A State Of Sin Amsterdam Occult Series Book Two, Mark Hobson [notion reading list txt] 📗

He punched the button that opened the door and raced through. He made for the exit just opposite, which would take him back out into the hallway beyond, but on the way he grabbed at anything he could find to impede the crowd. He flung a chair in his wake, the table, a bunch of the urine bottles, boxes of supplies, and then just as he was passing through the next door he scooped up the heavy oxygen cylinder propped up in the corner.

Pieter used his shoulder to barge through the swing door and he quickly spun and pushed it shut again, catching a quick glimpse through the crack as he did so, seeing the seething and spitting crowd sprinting towards him.

Wedging the door shut with his foot, he slid the oxygen cylinder through the large door handle and pushed it all the way in, sliding it past the door frame so that it bridged the gap between the edge of the door and the door jam. It was not a moment too soon, for a second later and the crowd hit the other side of the door, and it shuddered and bulged outwards at the impact.

Pieter stepped away, expecting it to cave in as they pushed and shoved and threw themselves bodily at the door, thumping the wood and shouting in anger, but it held, the cylinder acting as a huge bolt and holding it shut fast.

He was shaking and hardly able to get his breath, and his shoulder stung where the boy had bitten him and he could feel blood trickling down the back of his shirt, and he couldn’t think straight.

What the hell? his muddled mind asked. This was crazy beyond words. Who were these people, and what had they had done to them?

The hand holding the gun started to tremble as the shock began to course through his system, and he grabbed his wrist with the other hand to steady it.

He moved back from the door. He needed to get a grip, otherwise he would soon be crawling around on his hands and knees like a quivering wreck.

He needed to think fast.

Suddenly, the banging and gargled shouting on the other side of the door ceased, and a terrible silence stretched the atmosphere so taut that Pieter held his breath.

Then there was a loud shattering of glass somewhere to his left, followed by a tearing of metal, and moments later the rush of many feet heading his way.

Damn. They must have found another way out of the anteroom, perhaps through one of the theatres.

He didn’t stop to think about it any further, but turned and fled. He raced around the corner, back into the main hallway the way he had come, and down the long passage. He risked the briefest of glances back over his shoulder and instantly wished that he hadn’t. Behind him came maybe a dozen of the patients, their pyjamas flapping and their bare feet slapping hard on the floor, faces contorted with hatred. With their empty eye sockets somehow ‘seeing’ him.

A shaky cry of fear involuntarily escaped from between his lips, adding to the general discord of strangled and incoherent voices coming from his pursuers.

Pieter sprinted by the doors leading to the aftercare ward – no escape that way.

The others were gaining on him. He didn’t need to look to see that. They were so fast, inhumanly quick.

A few moments later and the door to the consultation room flashed past, and then he plunged headlong into the gloomy front-half of the clinic, and felt the crunch of the spilled tablets under his shoes as he entered the curved glass-covered passageway.

Pieter made a snap decision then. He had to slow them, otherwise they would be on him in seconds. So he spun around at the end of the glass corridor, and aimed the gun at the nearest running figures, and holding it in both hands he squeezed the trigger twice.

Both shots found their targets, and two men flew back from the impact of the rounds hitting their bodies. One bounced off the floor, causing those behind to stumble and fall, but the other was sent crashing through the glass wall, bringing half of the passageway cascading down in a shower of tiny glass shards. They glittered and fell on the mob, cutting and lacerating their bare arms and feet and bringing howls of pain from them.

Pieter, being at the end of the glass passageway, was mostly protected from the falling daggers, but he still flung up an arm to protect his eyes from any flying splinters. When he looked again he saw with no small amount of satisfaction that the gunshots, together with the falling bodies and shattered passage, had brought the pursuing mob to a halt as they stumbled around. It had brought him a few seconds grace, and so he turned and fled for his life.

On he went, running hell for leather, skirting around the abandoned wheelchair, his breathing coming in loud and harsh rasps.

More shouting echoed down the hallway as they once again picked up the chase, but now Pieter was bursting out into the foyer area, going by the comfy seats and then the deserted reception desk, praying that the front doors hadn’t slid shut and locked themselves.

To his relief, he saw they were still wide open, and the cold air wafting in gave him an extra burst of energy, and he charged through and out into the car park.

His car was parked in the shadow of one of the trees edging the large car park and now he regretted having parked so far from the entrance, for it meant a long run across the open space. There was nothing he could do about that now, and so he raced along the path leading over the frosted lawn, slipping and sliding through the thin covering of snow. Behind him, the patients flowed out of the clinic like a raging river.

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