This Would Be Paradise (Book 3)

by Iverson, N. D.

  “So just act crazy and they’ll leave you alone?” I said. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Mac grinned. “You can be my cell neighbor in solitary.”

  We returned our plastic dishes. The lunch lady counted to make sure I had returned both my fork and knife. I would have to find another pointy object to use as a weapon. Two more armed guards joined us in the cafeteria.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Were they expecting a riot?

  “We’re all being sent back to our cells—I mean rooms,” Leo replied. “So they bring in more guards so they can take us two at a time.”

  I looked at Mac. “Will they be sending you back to the isolated cells?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. He was busy picking at the gauze taped on his arm as he stared at the new guards.

  They started calling names two at a time, taking them out in pairs. The two guards from before remained while the two new guards accompanied the two prisoners to their rooms. Eight trips later and I was all alone in the cafeteria with the armed help.

  Don’t panic. I could feel my pulse spiking as I started to wonder why I had been left by myself. They had even taken Mac with Leo. Every time I sat down on one of the table benches or chairs, I sat up a few seconds after and paced. I couldn’t hold still. The doors opened and Amelia, the lady from when I first awoke, waltzed through. She walked over to me, the edges of her white lab coat swaying with her movement.

  “Bailey, is it?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come with me. I’ll show you to your room.”

  I followed her out of the cafeteria, a guard waiting for us on the other side. We walked back down the hallway and took a left past the room I had first woken up in. There were two other guards, dressed down in regular clothes and not SWAT gear, standing in the next stretch of hallway. As we continued down, faces peered out the small windows to each room. Amelia stopped at a door on the very end.

  “This will be your room.” She produced a ring of keys and unlocked the door. She motioned for me to go inside, but I remained where I was standing.

  It was now or never.

  I twisted around and bolted, turning the nearest corner only to run into another guard. I shoved her to the side and her arms flailed as she fell backward from the momentum. I could hear shoes slapping against the linoleum behind me, but I kept sprinting. There was an exit sign at the end of the corridor. All I had to do was reach the door. Throwing my hands forward, I slammed into the bar latch.

  But the door didn’t open so I ended up smashing my face into the metal. This was how bugs must feel when they hit a windshield. I whirled around to see Amelia and two guards looming toward me. I felt something trickle onto my lips so I wiped underneath my nose with the back of my hand. Blood. The impact must have made my nose bleed.

  I moved to keep running down the next hallway, but I had reached a dead end. Empty vending machines and worn chairs surrounded me. The two guards raised their bulky handguns, but it was Amelia who stepped forward. I used my shirt to dab at the fresh blood running down my face.

  “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  “There’s no way you’re going to shoot me—if immune people are so valuable.” I had no way of knowing this, but I couldn’t show them just how scared I was.

  “We won’t shoot you with bullets, no. These guards are holding tranquilizer guns.” She huffed impatiently. “Now you can either come with us willingly or we can hit you with a dose so you can no longer run.”

  I hung my head. There was no escape at the moment. I’d rather get locked up with my consciousness than be drugged up again.

  “Fine,” I gritted out.

  One of the guards came up to me and grabbed my arm. They escorted me back to the cell Amelia was trying to stuff me into.

  “See, we can be reasonable,” Amelia said as she closed the door in my face.

  I heard the lock click and watched her walk away down the hallway with the two guards. I ran my hands through my hair. This wasn’t going to be easy. I shuffled to the tiny window past the beds on the right side, but it too had metal bars. My nose had stopped its mild bleed at the expense of my previously white shirt. It was now spotted with deep red blotches.

  I didn’t know how I didn’t notice it before, but there was a woman lying on the second bed closest to the window. She was wearing a fresh white shirt and she was turned away from me, facing the curtain divider. This must have been a recovery room for patients. I cleared my throat, but the woman didn’t stir. She was breathing steadily. Maybe she was doped up.

  “Hello?”

  No answer, but her breathing picked up. She had to be awake.

  “So, it looks like I’m your new roommate. Bailey.”

  Still nothing.

  “And you are...?”

  Her body continued to rise and fall with her breaths.

  “Fine. I’m just going to talk until you say something. So I’m new here. Never been imprisoned before, can’t say I enjoy it. I take it you’re immune too. Sucks to be us, huh?”

  “Dear God, kid. Shut up,” the lady growled in a thick southern accent.

  She got up and turned to me, her brown eyes narrowed and glaring. Her bare feet hit the linoleum with a splat. She was tan—not as a result of being outside, but just as her natural skin color. She had to be somewhere in her forties—she had called me kid, after all. There were bandages wrapped around her arm and a distinct bulge under her shirt around the ribcage area.

  “You injured?”

  “What’cha think?”

  “Those from the tests?”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was sardonic and nasty. “You’ll be sportin’ your own soon enough.”

  “I’m starting to see why you didn’t have a roommate.”

  “Had one once. Irene. She hung herself with the sheets from your bed on the ceiling fan. Although, they’ve cleaned ‘em since then,” she snickered.

  I sucked in a deep breath. I wondered if I could apply for room re-assignment?

  Wait, Irene? Roy’s wife?

  “Tell me about Irene. Did she ever mention a husband or kids?” I asked, ignoring the lady’s attempt at rattling me.

  She stopped her snickering and shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “How long ago did she...?” I couldn’t say it.

  Roy was looking for a dead woman. He would be so heartbroken when he found out.

  “’Bout three weeks. Couldn’t take it no more.”

  “Take what? The tests? Being locked up?”

  She shrugged again and I clenched my teeth. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the answers out of her. She was being super uncooperative for someone who was being held against her will.

  “You know, if you’d help me out a little, maybe we could come up with an escape or way out?”

  “You think you’re the only one whose thought ‘bout escapin’? Trust me, people have tried and failed many times.”

  “So what, you going to stay in here until you die of old age or until your injuries finally kill you?” I jerked my chin at her wrappings.

  She scowled. “Every new person they bring in has the same idea. Rally the troops and attack. But guess what kid, it won’t work. So do yourself a favor and keep your head down.”

  She flopped back down on the single bed and rolled away, dismissing me. Escaping was never going to happen unless we all worked together. You’d think a common goal would unite people, but this lady and the white-power fools from the cafeteria seemed bent on alienation.

  I walked away from the window and to my bed. I lifted up the blanket and sheets to check for nasty stains and bugs like I was at a sketchy hotel. If what the other lady had said was true, Irene had killed herself in here. Obviously they would have cleaned the sheets and bedding, but my terrible roommate had made me paranoid.

  Seeing no other option, I lay down on top of the blankets and stared up at the ceiling, waitin
g for sleep to take me.

  Chapter 4

  I spent the whole night plagued with nightmares. I would open my eyes and see a dead woman hanging from the ceiling fan, then I would wake up realizing it was just a dream. I rolled onto my side and curled up into a ball, willing myself to get back to sleep despite the nightmares. But they kept coming. Sometimes it would look like she was mouthing words to me, but I couldn’t make them out. The last time, however, it was clear. She had screamed, “Run!”

  At that, I jumped out of bed, deciding that sleep was not going to happen. I started to pace until the lights in the hallway were turned on, shining into our room through the tiny window. It must’ve been time to move us to the common room. It was a lot of effort to keep moving people back and forth from their cells to the cafeteria, but like Mac had said, people needed to be right in their minds and socializing was a big part of that. Even real prisons knew that.

  I watched people go by in twos with the guards right behind them, back to the cafeteria. After counting sixteen people, the movement stopped.

  “Why aren’t they taking me?” I muttered.

  “Looks like you’re gettin’ the full-on welcome treatment, kid,” the lady said from her bed.

  “Don’t move, don’t breathe, and the dead won’t bother you. But a word of advice, let ‘em and you’ll be released faster.”

  I refused to look at her, so I fiddled with the doorframe, picking at a paint chip. “What the hell does that mean?”

  The locking mechanism to our door sounded, and Amelia’s face appeared in the window.

  “You’re ‘bout to find out. Good luck,” was all she said by way of explanation.

  “Do I need to remind you to not try anything again?” Amelia asked once the door opened. Her face was pinched tight, causing the glasses to ride up her nose.

  She had a guard on either side of her. I didn’t answer.

  “Well, come on. You too, Rose.”

  Amelia looked past me to my roommate. She must’ve been the lady Leo was talking about. He could’ve warned me she was a joy to be around. Rose sat up and sauntered over to us. Her previously pristine white shirt was now as stained as my own. Blood soaked through from the bulge on her ribs. So she was injured pretty bad.

  Amelia’s eye’s honed in on the blotch. “Come on, Rose. Let’s treat that.”

  “How kind of you,” Rose said, her voice sarcastic.

  Amelia shoved one hand into her lab coat pocket and used the other to grab Rose’s arm. Amelia steered her down the hall and before they disappeared into one of the rooms she turned back.

  “Take Bailey to examination room ‘F’.”

  The guards pulled me from my room and steered me down the hallway, but just before we reached the cafeteria, they had us hang a left down another corridor. The further we went, the quieter everything became. The noise level was low in the hospital, but this was deathly silent. Not even the florescent lights buzzed overhead. I nearly peed myself when something rammed up against one of the locked doors as we passed. An infected was snarling and banging from the other side, spittle coating the minuscule rectangular window as it got worked up. He was missing his front teeth like a little kid.

  “Keep moving,” one of the guards said as he gave me a little shove.

  I started walking again, feeling more and more like a prisoner on death row. Every step brought me closer to some unknown examination room. My mind ran through all the stories I’d heard over the last twenty-fours and my heart sped up with each one. Examination room ‘F’ didn’t sound like a fun place to be.

  We finally stopped at the appropriately labeled door and the guards let themselves in. I dug in my heels as they tried to yank me into the stark white room. It looked like a rubber-padded cell used for the insane. I wasn’t aware those were real outside of movies.

  “You want us to sedate you?” one of the guards groused.

  Facing whatever was coming next doped up sounded pretty good actually. Although I was pretty sure he was bluffing because if they wanted to run any kind of tests on me, they probably needed my blood to be clean, therefore sans drugs. Maybe I should mention the pot I’d smoked over two weeks ago. My system would test positive for a month at least.

  With a final yank, I was thrust into the eerily empty room and the door slammed shut while I scrambled up. I ran to the door and tested the handle. Of course it was locked. I started to bang on the door with my fist. There was no tiny window to see out of.

  “Let me out!”

  There was no surgical equipment or operating table in the room; there was absolutely nothing. How did they expect to “examine” me? I gave up my fruitless banging in favor of checking the room. The walls were padded with rubber, and the only break was a mirror running lengthwise built into the left wall. The floor was made of uncovered stained cement with a drain in the middle of the room. My slippers slapped against the floor as I made my way over to one of the walls. I pushed with my hand, checking to see just how padded it was—about the thickness of a mattress topper. This was a room for crazies and I wasn’t crazy. Not yet.

  My heart dropped as the door opened. I fully expected Amelia to come through with some medieval torture devices, but I was wrong. A snarling infected was led through by a guard via a large animal control pole. The infected gargled and swung its grabbing hands in any direction it could, almost tripping over its own feet. The pole was just long enough to keep the guard out of the thing’s arm reach.

  I backed up until my butt hit the wall padding. They were going to lock me in here with that thing. The door would only be open for this one moment so I scuttled along the walls trying to keep away from the worked up infected. It jerked toward me, pulling the guard/handler further into the room.

  “Stay where you are!” he yelled.

  Fuck that. I reached the door and flattened it against the wall as I slunk toward the opening. No sooner was my foot in the hall than my face connected with the butt end of a rifle. I was knocked back into the room, falling flat on my ass. My hands flew to my face to find my nose bleeding again, but the pain hadn’t yet registered. As the light cleared from my eyes, I started to feel the sting.

  “Shit!” I hissed and tested my nose. It hurt, but nothing felt broken or bent at an odd angle.

  I jumped up and rested a hand on the padded wall until the dizziness dissipated. I’d had the concussion before and I knew this was not as serious because my vision steadied quickly. The infected was thrashing again, clawing at the air to reach me. I watched the metal wire noose slacken around the infected’s neck until the guard was able to lift it over the thing’s head.

  The guard didn’t say anything as he bolted back out the door and shut it with a bang. Now free, the infected lurched toward me, but I shoved myself off the wall and into the opposite corner before it could reach me. It slammed into the padded wall so hard it bounced off and stumbled back a few steps.

  Rose’s advice played through my mind like a special bulletin report. Don’t move, don’t breathe, and the dead won’t bother you. How was I supposed to do that when every instinct was screaming at me to run? I tried to slow my breathing but my body wouldn’t have it.

  The infected swung its head toward me and I stopped in place like a mosquito caught in amber. My legs ached to move; to run, but I had nowhere to run to. I was trapped in this padded cell with the enemy I’d been running from for months. The infected was no longer fooled and started toward me in a slow manner.

  One step. Two steps. Three steps and it was less than a meter from me. I can’t do this. I gave into my flight instinct and ran to the other corner. The thing followed my movements and came after me again. We kept going around in circles. I would let it get closer only to dodge around it and run to the opposite side of the room—it wasn’t very effective.

  For the fifth time, I passed by the red handprint I’d left from leaning on the wall after wiping my bloody nose. The infected was never going to get tired—but I would. My breathing was already s
piking from the adrenaline and short bursts of running. Not to mention I hadn’t eaten anything since “supper” last night. They were going to win. How far will they take this? Would they let it consume me? Or just bite me? I stopped in front of the door to listen for people right outside but I couldn’t hear anything over the rasping of the infected in the small room.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” I muttered to myself as the thing launched itself at me again.

  I leapt out of the way and it crashed against the metal door. For some reason, the back of the door wasn’t padded like the rest of the room. The infected had landed so hard that when it fell backwards, I could see the bloody spot where it hit the door. Its forehead now had a small indent like someone had punched a hole in drywall.

  My foot moved before my brain could tell it not to. I kicked at the infected’s head but my slipper-clad feet didn’t do much damage, so I kneeled down and grabbed the snapping head in my hands. There was nothing to use as a weapon. The room had been strategically cleared of everything. Not even a chair. Just the hard floor, so it would have to do. The fallen infected reached for me but I was no longer concerned with getting scratched. I wanted it dead. I lifted the head up so high that the shoulders lifted off the ground, and then I brought it down with all the force I could muster.

  The infected’s head hit the solid floor and tried to bounce back up. I used that momentum to raise the head again and bring it down once more. I let out a savage yell as I continually bashed the thing’s head into the floor until it stopped moving. Its grabbing hands plopped onto the floor as the skull cracked and brain matter spilled out like a fallen container of cottage cheese.

  I dropped the skull and scooted back until I hit the wall. I was breathing so heavy that I thought I might pass out. Gathering my knees, I put my head in between my legs and squeezed my eyes closed, blocking out the image before me. The room was now splattered from the carnage. Dark brown blood and brain matter had sprayed the otherwise immaculate, white room. No wonder the walls were padded with rubber—it was easy to hose off.