“Hey! Get back here!” I screamed as I fought against the handcuff latched around my wrist.
She ignored my protests and walked out the door. A male dressed in scrubs came into the room next. He was tall and muscled like a UFC fighter. Both arms were entirely tattooed with color and black ink, looking like the pages of comic book.
“I always have to deal with the mouthy ones,” he muttered. His accent was lightly Irish.
“Ever think that, hey, maybe you shouldn’t be taking people against their will? Maybe we wouldn’t be mouthy then.” I was too pissed to filter my words.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all talk big until their first test. Then they usually stop.” His eyes bore into mine as the side of his lips curled up in a taunting manner.
Like hell I was going to be intimidated by this tattooed murse. That’s probably why they sent him in here for the “mouthy” ones. Normally a person would take one look at him and decide better of their words. I leaned closer to him. “I killed the last mercenary who tried to kidnap me because I was immune.”
“Never cared for those mercenaries. Bunch of savages and degenerates.”
That threw me off. “You’re not part of their group?”
“Nope. We just hire them to bring us people like you—outsourcing. This is our research facility. It used to be the East Louisiana State Hospital which was known for treating mental patients. Amelia, who you met just before me, used to run the place. Lots of handy equipment left lying around, and lots of special cells meant to keep people in. This is her brain-child.”
His words were meant to instill fear, but I never listened anyways. “So if you aren’t bad guys like the mercenaries, then why am I being held prisoner?”
“Well at first we tried the volunteer method. Oddly, no one ever came back.” He snickered at his joke.
“Why am I even here?” I had an inkling: test subject.
“Within you, and the others who can be bitten and scratched without turning into dead-heads is the answer to all this,” he said, motioning around him.
“So we’re your cure?” I asked.
“We’re not looking for a cure. You can’t help what’s already dead, but you can make everyone who’s still alive, immune. Once we find out what it is inside you that makes you safe from the dead-heads, we can eliminate the threat and re-start society. No longer will a bite or a scratch be a death sentence. Think of us as this generation’s Jonas Salk.”
“All this time and you still haven’t figured it out,” I taunted. I needed him to release me from the handcuffs and get me to the “others” Amelia had mentioned.
His smirk gave way to a scowl. “It’s not easy to find immune subjects. Anyone can be immune; there’s no telltale sign that’s easily visible without examining for healed wounds from the dead-heads.”
“You haven’t even narrowed it down?”
He strolled right up beside the bed I was attached to in two giant strides. “Hold still.” He ripped open a plastic package and produced a needle with a vial; he was going to take my blood.
“Fuck that!” I said out loud and shoved his descending hand away from me.
“I can restrain your other arm if you’d like. Or you could just let me take your blood and we can be on our merry way,” he said. “Word of warning: you’re not going to like the restraint option.”
I sucked in a breath. What do I do? I was completely at their mercy until I found a weapon or got free.
“Just the one vial?”
“For now.”
“Fine.”
He held his thumb down just below where my forearm and upper arm met. When a vein began to bulge, he plunged the needle into my skin. I hissed from the sting. Blood spurted into the vial, my treacherous heart doing all the work. Once it was full, he removed the vial, and then the needle with a yank.
“You’re not a bleeder, are you?”
“Shouldn’t you have asked that beforehand?”
“You know, I don’t think we’re going to get along,” he said, his eyes on the vial. He twisted it around in his fingers, as if looking for something inside.
“I can’t imagine you get along with many people,” I said, placing my free hand over the trickling wound the needle left behind.
Good thing I wasn’t a bleeder, as he had asked. He stashed the vial in his pocket, then deposited the needle in a yellow box attached to the wall labeled with a biohazard symbol. At least they didn’t reuse the needles.
“I’m going to unlock your wrist now. Try anything and you won’t like the results,” he explained slowly. I could have sworn he flexed when he said that. If immune people were so hard to come by, they wouldn’t risk seriously injuring them, but I’d bet they had no qualms about using excessive force.
He leaned down and used a key to free me from my restraint. The cuff popped open and clanged along the metal bedframe when it fell free from my wrist. I pulled my left hand up and massaged the red ring the cuff had left behind.
“Get up.”
I threw off the thin blanket and sat upright, finally noticing my attire. They had redressed me! Instead of my tank top and shorts, I was now wearing a plain white V-neck shirt and light-blue pajama bottoms. I felt so … violated.
I took a deep breath to calm myself and asked, “Where are we going?”
“You’ll be joining the other immune subjects.”
I didn’t like the way he kept referring to people as subjects. As if he no longer saw them as humans, but lab rats.
He walked to the door, expecting me to follow. I stood up and wavered for a step before I was able to walk in a straight line. Whatever drug Wyatt had stabbed me with was out of my system, but my equilibrium was still off. When I finally got to the door, Josh ripped it open and motioned for me to go through. I went out ahead of him, not sure of what I would see.
It was just a hallway like any hospital one: the floors a scuffed yellowed color, the walls white and lined with hand sanitizer dispensers, and clinical florescent lights above. All the doors were closed as we walked side by side down the long corridor. A set of black doors at the end had ‘Cafeteria’ written above.
Josh rapped on the door with his knuckles. “Open up, it’s Josh. I got a new one.” The doors opened from the inside, two armed guards waiting for me on the other side.
My escort shoved me into the brightly lit cafeteria crawling with other similarly dressed prisoners. “Welcome to gen-pop.”
Chapter 2
The doors were shut behind me. Josh stood on the other side giving me a sarcastic wave through the small window. I returned the gesture with my middle finger. The two guards each stood in front of a door, barely looking at me. They were dressed in black body armor that had the word ‘SWAT’ colored over, but you could still read the writing.
“So what now?” I asked.
“You find a spot and then sit,” said the male guard on the left.
“Until…?” I made a rolling motion with my finger.
“Until we send you back to your cell,” said the male guard on the right.
I felt like Alice trying to get information out of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I laughed and they cast me a sharp look that said, “Don’t try anything.” This former mental hospital was going to turn me mental. With a sigh, I gave up trying to get anything from the two idiots and turned to face the cafeteria once again. Everyone was dressed in the same white shirt and blue pajama pants as the ones I was currently wearing. Someone caught a sale at mental-patients-attire-R-US.
My eyes landed on the windows as I scanned my surroundings, looking for a possible way out. I dashed over to them to find bars soldered onto the outside frame. This was starting to look more like a prison, not a hospital. Even if I smashed the glass, the bars would stop me from escaping. The windows on the other side of the room had been outfitted with the same security measures. Except for one of the smaller side windows; it was boarded up.
I could tell we were on the main floor. Green bushes and shrubs reac
hed towards the bottom of the windows like curious fingers wiggling in the light breeze. Toward the back of the cafeteria was the kitchen, also guarded by one lone female guard. This wasn’t where I’d be escaping from—but I would be escaping.
“A word of advice: don’t try anything on your first day,” said a guy off to my left. He had been watching me size up the joint from his spot at one of the bolted down, stainless steel tables.
“Maybe I was just admiring the lovely weather,” I said.
“No one admires anything here. You had that look in your eye—we all did when we first got locked up.” His eyes flashed to the guarded front doors.
I sat across the table from him in an uncomfortable steel chair—also bolted to the ground.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Not a hundred percent sure. I didn’t thing to start marking the days until a while into my stay, but I’d say a month and a half,” he answered.
His smooth tanned skin, black hair, and build made me think he was of Spanish decent. From his sitting position I couldn’t gauge his height very well, but there was no way he was over six feet tall, maybe 5 ’10. He also looked younger than me by a couple of years. He had to be twenty at most.
“Do you know how long this all has been going on?”
He itched at his cheek. “Not sure. Some of the longer term residents say they’ve been here for three months.”
Well, at least they had long term people.
“I’m Bailey, by the way.”
“Leo.”
“So, Leo, what can you tell me about this place?” I leaned over the table toward him.
He let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know about any secret air ducts that can be used for a daring escape if that’s what you’re looking for.” He glanced toward the front doors again.
“You looking for someone?” I twisted around to peer at the guards.
“One of the ladies, Rose, was taken for testing today and they haven’t brought her back yet.”
“How often do they take people?”
“Depends on what they are doing, but sometimes they do multiple tests a day and sometimes they don’t need a subject for days.”
“What kind of test?” I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer.
He licked his lips, then pulled his left arm out from under the table. He stretched it out for me to see all the bite marks and scratches that had healed but left behind scars. It almost looked like he had been burned, there were so many.
“A personal favorite of theirs is trying to infect us while taking blood samples before and after.”
“Before and after what?”
He gulped. “They bring in a dead-head to bite us.” Holy shit.
“So what, they force you into a room with an infected until it bites you?” That sounded … horrific.
“Pretty much. Once the infected bites you, they kill it and take your blood to compare. Oddly, they take good care of keeping the wounds from getting infected with regular germs—now.”
“Now?”
“Someone died of blood poisoning a while back because they waited too long to treat the wound for the sake of their ‘study.’ Since then, they’ve deduced that they’ll run out of subjects soon if they keep letting them die. The people running this place like to pretend they’re doctors.” He scowled at the last part.
“How many people have died since you’ve been here?”
“One lady died just a few weeks ago.” He looked down at the table uncomfortably. I wondered what had happened to the lady, but I didn’t think I wanted the answer at the moment. This was all overwhelming enough as it was. “Other than her, around seven people have disappeared—that I’ve noticed since I’ve been here.”
I jerked my head toward the guards. “You ever see them kill a person?”
“No, they have guns but they don’t use them on us. If someone gets rowdy, they get injected with drugs to calm them down or put in solitary.”
“Jesus, this is a prison,” I muttered.
“At least we get fed three times a day and are kept safe from the hordes of dead-heads or worse,” Leo said.
When someone coughed, drawing my attention away from my questioning of Leo, I gawked around the cafeteria again. There had to be fifteen prisoners—sixteen if you counted the Rose person Leo had talked about. Most were keeping to themselves, a few clusters here and there. Various papers and books were scattered on the tables as well as game boards, and there was a small flat-screen in the corner surrounded by cushions and non-metal chairs. It was currently playing 12 Monkeys—how fitting.
“So, how did you end up here?” Leo asked, claiming my attention again.
“I was betrayed.” I couldn’t mask the venom in my words. Ethan had told Wyatt about my scratches. I didn’t think I could ever forgive him for this. If I live through this, that is. He had sold out his family to some crooked stranger. How could he have been to stupid? I didn’t realize I was shaking until the metal table started to wiggle, the bolts loose.
Leo held up his hands. “Whoa, sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
I unclenched my vibrating fists. “It’s all right. Not your fault.”
“Well, I pity the soul who betrayed you. You’ll be kicking their ass when you get out of here, right?” Leo shot me a grin. His teeth were perfect—he’d definitely had braces at one point.
“I’ll be dumping him, that’s for sure.” No longer would I have to worry about leaving Hargrove because where I was concerned, Ethan was no longer my problem. But again, I had to get out of here first.
“It was your boyfriend? Damn, that’s shitty.”
I didn’t want to talk—or think— about Ethan’s disloyalty anymore. “So where are you from?” I asked. “You don’t sound like you’re from the south.”
“I’m from New York. I was just down here visiting my grandma when everything went to shit. How about you? You’re clearly not from here either.”
“Canada. Was here for Mardi Gras with a friend.”
“Looks like we’re both miles away from home.”
The guards moved away from the doors as they opened. Leo stood up, his eyes glued to the entrance. When they shoved through a larger-set male, Leo let out a gust of air and plunked back down on the hard chair. The tension in the air was practically visible, like the room had collectively held their breath. Once the man got to his feet and the doors closed behind him, that collective breath was released.
The man turned so I could see his face and I jumped up from my seat like Leo had. “Mac?!”
He stood deathly still before coming over to me, his slipper-clad feet shuffling the whole way.
“Bailey!” He gave me an enormous hug. “I wish I could say it was good to see you, but I wouldn’t wish this place on my enemy.”
We parted. “What are you doing here? You’re not—”
His hand clamped over my mouth. “Shhh!” Then Mac steered me toward the nearest corner with his other hand on my back, away from Leo, whose face was scrunched after witnessing our exchange.
“Let’s not make that information public,” he whispered.
“Why would they think you’re immune?” I said back in a hushed voice.
“Did you ever go back to the apartments?” I nodded and he continued. “When the mercenaries attacked us, I took a chance and bit myself and wrapped the wound quickly, then told them it was from an infected and that I never turned. They spared me.” He was looking everywhere but at me. “I’m such a coward.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Mac, they were armed killers. You did what you had to in order to survive,” I said, paraphrasing from the pep talk Darren had given me before.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty. They brought me out through all the carnage. So much blood.” He put his head in his hands. I noticed a patch of gauze taped on his forearm. People will go to extreme lengths to stay alive—a fact I knew well.
“How have they not figured out you’re not immune
yet?” I asked, trying to tear him away from his guilt-laced thoughts.
“Aside from Amelia, they aren’t the brightest bunch. I’ve been acting out so they put me in solitary, and they don’t usually use those in solitary for testing until they’re able to handle being among the population. Something about needing healthy minds,” Mac answered. “That’s why I’m back in here; they’re trying to make me a viable test subject again.”
I had no idea how to help Mac—or myself. I knew nothing about this place other than what Leo and Josh had told me. Maybe once I got to see the daily routine, I could devise an escape plan. This hospital wasn’t escape-proof, but seeing that it was known for being a mental hospital, I was willing to bet the security measures were better than most.
“Don’t worry, Mac. We’ll be getting out of here. And for the record, I’m really glad you’re alive.” I cast him a smile, which he returned.
“Thanks, Steve McQueen.”
Chapter 3
Unfortunately, by the time supper was served, I had not yet escaped.
“This is practically gruel,” Mac groused as he played with a blob on his tray.
All of the trays and utensils were plastic, and they even monitored to make sure everyone returned them when finished. Leo told us that they started doing that once a prisoner sharpened a plastic knife into a shiv and stuck it in the throat of one of the guards trying to get away—he didn’t make it. There goes my plan.
One blond guy sitting with two other pale guys a few tables down kept glancing my way.
“What’s the deal with blondie?” I asked Leo. I hoped there wasn’t another threat I would have to deal with.
Leo scoffed. “He’ll probably try to recruit you.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, even more confused. Some kind of Jehovah Witness weirdo?
“Well since this is more of a prison, as you said, he’s the obligatory white-power group leader.”
“Ah.” Even worse.
“Yeah, they’re a bunch of Mein Kampf douchebags.” Judging from the darker color of Leo’s skin, they probably weren’t the nicest to him.
“They tried to get me into the fold when I first got here, but after my outburst to get locked in solitary, they’ve kept their distance,” Mac said.
This Would Be Paradise (Book 3) Page 2