A bored security guard barely glanced up at him.
“Sign in,” the guard said.
Parklon had expected questions, and much more security. He picked up the pen and signed in as ‘Mr. Carlton, The Legal Department, DalsonCorp’. He prepared to show a fake identification, but the guard didn’t ask for any.
“Which patient?” the guard asked.
“Eight-four-seven,” Parklon replied.
The guard tapped in some information on the keyboard in front of him.
“He’s in C-block. Follow the signs and check in with the night nurse.” The security guard idly scratched his crotch before he went back to his book.
“Okay,” Parklon said, glancing around. To his left he saw a waiting room filled with plump couches. There were several doors leading off from the area. To his right he located a map on the wall beside the elevator. Beside it was a glass door marked with the words: ‘Staff Only’. The door was closed, but he could see a long corridor behind it.
He walked over to the sign and stared at it. C-block was on the ground-floor, down the corridor. He opened the glass door. The calming silence of the reception area was shattered by animal screams and cries. He shuddered, but forced himself to walk through the door and down the long white corridor.
Long moments of silence were punctuated by distant screams. Some of the wails went on for several minutes. Others were abruptly cut short.
What kind of place is this? Cold sweat popped up on his skin. He wished he’d taken the time to do some recon before walking in here.
He passed a junction in the corridor marked with the words: ‘A-block’. He continued down the same passageway. There were several closed doors down the corridor. Some were marked and others were not. The building was immense in size. He wondered what was kept in here or who was kept in here…
The corridor walls turned transparent as he passed windowed laboratories. He glanced inside them as he walked past them.
The next set of rooms seemed to be some kind of observation area. Some contained patients. Others were empty. In some of the rooms, the patients were sleeping on beds. In others, they were struggling against restraints.
Parklon shuddered at the sight of tubes in the patient’s arms and legs while IV drips pumped God knows what into them. He began averting his eyes from the observation rooms when he passed them. There was something upsetting about seeing another being reduced to a vegetable state, or fighting helplessly against it happening to them.
Mercifully, the corridor walls returned after he passed another junction. This one was marked: ‘B-block’.
He vowed to report this place to HQ as soon as his mission was complete. Something wasn’t right here. Why aren’t the patients in private rooms being looked after?
Finally, he reached a third junction, this one leading to C-block. He turned down it and walked toward the nurses’ station.
The nurse behind the desk was a young brunette with chubby cheeks. He politely smiled at her and waited for her to speak.
“Patient?” she asked, sounding bored.
What’s with this place? They don’t even check IDs.
“Eight-four-seven,” he said smoothly.
“Purpose?” The nurse flicked her eyes up, glancing at him.
“A legal consultation,” he said. What the hell, it sounds believable.
“Follow me.” The nurse got up and grabbed a set of keys from the rack behind her. He followed her, noticing that her backside had chubby cheeks too.
“You won’t be able to use the interview rooms since he’s in restraints. We have fewer staff on the night shift, so it will have to be done in his room.” The nurse turned back to tell Parklon.
“That’ll be fine,” he said.
“He’s a noisy bugger too, so be warned.” She winked at him.
“Consider me forewarned.” He flashed a friendly smile.
“Here you are,” she said, stopping outside a white door marked ‘Eight-four-seven’. She unlocked the door and handed Parklon the key ring. “When you’re finished, make sure you lock up behind you and bring the keys back to my desk.” She brushed her hand against his when she dropped the keys in his hand, and smiled flirtatiously at him.
“I look forward to it.” He gave her what he hoped was a sexy smile. It must have been because she giggled and blushed, then turned to walk back to the nurses’ station.
He watched her leave. She was cute, but he didn’t feel anything for her. His training had taught him that flirting was a good way to get people to drop their guard, and to help you get what you wanted. It was all an act, but one he was uncomfortable playing.
He turned to face the door, considering it for a moment before pushing it open. He strode into the room, seeing the familiar figure of Lord Foamy strapped to a hospital bed.
The room was nearly bare, containing only a bed and a small dresser. The window was barred, and the lighting was stark and bright.
Parklon walked over to the bed. Lord Foamy was asleep. His face was pale-green and gaunt. Studying him, Parklon noticed his unkempt blond stubble, his messy hair and the grimy gray t-shirt he was wearing. He looked nothing like the stately lord he had once been.
His arms and legs were tied to the bed with thick leather straps, which looked very uncomfortable.
Parklon coughed to waken him. He wasn’t sure what to expect.
Lord Foamy’s eyes shot open and glowed red at him. Parklon took a step back. With red eyes, Foamy looked demonic and frightening. I guess they took his contact lenses away.
“You!” Foamy bellowed.
“You remember me?” Parklon asked.
“Of course I remember you, you blue fool! Get me out of here.” Foamy seemed coherent and not insane at all.
“What are you doing in here? You should be in Highgate.” Parklon referred to the maximum security prison that Lord Foamy was supposed to be imprisoned in.
“I wish I was. This place is full of lunatics. You’ve got to get me out of here. They’re going to kill me.” Foamy pleaded with him.
“Who’s going to kill you, the lunatics?” Parklon asked.
“No, the company! They want…” Foamy paused and narrowed his eyes at Parklon.
“What do they want?”
“Maybe you want it too. Working for them now, are you. Ha! I knew they’d come at me again, to get it, but I never expected them to send you.” Foamy was rambling and sounding paranoid.
“No one sent me. Do you mean DalsonCorp? Is that the company?” Parklon forced himself to keep the excitement from his voice. This could be the information he needed.
“What’s in a name?” Foamy laughed, and then he started coughing. “Where’s my beautiful Isabella?” He changed the subject.
She’s on vacation with my best friend, after divorcing you. Parklon didn’t think that information would be helpful. “She’s safe in Derobmi.” He lied instead.
“Ha! Safe, is she? Not for long. Teach her to leave me here.” Foamy laughed again. “Won’t get what they want though. It’s locked away for good now.”
“What do they want? Why isn’t Isabella safe?” Parklon was confused. Nothing Foamy was saying made sense.
“They called me a killer, didn’t they? Well, so what? I killed for them, and look what I got. I wouldn’t trust them. Fooled me, fooled us all with their sneaky ways.”
Parklon realized that Lord Foamy was too far gone to be of any help and sighed.
“Cameras.” Foamy glanced up at the ceiling. Parklon followed the direction he was looking in. There were tiny lenses in the ceiling. Is he acting for the cameras?
He leaned closer to Foamy. The lord’s breath smelled like sour milk and sick.
“They’re going to invade. They’re using our own biology against us,” he whispered in Parklon’s ear.
“Invade who?” Parklon urgently whispered back.
“All of them, every country. They think nothing can stop them. It’s already begun,” Foamy hissed.
; “What’s begun?”
“The end of the world.”
Parklon frowned. He could be a crazy person.
“She can stop them.” Foamy sounded pleased.
“Who? Who is she?” Parklon asked, getting tired of the half-answers.
“Get me out of here,” Foamy said slyly. “Get me out of here alive, and I’ll tell you.”
“You’ll be in military prison for life if I do,” Parklon told him. There was no way he was letting this guy loose on the public again.
“It’s better than waiting here for them to come and kill me.”
An alarm went off somewhere in the building and Parklon straightened up and stepped back. “I better go. I’ll come back later and see what I can do.”
“Don’t take too long. People disappear here all the time.”
“Tomorrow,” Parklon assured him.
“Tomorrow never comes.” Foamy stared blankly out of the dark window.
Carla found that Demons was a loud, dark club. People filled every inch of its neon-lit interior. She glanced toward the dance floor at the mass of sweaty people gyrating against each other. Behind them, a long bar stretched the length of the club, with at least ten bar staff serving drinks behind it.
A thick crowd of patrons lined up to get to the bar. The place was packed with people of all types and of all colors. There were girls wearing outfits that looked like underwear, shirtless boys, women in floaty dresses and men in suits. Some people were in fancy dress, some were in jeans and t-shirts. It was a mix of every kind of person you could imagine.
The music was so loud that the floor vibrated beneath her feet. She could only just hear the buzz of shouting and laughing over the pounding music. Her eyes watered at the cigarette smoke filling the air. She held onto a wall as the heat from all the bodies in the room made her dizzy.
She wildly glanced around. How am I supposed to find Bex in this?
A thin woman wearing a dress that was far too bright and cheerful for her gaunt features knocked into Carla and spilt her drink down Carla’s legs. The woman didn’t apologize. She just carried on toward the dance floor, pushing people out of her way with a blank expression in her empty eyes.
Carla snatched a napkin off the table in front of her and tried to dry off her left leg. At least it had only splashed the side of her leg, so she didn’t look like she’d peed her pants.
When she peered around, she saw pink, red and green spiky hair bobbing about in a booth in a seated area across the room and near the windows. Carla hurried over to it. The music was a little quieter over here, and the air wasn’t as stuffy.
She scanned the booths lining the wall, trying to locate the spikey hair she’d seen earlier. She navigated her way through the throng of people that were standing around holding their drinks, pausing to peer into each booth as she passed it.
She reached the third booth, breathing a sigh when she found it contained the person with multicolored hair, who was most certainly Bex.
The girl appeared to be holding court in the booth, surrounded by a group of boys. She’s like a guy magnet.
“Hi!” Carla shouted to Bex over the music.
“Hey, chica!” Bex waved her over. “Glad you found us. Pull up a lap,” she shouted.
There weren’t any spare seats at the booth. One of the guys patted his lap and winked at her. Part of her giggled like a silly girl inside, but the Derobmi in her was alarmed at the idea of sitting on some strange guy’s lap. She glanced around and noticed an empty chair at the table across from them. She dragged it over to the end of the table and sat down on it instead, offering an apologetic smile to the guy who’d winked.
“Oh ho Bex, you brought a nice girl here, shame on you.” He handed Carla an orange drink with straws and a mountain of ice in it. “This’ll fix you up, sugar.”
Carla took the drink and smiled at him. “Uh, thanks.” She took a sip to make him happy. It tasted quite nice, fruity and refreshing after inhaling the smoky air of the club.
Bex didn’t appear to notice as she was happily chatting to a tall, dark and handsome guy sitting next to her. Three of the other guys at the table were taking part in some kind of drinking game, which involved drinking a lot of liquid from a long glass tube, leaving the young man who’d called her ‘sugar’ as the only person available to talk to.
Carla smiled at him. He had nice dark blue eyes, so dark they were nearly black, and he seemed about her age.
“Hi, I’m Carla.” She shouted over the music. She didn’t really know what else to say.
“I’m Daz,” he shouted back.
“Like the washing powder?” She thought she was being witty, in Derobmi that would have been witty.
Daz stared at her as if he’d just smelt something nasty. “No,” he said. Then he tapped his friend on the shoulder and whispered something to him.
All the guys abruptly got up and left, leaving Bex and Carla alone at the table.
Carla glanced at Bex, feeling confused. “What the hell was that about?”
Bex laughed so much that she had tears in her eyes when she’d finished. “Oh, that was classic!” She wiped her eyes.
“What was?” Carla suddenly felt like a pariah of some kind.
“You had an uncomftabubble!” Bex shrieked with laughter again. “Come on,” she managed. “Let’s get out of here.” She nudged Carla out of her chair and led her out of the club and into the street, where the air was refreshingly cool.
“What the hell is an uncomftabubble?”
Bex was still chuckling over it. “Don’t worry. It happens to everyone. They’re these invisible bubbles that float around. If one pops near you, it stinks on a psychic level and makes everyone around you uncomfortable. They act like a bad smell just attacked them.”
“Are you shitting me?” Carla laughed. “That’s insane!”
“Nah, s’tru, I swear. They’re created by these little ethereal beings called Esaenu, which are mischief-makers. The bubbles are harmless until they pop. But when they do, people around you go silent and look at you in disgust. Usually Esaenus don’t attach to people unless they have a grudge against them for some reason. So you probably just bumped into a random uncomftabubble.” Bex laughed. “I hope so, anyway, or my dating will be on a downward spiral with you around.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
Carla held her breath and leaned back against the wall. Her heart was pounding. After a moment, she cautiously peered around the corner, pressing her cheek against the embossed gold filigree designs on the wallpaper.
She watched the maid in the corridor, removing clean towels from the bottom of her cart and loading them into her thick arms.
From the back, the maid was broad-shouldered, almost manly. Her blue-and-white striped uniform rightly hugged her wide backside, and her legs resembled tree trunks growing out of the bottom of her skirt.
“Has she gone?” Bex whispered.
“Shh, not yet,” Carla whispered back.
The maid unlocked one of the hotel room doors and carried some sheets and towels into it.
“She’s gone into a room,” Carla muttered out of the side of her mouth.
“Okay, let’s make a run for it,” Bex said.
“Run to where?” Carla asked.
“Straight ahead.” Bex spoke a little louder, stepping around Carla and the corner at the same time. “To the fire exit.” She pointed to the door at the end of the corridor.
“Are you kidding?” Carla gasped. “It’ll set off the alarms!”
“So?” Bex said. “We’ll be long gone by then.”
“It’s crazy!”
Bex frowned for a second, and then she grinned wickedly.
“Race ya!” she said before dashing down the hall at full speed, dragging Carla’s suitcase behind her.
“Crap,” Carla muttered before she chased after her, carrying a heavy bag and her rucksack. They must have sounded like a herd of elephants running down the hotel corridor, but no one peeked out of their rooms a
t them.
Carla was running faster than Bex, and had begun to catch up with her by the time they neared the fire exit door. Please don’t let it be locked.
Bex glanced to her side as Carla caught up with her, and she increased her running speed to stay level. She’s actually racing me.
Carla put some extra effort into her running, and she began to overtake Bex. She winked at Bex as she passed by her, and the exit loomed closer.
Carla threw her hands out to press down on the bar across the door, releasing it so that it would open.
Bex caught up when Carla reached the door and they both burst through it at the same time, laughing and out of breath.
Cold air whipped Carla’s dark hair around her face while they stood outside her hotel on a small metal balcony. The balcony was three floors up from ground level. Steel steps ran down the side of the building to street level.
Bex shut the fire exit door as alarms blared inside the hotel.
“Race ya to the bottom.” She scooped the suitcase into her arms and tossed it down the steps to the sidewalk below. Then she nudged Carla out of the way and raced down the steps.
“Shit!” Carla stared at her case three floors below her. I hope nothing got broken.
“Cheater!” she yelled before she chased Bex down the steps, finding it difficult to keep up since she was still laden with heavy bags.
“Always!” Bex shouted back.
Carla chuckled as she ran down the stairs, taking several steps at a time.
They both hit the street running. Bex grabbed the suitcase on the move, pulling it after her.
They were three streets away from the hotel before they collapsed in the road, laughing and out of breath.
“When you said we’d check me out of my hotel, I expected we’d leave by the front door,” Carla gasped.
“You gotta eat don’tcha? There’s no way you could have afforded to if you paid that hotel bill.” Bex grinned. “Anyway, this was more fun.” She gasped for breath.
Carla laughed. “Is everyone in Zoola this crazy?”
Science Fiction and Fantasy Box Set 1: The Squishies Series Page 23