Chapter Seventeen
In the middle of the corridor, only a few feet away from where Corry was standing, there was a man going to the bathroom. Not the “ducking behind the bushes after pulling over on the side of the road” kind but the other kind. Number two. Poop. Dooty. Feces. Shit. Yes, Corry decided, there was a reason why that word was a Bad Word. Not for the polite kind of pooping one did quietly in the toilet, hoping the noise wasn’t loud enough to inspire one of the ninth graders at the sinks to make a stupid joke. What he was doing was what the word “shit” had been invented to describe.
He had his pants down around his knees, his underwear just off his behind, and his behind sticking up in the air like those orangutans Corry’s science teacher had showed them pictures of last term. Except this guy’s behind was hairier than the orangutan’s. He was crouched in profile, his hand on the door to support the position, his ass aiming shit projectiles across the part of the corridor Corry had been hoping to pass through. He was grunting loudly and kept saying unkind things about his mother, who he seemed to think was standing behind him, perhaps with a catcher’s mitt.
Corry had gotten used to a lot of things in the past hour. Like dead bodies. Since Ned and Carl, he’d seen at least three more, although he didn’t stop to check any of them to see whether they were actually dead or just injured badly. Also unlike the two guards, it looked like they had been hit with something. A baseball bat maybe, or the end of a broom. And he’d had to get used to the sight of blood, which, thanks to the lighting, seemed to be the color of everything in the hospital. But a man rocketing diarrhea across a six-foot-wide corridor was something he never expected to get over.
Or get past. Which was the real problem. He wasn’t about to walk through the shit storm in front of him, and going back meant having to get around the annoyingly persistent Mr. Monsters, who apparently still wanted to grab Corry for some unknowable reason.
It would have been great if one of the doors between Corry and the Shitstorm Guy ended up leading to the public room, but he could tell just by looking at them that they were all ward rooms, just like every other door he’d seen so far, except for one. That one led to a stairwell down. He didn’t want to go down.
But Shitstorm Guy couldn’t go on forever, could he? How much shit could one guy produce?
“Hey, you almost done?” Corry asked.
Shitstorm Guy looked over at Corry, his face red from exertion. “Wait your turn, Bobby,” he barked. “The kitchen’s not done yet.”
O-kay. “How about you take a break for a minute, just so I can . . . walk by? Cuz, you know, this really isn’t a bathroom?”
“Dunnut . . .” Mr. Monsters declared. He was only about ten feet away. If he felt like picking up his pace, he could reach Corry pretty fast. Fortunately, he was still stuck in some sort of Frankenstein walk.
“I know it’s not a bathroom,” Shitstorm Guy said. “You think I’m crazy?”
“Yeah, actually. How about you just stand up for a second, and I’ll go between you and the wall over here. So I don’t wreck your . . . shit art, or whatever it is you’ve got going there.”
“It’s for mother, Bobby,” Shitstorm Guy explained.
“Yeah. She’ll love it.”
“Do you really think so?” He sounded touched, like he was going to start crying or something.
“Sure,” Corry said. This seemed to have a positive effect on Shitstorm Guy. He stood up. Corry saw his chance and ran past him. The guy reached out to grab his arm, but Corry saw that coming and adjusted so that he was out of reach.
“Mommy loved you, Bobby,” Shitstorm Guy declared as Corry continued right on running. “It was just an accident.”
Corry wasn’t listening anymore. He was trying too hard to pretend that none of that had happened, instead checking doors along the hallway. Patient room doors, all of them. Where the hell is the public room? he wondered.
He turned the corner and found . . . Carl’s body.
“Oh no,” he said. “Oh hell, oh damn, oh fuck!”
How could he not have noticed he was traveling in a circle?
Looking down the corridor behind him he could see—barely—the door to the nurse station. He had somehow not noticed it when he went by. And he certainly was not up to going back in that direction again to get to it, not with both Shitstorm Guy and Mr. Monsters—walking through Shitstorm Guy’s creative masterpiece at that very moment—in the way.
I could go around again, he thought. But that didn’t strike him as the very best plan ever. Shitstorm Guy was not the only person he’d come across that he was both lucky to get past and hopeful that he’d never have to try doing so ever again. Like the guy with no shirt who was trying to dig through one of the walls and kept shouting the word “Sparrow” or the one who was crawling along the floor like an inchworm. Neither one of them had seemed dangerous at first, but neither had Mr. Monsters. Who knew how they’d act when Rerun Kid—stupid name—walked past them again?
But that wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was the obvious fact that he’d searched the entire floor and never found the public room. Somehow, there was a room underground that got sunlight. It didn’t seem possible, but he’d eliminated all the other possibilities, so . . .
“I’ll take the stairs, then,” he declared definitively. He knew that each time he made these little decisions he was moving further away from a quick and easy exit, but that wasn’t the kind of thinking that would help him get to Violet, so instead he concentrated on running as fast as he could for the door to the stairs, which was only down the hall and around the corner. It was easy enough to identify, being the only door with a push bar on it. Running hard felt good, and it put some distance between him and Mr. Monsters.
When he reached the door, he hit the bar with vigor. It gave easily, and he was soon standing in the stairwell. He pushed the door closed.
The stairs were cement, like the ones in his school, only without the raggedy carpeting. He took the steps two at a time until he reached the first landing and found himself facing . . . a door to the outside. He could see grass on the other side through a small rectangular peek-a-boo window. The wiring on the side of the doorjamb was a good indication that this was the alarmed door Ned had been telling him about seemingly decades ago. It was the place he’d seen someone trying to escape.
So where’s that guy now?
First question first. How could a door that was a flight of stairs below the ground level come out on grass? Corry thought about it for a few seconds before deciding he was a complete moron. The whole city of Belmont was one hill after another, so of course the hospital was built on one. He peeked through the window and confirmed the downward slope of the lawn outside. And naturally, that explained how the public room got sunlight, too. Idiot, he thought.
The second question was answered as soon as he turned around. There was someone lying on his back at the bottom of the stairs, near the door leading to the sublevel.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked. The guy didn’t answer, so Corry went down to check on him. He was lying funny, with his head at an odd angle compared to the rest of his body, like he’d developed an elbow in the side of his neck.
With a shudder, Corry decided not to think about it any more than he had to. The guy was obviously dead, and that was that. How he’d gotten that way probably had something to do with going down the cement steps wrong after he’d gotten the door slammed in his face.
I should go out the side door, he thought. Get the police. It made the most sense. Besides which, he’d had plenty enough of crazy people for one day.
Just as he came to this conclusion, though, he heard the crash bar upstairs engage and the door swing open. He looked up, but seeing through concrete was not one of his powers, so he couldn’t tell who was there. He could guess, though.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Monsterssss.”
“Great,” he said. Rather than try and reach the exit, he grabbed the handle on
the basement door, because going away from Mr. Monsters by any means made more sense than heading toward him.
There was only one problem, the handle wouldn’t turn. The door to the sublevel was locked.
Shit, shit, shit, he thought. He vaulted over the legs of the dead man and reached the third step up, hit it running, and dashed the rest of the way up the cement stairs to the landing. The exit to the outside had a push bar of its own, which Corry hit as hard as he could. The door gave a bit and then . . . pushed back.
It was so unexpected—for some reason he hadn’t seen it coming—that he fell backward and right into the arms of Mr. Monsters.
“Monnnnsters,” the man said loudly. His breath smelled sour, and the rest of him stank of shit—a combination that made Corry gag, which he had little time for as he was being lifted off the ground and tugged away from the door. And for just a half of a second, he thought he saw someone else looking in at him outside the door. Somebody who wanted to keep him in.
This would have been terrifying enough all by itself but then Mr. Monsters wrapped his left arm around Corry’s shoulders, his right arm around Corry’s waist, a blood-smeared hand reaching down to the Bad Touching area, and all Corry could think was to scream—so he did. And what came out of his mouth was, “Do not consort with monsters!”
Mr. Monsters, his hot breath curling the hairs on Corry’s neck, hesitated. And then he loosened his grip.
Corry pushed himself free, nearly going headfirst down the stairs, where he would have ended up right next to the last guy who had done that and in a similar condition. He caught himself on the metal railing and stumbled the rest of the way down.
“Lest ye become a monster,” Mr. Monsters said. Corry ignored him. He had remembered the key ring still gripped firmly in his left hand, and began shoving keys into the door lock one at a time. It was hard, as they were slippery with his sweat and with Carl’s blood, and his heart was beating so quickly it was making his whole body move. He didn’t want to be a superhero anymore. He just wanted to find his mother.
“That’s the rest . . .” declared Mr. Monsters, who was coming down the stairs.
“Rest of what?” Corry said, almost under his breath.
“The . . . it’s Nietzsche. They locked him up, too.” Mr. Monsters sounded so lucid, Corry chanced a look over his shoulder, and saw that he’d sat down on the bottom step and did not appear to be preparing to renew his interest in groping children. Corry kept trying keys.
“He here?” Corry asked. Keep him talking.
“Who?”
“This Nee-chee guy.”
“No. He’s dead.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Mr. Monsters fell silent. Corry looked over at him. He looked back.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Mr. Monsters said.
“No kidding,” Corry said.
“Just a kid. You should go. There’s something terrible here. It’s going to kill everyone.”
“Can’t,” he said without elaboration, as he was not ready to process what he’d seen through the window. And he had only a few keys left to try. If Carl didn’t have a key for this door, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
“I was trying to protect you,” Mr. Monsters said.
“Funny way to do that,” Corry said.
“You didn’t see what I saw. You don’t understand.”
Corry looked at him. “What did you see?”
“Nobody,” Mr. Monsters said. “I saw nobody, and he killed the guard.”
“That’s helpful.”
“And then he put out the Cyclops’ eye . . .”
“Really, that’s great.” Corry found the key. He jerked open the door.
“Don’t,” Mr. Monsters said. “Don’t go through there. Stay here. Nobody isn’t here.”
“I said I can’t,” Corry said. “My mom’s down here somewhere. I have to save her.”
* * *
The sublevel of the Really Crazy section of the hospital was a lot like the floor Corry had just left, only more so. The lighting was not nearly as good, there were people screaming intermittently, and it smelled like something was burning somewhere. He had this sense that going on everywhere around him was frantic activity, maybe just around the corner or two steps beyond the shelter of the nearest light, in the shallows of what seemed to be unnatural darkness. It felt like being dropped directly into the middle of a Halloween fun house, only this time the corpses weren’t stuffed with cotton, and the scary people lunging out randomly would actually try and hurt him if he wasn’t careful.
A half-remembered safety tip sprang to mind, something about crawling when there was a fire. That was to keep from breathing smoke, and there wasn’t any, but he kind of liked the idea of making himself as small as possible. So he crouched down and started to crawl along the wall to his left. He chose the left because he’d seen sunlight through the windows of the public room, and it was the afternoon, which put the sun on the side of the building where he was heading. He was kind of proud of himself for having figured this out.
Crawling turned out to be an excellent decision a few seconds later when a screaming man wearing absolutely no clothing whatsoever sprinted past. As the man was sticking to the center of the corridor, Corry did not have to worry about the possibility of being touched by a naked man, something he anticipated never wanting to experience.
A little further along, he came across another body. This one looked to be a patient, and as he got closer—he was eye level with the body—he realized it was one he knew.
It was Mr. Conway. He was lying on his side, staring down the hall, looking like his last breath was spent screaming.
The back of his head was missing. Corry didn’t know what might cause such a thing to happen, but thought that maybe if you hit someone real hard back there, the head could cave in and look something like what he was seeing.
As far as horrible things went, it was just about the horriblest thing he had ever looked at, or it would have been if he was still feeling anything. But by this point, whatever was inside of him that was meant to help him register and process shocking things had either fainted dead away or died from overuse. The lifeless expression on Mr. Conway, a person he happened to like a good deal, would come to haunt him in the coming days, but at that moment it meant nothing.
Nobody killed him was the only thought he could muster, hearkening back to Mr. Monsters’s strange warning. Patting his friend on the shoulder, he crawled around him and kept moving.
He was still thinking about Mr. Conway as he crawled along at a brisk pace, not at all paying attention to the Secret Future—stupid—which was how the broken glass took him completely by surprise. He discovered it in the worst possible way, with a sharp pain in the palm of his left hand.
Letting out a little yelp, he jumped back against the wall, dropped the key ring, and pulled his hand off the ground. A half-inch-long shard of glass had been driven right through the middle.
“Oh God, oh God,” he muttered, staring at the wound. The glass was thin and curved, and had a crosshatch pattern on the part of it that wasn’t sticking into his hand. It was part of the spotlight. He had gone and crawled under one of the disabled lights and hadn’t even taken into account what might have happened to the glass once it was shattered.
The Punctured Wonder, he thought, grimacing.
There was only one thing to do. He had to pull the glass out. Already, his blood was leaking out through the sides, and he was sure once the glass was removed, more would come out, but he also couldn’t use the hand as long as the glass was in there. So he clenched his teeth, gripped the glass carefully between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and pulled.
It didn’t hurt half as much as he thought it would. That was the good thing. The bad thing was that it bled even more than he’d expected, so much so that he was genuinely alarmed by the sheer quantity of it all. For a few seconds he just sat there watching it drip down his hand, past his wrist, and onto the
floor.
Bandage. I need a bandage.
But there weren’t any bandages anywhere. Corry didn’t know what would happen if he let it just bleed—he’d never actually cut himself before but understood that bleeding nonstop led to something bad—so he pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out from his pants and tried to tear a strip off it. This turned out to be impossible to do with only one hand, and he succeeded only in getting his own blood all over his shirt.
“Dammit,” he said quietly. He was crying. He barely even realized he was doing it, and once he did, rather than stopping, he moved into full-sob mode. Soon his shoulders were shaking, and he was gasping for air and trying not to make too much noise, and still he couldn’t stop crying. “Nnno,” he grunted through the sobs. “Heroes don’t cry . . .”
His hand hurt like hell, he smelled like shit, he didn’t know where he was going, and he was going to bleed to death. And he still didn’t know where his mom was or what in the world was going on in the hospital. He just wanted to go home.
His eyes, tear-streaked and blurred, drifted over to Mr. Conway, and then he got a brilliantly stupid idea. He pulled himself together a bit and proceeded to hop and crawl back to his dead friend, who loved to talk about science on good days and on bad days bore the marks of his psychosis.
After a couple of minutes of searching, he found what he was looking for, a thick wrap of gauze spun around Mr. Conway’s left upper arm.
“Lucky it wasn’t a Band-Aid today,” he said as he unwound the gauze as fast as he could. At the bottom of it was a thin cotton pad that still smelled of alcohol and below that was a long thin cut that would never bleed again anyway.
Corry flipped the cotton pad over and folded it in half, and then he stuffed it into the palm of his left hand and held it there with his thumb while he wrapped it up in the gauze. When he was finished, his hand looked like a Mummy hand, but that was okay; at least he’d managed to stop the bleeding for a while.
Solving the problem of his hand made him feel much better. He didn’t feel like crying anymore . . . it was time to move on.
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