Hospital Survival Horror

So I am in a hospital for an undefined reason. Not because I'm sick or anything, I'm fucking invulnerable and a golden example of manly health and strength. That's why I'm in the waiting room. There's people being led into the back room to be put in the hyperbolic time chamber or some shit so they can heal for a year while I wait a mere 8 hours in a room full of whiners.

It's pretty easy to pick out the sickies of the bunch, the ones waiting to be given IV's full of rejuv potions. They're all old, desperate-looking folk with sunken eyes and ragged claws from digging in the mines for decades.

But that's not important because, as I was taking an elevator ride up to the fourth floor, I suddenly got some very powerful Left 4 Dead "No Mercy" flashbacks. For those not into such things, "No Mercy" is the campaign which takes place mostly in a large inner-city hospital. Standing there alone in the elevator, waiting for the doors to open, I had the sudden shock at realizing that I was totally unarmed. I don't even have a goddamn pocket knife, who knows what the hell was lying in front of me.

Of course zombies are stupid fairyland shit, but zombie fear is based on the very realistic fear of epidemics. What are you going to do if you wake up in a hospital and find dozens of infected doctors, nurses and patients crawling on the ground and vomiting their internal organs? How do you get out of there without getting infected blood, vomit or shit on you? What about the crazies whose mental states have been compromised, and they run through the halls babbling nonsense and scratching at you with their horrible bloody fingers? Which leads right back around to zombie fear, which makes the whole thing seem stupid.

But it might only be a matter of time before an actual, viable epidemic (Possibly Airborne or "Double" AIDS) hits a populated city and the hospitals become swarming cauldrons of horrifying, filthy death. Just the thing to wonder about the next time you go to the hospital because you faceplanted for a youtube video, you spaz.