Never Grow Up

You're with Maryam on the old Cairo-Dakar highway. Maryam thanks you for not turning her in when you caught her sneaking out. She promises to explain everything. For now, you need to keep ahead of this sandstorm and make for a small town ahead. She spots movement in the town square through the binoculars. It's a teenage boy and he's running from zombies. You need to help him!

The boy punches through a zombie's head – his arm is metal! He misses the next one and his arm gets stuck. Maryam helps fend off the zoms with a tyre iron and when they're gone, the boy extracts his arm and introduces himself as Karim. He met Maryam a long time ago. Maryam confesses that she used to be a children's television presenter before the apocalypse. She has a prosthetic leg and had the idea to film in a hospital fitting advanced prosthetics. They were interviewing kids over a video call when the zombies came and she thought they'd all died. The hospital was supposedly overrun but she heard a faint signal over comms and wanted to investigate. Karim and the other survivors scavenged parts to get comms working again. Unfortunately, there are more zombies. A lot of them were hospital patients receiving special treatments, and it makes them fast and strong zombies. Run!

You enter the hospital building and nearly set off a bear trap set up in the lobby! Karim says there's space to slip between the traps, but the zombies will run straight into them. Some of the zombies are caught but others are moving faster than the traps can close. Karim says those are the former VIP patients, rich and powerful people who paid for the best bionics. You'll need to run faster!

Karim directs you to a hidden door that leads to the paediatrics unit. It's full of kids Maryam recognises from her television show. Karim says they hid in the vents and scavenged supplies. A girl named Arwa built the radio but she thought the signal would be too weak to reach anyone. Karim says that at this time of year, hundreds of zombies drift through the region. They need to lock down, but they don't have enough food. Maryam wants to make a break for it, but Arwa says that some of the children are too young, and Karim doesn't trust adults not to abandon them again. Maryam says that they're all survivors and she has an idea to get them out. You need to follow her!

You reach the hospital garage. Maryam says you might be able to use one of the automated cargo carts. She gets it working using a universal keycard someone had traded her. It needs time to power up though, and it's rather loud, which attracts some VIP zombies, including one enormous one. You don't have enough bullets for them, but you don't have to outpace them for long. Head to the MRI ward!

You duck into the control room overlooking the MRI machine. It's solar-powered and Maryam has you switch it on to run a scan. The machine is very loud, which gets the attention of the zombies. The magnetism of the MRI disrupts the VIP bionics so they can't get to you. Unfortunately, MRIs also use liquid helium, which can be extremely explosive. You need to get away!

You make it to the hospital lobby, just in time for the corridor behind you to collapse onto the remaining zombies. Maryam wonders about that enormous VIP zombie. She thinks it looked military. She thanks you for accompanying her and asks you not to mention her background to Janine and the others in case they don't take her seriously. But for now, the kids hopefully have a bright future ahead!