TW: graphic blood and gore in the second half of the chapter, minor vomit

This book will have 20 chapters btw!

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Alert though he didn't know what to expect, Wooyoung followed Yunho down the corridor. The earlier loneliness was forgotten as his senses strained against the stench of the second floor. Nothing became everything and the overwhelming assault on Wooyoung's stomach made him queasy and on edge. Ready to shoot at everything even remotely suspicious if only it alleviated him from this torment, Wooyoung levered his rifle against his shoulder.

The others shared his stress. Before, they had been forlorn and curious about this place. Now, with the added information that this had also been a hospital, death seemed to lurk in every corner that had once been devoid.

"Shit, is this what hospitals smell like?" Mingi groaned as he thrust the nearest door open. More beds lined up there and they were bare of all sheets and blankets. Some of them were specked with rusty stains and mold discolored the walls in creeping . It wasn't sanitary, but it was the best they could do while the world sank into ruin.

"Not ours," San uttered back. His brows were drawn into a line as he braced against the smell. Not even caves full of fouls smelled this bad. For many years, Wooyoung thought the rotting odor of death was the worst smell his mind ingrained, but he was wrong.

"It shouldn't smell. Any scent that leaked out a long time ago should have disappeared in the air. Is it a gas leak? That might be dangerous." Seonghwa contemplated in his bag. Clueless, Jongho clutched him close. Yeosang's face was green, and he accepted the glove Yunho handed him to smother his airways.

This smell wouldn't kill them, but it made Wooyoung's knees wobbly and mind woozy. Whatever it was, he hoped they could chuck it out of the window and use it to ward off the fouls. 

San guided them deeper into the facility. More corridors branched off and despite the agony, the group tediously searched the next room. Since the scent seemed to hang anywhere behind those curtains to seal it in, it was impossible to locate its source. Or was it the building itself that smelled?

The next room looked like a toolbox. A leaning chair dominated its middle, and trays could be rolled around to tug in the various equipments. Pliers, syringes and other absurd metal tools that looked vaguely like Jongho's mechanical items, yet so much more shiny, laid around. The cabinets were stocked with medicines, and San stared at a bag full of bandages that was just sitting in a corner.

"Huh?" Wooyoung made as he pulled a drawer open. Pill bottles with various labels and fistfuls of cotton pads to soak up blood.

"Why is downstairs looted and over here is paradise?" Yunho followed the train of Wooyoung's thought. They only sparingly scavenged the dubious drawers. Most of these things, they were well stocked on, but Mingi rifled through the medicines like a madman to find anything that might help Jongho. A moment later, their leader gulped down a painkiller Seonghwa approved of. It did whatever in his blood that might slow down the creeping growth of the fungus for a few hours. 

"Probably since the stench warded everyone off," Yeosang muttered. He pocketed a few tools but didn't tell them what he needed them for. Hoping they could help Jongho, Wooyoung let him.

"Let's hurry. I want to get the fuck out of here and get Seonghwa to his computer," Mingi gritted. He rushed past them to secure the corridor and Wooyoung's stomach agreed. No need to stay in this place for longer than necessary.

Though this situation was bizarre. The fouls would have no interest in loot, but raiders would have checked the entire building before leaving. If they fled from some danger, it might mean there was a hole somewhere after all that let the infected in.

Alternatively, the past might have differed from what they speculated. Seonghwa said the radio station operated for a while after the war, but perhaps those people abandoned it when their lives got into danger and left the space for others, who then introduced a hospital.

But then why were relevant items left behind?

Nothing made sense, but Wooyoung knew he could think clearer once the unexplained smell was gone.

Ready to find an explanation for at least that mystery, Wooyoung followed the others outside. He stuck to Jongho's side, never getting too close since he respected the fungus, but mindful of his leg that disabled him. With the passing days, it would look more and more like San's right half and the skin would begin to ooze and burst open as the fungus gnawed its way through his flesh. Wooyoung never had to watch it happen, only the result. Whenever someone in their village got sick, the survivors released them from their pain before the infected could hurt themselves and others.

When Jongho sent him a thankful glance, Wooyoung dared one of his wonky smiles. Jongho had admired him for so long. It was painful to be by his side only now that his life was ending, but Wooyoung couldn't bring himself to be standoffish. His care for Seonghwa brought Jongho into this situation. 

Wooyoung prayed San could figure something out. Even if just by telling Jongho not to scratch at the craters and ulcers. 

They continued down the hallway. Some doors were locked, and they didn't make the effort to burst them open. Perhaps they should, since someone might be hiding there, but the stench robbed them of all reason. If anyone idiotic enough to stay on this floor ducked in there, they could rot.

All the while, Seonghwa babbled about describing the scent to him and what it might be. He said some chemicals could kill them if they breathed it in too much, but no one could care. They could only move on with soft knees, about to be done.

However, they barely rounded the first corner after entering the hellish second floor when a smear of red caught their attention. Bold against the white, it stained against the wall. When Yeosang ventured closer, he affirmed everyone's initial suspicion.

"Blood," he muttered. San peered at it as well.

"Doesn't look to be ninety years old to me," he commented. When he turned, the others reflected his grim gaze.

So there had been recent trouble inside the long abandoned hospital.

"Fouls, combined with disinfectant in the area, would explain the stench. They might have tumbled into some raiders. Stay watchful," Mingi advised. Immediately, Wooyoung tightened his grip on his gun. Everything looked the same, and he was distracted by his cramping stomach. He hoped their group could fend off a surprise attack. Fouls were beasts once they attacked, but they always needed a moment or two to make their way over. That had to be enough time to shred them.

They passed the bloody splatter and didn't think much more of it until they reached another T section. When Wooyoung glanced down the branching path that led into the darker side of the building, his blood chilled in his veins.

Red tinted the hallway. It was no single spot anymore. In broad traces, it splattered across the ground and walls, some reaching to the ceiling. Most of them were smeared stains, as if a weight pulled across. The imprints of desperate fingers scrambled in thin lines to find hold on anything. The barren beds and shelves inside the corridors had edges discolored with red.

It was a ghastly sight, but no sources remained. The red trails led inside the rooms branching from that corridor, as if they assembled horrors beyond the concern of the people who cleaned the main hallway.

"Ohh, shit," Mingi gritted between his teeth.

"What's going on here?!" Yunho demanded to know. He hushed his voice to describe the view to Seonghwa, but he stumbled over his words. Everyone was equally disturbed and stood clueless in the intersection.

The fouls ripped the flesh from their victims with their teeth, ever so hungry, although they could never starve. Wooyoung saw some mangled corpses before, but these sterile halls oozed an innocence that was jarringly sullied by the blood.

"It's too fresh," Yeosang pressed out. "Something is happening here, and it's recent."

Numb, Wooyoung stared down the hallway. San never lowered his knife and his boots threaded the darkness.

"This might be our explanation of the stench. If we don't check it out, we might run into a grisly trap," he warned when no one else came after him.

Jongho stood with Seonghwa clutched to his chest. His face was ashen, and he shifted nervously on his bad leg. While a medical sector promised help, this sight didn't inspire him to continue.

"I want to leave," he whispered. Next to him, Yunho nodded with similar terror.

"Kinda not our business to mess with that. This is fucked up."

"But Seonghwa needs the computer somewhere in this building. We can't just go," Wooyoung argued, though he wanted nothing more but to turn tail.

"No foul does this," San confirmed Wooyoung's earlier thoughts. They had no reason to drag off their prey. They ate wherever they caught their victims.

"Whatever it is, it's good at killing," Yeosang winced. Still, he readied his knife to back their shooters together with San.

"Which usually means it can be killed. Let's see what's going on here and then we can still run to figure out another plan," San suggested. They had arrived at the first door, but its little window was splattered with blood from the inside and obscured its innards. With Mingi pressed to its right and San on the left, they nodded at each other. Yeosang and Yunho monitored the other doors while Wooyoung aimed down the corridor. The blood on the walls was harrowing and seemed to narrow in on his vision. When he reminded himself to breathe, the stench of it almost made him tremble enough to lose his balance. 

The door behind them swung open under San's and Mingi's force. They rushed inside with their weapons drawn and Wooyoung slowly backed in their direction to risk a peek as well. His morbid curiosity got the better of him, especially when he heard San gag.

No fighting erupted, just silence as everyone froze in shock once more. A moment later, Jongho stumbled around the corner to puke his guts out behind the door. Seonghwa whispered to him in worry, told him the fungus would have him feeling off and that they still had time, but he didn't see what they saw.

Expectedly with the mess outside, the room was a bloodbath, but it was much more barbarous than Wooyoung expected.

He knew gun wounds. Knife wounds. Even lost limbs that needed a quick patch. He had seen ripped out throats and guts pulled from stomachs by coyotes and fouls.

But this place was a hospital. So seeing the leaning chair that was supposed to save a life doused in red and the medical tools covered in red fingerprints that insinuated whoever was here did anything but help made Wooyoung's stomach churn.

Two corpses fogged up the room in their stench of death. They were both cut from the crotch to the middle of their heads, their insides turned out for easy access. Only one of them was a foul, long dead with the nerves cut, but the other one looked like a perfectly healthy human survivor. Each cut was precise and minor limbs like fingers and ears assembled in two evenly distributed boxes between the two chairs.

Both corpses were strapped down and while the foul might have knocked over that shelf, the desperate handprints across the rest of the furniture had to have been from the woman. Obscenely, her exposed innards stared back at them. No one bothered to dab up the blood gathering in puddles on the floor. No one bothered to clean the utensils.

Wooyoung knew nothing about medicine, but they weren't helping people here. They were slaughtering them.

Mingi returned outside without a desire to find out the details. His haunted eyes hid under his hat, tried to block out the horrors they discovered in a place as unassuming as a radio station.

"The people who did this can't be far," San choked out while Mingi patted Jongho's back and told him to take it slow. If he fainted, the fungus might spread faster.

Queasy, Wooyoung battled the bile rising in his throat. He was eager to shoot anyone who so morbidly ended lives when a simple bullet would get the same results. For what reason?

"It might be for research," Seonghwa piped up, but he didn't see and the rest of them weren't convinced.

Suffering, they looked at each other.

"We are not alone," Yeosang muttered as he glanced around the eerily silent corridors. "So we should make sure no one awaits us in one of these rooms, distressing as it might be."

With gritted teeth and their scarves before their mouths, they went to work.