John realized it wasn’t feces at his feet.
He used the set of building keys to unlock the cell door. The key tumbler turned effortlessly and he readied his rifle as he swung the door open. Lauren had him covered as well. John shone his light inside the dark cell, the beam sweeping over the interior. They saw what John expected to see, but not Lauren—not this. What she saw was a nightmare.
“What the hell is that? Is that what I think—” she couldn’t finish her sentence as she covered her mouth at the grotesque thought.
John lowered his weapon and drew closer—in the cell were a few dead bodies—they weren’t patients who died and were put in the single cell, no. It was obvious these naked bodies weren’t patients because when John shone his flashlight in a corner by the door, they saw a pile of civilian clothing that were neatly folded, methodically folded past the point of obsessive. That wasn’t what repulsed Lauren, though. Even John cringed slightly at the sight—the bodies were just like the clothes, lying facedown neatly placed side-by-side, their faces seeing nothing but, Hell’s rooftop—what repulsed both John and Lauren was the fact the bodies were missing large sections of meat, and it wasn’t damage done by the savagery of the undead. Someone had cut out portions from the bodies.
The butchery wasn’t done haphazardly; the hands of a skilled and patient surgeon had done it. Pieces had been removed in small rectangular sections from the meatiest parts—the buttocks, legs, and arms were all stripped down to the bones. The cold, rancid corpses looked like jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces. Some were completely harvested skeletal shells, right down to empty skull cavities. The tools of the macabre were left in a few of the cadavers; a scalpel stuck in the thigh of one, and a butcher knife impaled in the ass cheek of another. The only things missing from this cell were meat hooks.
“Why would someone do this?” Lauren asked, trembling.
“Isn’t it obvious?” John answered and he nodded toward the cells that held the deprived.
The forty-seven patients in the cells had by now calmed down to a level of random moans and short howls of hunger.
Lauren realized what he meant when she saw a serving platter on the floor next to the bodies—it was slathered in old, dry blood. “Oh God, oh my God,” she mumbled in nausea.
John went through some of pockets of the clothing and found a few wallets. He rifled through the contents and found some IDs; they belonged to the faces of strangers. He had a hunch and went to the next cell and opened it…
Ceraulo still sat in the exact same position in the holding cell, the only difference was that his eyes looked in the direction of the cellblock and he could hear the thin echoes of John and Lauren’s activity. More precisely, he could hear John opening the cell doors. Ceraulo grinned and raised his eyebrows to the sounds of what he knew was being discovered. “Uh-Ohhh.”
John opened the other cell and inside was a dead patient; it also had been butchered as a food source. “Ceraulo was feeding these patients with these dead bodies,” John said.
“He must’ve killed them,” Lauren wondered.
John opened another cell. Inside was a repeat of the first cell—a few more butchered hospital staff—John went through their pile of clothes and found more wallets. None of them caught his attention; until he happened upon the last wallet he opened. His eyes widened with the anger of confirmation. He gave the ID to Lauren and then checked his rifle to make sure a round was chambered—it was ready. He left Lauren standing there as he headed back to Ceraulo’s holding cell.
She was in shock as she stared at the ID in her hand—it was a California driver license under the name of ‘Richard Ceraulo’. She stared at the picture imprinted on the holographic card—
“What…the…hell?” she expelled.
It wasn’t the face of the man they knew as ‘Doctor Richard Ceraulo’.
She made haste to catch up with John.
“You’re dead, you son of a bitch!” John said as he got to the holding cell.
He aimed his weapon in the cell, but it was
empty
.
“Goddamnit!” John barked.
He tried the door—locked—he looked up at the ceiling, it was intact. A moment later, Lauren got there.
“Shit! Where did he go?” she said.
“I don’t know, but we gotta find him!” John answered and they headed back to the main wing.
John and Lauren scanned their weapons everywhere for any sign of ‘Ceraulo’ as they descended from the second floor, but he was nowhere to be seen. At the bottom of the staircase, John decided to hang a left and go into the cafeteria. The place was deserted, no sign of Ceraulo. John walked over to the table with the stacks of patient files.
“Watch my back,” John said.
“Yeah.”
He slung his rifle over his back to free up his hands and went through the patient files, opening each one for a look at the file photo of the patient. He didn’t see anything that caught his eye, they were all disturbed strangers. He shot through them all and didn’t find anything of interest. John stood there thinking and then had an idea—he ran his hands under the table, feeling for anything and came across something that was taped to the bottom. He pulled it free and it was another patient file. Upon opening it, John and Lauren saw the photo and they recognized the face. It was the man calling himself Ceraulo.
John read his real name. “’Ben Cozine’.”
They left in a hurry.
John and Lauren appeared in the cafeteria of the main wing. “Hey! Get up! Everyone up!” John shouted.
Derek sprang up with his rifle already in his hands. “What? What the fuck!” he exclaimed.
“We have a serious problem,” John told him.
Ardent and the rest of them got up.
“What’s going on, John?” Ardent asked.
John handed Ardent the file. He looked at it and absorbed the information. “Okay, so we leave him here then,” Ardent said and handed the file to Bear.
“He got out of his cell somehow,” Lauren told them.
Reading from the file, Bear said, “He killed his own parents when his was nine, with a butcher knife. He—” Bear was disgusted by what he read. “He cut up their bodies and fed them to the family dog. He also killed a psychiatrist when he was seventeen.”
“What?” Derek said and grabbed the file from Bear and read it. “Fuck! I told you he was a sick bastard, didn’t I?”
“There’s more,” John said.
“What?” Ardent asked.
“He killed ten of the hospital staff, including the real Doctor Ceraulo,” John said. “The bodies are in the cellblock and he fed them to the patients.”
“He did what?” Milla said incredulously.
“The sick son of a bitch cut pieces out of the people that he killed and fed them to the locked up patients,” Lauren confirmed.
“Jesus,” Derek said. “We gotta find this fucker and waste him!”
“Derek, go wake up Tom and Anthony,” John asked.
“I’m on it,” Derek answered and gave the file back to John.
Derek left and Alan appeared from the basement machine shop, half-asleep. “What the heck is going on?” he asked.
“You tell us,” John said and tossed him Cozine’s file.
Barely catching it, he said, “What’s this?” he read the file, which woke him up right away. “I knew something wasn’t right about him, but I had no idea.”
“Really?” John said accusingly. “He killed several of the hospital staff, hid the bodies in the cells, and fed them to the other patients. Did you know anything about that?”
“What? No! Are you nuts! What do you think I am?”
“That’s just it, we don’t know who you are,
Alan
, you could be a patient here, too,” John shot at him.
Alan tossed the file back and reached for his pocket. John immediately aimed his weapon at him.
“Whoah! Go easy, I’m just reaching for my wallet,” Alan said cautiously.
“Nice and slow,” John said.
Alan took out his wallet and threw his ID to John, and they saw that he really was Alan.
“Satisfied?” Alan said defiantly.
John tossed the ID back, “Yeah, for now.”
In Joe and Maggie’s room, they were still asleep, but Joe slowly woke to the sound of everyone talking loud outside. “What’s going on?” his groggy voice asked.
He turned on a light, and sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking in the corner where Corina slept—she was gone.
“Maggie? Maggie, wake up!”
“What?” she said with closed eyes.
“Where’s Corina?”
“What!” Maggie shot out of bed and looked at her daughter’s empty bed. “Jesus!”
She got dressed and rushed outside with Joe following…
Derek walked through the front doors of the hospital with Tom and Anthony. By the looks on their faces it was obvious Derek had filled them in on the situation.
“Is it true what Derek told us about Ceraulo?” Tom asked John.
“Yeah, it is.”
“How did he do it?” Tom wanted to know.
“He must’ve done it after we left,” Anthony guessed. “That’s when the hospital staff was down to bare minimum. When we came back and they were all gone, we just assumed they had abandoned the hospital,” he concluded.
“Damn it, I gave that psycho a handgun,” Tom regretted.
“We have to find him, now,” Bear said.
“Find him and kill him, no questions asked,” Tom added.
“Then that’s the decision,” Ardent said. “We’ll split into teams. Bear and I will search the south wing, starting from the bottom. Derek and Milla, you two search from the top down and we’ll meet you somewhere in the middle.”
“Got it.” Milla said.
“Me and Anthony will take the main wing from the top,” Tom said.
“Where’s Donnie?” Anthony asked.
Before they could ponder that—Maggie and Joe stormed in—“Corina is missing! Has anyone seen her?” she demanded.
The group sounded off and told her they hadn’t seen Corina.
“When was the last time that you saw her?” Tom asked.
“Last night when I put her to bed,” Maggie told him.
“Okay, she can’t be very far, we’ll look for her as well,” Ardent said.
“Look for her as well? What do you mean?” Joe asked.
“Ceraulo isn’t Ceraulo. He’s actually one of the psycho guests here,” Derek informed them.
“Yeah, and he killed ten of the staff and fed them to the patients that he had locked up,” Anthony explained.
“Are you serious? Jesus Christ!” Joe said.
“Look, we have to find this guy. None of us are safe until we do,” John told the group.
“Maybe we should just leave now and forget about that nut job,” Derek suggested.
“No! I’m not leaving without Corina!” Maggie was set.
“We’re not leaving without her, don’t worry,” Ardent assured her. “I want you and Joe to start looking in the main building, start at the bottom floor and meet up with Tom and Anthony.”
“Okay,” Joe said.
“John, you and Lauren take the north wing. When we see Donnie, we’ll send him to help you two.”
“Alright,” John answered.
“Make sure that all of you are armed. This man, Ben Cozine, is a psychopath. You see him, shoot to kill,” Ardent told them.
“Please find Corina. She’s sick with the flu,” Maggie pleaded.
“We will,” Bear assured her.
“If you find the girl, let us know on the radios,” Ardent instructed them.
“Remember; if you find Cozine, don’t hesitate, kill him,” John said to everyone.
“I’m going with you two,” Alan said to Ardent and Bear.
“Okay, let’s go,” Ardent said.
They took off in their separate groups. Since it was still dark, flashlight beams led the way for them. Each group disappeared down a different corridor, up a different stairwell. They went off to search for a lunatic . . . they had no idea he was watching them…
John and Lauren appeared on the first floor of the north wing, where they had been just a few minutes ago. They were quiet and rigid, with their weapons at the ready. Their flashlights scanned ahead of them, back and forth, but they illuminated no one. They continued and searched every room on the first floor before moving on to the second.
Joe and Maggie had just started searching the second floor of the main building, they were moving too fast because they weren’t professionals and they were more concerned about finding their daughter than looking for Ben Cozine. “Corina?” Maggie called out.
“Not so loud. That maniac might hear you,” Joe whispered.
“I don’t care about him. We need to find our daughter, damn you! Besides, I never did anything to Ceraulo, Cozine, whatever his name is,” Maggie said angrily as she led the way.
As they went through a string of cubicle offices, they didn’t see the dark figure behind the door they walked through. Ceraulo, aka Cozine, stood there as they walked right by him. All they had to do was check the corner behind the door. He watched them with queer curiosity. At one point, Maggie inadvertently passed her flashlight beam across Cozine’s face as she turned back to talk at Joe. She didn’t see him, even though the flashlight beam twinkled in his eyes like starlight. He stood there, perfectly still like a snake set to strike, as the flashlight glow faded from golden amber to darkness in his pupils. They moved on not ever knowing. It seemed Cozine agreed that Maggie never did anything to him.