Huh, that’s interesting. Even someone as simple as Max could have secrets.
“That’s okay,” I said. Best not to push the one helpful person I’ve found. We were passing near the three men and the young man’s glare was as strong as ever. I’d be walking within a foot or two of him unless I made it obvious that I tried to avoid him. It would be so easy for him to reach out and grab my arm. I had both height and weight on him, so I could take him in a fair one-on-one fight. The problem was in this circumstance his friends might join in or he might have a hidden weapon. Knowing he was a patient added an air of unpredictability that I wouldn’t have on the street. I’m not a master of reading people, but there are certain ways you expect someone to act when they’re starting a fight. I decided that if said person was a mental patient, all bets are off.
Finally we passed them, continuing down the hallway. I let out my breath, unaware I was holding it. I had been in fights before, but I had never been so tense in expecting one. There was something about his eyes and how he looked at me. A part of me almost wished he would start something, so at least the tension would be gone and it’d be something I understood. I immediately banished that thought; any fight that could be avoided was worthwhile, and I had a job to do.
I took a moment and turned my head back at the three men. They were all still staring at me. The young one’s mouth was curled in a snarl. When he saw me look, he stepped forward to come my way, but one of the other three grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. All the tenseness returned to me. I hastened to catch up with Max. I counted my blessings that I did not hear footsteps behind me. We turned a corner to another hall.
“You have some interesting people in here with you, Max,” I said, breathing a heavy sigh.
“Y-yes,” he said. I waited for him to explain or just continue the small talk. He just kept on walking. Tough crowd here.
I wanted to keep talking, even if I had to listen to Max’s stutter. The small talk was relaxing. I decided to try to pick his brain. “I heard you mention Dr. Ashborn a few times. Is he your doctor?”
“Y-yes,” he said. “N-not at first. It was D-doctor Merill first. But then they ch-changed and I had D-doctor Ashb-born.”
“Interesting. Do you know why they switched you?”
“N-no. D-doctor Ashb-born had d-different t-t-tests.”
“What type of tests?” I asked. Merill had mentioned Ashborn’s illegal activities.
“Hu-hu-human p-p-potential,” replied Max.
“That doesn’t seem too bad,” I said out loud. Merill had said experiments, but human potential stuff was New Agey stuff, meditation, crystals, higher consciousness and all that.
“B-bad?” He paused, still walking. “D-doctor Ashb-born is very b-bad.”
Now we’re getting somewhere! “What did he do to you?”
Max stopped in place. He didn’t turn to me, but I saw his hands tighten into fists. “He st-stole my b-book.” He was still spacey from drugs, but I still heard an edge in his voice.
“A book?”
“Yes,” he said.
“So you’re mad at him for stealing a book from you?”
There was a long moment, then his hands relaxed and he started walking again. “Y-yeah. D-doctor Ashb-born is not a nice man.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess not.” Not getting anything out of him; nothing useful at least.
I followed him down the hallways in silence. I saw other patients standing idly in the hallway. They still stared at me as I walked, but none were as unnerving as the young glaring man. I looked for signs of nurses or doctors, but saw none. I saw two staircases, strangely within the ward, but blocked off by glass doors. In a few places I saw burnt walls with patients staring at them, but there were surprisingly few signs of the Five and the damage they wrought. I had visions of the nurses fleeing down the hallways after the first display of their power, cornering themselves in the lounge where they met their end. I now walked the opposite direction down the same hallways, toward the source of that chaos. The air suddenly felt just a bit more chilly and I rubbed my arms.
We made another turn, and we arrived at the other side of the patient ward. I was glad to have Max as a guide. There were more turns than I expected in the patient ward, a floor plan designed by an unorganized mind. I might have gotten lost on my own and this would not be a place I would want to spend any extra time in.
“H-here’s the end of the w-ward,” said Max. “I sh-shouldn’t go any farther.” He looked at me expectantly.
“That’s a good…” I started, with my next word being “boy”, but I immediately thought that inappropriate. “Good boy” brought up images of dogs and very small children. Even with the drugs and his strange affection for authority, I didn’t think I should call him that. “I mean, thanks for the help, Max.”
“What sh-should I do now, d-doctor?”
“You should go back to your room, and um... stay there until someone asks you to leave.”
“O-okay, d-doctor,” he said, giving that same goofy smile again and waving his hand bye.
I remember thinking, What a strange guy, glad I’ll never see him again. How I wish that had been true.
This end of the patient ward was another glass wall with a keycard-locked door. I walked up to it and immediately noticed that there was something wrong with the glass. It had some dark shape on it. I got closer and examined it. The glass itself seemed to be fine. But there seemed to be something black painted on the other side of some of it. I looked through the glass that was unaffected and saw no one on the other side of the glass. I saw more of the black on the walls. I turned my head, making sure I was alone, and then used the keycard to unlock the door. The last thing I wanted was company on the other side of the glass.
I walked through the door, hearing it once again lock loudly into place. Immediately the smell of ash seared my nose. The black on the wall was ash. The dark shape on the glass was also ash. I wondered what had burned as I stepped forward.
I immediately stopped, realizing what exactly had burned. Now as I was almost right above it, I could look down and better see the shape of the dark ash. It was clear it was the shape of a person. They were lying down, one arm stretched out, reaching. Their legs were together. I had no idea if they had been on their back or their stomach, but it didn’t matter. I immediately felt sick.
It was not the stench of ash or the burning which made me feel ill, though those things permeated my nose and lungs with their infernal smell. No, it was the death before me and its implications that made me ill. The room hadn’t been set on fire, burning everything, someone dying within it. Nor had the person just been set on fire, slowly burning on the ground. I know this because there were no additional burn marks around the ash. The floor was untouched around the ash. Somehow the person was instantly incinerated, disintegrated by the heat or fire, leaving a perfect shape made of ash on the unharmed floor. Bile rose in my throat, but I forced it down.
I turned and looked at the ash shape on the glass, then at the other dark shape on one of the walls. I stared at them for a moment, looking for a human-shaped figure, but then I pulled my sight away from it. I’d rather not know. Those five monsters had come through here on a rampage, not just killing as many staff members as they could find, but destroying them utterly. The ward’s patients were strangely untouched, as far as I had seen. I wondered if this was some remaining feeling of camaraderie within the Five or simply because the patients stayed in their rooms during the rampage. I just didn’t know. I wondered at the depth of the experiments Dr. Ashborn was performing. Had he created these monsters? If so, how? Laws of science seemed to lay broken before a man who could generate fire out of nothing. I wondered if the others had similar powers. I wondered if those five were the only monsters.
My hands cold, I grabbed my flashlight and pushed open the door. I left Wing B, hoping that all the monsters had already left the hospital.
Seven
TRANSCRIPT: OBSERVAT
ION ROOM 2. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. ASHBORN
PATIENT: I don’t want to open the door.
DOCTOR: Tell me about the door.
PATIENT: It opens when my mind races. I see the crack open and if I try to peer through, the light is too much for me.
DOCTOR: Why not open it the entire way?
PATIENT: I am afraid of opening it.
DOCTOR: What’s inside?
PATIENT: The past, the universe, everything. The keys to the kingdom, everything I ever wanted to know, everything I ever did.
DOCTOR: Why don’t you want to go inside?
PATIENT: I’m afraid.
DOCTOR: Of what?
PATIENT: Losing everything that I am.
DOCTOR: But the door keeps opening?
PATIENT: Yes, one day it will open wider than I can close and I’ll have to face it. I have to control my mind. I have to stop that.
Wing D brought me much closer to my goal of half a million dollars and white sandy beaches on some Caribbean island. I knew Katie was in Wing D. She was here… somewhere. I just had to find her, grab her, and get the hell out of Dodge. Doing that might be difficult, but my spirits were raised just by entering the wing. My aching muscles and sore ankle were forgotten as I pushed through the door to Wing D, ready to be done with all of this.
The lights were also on in Wing D. Yellow walls replaced numbing white walls; I guess it was somewhat of an improvement. The layout of Wing D was different from Wing B, showing there was absolutely no consistency around here. Maybe it was made at a different time, a different era. Maybe the architect was a past, present, or future patient. Where Wing B could only be entered from the first floor, Wing D had a stairwell to both floors before entering the patient ward. I knew Katie was in room 212, probably the second floor. My decision to check the second floor first was cemented by the fact that the door to the first floor was burnt and hanging off its hinges. Up the stairs to the second floor I went.
On the second floor, things were a bit more familiar. Lounge to my left, access hall door on the right, glass enclosure with keycard door. I didn’t bother with the access door, this was a ward I needed to be in. I peered through the glass at the hallway. As far as I could tell, no wandering patients. I’m sure some were milling about, but none immediately beyond the glass. Safe enough to use the keycard. A swipe and a push later, I was through the door and into the ward.
Fluorescent lights hummed down from above, illuminating the yellow corridor with a flicker. No signs of nurses, but no signs of burnt walls either. I considered that a plus. No patients yet, but that would probably change. I hoped that they assumed me a doctor as Max did. Unlikely, but it was the only trick I had at the moment. The first door I saw was labeled 201. I was looking for 212, so I almost cheered. Not far now. I just had to hold it together for a few more minutes, then I’d have Katie. There was still much to figure out after that, but that was the first step.
I found 212 with amazingly little problems. It was a short walk down the corridor, hearing my footsteps and the humming of the lights. As I sized up the door, I noticed a female patient peeking around the corner at me. Dark eyes stared out from dark hair cascading over an obscured face. I wasn’t sure her thoughts or intentions, but for the moment she stayed there and I was at the door. My danger sense wasn’t tingling… not any more than the air-raid level it had been at since I entered this godforsaken place. I put the peering girl in the “mostly harmless” category.
212 was typical of all the doors on this floor. A small viewing window that was closed, a keycard reader for the lock, and the numbers 212 in block print. I wondered how I was going to approach this. Assuming my keycard worked, I wasn’t going to kick down the door. I needed Katie as cooperative as possible. The last thing I needed was to bring her to the Intersperse people bounty-hunter style. It’d appear to be kidnapping every step of the way. Hell, it would be kidnapping, since there was no arrest warrant or public bounty. Her corporate masters wanted her back, but since they didn’t run the country just yet, it would still be uncomfortable for me to run the kidnapping angle under the scrutiny of the law. No, I needed her to think me as a nice a guy as they come, whether that was true or not.
So what did I need to do? Knock? Knock three times and the door opens on its own to a new fantastical wonderland. No, knocking would be weird. How many mental hospital patients have the nurses knock before entering? I wondered if she could even open the door from inside on her own. I’d just open the door, walk in and say… “I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.” No. “Come with me if you want to live.” No. Something reassuring, but at the same time addressing the gravity of what was going on at this hospital. I wracked my brain for the perfect entrance.
I swiped the keycard and the door unlocked. I pushed it open, revealing a dimly lit room with a young girl sitting on the bed. Blonde hair, T-shirt, sweat pants. She stared forward, her face masked in shadow.
“Hello, I’m John, I’m here to…” and I trailed off as she turned her head to look at me. The biggest, brightest green eyes looked right at me. I could stare into them for hours. There was an encompassing intensity, something completely enthralling.
I shook my head, looking at her again. Unkempt blonde hair hanging down almost to her shoulders, pale skin, blank face. Very cute. At one moment I was impressed with how much she resembled my niece; the next moment I was noticing just how attracted to her I was. Even blank-faced, she was quite a looker. She looked pretty on billboards and pictures, but that was nothing compared to in-person.
“I’m John,” I repeated dazedly, then catching myself. “John Keats. I’m here to get you out of here.”
No reaction. Her face remained blank.
“Intersperse records sent me to find you and bring you back.”
No reaction.
“Your record is the highest selling record in America.”
No reaction. I looked at her eyes. They weren’t the zonked out eyes I had seen in Max. They weren’t eyes spaced out from medications. Her eyes were lucid, alert. They stared at me, taking all of me in, following my movements. The eyes were conscious. It was her face and her body which were completely passive and blank.
“Can you speak?” I asked.
Thirty seconds later her mouth opened. I waited in anticipation. “I…”
“Yes?” I said.
“I..”
I waited.
“… don’t know.”
I smacked my forehead in frustration. Great, just great.
I sat down next to her on the bed, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Katie, listen to me. It is very important that I get you out of here. There’s some bad shit going on here. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be in a hospital. You’re a rock star. Your record company should be taking care of you. I’m going to bring you to them.” In my mind, I added "somehow" to that sentence.
She looked at me for a long minute, a very faint smile finally appearing on her face. “You called me Katie.”
I gritted my teeth in frustration. Oh come on! This was not my fucking day. Not by a long shot.
“Can you stand? Katie, can you stand?”
I watched her face. The eyes seemed to understand me, but the face kept that slight smile. It was maddening. Her eyes were intelligent, but they were the only things that seemed awake. The rest of her was asleep.
After a full minute, there was no answer. “All right,” I said, “let’s try this.” I stood up and moved in front of her. Gently but firmly, I grabbed her upper arms and pulled. Fortunately, she pulled herself up with my prompting. She smiled like this was some new game. Once standing, I tentatively let go of her arms. She stayed standing. Good. This was like pulling teeth, but at least it was going well.
I walked through the doorway and into the hall. The girl with the dark eyes still stared at me from around the corner. Great. I turned back to Katie. “Ok, Katie, can you walk? Walk to me.”
She smiled again, rather
stupidly, I might say. But she did walk out of the room and to me. Brilliant. She could walk. I wouldn’t have to carry her. That was a small blessing, at least. Now where were we going to go?
“Hey, you over there,” I said to the dark eyed face staring around the corner.
She turned her head to the left and right, looking for who I was speaking to.
“Yeah, you.” I said. “Do you know how to get out of here? Some way besides through the front door.”
She shook her head.
“Do you know where any nurses are?”
She shook her head.
“Doctors?”
She shook her head.
“Windows?”
Her head bobbed in what must have been a nod. Then a thin arm stretched out, a small hand pointing down the hall, further into Wing D. I knew this wouldn’t be easy.
New plan: find a window, break the window, climb out. Make a run for tree or hill cover. Hide out, ride things out until morning. I hoped that in morning the government would have sorted things out. The Army was called in because of the Five, that conclusion made the most sense. So once they saw how quiet the hospital was, they’d relax and perform a rescue operation. Still, on the off chance they decided to shell the hospital or nuke it from orbit, I wanted to put some distance between us and it. Hopefully there were not any Army teams on the back side of the hospital. It was a faint hope.
I walked down the corridor with Katie, wracking my brain for other ideas. I turned to make sure Katie was following every so often, but she seemed to keep up pretty well in her dazed way. At least she wasn’t being difficult. If she didn’t understand or didn’t want to go, I’d have to carry her or argue with her through the entire hospital. Neither appealed to me.
Down the hall I found a door that wasn’t marked as a patient room. Day Room 4. This looked like a good enough candidate. At the very least, if it wasn’t occupied, it was somewhere to stop and think. I didn’t want to spend too much time out in the hallway. I felt safer in the female patient wing than in the male patient wing, but I’d still rather not stand around waiting for trouble. Some homicidal patient could just be wandering around the hallways, looking for someone to stab.
The Lost and the Damned Page 11