The chaos in the hospital was dying down.

  It wasn’t clear if that meant people were beginning to calm or if it meant that everyone was leaving. Whatever it meant, the silence was almost deafening as I pulled myself up using the arms of the walker.

  I steadied myself as best I could and then let off the breaks. I began to meander my way towards the door and thankfully I didn’t fall on the way. It was slow going but I finally made it out and into the mostly empty hallway.

  The hallway was uncomfortably empty.

  To the right there were a few people moving about at the end. To the left was a sign that said ‘exit’ and so I started making my way in that direction.

  The nurse’s station was left unmanned, the phone ringing endlessly while the radios squawked at each other. As I made my way to the exit I realized that, outside of a few patients, the rooms were mostly empty as well.

  In one room I could hear a hissing sound as some machine pumped air into someone’s lungs. The faint beeping from the monitors could be heard in between the hissing. When I glanced inside the room, I saw that the person was asleep or unconscious but I didn’t stop.

  I couldn’t help them even if I had both my legs working. As I continued on, I hoped someone would come for them soon.

  As I neared the exit a handful of nurses came rushing into the ward. They didn’t give me a single glance as they moved down the hall. One of them went into the room of the person that was doing their best Darth Vader impression and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Out of the ward there was a kiosk showing a map of the floor I was on. I was on the 2nd floor and close to the elevator. I rushed a little to get over to it and abused the call button.

  It felt like the thing took 3 business days to reach my floor. I had no idea what hospital I was in, only that it was smaller than the ones I was familiar with back in LA.

  The elevator took me down to the first floor and I was thankful that there were finally other humans. People were still moving around in a rush which felt loud against the absence of chaos that had been on the floor I had just left.

  I was thankful it felt at least somewhat like a normal hospital as I made my way to the exit. People were staring at me and at first, I wasn’t sure why.

  It took a moment for me to remember that not only was I still wearing just the paper smock they put me in, but I hadn’t bothered to even try to tie the back up.

  Even with an alien invasion, seeing a bloody, half-crazed man with his ass hanging out could still cause a stir. I was about to start closing up the back when I saw an armed security guard coming my way.

  “I’m just heading outside to get some air,” I said, not wanting to waste any time. I managed to get the walker moving again just as the security guard took a step to block me.

  “We can’t let you leave sir. We were given strict orders to keep people on site for now. What happened to your wrists?” He asked.

  Now that this guy was almost on top of me I could see how absolutely massive he was. I was pretty tall at 6 foot 4 but this guy had a good handful of inches on me. And as many pounds. It wasn’t all muscle, but it was enough to give me pause.

  “Look man, I’m just trying to get to my son. The world is bonkers right now. I would think that at the moment, I am the least of anyone’s problems,” I said, trying to keep some distance.

  It was tough with my leg not cooperating but I felt ready to risk running if I had to. I was able to put a little more weight on it now that I had been moving around, and I was feeling squirrelly.

  It was probably adrenaline that was keeping me upright and I was fully ready to lean into that.

  “I get what you are saying but we need you to head back upstairs,” he said, moving towards me.

  “I can assure you, I’m not heading back up there,” I said, not moving. “Not until I know for sure my son is ok. I can’t believe this is even happening right now,” I said more to myself than to him.

  He took another step closer, trying to be slow about it like I would bolt at any moment. “We can find out for you. We just need you to go back upstairs.”

  “Dude, the fucking earth has been invaded by aliens that are scooping people up with their weird little laser claw game bullshit. Why are you hassling me right now?” My voice cracked with mania. “Over what? Do you even know? Just doing your job? Does this feel reasonable to you?”

  He made a move towards me and I backed up. It had been years, but I used to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and without thinking I felt myself ease into that to keep some space between us. The walker became a focal point while I kept my body distant, but ready.

  I wasn’t sure, exactly, what I would even be able to do if he really wanted to come at me. Still, there was no chance I was about to give up after everything it took for me to get this far.

  “Don’t make this a thing man,” the big guy said.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I didn’t bother to look for a name badge. My vision was on him but my focus was on the door not far behind him. “Let’s just get you in your room and we will figure out where your son is, ok?”

  He was keeping his voice calm and was trying to de-escalate. I appreciated what he was doing. Not everyone in a position like this, with everything going on, would be putting in this kind of effort. It also pissed me off, because seriously - read the fucking room.

  It felt obvious he was about to make a move when he feigned a reach towards my left side but suddenly moved to grab me on the right. Instead of either of those things working out for him, he caught the walker in his gut and legs.

  This caused him to double over onto the walker and sort of teeter in the air. There was the briefest of comical moments where his face was full of confusion and surprise as he slowly tipped over towards the ground.

  As he toppled, I used my hip on the walker and helped him finish his forward momentum. He landed hard on the side of his head and face and I winced. With an angry grunt the rest of him hit the ground in a heap, while the walker flew away from him.

  I lost my footing and decided to just go with it into a forward fall. This was not some sort of martial arts move, I just gave up on trying to stay standing. My weight carried me into the fallen security guard, my eyes on the only thing that could really tip this whole thing one way or the other.

  His gun.

  Somewhere in the ruckus it had spun away from him and sat a few feet away.

  He saw what I was going for and began scrambling to do the same. He tried to push me away from him with his legs, but our position on the ground was awkward. He was slower than me, despite my condition, but he was a hell of a lot bigger.

  His boot caught my calf, and I felt more stitches break open. With a groan I half wiggled, half rolled my way towards the gun again. Our bodies collided once more and with renewed effort he was able to push me away harder.

  I yelled in pain as we came apart and then scrambled to our feet – or foot in my case. I had my weight on my right leg since my left was a useless mess. Blood poured out of the wound, but the pain seemed to energize me.

  Both of our faces were a mask of shock as we realized at the same time that I had come away with the gun. For the briefest of moments, I looked at it like it was something I had never seen before.

  The guard made a step towards me and I snapped the gun up.

  “Put your hands up and step the fuck away!” I screamed at him.

  I hadn’t even seen a gun in years, let alone held one. I still remembered where the safety was located and knew some basics of gun control but the thing felt heavy and foreign in my hands.

  I clicked the safety off as the security guard was about to take a step towards me. With a wave of the barrel, I gestured to the big guy to stay back.

  “I’m going to leave this hospital so I can go find my son!” I shouted, sweeping the gun in an arch in front of me.

  I had the attention of everyone in the lobby now.

  “I’m not sure if you have noticed but there is a fucking ALIEN INVASION happening and my son’s school was sucked up by one of those ships. I need to go see if he somehow made it out of there before that happened,” I gestured with the gun towards the door.

  “Now, I suggest you regroup and reconsider your fucking life priorities from here on out. This is crazy work trying to keep me here with all that shit going on out there. Now step the fuck back!”

  I moved the gun towards a new security guard that had come up on my left trying to be sneaky. He took a step back. This guard wasn’t armed with a gun, but I could see he had his hand on a taser attached to his belt.

  I gestured at his hand with the gun and he moved it away. This new guard was much smaller than me, but either way I couldn’t handle two of these guys if they both made a move towards me.

  “You get the fuck over there,” I said, directing him towards the bigger guard with my gun.

  The new guy complied, moving slowly towards the other guard. I glanced quickly to my left and right trying to use my peripheral vision as best I could.

  My eyesight was incredibly bad on the best of days, but currently a lot of things were a blur that usually weren't. The combo of possible concussion, massive hangover, and lack of contacts or glasses made anything more than a few feet away a total mess

  “You really want to do this right now?” I had an edge to my voice I didn’t really recognize. “This is how you want to spend the last few minutes of whatever the fuck any of this is?”

  "LOOK AT ME!” I screamed. “I’m a fucking mess and I’m still doing everything I can go get to my people. What the fuck are you doing here?”

  There was a long pause where no one moved.

  “You know what, you’re right,” the larger guard said, breaking the silence. “Fuck this. I’m going to be with my family,” he said.

  His arms wwnt slack before he turned to walk towards the door.

  The other guard seemed to take that as his cue and backed off, giving me a wide berth. I hobble-hopped my way to the fallen walker, blood trailing as I went.

  One of the people that had been in the area came over and helped me stand the walker up. They had a look of compassion and fear in their eyes as they did. I nodded at them like it was some sort of Hallmark commercial and turned towards the door.

  It was dead silent as I made my way out the sliding glass doors, the only sound the swooshing they made. My heart was thrashing in my chest like it was trying to make its own escape.

  The air outside smelled of fresh rain and garbage and the city. It was the best thing I’d ever taken into my lungs. The feeling was short lived as it hit me that I didn’t have a car or even access to one.

  There was no way I was going to make it far in the half-naked, half crazy condition I was in - walker or not.

  A shuttle was parked a little way down the street and I moved towards it. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to talk the driver into taking me anywhere. The fact I was carrying a gun in the state I was in would probably help me at least get some keys.

  I had only taken two steps when I felt the air crackle with some sort of energy like my entire body was covered in static. I felt my hair stand on end and felt it tickling my eyes.

  The throb in my leg screamed as little bolts of pain caressed my skin. I looked around frantically, trying to determine what could be causing this to happen. My paper smock started to rise up like I was standing on an air duct.

  Above me I heard a loud hum that sounded like a massive drone flying overhead. Immediately I knew exactly what that sound was before I looked up. Parked above the hospital, taking up the entire sky, was one of the alien spaceships.

  My eyes grew wide as I saw the weird drones shoot out, creating the cone pattern with their laser spray. The crackling of energy increased and amplified another sound I was hearing – some sort of rushing noise like a giant wind tunnel.

  It was the most baffling war of sounds I had ever heard and it vibrated throughout my entire body. I realized what it was and couldn’t help but smirk a bit.

  “Jesus Christ, they really do suck everything up with a vacuum,” I said as the world went a familiar black.