The beast growled at Tom. Tom moved his hand to his shotgun, only to not feel it. He
looked down, and saw that his gun had been knocked away from him several feet away
when Mark first fell over.
A loud burst rang out in the hallway, and the beast recoiled. Several more, each time the
wolf wimpered and shuddered. Gunshots. The wolf collapsed in a heap, one of the bullets
had struck him right between the eyes. Tom looked to where the shots were coming
from. It was a police officer, his weapon still drawn.
"Are you bit??" He directed at Tom.
"What?"
"Did he bite you?" The policeman asked, lowering his weapon, walking towards Tom.
"'Cause if he did, we've got ourselves a problem."
"Uh, no.. No. He didn't. What the fuck is going on?"
"You first. What are you doing here? All civilians have been advised to stay indoors."
"Okay, calm down. My name is Major Tom Danielson, I work for the government." Tom
fished his ID out of his pocket, offering it to the officer. He looks it over.
"Alright, we could use your help." The officer said, handing the ID back to Tom.
"What's going on?" Tom asked, standing to his feet, reaching to retrieve his shotgun.
"Werewolves, for lack of a better way to explain it."
"Werewolves?"
Tom looked back at Mark. Already, his dead body was reverting back to human form.
"My God.. How is this possible?" Tom asked.
"No one knows, this all started about an hour and a half ago with the attack downtown.
We responded, but the severity of the attack and vague witness accounts made things
worse than we were led to believe. We brought some of the more wounded ones back
here, while others were treated on site. The ones we brought back, they.. They
transformed shortly after arriving."
"I see. What happened?"
"There was confusion, and we lost more people. We took a few of the monsters down,
but we tried to get as many people back into the building as we could. We've set up a base
in the cafeteria."
"Alright, let's get back there."
The officer nodded, and led Tom down the hallway. There were signs of battle
everywhere. Each new corridor they entered presented the now familiar signs.. Bodies,
blood, bullet holes.
"Do you have a phone on you, officer?" Tom asked him.
"No, just my radio. There are phones down in the cafeteria."
"Right."
Approaching the cafeteria door, the officer shouted. "Hey, it's me. I've got one."
From behind the door, something was being moved. Then, the door opened. A young
woman in hospital scrubs peered out at them.
"Officer, thank God you're okay." She said, letting them pass inside.
Tom looked around the rather small cafeteria. There were twenty, maybe thirty people
inside, mostly hospital staff.
"Are you the only officer here?" Tom asked the officer.
The officer was silent. Tom looked at his name, J. Ash.
"Ash. Are you the only officer here?"
"Yes. There were only four of us to begin with, we didn't expect any of this to happen."
"You left all these people alone, defenseless?"
"Excuse me, we're not so helpless." The woman in the hospital scrubs interrupted,
displaying a handgun she was carrying, probably taken from one of the dead police
officers.
"Can you use that?" Tom asked her.
"Of course." She released the magazine, and popped it back in.
Tom moved to a window, looking outside.
"Ash, what's the situation out there? Is backup coming?"
"Yea. They were supposed to be here by now, that's what I was looking for when I found
you."