Moments 2.0 | Sweet Home | Cha Hyun Soo

Chapter 1: Falling

FALLING

*

She was falling.

Moments ago she had been in the hospital, fending off the patients and nurses and doctors turned monsters, and moments ago she had watched her friend become something unrecognizable and bite off a man's head, and then moments after that another person had set her friend on fire.

The image still replayed in her head every time she blinked, bringing bile bubbling up from her stomach into her throat. She had grown up with that girl, they had both even been born in the same hospital on the same day just 2 hours and 36 minutes apart. The same very hospital her friend had ended up dying in.

Yeonha still shook from the horror of it, as she breathed heavily and swallowed.

It had been chaos as people fought and clawed and cried to make it out alive, to reach the helipad of the hospital and into the air ambulances for safety.

Right now there was herself, 3 others and the paramedic driving the heli, strapped in, hovering in the sky and searching for safety.

Soon they would be safe, soon. The two men and woman with her had already started to relax, the worst was over, there were no more monsters, and they had all gotten away safely.

Yeonha could not settle, it was something deep in her bones, the sceptic ingrained in her personality that had been fashioned by her father who taught her to question everything, and it was telling her that the others were wrong, they had gotten away from the hospital outbreak all too easily, and it was too soon to count their blessings and let their guard down.

And she was right, because in a matter of moments everything started to go wrong.

Panic hits her immediately as soon as the helicopter starts to uncontrollably sway.

The paramedic flying the helicopter had become infected, nose and mouth gushing with blood and in a panicked attempt to stop the bloody red fountain he had taken his hands off the controls, causing the helicopter to turn on one side. Then he had passed out, unable to regain control of the flying contraption.

She shrieked, and the others yelled and screamed, there were far too many of them inside the helicopter to be seat-belted and strapped in properly, so a few of them, including Yeonha, were tossed about, flailing as they tried to seek purchase and stabilise themselves.

As Yeonha hits a hard metal structure she groans, an ache echoing through her nerves down to her bones. Tears prick her eyes and her heart thumps in her chest. She grips a flailing strap from a built-in harness with all the will and ferocity she can muster, not caring that it is cutting into her palm. She had to hold on. She had to survive.

"What's going on!"

Another yelled, but their words were swallowed by the sound of wind and propellers.

"The Pilot, he must be infected."

"Does anyone else know how to fly?"

"If I get to the pilot's seat I think I can stabilise us." A woman with a boyish haircut tells the others, a man barks a hurry up then, and just as she unclips her seatbelt to move, the helicopter flips on its opposite side.

Yeonha's stomach jumps into her mouth as the woman is brutally thrown into the glass window, it cracks and smashes and gravity pulls the lady through with it. Her screams echo into the sky and are mirrored by the rest of the people inside the helicopter, who worry for their own lives.

What now what now what now. What happens now?

She hears it echoing in her head, in her ears, repeated over and over leaving the mouths of the others too.

What happens now? They're all going to die that's what.

Silent sobs wrack her shoulders, as she still clutches on for dear life as if the seatbelt would be her saviour even though she knows it was impossible- there was no saviour, this was going to be her end. The helicopter spirals again and she sobs louder.

It was beeping, a blaring alarm that was signalling its emergency state, and to make things worse, it was heading straight for an apartment building, where it would crash and burn and explode and kill not just them but any inhabitants of the complex too. She wouldn't be able to save herself, she wouldn't be able to save anyone. They were going to die and it was going to hurt.

Blood rushes to her head, and then, it gushes out of her nose and her mouth and it drips down her chin, onto her hands. She coughs and splutters, spitting out red through a gasping sob.

"Monster! She's infected too!" The others scream as her symptoms heighten their already panicked states; they're still descending, spiralling out of control and the man nearest to her, the man she had saved from a monster and helped onto the heli moments ago is kicking her, and he keeps kicking her and keeps shouting and yelling, calling her a monster that was going to kill them as if they weren't already sentenced to death and Yeonha as a result loses her grip on the one thing keeping her inside the helicopter.

In the face of imminent death, they didn't care about anyone else, it was every man for himself now. And to them, she was no longer human so she meant less than nothing. She has no choice but to forcefully surrender to the sky.

She was falling.

The deathly grip of gravity causes her stomach to lurch, and she can hear herself screaming, burning her throat raw. She hears a voice that sounds familiar in her head, "Now it's your turn to fly."

Yeonha hits the hard concrete of an apartment rooftop with a squeal and a smack. Pain explodes through her entire being, agonizing and nauseating and like nothing she had felt before. A soundless scream leaves her mouth, the oxygen in her lungs is crushed out of her and black spots taint her vision. She closes her eyes and whimpers.

Her ribs were bruised, cracked and maybe (hopefully not) broken, her shoulder had been pulled from its socket and two of her fingers had bent so far backwards the wrong way they had become broken. She coughs and cries and vomits up the taste of metal on her tongue and she spits it out in a spray of dark red that drips down her chin. Yeonha tries to move but moving hurts, everything hurts-dying hurts.

No.

She wasn't going to die. She wasn't dead. Not yet anyway. Her eyes open slowly to see the world on fire. Well, not the world but the helicopter- it had collided with an apartment building in the near distance, exploding in a horrific mess of fire and screams and debris. She can feel the heat from the flames on her skin, the smoke causes her to cough again and wince from the ache in her chest, it stings her eyes so she can barely see anything through streams of tears, and the explosion leaves her with a rattle and ringing sound in her ears that she hopes isn't permanent damage. She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie and manages to focus through her blurry vision to see a body on fire falling through the sky.

No survivors.

Only her.

She wasn't going to let herself be added to the death toll. With renewed vigour, she tries to move. First, she rolled on the side of hers that was the least worse for wear, feeling too fragile to stand as of yet, but still, she needed to find out what she could from her surroundings.

She scanned the area as far as her eyes could stretch but no bodies visible to her eyes appeared to be living. There were no sounds of life either, no cars, no other helicopters in the skies that had come to collect any survivors, but she notices at last that this rooftop had a door, a way inside the building at least.

With a grimace, Yeonha returns to herself.

No saviour, so looks like it was down to herself to keep going then.

Shakily she drags herself onto her knees. It takes time because every movement makes her head pound, makes her side feel like it's being stabbed and her stomach twists with nausea. Yeonha swallows down the urge to vomit and tries to keep focused on her goals- fix her fingers and her arm, then head to the door.

She was no stranger to things like broken bones, sprains and dislocations; it came with the territory as a gymnast, if you weren't careful, if you miscalculated your force, or height, or angle and you fell; then you would get yourself hurt. Her profession had caused many trips to the hospital, an appointment with the physio to check up on a collarbone injury had been the reason why Yeonha was at the hospital during the monster outbreak, but it was her father who had taught her how to reset a dislocation, during one hiking adventure where she had slipped and fell when she was 14.

She could never forget that moment, she had cried and wailed so much asking her dad to help her, and he had simply said sometimes you must learn to help yourself. Then he told her to listen carefully and talked her through how to pop her shoulder back into place.

Her breath leaves her lips in short shallow pants.

"Okay. Yeonha, this is going to hurt." She hears him say and she sniffles trying to stop her tears."Hold your wrist." She wraps her shaky unbroken fingers around her wrist."Now, pull and straighten your arm." She braces herself and bites her lip, hot tears leaking down her face as she screeches through gritted teeth. The ball of her arm bone slips back into place. 14-year-old Yeonha had hated her father after that day and refused to talk to him for almost a whole month, but now 18-year-old Yeonha was rather thankful. "Thanks, Dad." She breathes out as she braces once again to bend her two broken fingers straighter.

Another spell of dizziness and pain hits her and she cries out once again, swaying as her vision becomes dark around the edges, overwhelmed by it and exhausted, she collapses.

'Just a moment' She tells herself, she just needs another moment to compose herself and then she'd be okay enough to head inside and find people. She needs more than a moment though, but she doesn't allow herself any more time than the amount it takes her to tear off some fabric from the hem of her shirt to wrap up her injured fingers, because if she stopped for more than a moment then she would have to face the fact that she was infected, that the Yeonha she was trying so hard to save would soon become a monster.