The drugs normally kept me docile: not in a stupor, but just kind of numb and lacking the energy or initiative to act on my thoughts or desires. So, when I woke up this morning, saw the inappropriately open door, wanted to go through it, and was able to follow-through on that most extraordinary thought, I knew something was up.
I slowly stuck my head out of the doorway to my room, and checked for Conan. No one was around.
I couldn’t even hear the normal sounds of squeaky cart wheels or inmate agitation that I had become accustomed to during my tenure.
“Odd” I said softly to myself, and quickly made a mental note not to speak unless necessary. The echo of my own voice combined with the unfamiliarity of the circumstances was simply too eerie.
I made my way down the hallway, passing open cell doors and vacant cells. A cart was turned over at the end of the hall, where dozens of individual jello cups, having fallen victim to gravity in a tumble from their overturned food cart, lay prone and inert like so many stranded, colorful jellyfish. Mid-afternoon light streamed through a bank of barred windows in the rec room, illuminating the orange and brown 1970’s decor. The double doors to the main hallway, my first doorway to the outside, stood shut. I checked the handles. They weren’t locked.
I looked around, considered my situation, and locked them with a jaunty turn of the deadbolt. I may not be free for long, but every minute counts. Whatever happened here, they were going to come back. It was just a matter of time. May as well enjoy my R & R for as long as I could.
Then I found the remote.
The news was full of it. At first, I thought it was some sort of prank-some sort of television version of Orson Wells’ duping of the American people in 1938. I changed channels and found only four other stations on the air; the rest had already shifted to the emergency broadcast network. I left it on one channel and sat on the couch for an hour, taking in what was being reported. There were inconsistencies to be certain, and no real idea of cause, or how the government was going to react. Even doubts that the government could react. Apparently, it had happened fast and most of the active military was overseas. I kept it on one channel and listened to what little was known.
The television recounted details of the impossible: reanimated recently deceased, attacking the living, bites caused death and subsequent reanimation. Obviously, I couldn’t believe it.
But then I looked around.
Something caused the evacuation of this building, something caused me to be ignored in the flight of the authorities, and something was keeping everyone gone for a long time.
Someone should have returned by now. Even if there was a fire, or a gas leak, the firemen should have been here. I should have heard sirens and voices. Maybe helicopters. The clock above the nurse’s station read four o’clock when I finally switched off the television and, after realizing how eerily quiet it was (save for that constant hammering, which appeared to have gotten faster and more insistent), turned it right back on again for the comfort of the extra noise. My friend hadn’t budged from his station behind the couch, and he didn’t seem to mind the extra sound.
That was definitely the theme song from the A-team.
Man, that song was gonna get stuck in my head.
Chapter 2
They kept me in Building 13. Innocuously named Wisteria, 13 housed the most dangerous inmates in King’s Place. Murderers, rapists, and wife-killers all, we were held in individual cells controlled by a master switchboard in the security booth at the front of the building. I was guessing that switchboard was to thank for my freedom.
I lived on the first floor, but there was at least one more floor above me. Sometimes, mostly at night, I could hear a rapid staccato of beats on the ceiling above my head; an orchestral madhouse performance usually consummated by a crescendo of shouting, the hurried opening of a cell door, and a sharp, cracking thud that I imagined to be either a nightstick hitting a head, a head hitting the floor, or both.
At the moment, I was in the rec room, which was connected to the front of the building by a long, marble-tiled hallway ending in front of a Plexiglas antechamber, which in turn housed the security booth and the vending machines. The antechamber was normally locked on both sides, and the security booth controlled ingress and egress from the same panel that housed the electronic releases for the cells.
How do I know so much about the security set-up, you ask? A clever combination of pre-narcotic observation, and information overheard in a drugged stupor. Oh, and I was beaten to within an inch of my so-called life when I tried to make a run for the doors once.
Yeah, it only took once.
This highway to freedom was on the other side of the set of doors I had flippantly locked after discovering that our little hotel had some vacancies. But after having watched the news reports, I was a little wary about springing to freedom before figuring out where my jailers had disappeared to and, more pressingly, why they had disappeared. If those news reports were true, I thought I had a pretty good idea, but I still wasn’t prepared for what I might find outside those doors.
Besides, my head was still foggy from yesterday’s round of drugs and my prolonged nap, and I had no idea where I’d go if I made good on my escape. Almost absent-mindedly, I noted that the pounding from the East wing had stopped. For the record, I was no longer convinced it was anything as innocent as construction.
I turned my attention to my surroundings, searching for information. The desk normally occupied by the drug-dispensing nurse was, like the shelves behind it, in complete disarray. Papers were everywhere, looking as if they had been hastily rifled through and quickly discarded as either useless or irrelevant. I was famished, so I swallowed my pride and took a bite from the PB and J that sat on the desk.
My pride was the only thing I swallowed, quickly realizing that the mealy texture and sour taste were either the product of a piss poor sandwich maker or an extended period of exposure. Either way, and despite feeling like I hadn’t eaten in days, I spit out the large bite I had taken. I dropped the soggy bread to the dirty desktop, smearing peanut butter on a large desktop calendar in the process. Maybe I could find a vending machine.
I pushed the rest of the sandwich aside and scanned the binders still set back against the credenza; most seemed to be visitor and patient logs. Some were medical manuals dealing with recommended dosages for various diagnoses. Only one binder lay open on the desk. It was today’s intake chart complete with the intake notes from the last nurse on duty.
I scanned the list. It was like reading a plot summary for one of those television crime dramas. Or at least the writers’ collective brainstorming for the criminal de jour.
September 15, 0415: Sykes, Trevor. Multiple personality disorder; double murder; one personality extremely violent, other personality female. Latter personality friendly but no awareness of disorder. Convicted felon. 2F, 202E.
This guy would fit right in.
September 15, 0805: Williams, Seymour. Acute schizophrenia; murder, rape; requires constant sedation; use caution when handling needles. Patient has exhibited violence toward orderlies, nurses and all other authority figures. Patient has violent sexual impulses. Convicted felon. 2F, 206W.
Seemed harmless enough.
While I read, I caught myself wondering vaguely what the alphanumeric codes at the end of each note meant. I read on.
September 15, 0930: Hickman, Travis. Suspected bipolar; triple murder, attempted cannibalism; animalistic ideations. Patient seemingly identifies as wild animal; keep isolated. Admitted from County Sheriff for holding; pending arraignment. 1F, 126E.
Attempted cannibalism and animalistic ideations? Now this was something. If the news reports were true, there were people out there infected with some sort of sickness that made them act like this. Because I was an adult, I didn’t exactly buy the “risen dead” angle, but the shots they showed on the news of the infected really made a case for some seriously fucked up people on the outside.
Maybe this guy had it, and they admitted him before the psychotic crap hit the societal fan. The last entry on the log was the illustrious Mr. Hickman. At nine thirty in the morning.
I checked the clock again. Seven hours since they admitted the last patient, and still neither hide nor hair of another person. Other than A-team, of course.
Even if Hickman had the disease, it wouldn’t take a whole facility to subdue him, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have sprung the rest of us to do it. So he wasn’t the entire reason for the deserted wing. More likely, whatever was going on outside had caused some sort of spur of the moment campus-wide evac, and rather than rounding us dangerous criminals up by the book and spiriting our rowdy asses away to safety, they just popped the gates and let us fend for ourselves, leaving the doors wide open. Much more plausible. Also much more disturbing.
The power flickered briefly, as it did on occasion; the wiring in this place was probably reaching its centennial. The brown-out caused the television to flick off, plunging the room into silence.
My head jerked up in surprise. Something was moving outside the doorway to the hall. I almost wrenched my arm out of the mental socket patting myself on the back for locking the doors.
Whoever it was, they were moving slowly. I scanned the room, looking for something to use as a weapon in case it was one of those lunatics.
I laughed as I examined my name-calling hypocrisy. Dear Kettle, you are surely as black as midnight. Love, Pot.
Of course there were no weapons. Rule number one in housing violent psychotics: don’t leave anything laying around that you wouldn’t want to see used as an incidental murder weapon, such as forks, knives, sporks, cotton candy, rolled up newspapers…well, you get the drift. The furniture was bolted down, the desk held only papers and binders. Even the trashcan was attached to the wall.
I turned in place, looking around somewhat frantically. I walked past the orderly’s desk again and realized that in my initial giddiness at being released, I had failed to notice a faint-but quite clear-hand print on the wall. It wasn’t unusual to find out of place marks or stains in the Park, especially in this room, where my compatriots were often allowed finger paints, water colors and canvas. But this was different.
I moved closer to the print, which bore the appearance of an elementary school Thanksgiving project where you press your hand in a blob of paint and make a turkey out of the hand print. But this was slightly different. I was fairly sure this picture was pressed in blood.
I picked up the pace at that point. I remembered the utility closet I had seen across the hall from my cell. It was probably locked, but worth a shot. We didn’t exactly have free reign of the place, so I hoped that someone had been careless and left it open. I skirted around the edge of the desk (it sat precipitously close to the frosted glass windows spanning the tops of the locked doors) and walked quickly and quietly back down the hallway toward my room. I naively hoped that whoever was shuffling around outside would just pass right by, not recognizing that the adjacent room was occupied.
Trying the door to the closet, I realized my trust in the incompetence of my fellow man was misplaced. Locked. Just like it was supposed to be.
The hallway dead-ended in a glass block wall that allowed the ghost of daylight in, but not a view of the grounds below. No way out that way. The bricks were too thick, and I couldn’t see how far it was down, even if I could break them. I turned back toward the rec room and my eye caught on the sign adorning the door frame to my cell: McKnight, Michael. 1F, 132W. First floor, West wing, room 132. Now those codes on the log made sense.
Shit. Now those codes on the log made sense. The last new intake was on this floor, East wing. Room 126. If he did have the disease, he was as loose as I was, and very close. I was starting to grow… concerned.
I walked slowly back to the rec room, putting each foot down slowly on the marble tile, trying to mute my progress as much as possible. The A-team theme song continued to infuse the room with an audible sense of absurdity, and I resisted the ludicrous urge to join in as I evaluated the windows, judging their suitability for an escape route. Unfortunately, owing to my home’s unique internal security features, the windows were barred, and the glass was unbreakable.
As I scanned the room frantically, I suddenly noticed that I couldn’t hear anything from the hallway, and for a moment thought that the potential danger had passed. It was a fleeting moment.
Our tenuous calm was shattered by a pounding from the hallway on the doors to the room. Delivered in the same implacable cadence as the hammering I had heard when I first awoke, a body was being slammed with considerable force against the gateway to our temporary sanctuary. A-team didn’t like this new development, and he loudly shrieked his objection.
Distraught, he shot up from his crouch behind the sofa and bolted to the doors, frantically making a play for the deadbolt. Bolted to the ground in shock like a piece of loony-bin furniture, I watched, unable to move. I couldn’t believe my eyes; there was no way to get between him and the doors, and no way to stop him from damning us both.
He struggled with the locking mechanism for a split second, and yanked on the brass handle at the same time the doors were being shoved inward from the other side. His foot caught in the corner of the rapidly opening door. He fell to the floor awkwardly, still wailing his displeasure.
Our guest stood in the doorway, illuminated by the light from the barred windows.
I dropped instinctively to a crouch behind the desk, which blocked his view of me but afforded me a sheltered observation of our new friend. Too stunned to move, and with no chance to impede his progress into the room, I stared.
His skin had a light gray cast to it, and his face, fixed in a rictus of what could only be described as ravenous hunger, with the mouth slightly agape, and the cloudy eyes unblinkingly focused on A-team, wore no expression found on a living man. He was dressed in white pants and a white shirt, both articles straining to cover his massive girth. A bite wound adorned his massive neck, with the remnants of a crude bandage hanging lazily from his collar.