Its a warm night. I'm walking alone down a main road and pass a strange building on my right hand side. It almost seems like a renovated fire station or something - large openings along its broad side, separated by thick, sturdy pillars. Looking in from the street into the one long room behind the wall, I spot a mobile x-ray machine (one of GE's AMX models) in a far corner. I let myself in to have a look around; the room is very long, but not very wide, with a row of simple iron bed frames along both lengths of wall. It is a very old-fashioned hospital ward.
Around half of the beds are occupied by patients, though they don't pay me much attention. I walk over to the mobile and start pushing it through the middle of the room when a man appears in front of me. He is tall, old, balding, and looks slightly like John Cleese - which is fitting, because the guy's irate. He gives me a bollocking for breaking into this place and committing grand theft AMX. I explain that I'm the radiographer, but that just gets him angrier at me for not using the main entrance or introducing myself to him first. I turn round to put the machine back, but slip on the floor and hit my head on the side of one of the beds, injuring my neck pretty badly.
As I'm laid on the floor with my head resting on the side of the bed and unable to move, I look around the room at the other patients. Señor Chang from Community is on the bed across from me, he's being vaguely annoying in his typical Chang way. Further down the room, I can see maybe ten other patients, one of whom is also on the floor, with their head just above the bed like me. The beds all begin to rattle as an earthquake shakes the room. One of the patients from the other end of the wards shouts 'flash', I automatically reply 'thunder', the WWII challenge and response used by the allies in Europe to distinguish friend from foe in the dark.
From here, the other patients, minus Chang, and I start discussing our love of Band of Brothers, when a second earthquake hits much more violently. Bricks from the wall above us start falling down, and I manage to drag myself under the bed for protection as we realise that it's no earthquake - we're under artillery fire. Forgetting that I'm paralysed, I manage to escape from the hospital through a newly-blown hole in the wall with one other patient: Major Dick Winters, the infinitely respected leader of Easy Company in WWII.
I hear marching from down the street and decide we need to take cover. We cross the main road onto a patch of grassland, diving into a shallow ditch to conceal us. I realise that its a good job that I was wearing camouflage trousers and an olive drab tee. The marching gets louder as a Nazi parade makes its way towards us. We head away from the road, through a small stretch of woodland and out into a field of long grass with a small lake at the other side. We make our way to the lake when we realise we're being chased by ravers from the 90s. Three glow-stick brandishing madmen charge towards us, so we break into a sprint towards the lake, throwing ourselves into a large thicket of stinging nettles.
The ravers eventually pass us and we continue along the lake until we come to a short road. At this point, three of the other patients catch up with us and agree to help us escape the Nazi occupied town. We follow the road through the town and end up entering a big farmhouse. There are no lights on in the house, but it sounds like someone is upstairs. Dick & I follow the other three up the stairs to find out what's going on and once at the top, it becomes apparent that there's someone taking a bath in one of the rooms. We decide to leave them be and quietly creep back downstairs, when we see someone entering the house's front door before us. I yank a piece of panelling from the wall just as the house's owner steps in. It is Sarah Corby, one of my flatmates from my first year of uni. Before she can raise the alarm, I hit her over the head with the panel, knocking her unconscious (never did like her much tbf).
We decide we need to leave asap, and head through the conservatory to the back door, but just as we're approaching, someone starts to come through the back too. There are no obvious weapons to hand so everyone finds cover to hide behind. In the centre of the room, I have no such luck, and crouch down by a table and chair. This other girl, who's like a twisted amalgam of Katie Wild, Keeley & someone else I can't place, walks in and stops just by the table. I'm directly in front of her, but its dark and I figure she won't actually spot me unless I move or she directly looks my way.
The following scene is tense, cheesy and poorly written, as this girl starts saying things to herself like, 'oh I'll just put my coat down on this chair now' and places the clothing slowly right next to me, and 'oh I wonder where my bag is', and I notice the bag is only a few inches away from my crouched position. Stuff like this goes on for a while, where it seems certain that she'll spot me but never actually pays attention to all of these things she announces that she's going to do. Eventually this wears thin and she starts walking away into the house. I stand up just as she looks back into the conservatory and sees me.
Still unarmed, I decide I'm going to have to charm my way out; the girl has strange eyes and is actually pretty cute in a scrawny kind of way. I successfully manage to sweet talk her into letting us go and the five of us manage to escape before she finds Sarah. On my way out of the house there are two cats. One of them gives me a high five.
And then I woke up.
No comments:
Post a Comment