The word chaos doesn’t begin to describe the grounds around them. The idea that these scenes, or worse, were happening all across the world chilled him to the core. Panting and trying to still avoid notice, they watched from a shadow as the scene unfolded.
A wide variety of people scattered across the grass, heading in equally varied directions. White lab coats, black security uniforms, others dressed in business casual clothes. It hinted toward a specific type of business, but nothing they hadn’t already considered. Many were stained with blood, the whites of their eyes flashing as they ran toward safety.
“This is crazy,” Maggie breathed, wiping sweat from her upper lip.
After taking a minute to catch their breath, Neil inched around the edge of the wall to get a look at the door. It was wide open, the dark interior obscured by the bright sunlight. He moved closer, squinting into the darkness. He couldn’t shake the feeling someone, or something was watching him. Even though they were trying to sneak into a highly secure building, with the mania carrying on around them, it was an odd sensation.
Kristine clapped a hand on his arm and pulled him back. “Watch,” she said, nodding toward the slope in front of them.
Neil followed her gaze, scanning the swarm of people running in all directions. A woman with short brown hair and a white lab coat tripped. At the last second, she’d tried to change direction and stumbled over her own feet. An older, obese woman ambled toward her. At first, Neil thought she might try to help her up, but the fear on the fallen woman’s face wiped that thought away. Using her heels and hands, she scrambled away from the older woman, whose wheezes could be heard from even thirty yards away.
His throat tightened as she advanced, but Kristine’s nails in his arm kept him focused. “Watch,” she hissed through her teeth. God, I really don’t want to watch someone die…
The fallen woman’s face morphed in an instant. One moment she was terrified for her life, the next she was a placid observer. The world’s best actor couldn’t have transitioned between the two emotions with as much smoothness.
After a moment, the older woman shook her head, sweat-drenched hair hanging limply. The pair exchanged no words and walked off in opposite directions. The older woman stalked along as fast as her thick legs could carry her. The younger broke into a light jog, her head swiveling this way and that, looking for… a victim, Neil thought with a shiver.
Kristine grabbed his attention, her bright blue eyes wide and excited. “You saw it, right? You saw it?”
“I don’t know what I—”
“They shared it. Transmitted it, whatever,” Maggie groaned. “Jesus. That means—”
Kristine finished her thought. “Anyone can be turned.”
Maggie pressed into the wall, as if hoping it could swallow her whole. “This is crazy,” she repeated. “We need to get out of here, like, now. Now, now.”
As much as Neil wanted to go in and save that girl, even his resolve faltered. It was like diving into an angry hornet’s nest. One look to Kristine told him she wasn’t about to back down. Somehow, he found strength in that.
“You can hide here. I’ll grab you on the way back and we can run to the car. I have to go in. I can’t come this far and not go inside. Just, don’t let anyone touch you.”
“I’m coming with you,” Neil said, almost surprised at hearing his own voice. “I know the way, a little bit.”
Maggie didn’t argue. Her only response was a low groan rumbling in her throat.
The flow of people seemed to slow. One popped out of the darkness every ten or fifteen seconds. In Neil’s mind, this wasn’t a good sign. If this aggression could be spread through physical contact, it might mean that anyone left inside the building was now a vicious killer.
They crept along the perimeter until they were only a few feet from the door. Neil knew he had to be the first one in. He couldn’t expect the others to dive into the darkness first. He took a deep breath and prayed he wouldn’t piss himself out of fear. He looked each woman in the eye for a long moment, nodded, and slipped inside.
The darkness was all encompassing. He nearly screamed out but caught his tongue just in time. At first, he thought he’d gone blind, but his eyes were merely slow to adjust. With a couple side steps, he ducked further into the shadows and waited a few heartbeats. The immediate area seemed to be deserted. Keeping an eye on the hallway, he stuck a hand out and waved the other two in. He gave them a chance to get used to the darkness.
“The rooms are down that way,” he pointed.
Kristine nodded. She opened her mouth to reply and gasped, slamming her hand over the cuff at her wrist in surprise. The faint sound of a vibration touched Neil’s ears.
“Shit,” she hissed. “I have to answer.”
“You what?” Maggie demanded incredulously. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Maggie wilted a touch under the look Kristine fired at her. Neil was glad she’d said something, though. As if his nerves weren’t already on edge, they had to stand here and wait for this woman to finish her call. His confusion only doubled when Kristine answered with a light, almost sleepy tone.
“Hey baby. This is a treat. Are you on a break?”
Neil could hear a man’s voice on the other side of the call, but couldn’t make out the words. Judging by his tone, he didn’t sound nearly as relaxed.
Kristine yawned. “No. Why? What’s happening?” She glanced at Neil and he could see the fear, and anger, reflected back. “Oh wow. Shit. No, I had no idea… right… okay… I’m turning on the TV right now.”
She bowed her head and took tiny steps. Neil got the feeling it was common for her to pace while talking on her cuff, but the space, and situation, constricted her. It was incredible to hear her act so normal under the circumstances. Really, it only added to the bizarre scene.
“You be careful, too. You’re at work, right?”
Neil and Maggie looked at each other. Those words had been tinged with venom, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Maybe you should come home… no? You’re too busy? Uh huh… right. Well, okay sweetheart. I’m gonna make sure everyone in the unit is okay. Take care of yourself.”
She tilted her face to the ceiling, shaking her head. “I love you, too. Bye.”
Maggie didn’t wait even a second before jumping in. “You knew one of those guys, didn’t you? The ones in the car.”
Neil thought for a moment Kristine might slap her for the comment. Her expression twisted not in anger, but at the truth of the comment. Instead, she gave them a wry smile. “You two might be better investigators than me. Come on, we don’t have much time.”
The hallway seemed longer than he remembered. Maybe it was because he fully understood what lay behind each door, the vastness of the place threatened to consume him. Shaking away the overwhelming sensation, he focused on getting to the girl on their first try. Any wasted time could be the difference between life and death. They’d been lucky up to this point. He didn’t want to push it further.
He paused in front of one of the plain doors, looking up and down the hallway. It seemed right, but the difference between this one and the next appeared negligible. Was it the third or fourth?
“You okay?” Kristine whispered.
In his concentration, he hadn’t noticed how nervous the two women had become. He couldn’t blame them. His hesitation had left them in a rather exposed position.
“Yeah. It’s this one.” He tried to sound confident and apparently it worked. Neither of them argued as he pushed the door open.
The room was exactly as he’d remembered it. The clear cubicles seemed to almost glow from within, the emergency lights bouncing and refracting off the plastic in odd angles. Everything was exactly as he’d left it only days before, though to him, it felt like a lifetime.
Kristine looked to him, almost for permission.
“This is it, yeah,” he nodded.
As they inched down the hall, she began recording. In a soft voice,
she narrated what she was seeing and any other details that might be missed on the video. Maggie even took out her cuff to snap photos of anything she thought might look important.
Neil was relieved to see the older Asian woman in the first bed, thankful he’d at least he’d chosen the right room. Kristine paused in front of her, describing the scene in a breathless, low tone that freaked him out a little.
“The patient is hooked up to a series of machines, I think for monitoring, not life support. Like the patients I saw in the hospitals in New York, she is sitting upright. It may be difficult to see in this light, but her eyes are open, face expressionless. Maybe the partition is like a one-way mirror, but she doesn’t show any sign that she’s aware of our presence.”
Feeling the pressure of time heavy on his shoulders, he pushed behind Kristine and strode down past the next few cubicles. As he approached the room he’d been dreaming about for days, his heart sank.
Sitting serenely in the hospital bed was the young blonde girl. With her eyes unfocused, hands resting neatly in her lap, she was as still as the others. He held his breath and stepped directly in her line of sight. No reaction.
Neil felt another pair of eyes on him, these piercing blue and coming from the left. Kristine asked the question with her gaze, not her words. She knew there was something special about this specific catatonic patient. He opened his mouth to try to explain and for the first time, he questioned his own perception. Maybe in the stress of escaping, he’d imagined her moving, calling out to him. Or maybe in the time between, they’d done something to her, stolen her voice.
All three stood staring at the young woman, each deep in their own thoughts. Their reactions were just as different when the girl suddenly moved. As she threw the white sheet aside and swung her bare feet to the floor, Neil stepped forward. Kristine raised her cuff.
“Fuck me!” Maggie gasped, jumping away from the glass.
“You came back! It’s really you?” the girl cried. She pressed the flat of her hands against the barrier, reaching out to touch him. She stood strangely on the balls of her feet, obviously having spent a long time in the bed. She scanned Neil’s face with her dark eyes. “What’s going on out there? I heard screams.”
“You have something you want to tell me?” Kristine whispered, her gaze transfixed on the suddenly-awake catatonic girl.
“When we escaped last time, I… we…”
Maggie ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek and glared at him. “You couldn’t find an ugly grandma or something?”
“Was she this awake?” Kristine looked at him from the corner of her eye.
“Yes! I’m not a freakin’ pedophile!”
“I think you mean necrophile,” Maggie corrected, coming along his side. “At least, I hope you do.”
The girl on the other side of the wall watched them as they spoke in turn. She pounded a weak fist on the wall once.
“What happened out there?” she demanded, looking directly at Neil.
“We need to go,” Maggie said, pulling the two others away. “We’ve been in here too long already.”
“We can’t just leave her,” Neil protested.
Panic touched her voice as if an invisible noose tightened around her neck. “She’s a prisoner, Neil. And do I have to remind you why she’s in here?”
“Why am I in here?” the girl asked. The innocent question hung in the air.
“She’s lying. She can’t possibly—”
Kristine held up a hand to silence the beginning of Maggie’s rant. “We have no idea what she remembers or doesn’t. I’ve never met someone who’s woken up from the coma, have you?” She cocked her head, squinted slightly, and seemed to make up her mind. “We should at least try.”
“Kristine, seriously. You saw what happened out there, how it spread.” Maggie was close to hysterics at this point, but Kristine had a strange way of being able to calm her.
She grabbed Maggie’s shoulders and stooped to be eye-to-eye. Neil expected her to slap the hands away, but she stilled. “Look at her. She’s a string bean. If she snaps, all three of us will take her down. Agreed?”
Both women looked at him pointedly. He nodded without fully considering what he’d just signed up for. If it meant getting her out, then it had to be done.
Kristine turned her attention to the keypad beside the narrow door. A small green light blinked away, indicating it was still engaged.
“The guard keeps something down there. I know the code to get in, but you need the card down there.” The girl pointed to a desk at the end of the hall. Neil was glad Kristine moved first. He wasn’t looking forward to having to walk past a bunch of motionless zombies.
He lifted his hand to touch the spot where her’s rested, but pulled it back at the last second. It felt too personal, something Maggie would use as ammunition later.
“What’s your name?”
She scrunched up her face, blinking several times. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Maggie muttered.
“You don’t remember your name?”
She shook her head and nibbled on her bottom lip. Neil suspected the gesture was meant to keep her from showing how afraid she was. She still looked terrified and his heart melted just a little bit more.
With an aggressive yank, Maggie pulled him away from the door. They stood in front of another patient, their hollow, dead eyes staring straight through them.
“None of this feels right, you have to see that. She’s the only one awake, doesn’t remember her name…” Maggie and the girl looked at each other. “She’s pretty, I’ll give you that, but not worth dying for.”
Kristine returned to the door with a handful of different plastic ID tags.
“I don’t know which one it is. But you have to hold it up, something clicks, you type in the code, and it unlocks.”
With a glance over her shoulder to the main door, Maggie pulled them both back once more. “How does she know the code? How does she know any of this? It feels like a trap!”
“Please, I need to get out of here. I swear I don’t know what I did and I’m not going to hurt you. But I need to get out of here. There are a few guards who…” She finished the sentence with her eyes, the implication of the unsaid words the last straw.
“We’re getting you out,” Neil declared.
Kristine held the card-sized white tags up and plucked one at random.
“The code is 9-6-6-2-4-3.” She tugged at the patch of blue hair and stared at the exit. “Please hurry.”
It took five different tries, but finally the keypad light flashed, clicked, and the door was unlocked.
Maggie dove between the two of them to grab the door handle. “Are we absolutely sure about this?”
With a firm hand, he pried her hand away from the door and gently pushed it open. Even though the door was large enough, she ducked her head as she stepped over the threshold. Somehow, she seemed even smaller now that he could touch her.
“Which way is out?” she asked, peering up at him with fear and trust.
Neil, feeling like a hero for the first time in his life, threaded his fingers with hers. “This way.”
Chapter Fourteen
South Lake Tahoe, CA
The young girl screamed. Her brother pulled her behind him protectively. Their mother was split between the two, concerned for her father who appeared to be having a stroke and blocking the strangers from her children.
“Get away from him right now,” Penelope repeated.
Cameron complied, backing away with his hands raised, ready to deal with whatever threat he wasn’t noticing.
“Wesley, you too.”
The old man was oblivious to everything else around him. He’d appeared from the dark hall the second the beeping began. Hunched over the machines, which were now going crazy, he didn’t even acknowledge she was speaking.
Seconds became minutes. Penelope glanced back to the connection between Joey and Rex, sensing that an
invisible timer was nearly coming to zero.
Whether it was his inherent skill in sensing danger or that he trusted his old friend, Cameron didn’t wait to understand what was going on. He acted.
“Wesley! God damnit, move!”
“The data coming out of this—”
“Means fuck all to us if you’re dead,” Cameron shouted back.
For the first time, the scientist looked up to those around him. Like a kid caught in the middle of a game of keep-away, he was trapped directly between Rex and Joey. When he stood, he broke their line of sight. The color drained from his face. With a stumble, he moved back to the hallway door.
Joey slowly closed his eyes and reopened them.
Taking advantage of the intruders’ retreat, Rex’s daughter moved to check on her father, her hand floating to his shoulder. Before Penelope could open her mouth to warn the woman away, chaos exploded around them.
Without looking, the older man’s fist fired up from his waist, landing just under his daughter’s jaw. Her teeth audibly clacked shut, a piece of tooth flying from her mouth in an arc. She was lifted from her feet and knocked backward. She stumbled, hands splayed to catch herself, but the impact was too strong. Her head smashed against a table as she fell back and slumped to the floor.
The girl’s deafening scream broke Penelope from whatever haze she’d found herself in. Unsurprisingly, Cameron was already on the move.
With a stealth that seemed impossible from a man of his stature, he swiftly closed the distance between them. Along his path, he grasped a heavy chunk of equipment from the table, swapping it to his right hand. Only two steps away, he brought the hard metal down on the soft spot between neck and shoulder.
Rex crumpled a little, his knee giving out, but he didn’t fall. Cameron leapt back, deftly avoiding a backhanded fist.
Penelope shifted around the perimeter of the room to try and reach the mother. She rolled on the floor in a semi-conscious state, blood pouring from her mouth and head. Her children were on the opposite side, scared to approach, too terrified to move.
STASIS: Part 3: Restart Page 11
