“Howie… I want you to get out of that room now, abort the mission.” Nick instructed.
The three of them watched helplessly on the computer as they saw Howie’s camera turn and make it’s way to the door. They heard his hard breathing, “Shit, the door’s locked!” Howie replied.
Nick tried to keep himself calm, “Okay D., hold on… we’re gonna contact Kevin and have him come get you okay?”
Brian grabbed the walkie talkie, “Kevin.” he radioed in, but got no response. “Kevin, come in!” he glanced over at AJ and Nick when he still go no response.
“Fuck this!” AJ growled as he shot out of his chair and began making his way out of the house. He could hear Nick and Brian yelling for him, telling him not to go, but he ignored them as he continued on, sprinting towards the hospital.
When he finally reached the hospital, he ripped the doors open and ran inside, looking around frantically. “Howie!” he bellowed out, hoping he would hear a response, but got nothing. He had forgot to bring a walkie talkie with him, so he couldn’t radio in to Nick to ask him what room Howie was in.
He began making his way down the halls, shouting Howie’s name all the while. After a few minutes of searching, and coming up with nothing, he stopped in the middle of the hall, hunching over as he tried to catch his breath. He walked over towards the wall so he could lean against it, trying to regain his composure. When he straightened himself back up, one of the rooms caught his attention. Slowly, he walked over to the room, looking at the number that was printed on the outside of it.
“109.” he said to himself, noticing that the number 9 was a bit slanted and wasn’t leveled with the other numbers. He immediately perked up when a thought came to his head, “Room 106...” he muttered to himself again, as he looked back down the hall from where he came, realizing that he passed the room.
He began walking back down, the numbers on the outside of the rooms decreasing, until he finally stopped at what he assumed to be room 106. The number was slightly covered in dirt, but he found that the muck was smudged off a bit by someone’s fingers, what he assumed to be Howie’s fingers. He slowly placed his hand on the doorknob, wondering why it was so quiet on the other side.
“Don’t go in there.”
AJ literally jumped when he heard the unexpected voice and felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He quickly whirled around to find Howie standing behind him, looking… emotionless.
“Shit Howie!” AJ said as he grabbed Howie and pulled him into a hug. “I thought something happened to you man. How the hell did you get out?”
“I don’t know.” Howie shrugged. “I just kept trying to open it, and it finally did.”
“Well, you’re okay right?” AJ asked as he tried to look Howie over, “You’re not hurt or anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Brian had told me that Kevin wasn’t responding and you had came out to get us. After I finally got the door open, I got out of the room as quickly as I could and decided to go look for you.”
AJ nodded, “Do you know where the morgue’s at?”
Howie shrugged, “I’m not too sure.”
“Okay.” AJ sighed. “Do you have your walkie talkie?”
Howie nodded as he grabbed his walkie talkie from out of his holster and handed it over to AJ. “Nick, come in, this is AJ… do you read me?”
They both remained in silence for a while, waiting for a response. “AJ? Is that you?” a voice cackled through.
“Yeah man, it’s me.”
“How are you… you didn’t even take a walkie talkie with you.”
“This is Howie’s walkie talkie, I’m with him right now.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine.”
“What about Kevin?”
“That’s what I’m radioing in to you for. I need you to direct me to the morgue.”
“Hold on one second.” AJ waited, hearing shuffling on the other end of the walkie talkie. “Okay, what is your current location?”
“Right outside of George Pelowski’s room.”
“Okay, what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna continue all the way down that corridor once you come to the end. When you’re at the end, you’re gonna take a right and continue going down that way. Once you come down to the end of that corridor, you’ll find that the path forks off, either to the left or right. On the left side there should be a set of swinging doors, that’s the morgue.”
“Alright.”
“Radio us back when you find Kevin.”
“Gotcha.” AJ ended as he handed the walkie talkie back to Howie. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but do you want to go back to the safe house?”
Howie gave a small chuckle, “Alex, I appreciate the fact that you came all the way out here to get me and everything, but you know that I know that you’re the biggest scaredy pants, right after Nick, so you can’t stop playing macho man now.”
AJ rolled his eyes, “Shutup dude. Just thought I’d ask, but you’re stuck with me now, so don’t start crying and clinging to me once we reach the morgue.”
They both trekked down the dark corridor, walking until they reached the end. They proceeded right when they came to the end and started walking down another long and dark hallway. When they came to the end, they found the fork in the path Nick had told them about, where they either had to go left or right.
“And there’s the morgue.” AJ said as he pointed down the left side, where at the end it was nothing but a set of swinging doors.
They both began to slowly walk down towards the swinging doors, both sort of hesitant because they were afraid of what they would find. When they finally stood in front of the doors, AJ reached out to push the left swinging door inward. They both slowly and cautiously walked into the morgue, greeted by nothing but darkness.
“Isn’t there a light switch in here or something?” Howie questioned as he began to grope the wall for a switch.
“Don’t even bother looking.” AJ replied. “The lights don’t work, Kevin already tried it.” He tried to journey further into the morgue, but it was just too dark to see anything. “D., you got your flashlight on you?”
Howie pulled his flashlight out and clicked it on, causing a bright beam to blast out, illuminating the area just a tad bit. Howie now led the way, shining his flashlight all over the place, while AJ followed close behind. As they continued venturing further into the morgue, they both came to a halt when they saw a ray of light coming from the middle of the room.
AJ slowly walked towards the light as Howie remained where he stood, shining his flashlight down to the ground to guide AJ. When AJ finally reached the source where the light was coming from, he bent down to realize that it was a flashlight, Kevin’s flashlight. He picked it up and shone it over the area, hoping to find that Kevin was near. “Kevin?” he called out.
Howie began walking towards where AJ was, but came to a stop when he felt his foot come in contact with something on the ground. He shone his light down to the ground and had found a hand near his foot. Hesitantly, he trailed his light up the hand to see where, or whom it led to. “AJ?” he choked out.
AJ turned towards Howie, to find him staring at something on the ground. He quickly made his way over to see what Howie was looking at. “Holy shit.” he muttered out as he quickly dropped to his knees, “Kevin! Kev… wake up man.”
AJ began to lightly slap Kevin’s cheeks, trying to rouse him, while Howie stood there, shining his light down upon them. “C’mon Kev… get up.”
Both AJ and Howie sighed heavily when they noticed that Kevin’s eyes were rapidly moving beneath the lids. “That’s it big man…” AJ continued to encourage. “open your eyes.”
Kevin’s eyes began to flutter open, groans being emitted from him all the while. When he was finally able to keep his eyes open long enough, he focused his vision on the voice that brought him back to consciousness, seeing AJ and Howie hovering above him.
“What happened?” Kevin moaned out as he tried to push himself upwards, regretting his movements seconds later.
“Take it easy Kev.” AJ said as he kept Kevin from sitting up too fast. “We don’t really know what happened, we were kinda hoping you could tell us…”
“We found you like this man,” Howie added, “unconscious.”
Kevin groaned out when he felt a new pain hit him, rendering him motionless for the moment. “God, I don’t remember… I don’t even remember falling or whatever.”
“Shit Kev, you’re freaking bleeding man.” AJ said, noticing for the first time a small puddle of blood on the ground where Kevin had risen from. “We need to get you back to the safe house. Do you think you’ll be okay to walk?”
Kevin slowly nodded as he tried to push himself up from the ground, “Yeah, just help me get up.”
AJ rose from the ground as both he and Howie helped Kevin up. Once Kevin was up, he tried to make himself stand on his own two feet, but felt his legs betray him as he felt his knees beginning to buckle underneath his weight. AJ and Howie’s arms immediately shot out, catching Kevin before he was able to crumble back down to the ground. Kevin hunched over, feeling a wave of nausea hit him right then and there, making him feel extremely weak.
“Don’t mean to startle you two, but I really don’t know if I can do this.” Kevin panted out, his whole body feeling weary as his head continued to pound.
AJ slunk an arm around Kevin’s waist as Howie did the same. “We gotta get you back Kev, you’re bleeding a lot and you could be suffering from a concussion for all we know.”
As the three of them slowly began to make their way out of the morgue, they failed to notice a male standing in the shadows behind them, watching them menacingly as they walked away.
