Behind me, back in my office, glass crashed and shattered.
Concrete and mortar and plaster shot through my open office door, spraying across the tiles and stinging my calves.
I shoved myself back to my feet, t
hroat closing, eyes tearing. Blood roared in my ears as I tried to move fast, but I felt my right knee give with a tearing agony.
Someone — or something — behind me let out a roar like a rabid bull.
“Shit. Shit. Shit!” I dragged my bad leg down the admissions hallway, past all the closed doors and darkened windows. My mind focused on the hospital’s back door, on the cold metal handle that would let me out into the snowy night.
John Doe shouted something in a language I had known before, but didn’t remember.
What the fuck is happening here? To me. To him!
I looked over my shoulder, and silvery light almost blinded me.
Fire poured out of my office door in sharp, massive jets, so big they almost reached me.
I barely got my face turned away before I almost lost my eyebrows. My skin ached from the heat as I fell forwards, one limping step at a time. I smelled burning hair. My own. Thick, sulphurous clouds made me choke as I tried to breathe, and each time my bad knee tried to flex, I let out a scream.
John Doe.
No way had he survived that explosion of fire.
But he had to.
I didn’t want him to be dead.
I didn’t want to die.
That friggin’ door seemed like a mile away, even though it was less than ten feet now.
Fireballs streaked past me on both sides. Door facings splintered. Sprinklers went off, pulsing with the fast, hard beat of my heart.
I lurched forwards, slipped again, banged my hurt knee on the tile floor, and yelped.
Something huge and flaming and bellowing soared over my head and slammed to its feet right in front of me, blocking my path to the back door.
Oh God. It has gigantic, scaly feet.
Not real. I had to be hallucinating.
Boom, said my dead father’s voice. Here come the monsters.
Claws the size of butcher knives gouged into the tiles, grating so loud they blotted out the hospital’s fire alarm.
My heart stopped beating, and my breathing stopped too. My chest squeezed in on itself as I looked up into a tower of fire with scaly arms and clawed paws. Unnatural black-coal eyes burned with hungry hatred, and the thing grabbed for me.
I screamed, dropped, and rolled away from it.
Smoke choked me.
I couldn’t see.
I used the hallway wall to pull myself up again and raised my arms in defensive posture.
No way out of the back door. If I ran the other way, there was only an elevator, and I might lead the thing to the patient floors.