by Terry Griggs
“Who cares,” the other answered. “She won’t last long anyway. Not with her attitude.”
If Nieve found this disturbing, there was worse to come. Much worse.
At first everything beyond the doors appeared as she imagined it might. Sterile, uncluttered, starkly lit, busy. Nurses and doctors – masked, gloved, and gowned – moved in and out of operating rooms with an air of brisk efficiency. It was cold, which she hadn’t been expecting, although she supposed that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the smell that tweaked her nostrils. Not the typical hospital odour (overcooked stew), nor the smell of antiseptic and bandages, but a sweet, flowery fragrance, cloying and somehow familiar. Was it anaesthetic? She shivered, not sure if she was ready for what she might see? People cut open . . . lots of blood?
They continued in the wake of the orderly, following directly behind him, so they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. Even though Nieve was new to this invisible business, she knew enough not to become the unseen obstacle that tripped someone up. The orderly rattled past a couple of occupied rooms – doors closed, they couldn’t peek in to see if Frances was inside – then he stopped abruptly before another, wider door. Too abruptly, for Lias trod on the orderly’s heel.
“Hey! What the–?”
Lias backed off hastily, while Nieve clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling a nervous laugh.
The orderly was staring, puzzled, at the back of his shoe, which had gotten crunched, when the door of the operating room opened. A nurse stood in the doorway, grasping the handle of a shopping cart. Giving up on his shoe scrutiny, he said to her, “Done?”
“Done,” she responded in an oddly flat tone.
When the nurse started off down the aisle, Nieve had to clap her hand against her mouth again, but not to smother a laugh. She was shocked to see that the cart contained babies, newborns, all wrinkly and red, but utterly silent and still. About nine of them were heaped in the cart carelessly, in the same way the corpses had been piled in that coffin at Ferrets. But surely these babies weren’t . . . ? Her stomach clenched. During their tour of the hospital, the nursery in the natal unit had been unoccupied, all the bassinets empty and the room darkened. What was going on here?
Lias clutched her arm and pulled her forward as the orderly began to push the gurney into the operating room. Once inside, they saw that it was an operating theatre, with a bank of seats for observers located behind a glass partition. A full house of observers had filled those seats, too.
Nieve pressed herself against the wall closest to the door and gazed at them. Among the stone-faced medical staff in attendance, she located the ferrety features of Mortimer Twisden (handsome on a ferret, but not so fabulous on him). Seated beside him was his young, dark-haired fiancée. When he bent toward her to say something, she smiled with interest, but leaned ever so slightly away. Dunstan Warlock was present as well, jolly amid a gang of those putty-faced men with pointy teeth – deilers Gran had called them. Nieve was startled to see them here. The setting seemed too clinical and bright for figures so unreal. But she was even more startled when she noticed, seated off to one side, someone she definitely didn’t want to see, not here with the rest of them. Her mother! Still wearing her finery from the wake, Sophie sat clutching her glittery evening bag and staring fixedly at the patient who had been wheeled into the room. Nieve didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved that Sutton wasn’t with her.
Following her mother’s gaze, Nieve now turned her attention to the nurses, who were shifting the patient from the gurney onto the operating table and securing him in place with wide nylon straps. She felt jittery and anxious. If, watching, she got sick to her stomach would her sick be invisible, too? Please – she’d rather not find out.
More than anything, she felt anxious for the patient. If only there was some way to help him. He looked perfectly healthy . . . and terrified. His eyes were rolling in their sockets, but sedated and strapped in, he couldn’t move. Whatever was going on here was unlawful and hideous – she couldn’t understand why these doctors and nurses were involved. She couldn’t understand, that is, until the head surgeon pulled his mask down onto his chin so that he could speak to the audience.
Holding a syringe aloft, a very large syringe with a very long needle, he said, “Child’s play, anyone can do it, you all can do it.”
He had a black tongue.
The barrel of the syringe was filled with a bright green liquid, some of which sprayed out as he jiggled the base of the plunger with his thumb. He was clumsy, and as zoned out as Alicia had been when staring at that nasty black cake in Wis-hart’s Bakery.
The peculiar flowery smell Nieve had noticed in the hallway filled the room, and she took short shallow breaths to avoid inhaling it too deeply. Still, it tingled in her throat and made her feel dizzy. She pushed herself more firmly against the wall for support.
“You simply find a vein, any old vein will do.” The surgeon swivelled toward the patient and grabbed his arm. The man’s eyes were bugging out of his head. With a flourish, the surgeon took a jab at a vein. “Whoops,” he said. ‘Missed!” He took another swipe at the man’s arm and missed again. He gave the audience a goofy grin, then slurred, “Ah, what the heck, why not.” He lunged at the patient once more, only this time aimed for a vein that was pulsing in the poor man’s forehead. As the needle slid into his head, the man screamed. But only briefly – it was more a half-scream, followed by silence. His face was contorted and his mouth was opened wide as if he were screaming, but he was no longer conscious.
After the surgeon had emptied the contents of the syringe into his head, watching as the vein turned from a normal blue colour to a vivid green, he raised the man’s arm and bent the hand, palm upward, like a waiter holding a platter. The arm remained upright and the surgeon dropped the empty syringe on the man’s palm.
“As you can see,” he addressed the audience again, while peeling off his gloves and depositing them on top of the syringe. “Not a drop of blood spilled and the body is completely ready for processing.”
“Processing?” Nieve said aloud, outraged. She open her clenched hands wide, gesturing in dismay toward the unfortunate man.
No blood may have been spilled, but at that moment something else, much tinier than a drop of blood, drifted to the floor. The fern seed. She had forgotten about it completely.
The surgeon and nurses, the audience, everyone, began to shout and groan and gasp aloud, astonished to see a girl’s face appear by the door. No body had appeared, and no head, only a face, but a furious one. One with intensely lit eyes that raked the whole room over with a scorching glare.
–Nineteen–
Murdeth
If looks could kill? Fierce-eye, Gran called it, this ability of Nieve’s to stun with a look.
After witnessing that sick operation, Nieve certainly felt as fierce as she ever had. She didn’t knock anyone dead – not that she wanted to – but she did stop them dead in their tracks. If only for as long as it took for them to get out of there.
They raced down the hall, heading straight for the OR doors. Lias was still invisible – she could hear his runners thumping along beside her – but more of her body was beginning to reappear, arms and legs first.
As they were about to scramble through the double doors, a couple of orderlies pushed through from the other direction, one after the other, wheeling in two more patients.
“Hey,”one shouted. “What’s that! ”
“Ech!” the other squealed. “Body parts! On the loose!”
Nieve stopped them dead in their tracks, too, and she didn’t even have to bat an eye. Problem was they were blocking the way like two lumps of stone. The elbow technique wasn’t going to work on them.
“Get her, you fools. Move it!”
Dunstan Warlock had stumbled out of the operating theatre, a pack of deilers gathering behind him.
One of the orderlies, the less squeamish one, lunged at her. She leapt aside, deftly evading him, and too
k off down a corridor to her right.
“Lias?” she panted.
“Here.” He was directly behind. But so were the others, only a few lengths back. “I’ll slow them down.”
Something snapped like a cap gun, which started Warlock shouting again. Nieve glanced back and saw flames leaping up from a gold coin that was lying on the floor. The flames merged into a crackling curtain of fire that was drawn across the width of the corridor, separating them from their pursuers. The deilers were wrinkling their ugly faces and recoiling from it, while the orderlies stood dumbstruck. Warlock cursed, “A trick, it’s nothing but a bleeding trick. Come on!”
“’Twas,” whispered Lias.
“Good one.”
“Won’t last long. Which way?”
“Down here.”
At the end of the corridor, instead of turning right and heading down another hallway, they veered left toward an alcove that housed a bank of elevators. One of the elevators was standing open and an orderly was hanging around outside, waiting for someone to arrive. He was staring at a clipboard and tapping it with a pen as he listened to music through a set of earbuds. Music leaked out of them, a screechy-scratchy sound, tiny but dire, like death metal for mice. He was bouncing his head up and down, keeping time with the beat, oblivious both to the commotion in the corridor and to Nieve, who snuck past. The elevator was crammed full of gurneys, with only enough room for one more, a space that she and Lias readily filled.
Nieve smacked the down button and the elevator door slid shut, slowly enough for the orderly to glance up in surprise from his clipboard, but too fast for him to do anything about it.
“Finally got an elevator,” Nieve said, as they plunged downward.
“Grand. I’ve always wanted to be trapped in a runaway closet with a rickle of corpses.”
“Oh!” Nieve whipped around and eyed the gurney she’d been leaning against, a pair of pale knobbly feet were sticking out the end of a black shroud. “Do they . . . that operation, is it . . . ?”
Lias had begun to reappear, head first. “Final? Dinna ken, but it’s my guess this lot’s off to the hospital morgue.” The expression on his face was a mixture of apprehension and disgust.
“Lias, don’t. I mean, stay out of sight.”
“I put the fern seed back.” His hand emerged, and in it was the silver cannister, which he offered to her. “You take it. They’ve seen you, not me. Be safer.”
“Just give me another.”
“There’s only the one left. Used the last of the coins, too. Shame, that.”
Lias didn’t seem upset about the losses, but Nieve groaned, “I really blew it.” She felt badly enough about dropping the fern seed in the first place, but worse now. “You keep it, Lias. Gran gave it to you.” She glanced up at the panel that indicated what floor they were passing – second floor, first floor – then pressed the button for the lobby. And then she pressed it again, urgently, trying to get the elevator to stop, but it kept going down . . . lower level, lower lower level. “Is this thing never going to stop?”
“What will we do when it does?”
“Follow our noses, I guess. Remember? Or all of these noses.” Nieve nodded toward their fellow-passengers, a few with noses sufficiently pointy to form little hillocks in the shrouds. “Maybe we’ll find out what’s going on.”
Lias smiled gamely, or tried to. The presence of so many bodies gave him the jitters. She wasn’t overly thrilled herself, but they were safe for the time being. Someone, or several someones, already alerted by Warlock, might be waiting to nab them when the elevator arrived at its underground destination.
Lower lower lower level . . . it finally bumped to a stop and the doors slid open.
They heard voices, but some distance away.
Nieve peeked out and saw two figures dressed in black, one tall and the other very short, walking briskly along a corridor, heading in their direction. The tall one was speaking curtly and at length to the other, neither paying much attention to what lay ahead.
“Quick,” said Nieve.
About a dozen gurneys were assembled in the hall, empty ones with sheets tossed onto them in crumpled piles. They slipped out of the elevator and wedged themselves behind one at the very back. Nieve tugged at the corner of a sheet that was hanging down, pulling it over them for better cover. With any luck the men would pass them by or take the elevator up.
They did neither, coming instead to an abrupt stop in front of the empty gurneys.
Peeking out at them, Nieve saw that the short one was a deiler, the features on his murky face oddly twisted and misaligned, nose pulled one way, mouth and eyes the other. The other deilers she’d seen were by no means beauties, but their faces weren’t contorted like this. It made him easily recognizable. He was the one who had stared at her, cold-eyed, from the back seat of the ambulance during Mayor Mary’s abduction. The tall man, she recognized as well. It was that administrator, the man in the black suit who had been arguing with Julie in Malcolm’s room. Seeing him again, it occurred to Nieve that she should have taken a look at the bodies while riding in the elevator. Mary herself might have been among them, or Frances, or Malcolm! A frightening thought, but still, she needed to know.
“Can’t be done, Murdeth,” the deiler was saying, his voice low and gravelly. “The factories aren’t ready yet. Twisden’s too distracted.”
“I’ll speak with that hag he’s to marry. What’s her name?”
“Sarah.”
“Have her brought down. This can’t go on, the warehouses are full to bursting. See here, Lirk, another batch has arrived, as I predicted.” Murdeth indicated the gurneys in the open elevator, then frowned. “Where’s the porter who’s supposed to be managing this material?”
Lirk opened his twisted mouth to answer, but snapped it shut as a second elevator rattled to a stop. When the door slid open, Warlock jumped out. The deilers who were with him hung back, much less eager to leave the elevator once they saw who was standing outside.
“Ah, a dogsbody,” said Murdeth. “Not as useful as a real dog and not half as smart, but you’ll do in a pinch.”
“That girl, did she–?” Warlock blurted.
“No idea. Would you like a pinch?” Murdeth rubbed his long forefinger and thumb together in a cooly menacing way that made Lirk wince.
“I’m looking for–”
“Trouble?”
“Yes, she’s . . . I mean, no, I’m–”
“Enough dithering!” The nasty smile on Murdeth’s thin lips vanished. “One more escaped patient isn’t going to be the end of us. We’ll catch her, we’ll catch them all. What might be the end of us, end of you more specifically, is if we displease the Impress. We don’t want to give her a headache, do we? I suggest you get this elevator unloaded and the cargo moved down to my office for sorting, pronto.” He turned on his heel and marched away. “Lirk, come with me.”
Lirk gave a nod to the other deilers and moved away, although he took his time in catching up with Murdeth.
“You heard the sawbones,” Warlock growled. “Get to work!” He sauntered casually back into the elevator, but his lips were tightly pursed and his face a blotchy red.
When the door closed, the deilers laughed, a seething snicker that sounded like someone shaking sand in a box.
While they were unloading the elevator and wheeling the gurneys away, Nieve nudged Lias and pointed in the opposite direction. With all the deilers headed toward Murdeth’s office, they could make a break for it and find a better place to hide until things quieted down.
This plan might have worked if several deilers hadn’t remained behind in order to push the empty gurneys back onto the elevator. Impossible to sneak away without getting caught. The thought of all those sharp little teeth made Nieve uneasy. Another blasting would help, but fierce-eye only worked sometimes, usually when she was furious. At the moment she was more nervous than anything. But she was also determined.
She nudged Lias again and pointed t
o the gurney itself. He returned an appalled look, but reluctantly nodded. Waiting for a moment when the backs of the deilers were turned, both crept quietly up, each onto one of the gurneys, then quickly covered themselves with the sheets, while leaving them rumpled enough for the gurneys to appear unoccupied.
If this plan had worked, they soon might have found themselves back upstairs, possibly in an unguarded storeroom.
But . . . by the time the deilers got to the last two gurneys, one said, “Huh, bulky these.” He gave one of the sheets a thump with his tough little hand. It was all Nieve could do not to grunt from the hit. “What’s this? Some glaik’s forgotten to dump the body. This one, too.” Lias got a sharp rap on the head.
“Lirk?”
“’Spect so.”
“Better take’em down,” another rasped. “Don’t want Lirk gettin’ another pinch, eh.”
As the gurneys rumbled along, Nieve lay absolutely still, playing dead, a game she really really didn’t want to play.
–Twenty–
Last Office
When they wheeled Nieve into Murdeth’s office, a chill slipped over her like an extra sheet, one that offered no comfort whatsoever. The room was super-cold, refrigerator cold, and she feared she might start shivering and give herself away. Unless the thought that she was entering a morgue didn’t unnerve her first.
“Over here.” The deiler who was pushing her gurney kept his voice low. “With this bunch.”
“Good enough,” said the other, docking Lias’ gurney alongside hers. “Slabface won’t know the difference.”
“Hush, don’t want to be wearin’ your face back to front, eh.”
The other gave a grunt, followed by one of those strange seething laughs, then they scuffled away.
Was she in a morgue? One quick look would settle the matter, but she didn’t dare stir, not yet. For the moment, she concentrated on keeping absolutely still and warming herself up by imagining a blazing summer sun beating down. Whispering a word or two to Lias was also out. She’d have to play it by ear, figure out what to do once she had a better idea of what sort of fix they were in. In the meantime, the sun, blazing . . .