“Electricity is out to much of the town. We have diesel generators but they are insufficient for the whole facility, so we are forced to pick and choose. Other than your missing memory, are you having any other symptoms? Dreams, hallucinations?”
“Well if I was, I wouldn’t remember them, would I? You know, because I’m missing my goddamned memory.”
“Of course. How are you feeling, physically?”
“I have a headache and my joints hurt.”
“Those are expected side effects of the tranquilizers and being bedridden, and also should pass quickly. Do you remember why you were put under tranquilizers in the first place?”
“Any question you ask me that begins with the words ‘do you remember’ is going to be answered with ‘no.’”
“Ha. Understood! Do you feel like you are up to rejoining the others?”
“The others? How many others are there? Can you tell me that?”
“In the primary quarantine area? Nearly five hundred. At one time.”
“And how many of them are people like me, who you know goddamned well aren’t infected?”
“Now David, can’t you see that I do not know that?”
“Ah, I see. Due to being muddled by the medication, you are missing some key information about our circumstances. It turns out that appearances are not a perfect indication of infection. Not, unfortunately, until it’s too late. So hopefully you understand that we must take precautions.”
“Dr. Tennet, can you hear the fucking people behind me, screaming for help? Can you hear them over this intercom thing?”
“Which people? The gentleman asking for help with his wife? We lost two staff members trying to help that man’s poor ‘wife.’ If you open that door, you’ll indeed find what looks like a very frail, wounded woman. If you get within striking distance, you’ll find that woman is the transfigured tongue of a grindworm.”
“A
“I’m sorry, we have to come up with names for the organisms the parasite transforms its victims into. Without getting into detail, let me just say that we spent sixteen hours trying to recover our two staff members from the creature, their screams echoing down this hall the entire night, and next day, as they were slowly twisted to pieces. The creature has been spitting splinters of their bones under its door ever since. So hopefully you’ll understand why we’re leaving that door locked. ‘Fool me once,’ as they say.”
“So… you just lock everybody up and wait for us to turn monster?”
“As I said, we’re making progress. But, regardless, this conversation is only wasting time and taxpayer money at this point, when all I need to know is if you feel up to joining the others out in the fresh air and sunshine of the hospital lawn. We need your room, to be perfectly frank.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“Great, great. If you turn to your right and continue down that hall, you’ll find an elevator.”
“And then what will—”
The monitor blinked off.
One of the two guys behind me told me to hold still, and unlocked my cuffs and leg irons. He pointed, and through a speaker in his helmet said, “End of the hall.”
I said, “What about the girl?”
“Sir, move to the end of the hall.”
“There was a little girl in my room, named Anna. I don’t know if she snuck in and back out or what but she was in there right before you guys arrived.”
The guy gave a glance to his partner. Uncertainty? The partner said, “Move to the elevator, or you’re going back to the room.”
I obeyed, my unsteady footsteps echoing in a dim hallway where the only illumination was dribbling out of a set of emergency lights to my left. Way down at the end was a barely lit elevator standing open.
Halfway down I turned and looked back for the two guards. Not there. Just lonely blackness beyond the pool of emergency light.
Goddamn did this seem like a long walk. My legs were weak and shaky—how long had I been strapped to that bed? What kind of drugs did they have me on? I felt my face and had no bandage there, just a little bump where the spider had bitten me. Where were John and Amy? What happened to the town? Had the world ended? Why did this hallway smell like shit?
A whisper, behind me. I stopped, and held my breath. Had I actually heard it?
I continued, the elevator waiting right up ahead in the darkness, barely enough light inside to fill the tiny space.
I stopped again. I thought I could hear smaller, lighter footsteps trailing mine. Or maybe an echo.
I whispered, “Anna?”
Not sure any sound actually came out.
I turned and walked as fast as I could toward the open elevator, without breaking into what could be called a run. I made it inside, spun around and punched the button that said “1.” All the other buttons from there up had been covered with electrician’s tape.
Nothing happened. I was standing under what seemed like a 25-watt bulb that was slightly brighter than a candle. Dead silence.
No, wait. There was a faint sound. Not footsteps. A light scraping, then a brief pause, then the scrape again. The irregular rhythm of somebody trying to drag or carry an awkward load, or maybe just trying to walk with a severely wounded leg.
Getting louder. Closer. I could now make out a smacking, sticky sound, like a person loudly eating pasta right next to your ear.
I punched the “1” button again. I punched the “Close Door” button. I punched the “1” button again. Then I mashed the buttons under the electrical tape. All of them.
That wet sound, scraping toward me. I could hear it clearly now, not ten feet away. Moving faster.
The door closed.
If they didn’t want the patients at the Undisclosed Ffirth Asylum command center slash patient processing facility to feel like prisoners, they were doing the world’s shittiest job. In the light I saw I was wearing a green prisoner jumpsuit. When the elevator arrived at the top, two more black-suited space men roughly dragged me out, put a black hood over my head, and threw me into the back of a military truck.
The hospital was just a couple of blocks away, but the trip took twenty minutes. We drove, stopped, waited, drove, waited again, then an alarm went off and I heard an electric sound like a garage door opening. We rolled forward for five seconds, then the sound again, and the clicks of latches. Then there was another gate opening, followed by the opening of the doors of the truck. I felt sunlight and a blast of cold air hit my hood. I was dragged out and told to lay flat on the grass. I was told that if I raised any part of my body before commanded to, I would be shot.
They yanked off my hood. The truck left and I risked craning my neck enough to see a chain-link fence roll shut behind it. I turned the other way and saw that there was… another fence. I was in a gap the width of a city street, between two tall fences that were each topped with coils of Fuck-You razor wire. The inner fence, the one opposite the one the truck had just slipped out of, was opaque—they had attached tarps or some plastic sheets to it. The goal was clearly to make sure the separation between the hospital quarantine and the outside world was absolute. The plastic sheets were colorful and had printing all along them. The one nearest to me said 91.9 K-ROCK ROCKTOBER ROCKOCALYPSE.
I wondered how long they’d leave me laying like this, but soon a gate in the inner fence slid open and a voice
