The stairwell opened into Floor 2 – Surgery & Administration.
Joe stepped into the hallway carefully, the fire axe gripped in his tired, shaking hands.
His breaths were shallow and controlled, honed by combat experience, but his body was running on fumes.
This floor was different.
The silence was gone.
In its place...
Shuffling.
Snarling.
Groaning.
A lot of it.
Joe pressed his back to the wall and peered around the corner. The hallway stretched ahead, wider here, with more broken doors and flickering ceiling lights. Papers littered the floor. Blood coated the walls like some abstract mural.
And then, he saw them.
At least fifteen walkers.
They were packed in tight, wandering aimlessly near the nurses' station. Some bumped into walls. Some leaned over old corpses. One was gnawing on a half-rotted foot.
Joe's jaw clenched.
Too many to fight. Not enough room to run.
He scanned the area. About thirty feet ahead, an exit sign glowed above a double door. That would take him to the lobby, or what was left of it.
But between him and freedom: a slow-moving sea of death.
Joe backed up and ducked into a room. He closed the door halfway and stared down at his hands.
They were shaking. Almost too weak to hold the axe.
'Pull it together. You've been outnumbered before. You've been worse off.'
He dug into a nearby cabinet and found an old bedpan and a rusted wheelchair. Not ideal.
Then he spotted a glass bottle of hand sanitizer and a lighter in a small medical kit.
That'll do.
Joe ripped a strip of cloth from his hospital gown, stuffed it into the bottle's neck, and doused it with the thick gel. He paused, just long enough to steady his breathing.
Then he lit it.
The flame danced along the rag, burning blue.
Joe opened the door, tossed the makeshift Molotov down the hall, and ducked back inside.
WHOOMPF!
Fire bloomed. Walkers burned silently looking at where the bottle broke, the flames dancing on their skin. The hallway turned orange as heat radiated outward.
Joe waited a little longer for the flames to die down a little.
Then charged into the chaos, slamming the axe into a burning walker's head and shoving past another. His body screamed. His legs wobbled. But he moved like a man possessed.
A walker lunged from the side, Joe smashed its knee with the axe, then kicked it into another walker.
Another grabbed his arm.
He twisted free.
Then ran.
Smoke filled his lungs as he burst through the double doors at the end of the hall and collapsed onto the tiled floor of the hospital lobby.
He rolled onto his back, gasping.
He had made it.
But the smell of death was still everywhere.
Joe stood up quickly theb cautiously crept through the stairwell door, fire axe in one hand, the other gripping the wall to steady his legs.
The hallway was dim, a sickly green tint bleeding in from flickering emergency lights. Blood painted the walls in smears.
Something felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
Then he heard it.
A wet dragging sound, then another. Groans. Not one. Not two. A dozen at least.
He turned checked around the corner and halted.
The hallway opened into a waiting area—rows of chairs, toppled gurneys, a shattered vending machine—and in the middle of it all:
A horde.
At least twenty walkers, packed tight, backs turned to him as they tore at a pile of limbs and clothing. Some crawled. Others swayed as they chewed. One dragged half its spine behind it, entrails leaking across the floor.
Joe's breath caught in his throat.
His fingers tightened around the axe handle.
You can't fight that many. Not now. Not with what you have.
He glanced around. To the right was another hallway. To the left another set of double doors, marked "Surgical Wing – Restricted Access." Cracked open just enough to slip through.
Joe took a shaky step back.
His back hitting a gurney and causing a IV drip to fall.
Clang.
A dozen heads snapped toward him.
Joe didn't wait.
He ran, legs screaming in protest, heart pounding in his chest. He barreled through the surgical doors and slammed them shut behind him. "Lock? Lock! Fuck, no lock!"
He dragged a nearby cart in front of the doors just as the first walkers slammed into them on the other side. The horde growled and moaned, pressing forward with animalistic hunger.
Joe staggered backward, gripping his axe.
The surgical wing was dark. Too dark.
He could hear his own heartbeat.
He was still breathing when he realized...
He wasn't alone in here.
Somewhere deeper in the surgical wing, something else moved.
The metal doors behind Joe shook violently as walkers slammed against them. The cart he'd wedged in place rattled with every impact, wheels screeching on the tile.
He turned and limped deeper into the surgical wing, the air thick with rot and sterilizer. A couple fluorescent lights flickered faintly overhead, most already dead.
His axe felt heavier by the second.
He passed operating rooms, overturned gurneys, and blackened windows streaked with handprints. The silence here was heavier than gunfire. More final.
He kept going.
That's when he saw it—halfway down the hall, outside a secured door:
Bodies.
Not walkers. Soldiers.
Five of them. Still in tactical gear. Helmets on. Rifles scattered across the floor. One leaned against the wall, head tilted back, a bullet hole clean through his chin.
They didn't die in combat.
They made a choice.
Joe crouched beside them and read the patch on one of the sleeves.
Medical Containment Unit.
He checked the satchel lying near the corpse and hit gold.
A full magazine for an M4.
Two grenades.
A field radio—dead.
One Beretta sidearm, fully loaded.
And a sealed envelope labeled:
> "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL SECURED – SUBJECT: R. GRIMES"
Joe furrowed his brow. "Grimes?"
Before he could dwell on it, something let out a wet shriek behind him.
He turned, just in time to see one of the walkers had squeezed through the cracked surgical door.
Then another. And another.
Joe grabbed the satchel and retrieved a mag for an M4 before quickly reloading. Taking aim, the gun felt familiar, it had been his companion throughout his time as a marine and had never failed him.
In quick succession, he fired round after round accurately hitting each in the head.
The bodies piled up quickly, and before he knew it 25 bodies lay on the floor. With 5 rounds left in his mag he scanned the area for any movement before grabbing the rest of the guns and moving them into a room
Then dragged one of the soldiers bodies inside. Stripping the body of its gear as quickly as possible he suited up.
In 5 minutes flat he was changed, finally having some proper equipment. He quickly checked the rounds in each M4 1 completely empty, the others only having a few rounds left.
He quickly stripped all the bullet out of them and consolidated them within his rifle, leaving him with 14 rounds.
Loaded M4 strapped to his shoulder, M9 at his side.Fire axe in his left hand. He put the other pistols in the satchel before attaching the other rifles to it.
Quickly making it to the door, he opened it slightly to scan the area, then crept down the hall with full condidence. Everything seemed fine, he had be worried that the walker from the other floors had heard his shootout.
Just as he turned to continue on his way, behind him walkers poured into the hall like a tide of death. Screeching. Clawing. Some still wearing surgical masks stained with dried blood.
He reached a side hall and dove into a room marked "Sterile Supply". Slammed the door shut. Locked it.
Then braced for impact.
One walker reached the door, then started ramming and banging into it.
Joe scanned the room. One small vent. Too small to crawl through. A second exit at the back, chained from the inside. No good.
The door started to crack.
"Think, Joe, think!"
He grabbed one of the grenades he saw in the satchel, yanked the pin, and shoved it into the crack beneath the door.
He dove behind a metal cabinet and covered his ears.
BOOM!
The door blew inward. Smoke was everywhere. Then silence.
When Joe opened his eyes, the hallway was filled with twitching limbs and mangled corpses. The rest of the horde had been vaporized.
His adrenaline fading he felt a sharp pain rocket through his thigh. A piece of shrapnel from the door sticking out.
He quickly checked the flow of bleeding and was relieved to see dark red blood coming out slowly.
Getting up with a slight groan.
He stepped out into the smoke, coughing, limping, heart pounding.
Blood. Ash. Silence.
Then... a sound from below.
Distant. Echoing.
A voice. A groan. A distant call for help.
The sound of another man waking up!
Smoke still lingered in the corridor as Joe descended the stairs, one slow step at a time. His legs were barely holding him upright. Every movement felt like dragging a dead body, his own.
But the fire inside him still burned.
He had to keep going, he had to understand what was happening.
He stopped at the landing between the second and first floors. Something had changed.
The air was... different.
Not just in smell or pressure, something else.
He moved slowly toward the door marked "1st Floor – Recovery Wing." The metal handle was cold in his hand.
He cracked the door open and peeked through.
Nothing.
Just a long hallway, half-lit, flickering lights overhead dancing over linoleum floors and abandoned wheelchairs. There was an eerie stillness, no walkers, no blood, just silence.
Joe stepped through and crept past patient rooms.
203… 207… 209…
Then he stopped.
Room 210.
The door was cracked open.
He glanced inside.
Laying there,was a man in his mid-thirties, pale, weak. Hospital gown. IV still taped to his arm.
He was lying in bed, eyes half-open, blinking up at the ceiling in confusion. Alive. Awake. Disoriented.
The door to Room 210 creaked softly as Joe pushed it open.
The man inside stirred.
Joe stepped closer, axe in one hand, blood-streaked satchel on his back and M4 strapped to his shoulder. His body ached. His heart still beat like war drums in his chest.
The man, dazed and dehydrated. There was a line of dried blood running down from a cut above his eyebrow. The man looked over and said, "Shane! That you?"
Joe stood in silence for a second, unsure what to say.
"You're alive," he muttered, voice dry and cracked.
The man, eyes now focused, looked at the grisly man with a full beard and a scar on the left side of his face. He asked, "...Who are you?"
Joe let out a breath, half a sigh.
The man looked around, eyes scanning the tubes, the dust, the long-dead machines. "Where... where is everyone?"
Joe hesitated, then walked to the end of the bed and pulled a stool over. He dropped into it with a groan.
"They're gone," Joe said quietly. "Dead. Or worse."
The man's brow furrowed. "How long have I been out?"
"No clue," Joe replied. "I just woke up too. Maybe an hour before you."
The man looked like he was about to ask something else, then froze. "My wife… my son…"
Joe didn't say anything, his eyes losing focus for second.
That silence said everything.
After a moment, he leaned forward. "What's your name?"
"Rick," the man replied. "Rick Grimes. I'm a deputy from King County."
Joe nodded slowly. "Joseph Black. Mechanic. Soldier. Ghost, I guess."
Rick sat up slowly, groaning, struggling to find his balance.
Joe stood and offered him a steadying hand. "Come on. You'll want real clothes, real food, and something sharp in your hands."
Rick looked at him, confused. "What the hell happened?"
Joe's jaw tensed. He glanced out the window, where the sun spilled across an empty world.
"End of the world happened." he said. "And we missed the memo."