Silent Hill fic: Outbreak - Chapter 2: Paul

[mistressofmuses]

In chapter 2: Search and rescue worker Paul begins to get sick.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Paul did not feel well.

He figured the stress of spending all of Tuesday and Wednesday searching for those missing boys had done him no favors. The lake air was chilly by this point in the season, and even if you couldn’t truly “catch” a cold just by being cold, it didn’t help your immune system any.

So Thursday he shut off his 6:15 alarm without getting out of bed, figuring he’d sit out the continuing search. He felt a twinge of guilt. Two missing persons should outweigh a cold, but even so…

He rolled back over in bed, half-listening for Maddie. His daughter seemed to be sleeping in, blessedly, giving him the opportunity to do the same. If he was staying home today, he didn’t have to drag her out of bed and over to her aunt’s house for the day. Though maybe he could have Shelley come pick her up in the afternoon, just to give him a chance at extra sleep…

---

The sound of the TV blaring a too-loud kid’s show woke him around 10:30. Why did every cartoon character have to speak in a shout?

He pulled himself out of bed, and decided it was definitely a good thing he hadn’t volunteered to keep going with the search and rescue. He probably would have fallen overboard if his trouble standing up was any indication.

He shrugged his robe on over his pajama pants and staggered into the living room.

Maddie was on the floor in front of the TV, eating cereal from a bowl in her lap.

Paul headed straight for the kitchen. “Mornin’ kiddo,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said, eyes not leaving the screen.

“Sleep all right?” he asked as he hit the brew button on the coffee maker.

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.”

He put the cereal box she’d left on the counter away, but at least she’d gotten the milk back into the fridge.

He stumbled into the bathroom to take a mega-dose of Dayquil, washed down with a little paper cup of water from the sink. Staring in the mirror, he did, in fact, look as much like shit as he felt.

He washed his face and hoped the Dayquil would knock this crud out. At a guess he had a low fever, plus the sniffles, and some chest pressure that he really hoped wasn’t impending bronchitis. He shook his head, and winced when the motion made his sinuses throb.

By the time he made it back to the kitchen, the little coffee maker had done its thing, and he poured himself a mug. Then he joined Maddie in the living room. He should have told her to sit on the couch instead of so close to the screen, but he shrugged it off and leaned back into the couch cushions. The coffee was hot enough to scald his throat.

Whatever Maddie was watching wasn’t of too much interest to him, and he couldn’t quite summon up the energy to fake it very convincingly. Still, it was easy to smile when she laughed uproariously at something, and he waited for the Dayquil to kick in.

---

He did end up asking Shelley to come get Maddie for a few hours so he could sleep. When she saw how sick Paul looked, she offered to make it a sleepover instead. Maddie packed a quick overnight bag, and Paul thanked his sister in law profusely, promising to call Maddie to say goodnight.

He couldn’t even make it to the bed, and instead he just crashed on the couch.

---

He was running. The fog was thick, blocking most of the island from view, but he knew he had to keep going. If he reached the shore, he could find the boat, and then…

He tripped over an exposed root, landing flat on his face. He got to his hands and knees, wiping wet sand away from his eyes, trying to refocus on his goal. He was about to get up when the coughing started.

It was the deep, horrible hacking that made every muscle in his sides and chest hurt, like his body was desperate to get something out. He couldn’t stop long enough even to get air. Paul collapsed back to the ground, rolling onto his side. The coughs made his whole body convulse, and he gagged, unable to breathe in enough to even cough it back out. Was it true that coughing too hard could crack your ribs?

As the fit subsided, he realized that worse than slowing him down, it would attract… whatever that thing was. What was out there? Was something out there? Paul couldn’t remember having seen anything. And yet something told him that he should be frightened. That he needed to run.

He pulled himself to his feet, and took off toward the shoreline again, stumbling, but somehow staying upright. The coughing fit had taken a toll.

Something made noise ahead of him. Paul stopped. Was that water against the shore? Or had it been footsteps across the sand? A growl? He wasn’t sure. Couldn’t be sure.

Then the crushing dread. He didn’t know what it was, and it didn’t matter. It couldn’t find him, it couldn’t get to him.

He had to hide.

Turning, he stumbled back into the trees, praying whatever it was wouldn’t follow.

The cough tore its way up through his ribs, his chest, his throat again. He wiped his mouth, and his hand came away bloody.

---

Paul woke up coughing, the fit so bad he tumbled off the couch and to the floor, legs caught in the blanket he’d wrapped himself in. He was momentarily disoriented, gasping for breath on the living room floor. It was surprising not to see blood when he wiped his mouth.

Shakily, he got back up onto the couch. Fevers always did weird shit to his dreams, but with the addition of this disturbing missing persons case and the bloodstained campsite, there was plenty of ammunition to give him some real nightmares.

After that, he didn’t want to go back to sleep, just in case he found himself back in that dream.

He called Melissa around dinnertime, though he couldn’t stomach the thought of food. She’d had a day full of meetings and seminars, but had just finished dinner at the hotel. She was at some mid-week convention that her company had sent her to. Friday was the last day, and she’d be flying back to Maine on Saturday morning. She promised to make him some soup if he wasn’t feeling better by then, and told him to get to the doctor if he felt worse the next morning.

Paul called his daughter to tell her goodnight, and then he choked down an imprecisely measured gulp of Nyquil, hoping it’d knock him out enough to not dream so much.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Friday was not much of an improvement, though Shelley was happy to keep Maddie around for most of the day.

By the afternoon, Paul was even feeling a bit better, though maybe it was just that the cold meds finally seemed to be doing some symptom management. It was enough to keep him from trying to get in to see the doctor, at any rate.

He’d always hated doctors. It was irrational, but the sterile environment of a doctor’s office always made him uncomfortable. He was grateful for doctors, as anyone engaged with search and rescue would be; he’d called plenty of EMTs and sent plenty of people to the hospital to be treated for injuries, for exposure… He knew they saved lives.

Didn’t mean he enjoyed visiting them himself.

Shelley called late that afternoon and offered to keep Maddie an extra night, but Paul declined. He truthfully told her that he was feeling much better. Plus, Melissa would be back on Saturday morning, and she’d be sad if Maddie wasn’t there when she got in.

By evening, he was able to pull together a passable meal of macaroni and cheese and bacon for himself and Maddie, which they ate in front of the TV. He let Maddie pick a movie for them to watch. He mostly tuned it out, since it felt like the hundredth time he’d watched the same little CG fish mount a rescue for another little CG fish. Still, he knew the right parts to laugh at, and quoted all the right lines back to his daughter, so it kept her happy until bedtime.

They called Melissa, and she talked to Maddie for a bit, and promised she’d be back on the earliest flight she could.

Paul fell into bed just after he tucked his daughter in. The combination of cold meds seemed to be keeping the worst of it at bay, but he was exhausted.

---

Saturday, August 27, 2016

The front door closing woke him up. He squinted at the clock in the dark bedroom. 9:26. He’d been asleep for more than an hour, so that had to be AM.

Struggling upright, he staggered to the open bedroom door. Relief flooded him when he recognized Melissa’s footsteps in the living room. “Hey, honey.”

She jumped, but rushed the last few feet to hug him.

Almost immediately after, she rushed him back to bed. The progress made toward feeling better seemed to have been lost overnight, and his fever was back up.

This time, sleep eluded him. He tossed and turned, and was stuck in a miserable half-waking, half-sleeping feverish state for hours.

Finally he got up out of bed, wrapping his robe around himself. The house was entirely quiet, and he assumed that Melissa must have taken Maddie out for a while. He tried to flick the hallway light on, but nothing happened. He shrugged off the burned-out bulb, hoping he’d remember to fix it as soon as he was safe to stand on a stepstool.

The curtains were drawn in the living room, which he was grateful for. They let in a little dim light, but not enough to be blinding and stoke his headache to full strength. The television was playing nothing but static. He hadn’t known TVs did static like that anymore. Maddie must have shut the DVD player off without switching it back to the cable or something.

He reached over to grab the remote to turn it off when he heard something from the kitchen. A scuffling, weird noise. Not like a person, and they didn’t have any pets. Frowning, he stepped toward the other room, his illness-fogged brain worrying that somehow a cat or a raccoon had gotten inside.

He reached around the corner to switch the kitchen light on, staying clear of the door in case there was an animal that ran. Again, nothing happened at the flip of the switch. Paul frowned. Maybe a tripped breaker? The TV had been on, so they clearly had power.

Whatever was in the kitchen grunted. Paul stepped back. It didn’t sound like a cat.

He moved as quickly as he could back into the living room, digging around in the end table drawer for the flashlight. It was one of those big maglite things that could double as a weapon.

He steeled himself, and stepped to the kitchen doorway, flicking the flashlight on and pinning a beam on whatever was in there.

Whatever it was, it was bigger than he’d thought. It was facing away from him, hunched over something on the floor. It was about the size of a kneeling person, low to the ground, though it seemed more crouched than kneeling. Its skin was white and slimy looking, swollen and misshapen flesh shot through with blue-purple veins. It gave the impression of a water-logged corpse.

That was all Paul saw before he stumbled backwards, thudding into the opposite wall, his flashlight beam waving wildly.

The thing started to turn, and Paul barely got a glimpse of its face, more just the impression that the area where its mouth should have been was covered in blood.

Paul ran, unsure whether he should barricade himself in the bedroom or go for the front door, and heard the scrabbling noise of the thing chasing after him.

A clatter woke him, the perfectly mundane sound of a pan being set in the sink.

Paul was breathing hard, and he clawed a blanket away from his neck where it had tangled. At first he thought the monster must be outside the room, but as he caught his breath he realized it had been a nightmare.

Just a nightmare.

He shoved himself out of the bed, terrified of falling back asleep and into the dream. He froze.

His pillow was covered in blood.

He wiped his hand across his face, and it came away streaked with blood. His first thought was that he must have coughed it up, but no. Just a damn nosebleed. He grabbed a handful of tissues and held them to his face, heading to the bathroom to clean up.

He was finally half able to relax as he heard more sounds of Melissa in the kitchen. Nothing like the shambling monster thing he’d heard in his dream.

“Are you okay?” Maddie asked as he walked through the living room. She’d been on the couch, reading, but looked up when he walked in, and had probably seen the bloody tissues.

“Fine, sweetie,” he said, muffled a bit.

Reaching the bathroom, he turned the hot water on in the sink and leaned over, tossing the bloody tissues in the trash. His nose was still dripping. Ugh, of course it was a bad nosebleed.

Melissa poked her head in to check on him.

“Oh jeez, hon. I’ll get you a clean shirt.”

---

A good face wash and a clean shirt later, and Melissa got him set in the corner of the couch, wrapped in a blanket and holding a hot mug of clear soup.

She sat next to him, gently rubbing one of his shoulders through the blanket. Maddie was off in her room, playing.

Before he even realized he intended to, he started telling Melissa all about his nightmares, and then about the search and rescue. She’d known he had been on the search, and that they’d found something, but he hadn’t gone into detail.

Melissa just listened while he talked, nodding occasionally, but not interrupting.

“Considering what we found… I don’t think that those boys are alive anymore. They’re still looking, but they haven’t found anything else. But blood at the site, no items missing… I can’t imagine what happened.”

When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, she spoke up. “Who knows? But at least you found something. That’s better than having no leads at all, isn’t it? Even if it doesn’t point to anything good. They always say closure is better than just not knowing.”

“But there’s not even any closure. Not really. The boys are still missing. And I can’t even help look for them. I feel… like I should be. Like I need to go back out there.”

“You did what you could, Paul,” she said. “The police will do the rest. It’s not your responsibility, and you can’t beat yourself up over it. That’s probably why you’re having nightmares.”

“Yeah.” He fell silent for a while, sipping at his soup.

“Hon, I really think you need to go to the doctor,” Melissa said after a minute of silence.

“What? Why?”

She rolled her eyes in good-natured over-exaggeration. “Oh, I don’t know. It looks like you might be coming down with a cold or something.”

He shook his head. “It’s fine. The search on Wednesday just kicked my immune system in the ass. It’ll pass.”

“You’re worse today than you sounded on the phone Thursday, and you sounded rough then.”

He shrugged, well aware of how pathetic the motion probably looked. “It always gets worse before it gets better,” he said lamely.

“Or it gets worse before it gets even worse.”

“And if it gets even worse, I’ll go, okay? No point in going in just so they can tell me it’s a virus that I need to wait out. Or my favorite, that it’ll clear up in seven days on its own, but if I take some antibiotics, it might be gone in a week.”

She gave him a wry half smile. “All right. Lots of fluids, keep taking your cold meds, and drink more soup. And try to get more sleep, okay? If you get any worse, I’m dragging you to the ER myself.”

“Fair enough. I think I’ll maybe try to sleep out here, if that won’t bother you. Might not help, but at least I won’t kick you when I’m fighting with the blanket.”

“Sure, love.” She patted his knee. “Try to get some rest. I’ll keep Maddie quiet. Let me know if you need anything, all right?”

He nodded, and leaned back, hoping he’d be able to doze.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Paul wanted to kick himself when Sunday morning, Maddie was sniffling too. He just hoped it would clear up in time for the first day of school on Wednesday.

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