RED AND THE APOCALYPSE
Chapter 62 — The Doctor
The cold, metallic heavy doors slammed shut behind her, cutting off the echo of the main hallway.
Mira marched down the dim subterranean corridor, flanked closely by four heavily armed women. The guards held their rifles at a low ready, their fingers resting nervously against the trigger guards, their eyes constantly darting between the branching passageways and the shadowy alcoves they passed.
Despite the late hour and the stifling underground atmosphere, the compound was pulsing with chaotic life. Survivors scurried back and forth carrying plastic tubs of water, rolled bandages, and rusted cans of food. Wounded fighters leaned heavily against the damp concrete walls, their low groans blending into a distant, rhythmic hum of suffering that vibrated through the floorboards.
Mira said nothing. Her face was a mask of cold composure, but her mind was miles away, racing through a dark checklist of names.
Tokita.
Nezuko.
Aoi.
Kaito.
And above all... Natsuki.
He had been shot at point-blank range. She could still see the dark, crimson pool spreading across his denim jeans. She knew the grim mathematics of a femoral or high-thigh gunshot wound—if the bullet tore through a major artery and the hemorrhaging wasn't controlled within minutes, he would bleed out long before anyone noticed his fading pulse.
The guard leading the escort abruptly stopped in front of a massive pair of double steel doors. Above the frame, crudely painted in flaking white stencil, were the words:
EMERGENCY CENTER
One of the women stepped forward, unclipped a heavy ring of brass keys from her belt, and shoved the longest key into the tumbler. Before turning it, however, she swung around to face Mira, her expression stern and demanding.
"Wait."
Mira halted, her dark eyes locking onto the guard without a flicker of fear.
"There are a lot of injured people behind these doors," the woman explained, her tone sharp with authority. "Some of them are on the brink of death. You don't get to pick and choose who looks nice. You prioritize the ones who are bleeding out. Am I clear?"
Mira stared at her for a long, quiet second. A faint, tired sigh escaped her lips.
"I know how to do my job."
The guard hesitated, thrown off by the complete lack of panic in the doctor's eyes.
"I am a physician," Mira added, her voice dropping into a quiet, icy pitch that commanded instant respect. "You don't need to explain the concept of triage to me."
The woman searched Mira's face for another second before giving a slow, reluctant nod. "Fine."
She turned the key and threw the heavy double doors wide open.
The moment Mira stepped over the threshold, her boots froze against the concrete floor.
The smell hit her first—a thick, nauseating mixture of copper, rotting tissue, stale sweat, and cheap disinfectant. And then came the sight.
There were people everywhere. Hundreds of them.
The vast, cavernous bunker was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Men occupied most of the rusty army cots and threadbare mattresses, but scattered among them were women, terrified teenagers, and elderly survivors shivering under dirty blankets. Those without beds sat propped against the concrete pillars or lay directly on the cold stone floor.
And the injuries—
Mira's eyes swept across the room with practiced, clinical precision, taking in the horror row by row.
Deep, jagged lacerations. Puncture wounds that looked like shattered bone fragments poking through torn skin. Broken limbs tied with makeshift wooden splints. Chemical burns. Deep, tearing bites. Severe, purple contusions. Bandages so saturated with blood that they had turned black and stiff. Some wounds were fresh and oozing; others had clearly been stitched together with unsterilized fishing line, festering with yellow infection and reopening under the slightest movement.
For a terrifying second, Mira's clinical detachment faltered. What is this place?
These people didn't look like scavengers who had been surprised by a stray infected during a supply run. They looked like the battered survivors of a meat grinder. They looked like soldiers returning from a war zone.
A haggard-looking man, his shirt torn and covered in soot, suddenly broke from the crowd and rushed toward the escort. "Have you found her?! Is that the doctor?!"
"Yes," the guard replied, holding her ground.
The man's bloodshot eyes locked onto Mira. His face crumpled with desperate, frantic relief. "A doctor... Oh, thank God! Thank God!"
He lunged forward to grab Mira's arm, but the nearest guard instantly raised her rifle, slamming the butt of the weapon into his chest.
"Back off, civilian!" the guard barked. "Keep your hands off the doctor!"
The man stumbled back, clutching his chest, his eyes wild with terror and grief. "Please! My brother—he's dying! He needs help!"
Mira raised a calm hand, stepping past the guard's rifle. "It's fine. Let him speak."
The guard lowered her weapon slightly, though her jaw remained set.
The man pointed frantically toward a metal frame cot near the center of the ward. "There! My brother! Please... he's burning up!"
Mira didn't hesitate. She crossed the crowded room, her eyes already evaluating the young man lying on the cot. He was sweating profusely, his skin turned an ash-gray color, his breathing rapid and shallow as his chest heaved under a soaked blanket.
High fever. Rapid pulse. Systemic inflammation.
Even without a thermometer or a blood panel, the clinical picture was glaringly obvious. Her instincts screamed sepsis, but she needed to check for local infection.
She took a firm step toward the cot. "Let me take a look at him."
Immediately, the lead guard planted herself in front of Mira, blocking her path with the length of her rifle barrel. "I already told you. You treat the critical trauma cases first. The ones actively bleeding out on the floor."
Mira looked the guard dead in the eye. "I understand."
"Then stop wasting time on fevers."
"This will only take a moment," Mira insisted calmly.
The guard shook her head, her temper flaring. "You don't understand how things work here—"
"Bring me the medical supplies," Mira cut her off before the guard could finish her threat.
The woman blinked, caught off guard by the doctor's sheer authority. "What?"
"Morphine," Mira rattled off, her voice crisp and sharp, bouncing off the concrete ceiling. "For severe pain management. Bring it now."
The guard stared at her blankly.
"Lidocaine for local anesthesia. Cefazolin for broad-spectrum bacterial coverage. Tranexamic acid to arrest internal hemorrhaging," Mira continued, her words coming out like rapid-fire commands. "And paracetamol to bring down high-grade fevers."
The guard looked utterly lost, her confidence completely evaporating. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Mira let out a short sigh, her dark eyes narrowing. "Don't bother trying to memorize the names or understand what they do." She took a step closer to the guard, her tone dropping into an absolute command. "Just show me where your medical storage is. Now."
The woman hesitated, looking at Mira's unyielding posture, before pointing a shaking finger toward a heavy steel door at the far end of the ward. "In there."
Mira turned on her heel and strode directly toward the storage room.
As she walked down the narrow central aisle, a strange hush fell over the room. The packed patients and their crying family members paused, their eyes tracking her movement. Whispers began to ripple through the crowd like a rising tide.
"A real doctor..."
"They actually brought a doctor..."
The faint expressions of relief painted on their hollow, dust-caked faces were heavy with desperate hope.
Mira pushed open the storage room door and stepped into the cramped supply closet. She scanned the metal shelving units, pulling plastic bins down one after another.
Morphine ampoules... Lidocaine vials... Cefazolin powder... Tranexamic acid (TXA)... Paracetamol IV bags... Normal saline... Sterile gauze... Syringes... Suture kits...
Her hands worked with blinding, professional efficiency, sweeping vials, IV lines, and surgical tools into a heavy metal tray.
I just hope there's enough here to stabilize even a fraction of them, Mira thought to herself, her chest tightening as she realized the sheer scale of the crisis.
Then, a sound cut through her thoughts.
A sharp, blood-curdling scream.
Mira froze, her hand hovering over a bottle of antiseptic.
Another scream followed, louder this time, ripping through the concrete walls. Then another. And another.
Mira spun around and rushed back into the emergency center.
The atmosphere in the room had completely shattered. The quiet desperation had turned into pure, chaotic panic.
Patients were thrashing on their cots, crying out in agony. A young boy was coughing violently, spattering blood over his sheets. A mother was screaming frantically for a medic as her daughter went rigid.
And right near the front, a man who had been speaking moments ago suddenly went limp, his head rolling back as his heart stopped beating.
Mira's clinical composure fractured. They're dying. The entire room is going into shock at once.
Grabbing her tray of supplies, she sprinted toward the nearest critical trauma patient—a young man sprawled on a blood-stained mattress, clutching a massive, jagged tear across his upper abdomen. Dark, venous blood was pouring through his torn shirt, pooling onto the floor.
Mira dropped to her knees beside him, her hands moving instantly. "Lidocaine! Hold his shoulders!"
One of the female guards rushed forward, dropping her rifle to pin the man's writhing upper body.
Mira drew the clear liquid into a syringe and prepped the margins of the torn flesh. "Cefazolin!"
She flushed the gaping wound with sterile saline, frantically trying to clear away the dirt and torn fabric. But the man's vital signs were dropping too fast. His chest hitched in shallow, desperate gasps. His pupils dilated, losing focus as his eyes rolled back toward the ceiling.
"No, no, no..." Mira pressed her gloved hands directly down onto the torn artery, leaning her entire body weight into the wound. "Stay with me! Look at me!"
The man didn't respond. His head sank sideways into the blood-soaked pillow.
All around her, the emergency center fell apart into utter madness. Screams echoed off the concrete. Families wept over lifeless bodies. Guards barked futile orders that no one listened to.
Mira looked around the massive, cavernous room.
There are too many, her mind screamed. Dozens of critical patients... three doctors couldn't handle this load, let alone one woman with a tray of basic meds.
Her hands began to tremble. Her breathing turned heavy, ragged, and short. The chorus of screams, groans, and desperate cries blended into a deafening, suffocating roar in her ears.
For the first time since the apocalypse had shattered the world, Dr. Mira lost her grip. She felt small. She felt completely overwhelmed.
She sank back on her heels, closing her eyes tightly as tears threatened to burst through.
Calm down, a voice echoed in the deep recesses of her mind. You've been in trauma bays worse than this. You've worked double shifts during mass casualty events. The only way to stop the worst-case scenario is to stay grounded. Panicking won't save a single life in this room.
The female guard standing over her noticed her sudden stillness. "Doctor? Hey! Doctor!"
Mira didn't open her eyes.
"Are you okay?!" the guard demanded, reaching out a hand.
"Don't touch me," Mira whispered quietly. "Please."
The guard pulled her hand back, frozen.
Mira remained kneeling in the center of the chaotic ward, completely still amidst the screaming crowd.
She inhaled. Deeply. Bringing the smell of copper and dust into her lungs.
She held it.
Then, she exhaled. Slowly.
In.
Out.
With every steady breath, her racing pulse slowed. The roaring noise in her ears faded into background noise. The panic dissolved, leaving behind a cold, absolute, undeniable resolve.
And then—
Mira opened her eyes.
They were no longer their natural dark hue. They were glowing with a soft, brilliant, luminescent pink.
The guard kneeling beside her gasped, stumbling backward on the concrete floor. "What the... what is that?!"
A gentle breeze stirred inside the sealed, airless concrete bunker.
And then, they appeared.
Petals.
Soft, radiant, glowing pink petals began drifting down from the high concrete ceiling. They floated delicately through the heavy air, swirling between the rusted iron cots, dancing across the crowded aisles, and brushing softly against the faces of the dying.
They looked remarkably like cherry blossoms—Sakura petals falling in the dead of spring.
But there was no wind inside the underground complex. There were no open windows. There was no physical source.
The petals simply materialised out of thin air, falling in an ethereal, glowing pink snowfall that covered the entire one-hundred-bed emergency center.
The deafening noise in the room died instantly.
The screams stopped.
The crying faded into stunned silence.
Patients who were conscious looked up in awe, reaching out trembling hands to touch the glowing blossoms as they drifted past.
"What is this...?"
"Is... is it snowing?"
"Is someone using an ability?!"
Confused, hushed whispers rippled through the crowd. Even the hardened, cynical guards stood paralyzed, staring at the ceiling with their mouths agape.
Only the guards who had watched Mira's eyes knew the truth.
This wasn't magic. This was her soul. This was Dr. Mira's ultimate gift, unleashed across an entire room.
Beneath Mira's glowing hands, the dying man on the cot suddenly gasped, his chest expanding with a deep, violent breath of clean air.
Mira looked down.
The massive, jagged laceration across his abdomen was changing. The torn, bleeding muscle tissue was visibly knitting itself back together, microscopic threads of light pulling the flesh closed. The internal bleeding stopped entirely. The gray, necrotic skin around the wound flushed back to a healthy, warm pink.
Mira stared in wonder.
Her ability wasn't just localized to her hands anymore. The glowing petals landing on the patients were channeling her energy everywhere at once.
Across the room, a woman watching the deep, infected gash on her forearm gasped as the skin smoothly closed, leaving behind only a faint, pink line before vanishing completely.
A young man with a compound fracture in his leg felt the grinding bone fragments snap quietly back into alignment, the agony vanishing in a wave of soothing warmth.
A elderly woman suffering from a fatal septic fever stopped shivering, her dry skin suddenly cooling as her labored breathing became deep and rhythmic.
Even those who had been unconscious slowly opened their eyes, sitting up on their cots in absolute bewilderment.
The overwhelming fatigue, the bone-deep pain, the infection—it was all being washed away.
Mira's glowing pink eyes widened as she took in the scene.
I'm reaching all of them...
She hadn't planned this. She had only meant to stabilize the young man on the cot. But her instinct as a healer—her absolute refusal to let these people die—had unlocked something deep within her ability, expanding it across the entire space.
As the pink petals continued to fall, Mira's sharp, clinical eyes caught sight of a patient on the far side of the room.
The man was sitting up, his shirt torn open, revealing a large, jagged bite mark torn into his side.
Mira studied the shape of the wound carefully as her petals gently closed the flesh.
What could have caused a tear like that?
It wasn't a bullet hole. It wasn't a knife slash. It looked remarkably like the jaw footprint of a predatory animal—but the scale was entirely wrong. The teeth marks were too wide, the pressure too immense.
Could an infected creature have done this? Or something worse?
Her eyes swept across the room again, analyzing the healed scars of the other patients. The sheer variety of trauma was staggering. Blunt force impacts that shattered ribs, chemical burns, claw marks...
Her expression darkened. She turned her glowing eyes toward the lead guard who was still lying on the floor, staring at her in sheer terror.
"Why are there so many injured people here?" Mira demanded, her voice ringing clear through the silent ward.
The guard swallowed hard, unable to find her voice.
Mira's eyes narrowed into sharp, demanding slits. "I am asking you a question."
"It's... it's classified information," the guard stammered out, backing away on her elbows. "Perimeter operations are on a need-to-know basis—"
"Then you had better start making me need to know," Mira cut her off coldly.
The guard blinked, stunned by the sheer defiance of a captive.
Mira pointed a finger across the crowded room. "If you want me to stay here and keep your people breathing, I need to know what we are fighting against out there. These are not standard zombie bites or scav-war injuries."
She stepped closer to the guard. "Tell me what caused them."
Before the terrified guard could answer, a man on a nearby cot stumbled to his feet. His fever was gone. His color had returned. He stared at his trembling, healthy hands, then looked up at Mira with wide, tear-filled eyes.
"What... what did you just do to me?" he whispered, his voice trembling with profound reverence.
Mira didn't answer him. Her mind was still trying to process the strain on her own body.
Slowly, the glowing pink petals began to dissolve into thin air, fading one by one until the concrete room returned to its dim, gritty reality.
The pink glow in Mira's eyes flickered, dimmed, and finally vanished, returning them to their dark, natural color.
And then, the bill came due.
Instantly, a crushing weight slammed down onto Mira's shoulders. Her entire body turned to lead.
She took one shaky step backward, but her knees buckled under her weight. Her vision swam, the lit room spinning wildly as black spots danced across her eyes.
Damn it...
Her legs gave out completely.
"Doctor!"
The lead guard scrambled forward, catching Mira by her shoulders just before her head slammed against the concrete floor.
Mira tried to summon the strength to stand, to raise her hands, to speak—but her muscles refused to respond. Her chest heaved as she fought for oxygen.
She knew exactly what had happened. Core exhaustion.
The foundational energy that fueled her supernatural healing had been drained down to the absolute bedrock. She had stretched her life force over a hundred dying people at once.
She was empty.
Mira's consciousness began to slide away into the dark.
Around her, the emergency ward remained dead silent.
The men and women who had been screaming in agony moments ago were standing up from their cots. People were touching their smooth, unblemished skin where gaping wounds used to be. Families were weeping tears of pure joy, holding each other in disbelief.
And then, a voice broke the quiet, echoing from the back of the crowded room.
"She's... she's a god!"
Mira's eyelids fluttered, barely holding open.
Another voice joined in, louder, choked with emotion. "She saved us! She healed everyone!"
"She's our savior!" a man shouted, dropping to his knees.
"Our savior!"
"SAVIOR!"
The chant caught like wildfire, spreading rapidly through the hundred-strong crowd. Voices raised in unified, deafening reverence, bouncing off the damp concrete walls of the complex.
"Savior! Savior! Savior!"
Mira tried to focus on the ceiling, but the room was rapidly receding into an endless black tunnel. Her core was freezing cold. Her limbs felt weightless.
"Hey! Hey, Doc! Stay with us!" the guard holding her shouted frantically, shaking her shoulder. "Doctor! Can you hear me?!"
Mira couldn't answer.
Her eyelids grew too heavy to fight, dropping shut as the darkness swallowed her whole.
The last thing Dr. Mira heard before slipping into complete unconsciousness was the roaring chant of the people whose lives she had just bought with her own.
"Savior..."
And then, everything went black.