back and then the front.

"Is that light coming from where I think it is?"

[thewalkabout]

Locke sets his jaw and, much though he'd rather not, grimly concurs. "Yes. It is." If that door turns out to be locked, they may need the light to find another way out of here. Even if it's not locked, the hospital - like the rest of the world - isn't going to have any power. And honestly, she's strung up to be undignified enough already. They're not going to be able to manage the kind of leverage necessary to get her down off that thing, but leaving a damn flashlight in her belly and walking away would just seem... odd, somehow

[itllhurtifido]

While Mr. Locke is busy with digging out the light, Smith's busying himself by looking around the rest of the room. No guns, no knives, but he'd feel better if he at least had something resembling a weapon to work with. Everything's too unwieldy to do anything with, though. He'd settle for the fishhook, except that he, like Locke, has to conclude that it's not really practical to pull the dead woman off of it.

He's pretty well resigned himself to having to wait until they get out somewhere else to find weapons, when he catches the sound of Locke's grumbling.

"Not like who said?"

[thewalkabout]

The switch is a little gummy, but operable, and Locke switches the flashlight off as he goes over to the door. If there's someone armed and waiting outside, no point making targeting practice easier for them. "Not sure yet. That's what I'd hoped Antinora would tell me-dammit!" He jerks his hand back with a hiss after making contact with the doorknob, looking at their exit with renewed alarm. "It's hot..." Fire out there? There's no light coming in through the cracks, and no smell of smoke... though admittedly, the smell of the corpse could be doing a fair job of covering that up

[itllhurtifido]

Okay, so the guy thinks the place will tell him things. Okay, a little weird, but that's increasingly common these days... Like, apparently, the doorknob. Smith waits a couple of moments for an immediate reaction o the door opening, then sticks his head out, cautiously looking around. He can't really see far into the darkness, so he shrugs, shaking his head to say, Well, here we go... before stepping through.

[thewalkabout]

The other side of the door is not a hallway, contrary to what an ordinary hospital's layout would be. No traps, but what is there is no welcome sight. Fog covers the cafeteria floor, and spills out around their ankles as the door opens to give it passage. The counter where food is usually served is now an enormous, rusty grate stretching from floor to ceiling. Behind it, long hooks of various shapes and size hold rotting chunks of meat, which just might be decorated by scraps of what could have been sleeves or pantlegs. The long tables at the edges of the room have been covered by blood spattered sheets, under which vaguely human shapes are visible. On and around the semi-human forms, something - somethings - seem to be moving

[itllhurtifido]

The last room had been merely a bit disgusting. The cafeteria was downright unreal, enough so to chip even at Smith's calm, albeit only a little. The counter area and its stock of possibly human deli meat, in particularly, causes a bit of tenseness in his jaw.

"Well, so much for my appetite."

Actually, if anything, it's that he's maybe starting to feel a little hungry that disturbs him the most. He does his best to shake it off, focusing instead on spotting the door out and on Locke's question.

"Combination of things. Vague whispers, gut instinct, an image of... well, my father's face. Whatever it took to get me here, I guess. I'll take an omen as well as the next guy, but I'm not exactly the sort to go seeking them out unless I have to, y'know? C'mon. Looks like that's the way out."

The direction he points in is, of course, towards the opposite end of the room. It's not far, but it does involve walking past one of the snake-covered tables and through the thickest of the fog... where things are moving.

[thewalkabout]

From here, it sounds like rats' claws scraping over the floor. Locke advances warily, but up until one of them shows itself, he's more worried about the walls than about the vermin. His head is starting to pound, and he's not sure whether he has a moment of being unusually slow, or whether the little thing's advance and attack was bizarrely fast

[itllhurtifido]

Smith, on the other hand, having seen the first of them go for Locke, opts to squash them underfoot like scorpions. He's a bit surprised, as he raises his foot to admire his handiwork, to see the fog roll over the corpse and seemingly cause it to disappear.

"Well, don't that beat all."

He'd rather go at a run, but he's not going to leave Locke behind, either. So, instead he keeps pace, kicking and stomping the bugs on the ground as they go. Watch out for the snakes too, guys.

[thewalkabout]

This place has proved unenlightening, and the smell? Really starting to get to him. He gags a little as they pass by a particularly overpoweringly wretched pile of rotting remains en route. That, that's just not natural. Not even a big bloated dead buck would smell this bad without some serious mistreatment.

There's a sound coming from back the way that they came, faint, like a muffled groan. Maybe even from the direction of one of those covered lumpy tables. Locke, for one, has no interest in investigating that. "Now what do you think are the odds..." Squish. "...that the walking corpses..." Splat. "...and the kids... given to biting..." And here's a lovely gore-splattered door. The gore-splattered part is forgivable in light of the door part. "...have something to do with this place?"

[itllhurtifido]

The hunger's starting to get a bit nauseating in and of itself, even besides the contrast with what could be considered available in the cafeteria for eating. It slows him down for a moment... almost long enough for one of the snakes on that table to get the better of him. Those few years he spent living in desert locales, however, still offer up good instincts even now, and while one foot's squished a bug, his hands come up and catch it in his vise-like grip, one just behind the head and the other at the tail

[thewalkabout]

"It is interesting that the Once Upon A Time shelf should be so empty..." It isn't a quest for a door out that first draws Locke's attention; it's the tiny gift shop, an alcove stuffed with dead flowers and little teddy bears. "...and there just seems to be... no end of things to put in your bin. And interesting that the point when it stopped being Once Upon A Time, and turned into now..." One of the bears is not like the others. Its face is longer, more like the original Theodore Bears than like the current generation of beanie babies, and its fur is woolen curls rather than synthetic fuzz. Locke holds it up for closer inspection. "...would be so clearly marked for us