by Rob Horner
He’d never be able to get out of range of his own guilty thoughts, though, would he? He’d never be able to forgive himself for leaving a man behind.
Taking a deep breath, he reached for the doorknob, gave it a twist, and shoved it open.
* * * * *
Something about Kim was different.
There was an imperative, a need. It came on her with all the suddenness of a tornado, prompting her violent actions in the CT room.
But now it was gone.
She was alone and afraid.
She understood why she was in four-point restraints on her back on a stretcher. Anyone who willfully attacked nurses and doctors could expect no less. It might even get worse, if anyone decided to press charges against her.
So far, ever since they’d gotten her secured, she’d tried to remain calm.
When they talked to her, she answered them.
She allowed them to take blood and lay still while they catheterized her for a urine specimen, eyes closed and mouth moving in silent prayer.
She understood what was happening and why it was happening. But for the life of her, she didn’t understand what drove her to attack.
One minute she was rolling along on her back, listening to the conversation between the two nurses. Then she was struck by…whatever it was…a sudden, irresistible desire to taste their skin. She acted on the desire because there wasn’t any option not to. There was no concern about right or wrong, should or should not.
There was only the drive to do.
Her mouth was open, teeth bared, rushing in at the doctor’s face. Then a weight struck her from behind, strong arms wrapping around her. Her head snapped forward, but it was only her head and not her teeth. The doctor screamed and there was blood on his face.
She shuddered at the memory, but it wasn’t the sight of blood which drew her out of her…what could you call it? A manic frenzy? Homicidal rage?
No, the blood didn’t do it. Greg and Jake piling on and pinning her to the floor didn’t do it, either. She fought them the same way she’d fight a wannabe rapist, maybe even harder. Nothing mattered. Not their hands, not the doctor’s blood. It didn’t bother her when her muscles screamed, and her joints strained.
It wasn’t until she was tied down, spread-eagle on her back like a sacrifice in a horror movie, that her senses returned.
With them came a feeling of guilt at her actions and astonishment that she could have done them. Her head remained pain free, so that was a plus, but what if her inability to feel the pain of her injury was a sign of some persistent brain injury. Her craziness started when the pain went away.
She wasn’t healed from the injury, not if the way people looked at her was any indication. That sliding of the eyes across her face could only mean something bad, but she didn’t have her hands free to feel at it.
She could clench her abs and lift herself a couple of inches off the bed, head craned to the left, straining for a glimpse of her arm. There were black lines there, running up the skin from her wrist to her shoulder, which was as high as she could see. Nothing in her memory explained them. They frightened her, but not as much as her brief descent into madness. Lines were lines. If she had an infection, they would figure it out and treat it.
How did you fix going crazy?
She hadn’t been able to prevent it before.
What if it happened again?
Would she even know it?
Silent tears leaked from Kim’s eyes as she lay back against the hospital mattress.
What was happening to her?
* * * * *
The door opened onto a lounge much as Steve described: pleather chairs from the 80s with cracked surfaces liable to lacerate a butt cheek if you slid around too much; a battered and scarred low table complete with out of date magazines strewn across the top almost hiding the hundreds of cup stains permanently etched into the surface. On the wall to the right was a relatively new flat screen television, not large by any standards but more than enough for the small area. Having been in several such pilot lounges in small town airports, Jesse could envision football games being enjoyed by a group of guys who thought it too early to go home to suburbia, or who had no suburbia to go home to but rather existed for those moments of camaraderie. Off in a corner stood a water cooler next to a small end table, currently bare, but which could easily support another five or six red Solo cups filled with soda or beer.
Other than that, the room was empty.
Jesse stopped just inside the building, holding the door, holding his breath. Nothing moved.
The two doors were there on the far wall, just as advertised. Both doors were closed.
The noises could have come from either one.
Jesse could feel another person in the building, maybe holding their breath like he was, waiting for a sound which indicated his commitment to entering the room. If he let the door slam, someone might rush out, ready to attack.
Ragan was there, on the CT table, her skinny body lying there while the nurse performed CPR, pushing down hard and fast on her chest. Then she…slid sideways, falling off the table. And then she was back up, tearing into the people around her. One woman screamed as sharp teeth bit into her wrist, sending blood spraying while a man scrambled over the table, intent upon getting his hands on the girl. Ragan released the arm and swung around, angel face twisted with fury, mouth painted with the nurse’s blood, naked torso trailing wires and spattered with red. She swung her arms, scoring hits on the man’s face, and he fell back against the table, unable to face the aggressive girl.
He growled away the memory. Ragan wasn’t the first person he’d seen overcome with the crazy need to bite and scratch. It started in the airport…
And that’s where you are again, dumbass.
Yeah, well, he might be a dumbass, but he learned. The heavy flashlight still held up high beside his head testified to that.
Still, nothing but quiet.
He could stand here all day and maybe nothing would happen. The person or people on the other side of one of those doors might be waiting to hear this one shut. He didn’t think the crazy people would have the wherewithal to stand silent, waiting patiently for him to approach. But then, he hadn’t considered they might be able to formulate a plan to draw in more victims, either. Not until the possibility began to seem more like a probability.
Is that what I think is going on?
Turned out, it was.
Carefully, gently, Jesse eased the aluminum door shut behind him. He misjudged the point where he needed to twist the handle to clear the hasp, and a brief metallic scrape sounded before he corrected it.
Nothing happened. Either the sound hadn’t carried, or the other person wasn’t taking the bait.
Maybe he’s smarter than me, Jesse thought. I sure came in quick for a voice on the radio.
Letting out his pent-up air as quietly as he could, Jesse eased the door the rest of the way closed. Then he stood for a moment, feeling the room.
With the outside closed off, the loss of the slight breeze was noticeable. The air felt stuffy and closed in. But there was…something else. Nothing he could put a finger on. It was…an expectation.
Maybe it had to do with those inherited memories the egghead scientists were always talking about when they pushed their evolution agenda over the idea of God. Some part of our deep DNA remembered being hunted, stalked through a prehistoric jungle by massive dinosaurs and sabretooth cats. We knew the scent of our own fear, and squirted adrenaline in preparation for fight or flight before our conscious minds could fully assess the situation.
Maybe it was that.
Maybe it was just that he’d heard a sound and couldn’t forget it. It hadn’t repeated since he’d entered the building, and nothing in the small room accounted for it. Therefore, it had to be coming from behind one of the two doors, and it had to be made by a person, since a loose shutter or malfunctioning piece of equipment wouldn’t stop just because he decided to investigate.
Still, the outer door was closed now. The sound hadn’t repeated.
And he couldn’t stand here with one hand on the door and the other holding a flashlight all day.
The floor was old tile covered with threadbare carpet, something a vacuum cleaner could run over without any danger of pulling up a thick nap. It wouldn’t do much to muffle the clomp of steel-toed boots, but it covered the sound of Jesse’s tennis shoes well enough.
Right or left?
Someone trying to steal something heavy from the parts warehouse might make the weird thump and slide noise, pick up an end, drag it a few feet, then set it back down.
That didn’t make sense, and Jesse knew it as soon as the thought formed in his head. If someone were dragging something heavy, the slide would come before the thump, not after.
If a thief decided that now was a good time to steal something, they wouldn’t appreciate being caught in the act. They might also be content with waiting in the parts warehouse for him to do what he came to do and leave. Most thieves didn’t seek out confrontation.
Jesse watched the right door as he soft stepped to the left. His ears strained, listening for a repeat of the strange noise, listening for anything—the sound of someone breathing as quietly as possible, maybe the scuff of a shoe. Hearing nothing, he reached out a tentative hand.
The smartphone in his pocket chirped its little notification noise, alerting him to an incoming text message.
As though the person had been waiting for the sound, the right-hand door burst open.
* * * * *
The madness came over her again while she waited for…something to happen. It didn’t matter what. A doctor coming to examine here, another nurse with a handful of colorful tubes to fill—anything would be better than the interminable waiting strapped to a stretcher. It felt like hours, but it might have been only minutes. Time was different when you couldn’t lift a hand to scratch your own nose.
Those were her thoughts. Her worries.
Then the worries were gone.
There was only the now.
She was become.
And then she wasn’t, though Kim remembered vividly the sudden fading of concern.
Something was happening to her, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the black lines on her arm or the damage to her head. Those lines now reached into her neck; she could feel them, tight cords like she was flexing every muscle at once. Except these didn’t move. They had a pulse to them, a sick, twisted thing pounding from her left ear down to her collarbone, some poison running into her brain.
With each pulse, something changed, and her mind slipped farther away. Whatever brief respite she’d gotten from the madness growing inside of her was fading. She was losing the battle.
What would happen when she lost it completely?
Would she be like that crazy fire-eyed woman at the airport? Screaming at everyone and so willing to kill that she’d swing a metal bucket full of vomit, blood, and cold water at another person’s face? Is that what brain damage caused?
And what about the ropes on her arm? What caused those?
There might have been something like that around the woman’s eyes, now that she thought about it, little black lines like wriggling worms dancing around and through the bloodshot morass.
Did it all come back to her?
Then Kim was gone again, and she was become.
She couldn’t move. Try as she might, and try she did, jerking this way and that until the bed groaned and her muscles knotted like pretzels, it was no use. The restraints prohibited her hands from moving more than a couple of inches in any direction and her legs from moving at all.
The attempt to escape was perfunctory, something she had to do. As a become, she was unburdened by a sense of entrapment. There was no screaming unease at not being free to move. There was patience.
Kim had no guide in her current state. There was no calming voice to explain her change, nor was one strictly necessary. She knew she was become. She knew she needed to make others become. That was enough.
She wasn’t a screaming consciousness hiding in the back of a changed mind. There was no possession or sense of detachment. She wasn’t become, and then she was.
The hospital room they’d placed her in was austere, without even a nod to medical care—no vital sign monitor, no oxygen port on the wall. The part of her mind where her normal life was stored recognized this as a means to prevent a patient from injuring him- or herself. With no cords, there could be hangings. With nothing sharp, there could be no cutting.
The same font of stored memories supplied an image of an old friend, confined to a state institution for schizophrenia back when there were state hospitals for mental illnesses. Those days were gone in the name of modern medicine and out of fear of being called a place of legalized torture. Thank the movies and tabloids for that. She remembered visiting the friend on days when the voices were loud, when she had to be confined to a bed much as Kim was.
There were laws restricting how long a patient could be immobilized. Those same laws dictated how often a patient had to be assessed. Kim the become knew all of this without the burden of any pain from the memories.
There was a woman on a bed. And every hour or so someone came to check on her.
Which meant someone would be coming soon to check on Kim.
Could she hold back the desire to make that person become on the spot?
She resisted the urge to struggle against the Velcro ropes. There was a camera high up in the corner of the room, watching her. Let them see a Kim docile and compliant. Let them come and assume she had worked through whatever mad rage possessed her to attack the men in the CT room. Let them set her free. Then she could make them become.
There was a click from the door and it began to open.
Kim smiled inside.
She could be patient.
She could wait.
She was become.
* * * * *
The right-hand door opened, but it wasn’t a thief dragging a spare propeller who came out.
It wasn’t a thief at all.
A short man, maybe no more than five and a half feet upright, staggered through the door. The thump came from his good right leg. The left dragged behind him like so much dead weight, turned sideways at the hip and stretched out. His shoe laid over as well, big-toe-side-down. With the injury forcing a hunched hobble, his height dropped to somewhere closer to five feet even. The injury looked painful, but if the man was in any distress, he didn’t show it. His arms were out, hands reaching for Jesse as he cleared the door.
All that, “I’m a man, dammit!” crap went right out of Jesse’s head, and he let out a short scream.
The short man had black ropes coursing under the skin of both arms, circling the shoulders and ringing his neck. His shirt was torn—bitten, those are tooth marks—in too many places to count, with clotted wounds showing in the skin beneath. His face was a fright mask of pits and pocks, so closely resembling bites that it was impossible for them to be anything else. His eyes were open and staring out of a too-pale face, as if he’d been dying but then got distracted and was now stuck in this half-way form.
With one hand still on the locker room door, Jesse gave it a quick twist, yanked it open, and darted inside.
The room was dark but blossomed with light as he entered—must be on a motion detector. He spun as soon as his shoulder cleared the door, going from pulling out to pulling in as fast as he could change his grip. The other guy grabbed onto the door on the other side and for an instant they were locked in a desperate tug of war. There was a lock button on the handle, something Jesse could use to keep the dead thing away long enough to find a weapon, if only he could get the door pulled to.
And did he think he’d have a problem shooting the little man with the dead face and nightmare poisonous veins? Not at all and no sir.
Another small sound like a cross between a whimper and a sigh escaped him as he got both hands on the
handle and threw himself backward. The door came free of its resistance and pulled shut. Jesse gave the lock knob a savage push and twist. The handle jiggled immediately after, but the door didn’t open.
Shaking, close to sobbing and breathing deep and fast, Jesse backed away from the door.
He screamed again, for real this time, when a bloody hand latched onto his arm.
Chapter 5
“Help me,” a soft voice said, somehow cutting through the blood rushing in his ears and the piercing sound of his scream bouncing back and forth inside the small room.
Jesse resisted the impulse to slap at the hand on his arm. He settled for pivoting and the arm fell away as though it had taken all the owner’s strength to raise it that high.
Another man lay on the floor, back propped against the lockers. His legs were a nerveless, twisted mess in front of him; his left arm supported his upper body, hand planted at an angle against the floor. His head lolled about on his shoulders, like he barely had the strength to keep it upright.
There was blood everywhere, pooling out of the guy, though Jesse couldn’t immediately see a source.
The door jerked behind him as the thing outside tried to pull it, but the lock held.
“Have to…help me,” the man whispered.
“What happened?” Jesse asked.
“It was Ray. Big guy. Maybe you saw him?”
Jesse didn’t know how to answer, and the other man kept talking as though it didn’t matter. No one in their right mind would call the man outside big, which meant he was just another victim, and this Ray was still on the loose.
“Ray…was sick. Don’t know how long. E’rybody got sick. Most went home. I stayed. More the fool, me. Ray was in the men’s, pukin’ and poopin.’ I thought to check on ‘im, and he flipped on me. I turned and ran. Got out to here before he grabbed me and squeezed. Broke something. My back, I think. He did something else, too, but I didn’t feel nuthin’. Think he bit me or stabbed me though. Lost a lot of blood.”