[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.I half expected the demon to hammer the door again, but the silence that followed didn’t mean it’d given up.It was taking the next elevator down, no doubt.The doors spilled me out into an even gloomier space than the one upstairs.It was airless and dark with a constant throb of central heating pumps.The smell of disinfectant and blood was stronger, as if this was the source of it and it crept up through the rest of the building from here.Metal gurneys stacked with black plastic waste bags were shoved haphazardly against the opposite wall.Past them, along to the left, were three closed doors with more loaded trolleys outside.The farthest room had a light on inside.I hurried toward it like a moth drawn by a bulb, stepped inside, and closed the door after me as the second elevator arrived with a crash.I leaned back against the door, holding my breath, mentally kicking myself for coming this way.From here there was nowhere to go.I’d arrived in the dark bowels of the hospital, exactly where they’d want me to be.And worse than that, the room I’d ducked inside was the last place I should’ve chosen.Of all the rooms in the building, I thought.Stupidity or just dumb luck?I was inside the morgue.A stainless steel counter ran the length of the far wall.At its center were two steel sinks, and between the sinks a length of hose on a spool.A dozen gurneys took up most of the floor space.Three were occupied by bodies draped with clean white sheets.Their ghosts weren’t around, though.If they were, I would have known.By now they’d be wandering freely through the wards upstairs, scared and confused and seeking assistance.In here, though, all I could feel was a cold emptiness.Those three on the gurneys weren’t people anymore.They were shells.They were meat.From the corridor came the sound of footsteps scuffing across the stone floor.Patient, unhurried footsteps.The demon was taking its time.It knew I had nowhere to go from here.Or maybe I did.My eyes were hazy with fear, and everything in the morgue looked soft at the edges, but to the right of the counter was a concertina screen.And just visible above the screen, the top frame of a door.As I started toward it, the tiles squeaked loudly beneath my rubber soles.I froze, listening for movement outside.It wasn’t easy to hear above the pulse between my ears, but I was sure the footsteps had stopped.They’d stopped right at the door.My heart skipped a beat.And then the door was thrown open and in it came, a dark vision with a pale death’s-head face.A worm slithered from one of its eyeless sockets; the mouth without lips chanted words I didn’t understand and didn’t want to.It’d had enough of tiptoeing around, and now it wanted to tear me to pieces.I jumped back, colliding with the nearest gurney.The gurney, holding one of the bodies, skewed aside and went into a roll.Its wheels hadn’t been locked.Running around behind it, I pushed it with all my strength at the demon.But the gurney passed straight through it, as if it’d dissolved at one end and materialized again at the other.The gurney struck the door behind the demon and rolled back into the room, the impact sending the corpse it carried into a sideways roll off the edge.“Harvester.,” the demon began.I didn’t wait for it to finish.I turned and darted between the other gurneys and around the screen, grasping the door handle and pushing.The door didn’t budge.It wouldn’t open outward or inward.I tried again as the demon’s footfalls crossed the floor behind me.Then I saw a metal bolt up near the top of the door, another lower down driven into the floor.The first slid back easily.The second was tougher but gave way when I pulled with both hands.As the demon reached the other side of the screen, I yanked the door open and slammed it behind me and ran on through the next room.Now I was moving through a cold storage area, a fridge room for bodies.On both sides of the space were the storage units, stacked three-high, gunmetal gray, many of them displaying the names of the departed on their doors.I ran past them toward the murky light farther on, heading for a sign that read PATHOLOGY, FIRE EXIT, STAIRS.At any second I might feel the Deathhead’s cold hand on my shoulder, and it’d drag me back to the morgue or kill me on the spot, if killing was what it had in mind.I kept going, through the next set of doors, across a concrete passageway where my footfalls sounded like shots, then up the first flight of the stairwell.It was like being in an echo chamber, the bare walls amplifying every slap of my feet on the stone steps.The air was cool and damp as a dungeon’s, the light almost nonexistent.I’d taken three turns of the stairs and almost reached the second floor before it dawned on me that the only steps I could hear on the stairwell were my own.At the top of the next flight, I slowed to listen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl milosnikstop.keep.pl
.I half expected the demon to hammer the door again, but the silence that followed didn’t mean it’d given up.It was taking the next elevator down, no doubt.The doors spilled me out into an even gloomier space than the one upstairs.It was airless and dark with a constant throb of central heating pumps.The smell of disinfectant and blood was stronger, as if this was the source of it and it crept up through the rest of the building from here.Metal gurneys stacked with black plastic waste bags were shoved haphazardly against the opposite wall.Past them, along to the left, were three closed doors with more loaded trolleys outside.The farthest room had a light on inside.I hurried toward it like a moth drawn by a bulb, stepped inside, and closed the door after me as the second elevator arrived with a crash.I leaned back against the door, holding my breath, mentally kicking myself for coming this way.From here there was nowhere to go.I’d arrived in the dark bowels of the hospital, exactly where they’d want me to be.And worse than that, the room I’d ducked inside was the last place I should’ve chosen.Of all the rooms in the building, I thought.Stupidity or just dumb luck?I was inside the morgue.A stainless steel counter ran the length of the far wall.At its center were two steel sinks, and between the sinks a length of hose on a spool.A dozen gurneys took up most of the floor space.Three were occupied by bodies draped with clean white sheets.Their ghosts weren’t around, though.If they were, I would have known.By now they’d be wandering freely through the wards upstairs, scared and confused and seeking assistance.In here, though, all I could feel was a cold emptiness.Those three on the gurneys weren’t people anymore.They were shells.They were meat.From the corridor came the sound of footsteps scuffing across the stone floor.Patient, unhurried footsteps.The demon was taking its time.It knew I had nowhere to go from here.Or maybe I did.My eyes were hazy with fear, and everything in the morgue looked soft at the edges, but to the right of the counter was a concertina screen.And just visible above the screen, the top frame of a door.As I started toward it, the tiles squeaked loudly beneath my rubber soles.I froze, listening for movement outside.It wasn’t easy to hear above the pulse between my ears, but I was sure the footsteps had stopped.They’d stopped right at the door.My heart skipped a beat.And then the door was thrown open and in it came, a dark vision with a pale death’s-head face.A worm slithered from one of its eyeless sockets; the mouth without lips chanted words I didn’t understand and didn’t want to.It’d had enough of tiptoeing around, and now it wanted to tear me to pieces.I jumped back, colliding with the nearest gurney.The gurney, holding one of the bodies, skewed aside and went into a roll.Its wheels hadn’t been locked.Running around behind it, I pushed it with all my strength at the demon.But the gurney passed straight through it, as if it’d dissolved at one end and materialized again at the other.The gurney struck the door behind the demon and rolled back into the room, the impact sending the corpse it carried into a sideways roll off the edge.“Harvester.,” the demon began.I didn’t wait for it to finish.I turned and darted between the other gurneys and around the screen, grasping the door handle and pushing.The door didn’t budge.It wouldn’t open outward or inward.I tried again as the demon’s footfalls crossed the floor behind me.Then I saw a metal bolt up near the top of the door, another lower down driven into the floor.The first slid back easily.The second was tougher but gave way when I pulled with both hands.As the demon reached the other side of the screen, I yanked the door open and slammed it behind me and ran on through the next room.Now I was moving through a cold storage area, a fridge room for bodies.On both sides of the space were the storage units, stacked three-high, gunmetal gray, many of them displaying the names of the departed on their doors.I ran past them toward the murky light farther on, heading for a sign that read PATHOLOGY, FIRE EXIT, STAIRS.At any second I might feel the Deathhead’s cold hand on my shoulder, and it’d drag me back to the morgue or kill me on the spot, if killing was what it had in mind.I kept going, through the next set of doors, across a concrete passageway where my footfalls sounded like shots, then up the first flight of the stairwell.It was like being in an echo chamber, the bare walls amplifying every slap of my feet on the stone steps.The air was cool and damp as a dungeon’s, the light almost nonexistent.I’d taken three turns of the stairs and almost reached the second floor before it dawned on me that the only steps I could hear on the stairwell were my own.At the top of the next flight, I slowed to listen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]