The Winter Tyrant-Chapter 59: Survivors

Dean led the Peltasts through the building, his white light and laser flashing across every corner as they cleared each room they came across.

Only those with access to the infrared spectrum like their night vision goggles could witness such a show.

Shattered glass from broken windows scattered the floor, crunching beneath the thick winter boots of the Peltasts as they moved forward.

Medical waste had been tossed everywhere, and supplies, whether useful or not, lay tangled within the mess.

Every room looked almost the same as the last. The chimps had been living here for weeks, and they had truly made it their home.

Beds had been dragged into hallways. Mattresses were ripped open, their stuffing scattered like snow across the tile floor. Blankets and hospital gowns had been piled into crude nests.

Dean scoffed and rolled his eyes as he and the Peltasts beside him cleared another patient room.

He crouched down and began sifting through the trash slowly and cautiously, trying his best not to end up punctured by some hidden dirty needle or something worse buried beneath the mess.

"Fucking animals..." he muttered. "This is going to make our jobs a living hell."

Zach sighed and shook his head. His rifle remained trained on the doorway while he watched the corridor outside, keeping guard while Dean and the others scavenged.

"At this rate," Zach said, "the damn monkeys probably destroyed anything useful that could’ve been taken back to Elysium."

Dean didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he continued opening cabinets and digging through the storage shelves, ignoring the piles of trash littering the room. His gloved hands moved methodically as he checked each container.

Then he found exactly what he was looking for.

A faint smirk formed beneath the layer of his balaclava, his breath hissing through his teeth.

"Oh ye of little faith..."

He reached deep into the back of a cabinet and pulled out a container that had been pushed far enough inside that the chimps had never bothered with it.

Inside were several unopened boxes of surgical gloves.

It wasn’t much.

But for a hospital run like this, anything was better than nothing. And the more of these Katherine had to work with, the better things would be for everyone back in Elysium.

Dean tucked the boxes carefully into the duffel bag slung across his back.

Then he rose to his feet, raised his rifle, and motioned with two fingers toward the boys nearby.

The peltasts immediately moved. They flowed back out into the hallway with practiced efficiency. Dean took point while Zach slid into position behind the group to watch their six.

Room by room they worked their way deeper into the hospital, clearing, searching, and salvaging whatever they could carry.

Bandages, medical tape, small sealed instruments, anything useful went into their bags.

The echoes of their looting reverberated faintly through the abandoned ward as the team continued their slow advance toward the laboratory.

Eventually Dean and his men reached the terminal end point of their destination. It was a room Katherine had identified as a storage facility.

One that contained the bulk of the hospital’s remaining supplies in the initial weeks following the long winter’s beginning.

She was certain that if the blood testing kits still existed, they would be there along with anything else of significance.

Dean motioned for the peltasts to stack up on walls that flanked the door. He reached forward to grab the handle finding that it had been locked. Perhaps even bolted from the other side.

A frown carved itself beneath the lines of his balaclava as he stepped off the centerline and walked up to one of the men nearby.

"Turn around, I need your sledge."

The peltast did as he was told, allowing Dean to fetch the 8 lb sledge looped through his back panel.

The fiberglass shaft had been wrapped in a winter camouflage cloth, helping it blend in better with the environment and allowing a better grip purchase for the upper hand.

Dean felt the heft as he gripped his hands around its shaft and rubberized grip at the bottom. He only gave his men the slightest warning before taking a swing at the door right above its hinge.

"Make sure some dumb ape doesn’t tear my face off!"

*SMACK*

The door burst open with a single swing. Causing dust, splinters, and debris to explode into the air.

Dean immediately cleared the entry point, allowing his men to push into the room. And there he immediately heard his peltasts shouting commands before he could even fully retrieve his weapon and join them.

"Put your hands up where I can see them! Right fucking now!"

"Let me see those hands bitch!"

Dean quickly entered the scene and noticed a thermal signature surrounding two women who appeared to be in their early to mid twenties. They were alive, albeit very malnourished.

They were panicking and crying as they got on their knees and raised their hands into the air as high as their strength would carry them.

"Please! Take whatever you want! Just don’t hurt us!"

The women were dressed in multiple bundles of clothing, and Dean stepped forward just in time to deescalate the situation.

The haunting letters of the Tyrant’s ledger acting as an almost blinding overlay to the scene he was witnessing through white phosphor and a thermal clip on.

---

Name: Emily Carter

Age: 23

Health: 20/100

Relationship: Intimidated

---

Name: Kayla Jensen

Age: 26

Health: 20/100

Relationship: Intimidated

---

Dean immediately lowered his weapon and motioned for his men to do the same. He was quick to kneel down to their level where he reached into his plate carrier’s hanger pouch, unzipping it and pulling out some high calorie protein bars, which he handed to the two women.

"What are you two doing here?"

The women snatched the food out of Dean’s hands and ripped off the wrapper, gnawing at it as if they had gone feral after so long.

But once they had eaten them, Kayla was quick to speak. Her "Health" and "Relationship" status updating slightly as she did.

"My name is Kayla... and this is Emily. We are... were nurses here at Saint Raphael’s. You know, before...."

She didn’t finish. Instead, Emily continued where she had gone silent.

"When things started getting bad... really bad... we locked ourselves in here. Waiting for someone, anyone to come help. This is, after all, where we kept the bulk of our supplies. But it wasn’t really enough to last ,and when the power went out...

Dean more or less could have guessed what happened. When the power went out, the hospital became a war zone. They had escaped the chaos that ensued and ended up surviving, but trapped within this room.

Which meant they also likely weren’t aware that the facility in the month or so since he had been overtaken by wildlife.

As Dean thought this all through, handed the women some more food, and even some water to help them.

This again updated their relationship status from intimidated to cautious within the Tyrant’s Ledger.

It was only then that he dared to ask another question.

"Kayla... Emily... Do you know a doctor Katherine Whitaker?"

The two of them stared at each other in utter disbelief. Before one of them quickly blurted out their shared thoughts.

"Katherine is still alive? She went missing before everything happened. Many of us thought she had been killed by one of the more unruly patients or the grieving family members. Did she send you to save us?"

Dean shook his head, and stood back up, hovering over the two women as he crushed their dreams on the spot.

"She sent us to fetch whatever medical supplies we could. Particularly blood testing kits. She thought this place had been turned into a morgue...."

This news was a brutal and crushing realization to the women who had been trapped inside for months with only the supplies they had, and the warmth of their bundled clothing to keep them alive.

But Dean surprised them in the next moment before despair could truly take hold of their hearts.

"However... I’m sure she would be happy to see you two again. You should come with us, we have food, water, heat, and shelter. And we could use your talents. Katherine especially will need a pair of steady hands to help her take care of us the next time one of us gets ourselves shot."

The two women looked at one another for but the brightest moments before getting up to their feet. Kayla took the lead again.

"Blood testing kits, huh? I think we have quite a few of those left. They weren’t exactly in high demand towards the end... Whatever we have left you can take with you. It’s better than leaving it here to waste."

With that said, Dean and his Peltasts followed the two nurses, getting their hands on what remained of the hospital’s depleted stockpiles of medicine, medical technology, and surgical equipment.