Long Dark Night

by Janci Patterson

  Thorpe cleared his throat. “Some time to have second thoughts.”

  He pulled into the hospital parking lot. The lot was well lit and still half-full of cars. Hospitals weren’t the kinds of places that cleared out overnight.

  I searched over the area in my mind. I knew Thorpe could tell me where Vance was—if he was even here—but I wanted to track him myself. He couldn’t sneak up on me. Not anymore.

  I sifted through the corpses in the hospital, starting with the basement. As I did, I looked for spaces between them. I didn’t find him there, so I worked my way up through the floors.

  The first time through, I missed it. But as I made a second pass, high in the air I felt a slight tugging at my energy, as if my very anxiety were being pulled into an invisible object.

  He was in his office on the top floor. I hadn’t been back in that room in six months. I’d never wanted to go back there again.

  “He’s here,” I said, eyes still closed. “He has to know we’re here already, but he doesn’t seem to be coming for us.”

  He was waiting for me to come to him. That’s what he’d wanted all along—to break my will until I was ready to do whatever he said.

  Even though I brought backup, he was going to wait there. Not because he expected I’d come in peace, no doubt. But because he had pawns to use against me. He was sending me a message about what kind of effort I was worth.

  But Thorpe was older than he was, and I was stronger than I’d been when I left.

  Vance was in for a surprise.

  Thorpe parked the car and checked the bullets in his pistol. I’d expected to have to talk him out of his rifle, but he seemed to already realize that he wouldn’t be able to waltz into the hospital carrying a gun that big without getting stopped.

  I pulled a canvas bag containing the tranquilizer gun out from under my seat. “Won’t people hear if you start shooting?” I asked. “I really don’t want any beaters getting hurt.”

  Thorpe pulled out a long tube and applied it to the barrel of the gun. “Suppressor,” he said. “With subsonic rounds. It’ll still make noise, but it’s early morning. The office area should be thin, at least.”

  I searched the building again, this time counting corpses. There were twenty-one in all. I looked at Thorpe. “You’re up.”

  “You’re sure you want to do it this way?” Thorpe asked. “It’s a declaration of war.”

  “Do you have a better plan?” Jack asked.

  “We should burn the place down,” Thorpe said. “Smoke him out.”

  I gaped at him. “It’s a hospital,” I said. “What part of what’s wrong with that don’t you understand?”

  Thorpe shrugged. “As you wish. But Vance is willing to hurt them. That gives him an edge over you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “As if he needed another one.”

  Thorpe nodded. “Let’s get inside first. In case all hell breaks loose.”

  We went into the hospital the same way I’d escaped—through the emergency room. As we headed toward the elevators, a woman at the front desk waved at us.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “We’re visitors,” Jack said. “Oncology.” It wasn’t normal visiting hours, but we kept walking, and she didn’t stop us. We climbed into the elevator alone, and the doors closed behind us.

  I half wished Vance would come for us here. If he was waiting outside the elevator when it opened again, I could sense him, ready the gun, shoot him. Fewer bystanders would get hurt in an altercation in an enclosed space. We could get it over with, one way or the other.

  But I could still feel the empty spot, far above me.

  Vance wasn’t coming. He was still waiting. But he definitely knew we were coming because corpses all over the building were on the move. On every floor, Vance’s men moved toward the elevator, no doubt waiting to intercept us at every door. In the basement, some of the corpses clawed at the walls of their closets, but others moved purposefully up the stairs.

  Reinforcements, all of them ready to take us down.

  “Now,” I said. “Do it now.”

  I didn’t have the words out of my mouth before, all around us, the corpses froze. Then the tendrils outlining their forms abruptly shrunk down to a dewdrop mist, and then immediately dilated, melding together until they became a solid sheet.

  I looked up at Thorpe, and found him standing with his eyes closed. The elevator continued upward past pairs of corpses.

  And then they all began walking again, proceeding past the elevator at the same speed they’d approached.

  “They aren’t armed,” Thorpe said. “Or I’d have them shoot each other in the chest. But there’s got to be a projectile around somewhere.”

  “Nowhere the beaters can see,” I said.

  Our elevator continued to ascend.

  “I could have them jump out windows,” Thorpe said. “Won’t kill them, but will probably draw attention.”

  “No,” I said. “Vance will kill any beaters who witness something like that. Or worse.”

  Then, quite suddenly, our elevator stopped.

  I stepped back into the corner, wedging myself in. No corpses were near the elevator. I supposed Vance might have called beater security to take care of the problem, so I wouldn’t be able to sense it, but having beaters apprehend us only made it more likely that we would do something to expose him.

  Did Vance have elevator controls in his office?

  I moved to pry open the elevator doors. Jack helped me, and we wrenched the doors open and climbed onto the fifth floor. I couldn’t see anyone in the hallway except for two of Vance’s look-alike corpses heading for the stairs at the end of the hall, wearing hospital security uniforms.

  Thorpe swore behind me.

  And then the corpses at the end of the hall spun around and ran straight for us.

  I stumbled backward down the hall, away from them. No, all the corpses started running toward us, from all over the hospital. Jack grabbed me by the arm, carrying me toward the end of the hall, but they were between us and the stairs. Would we be able to find our way out in this direction?

  I glanced over my shoulder as we ran, and saw Thorpe step into the hall, gun drawn, and open fire on the corpses. Even with the suppressor, the shots were enough to draw a nurse out of one of the doors down the hall, but one of the corpses—still standing despite taking bullets to the chest—yelled at her to take cover, and she slammed the door shut again immediately.

  If she had a phone in there, she’d no doubt be reporting what she’d seen. And with the corpses dressed as security—hell, they probably were the regular security—it wasn’t hard to guess whose side she’d be on.

  Jack and I ran, reaching the only exit at the end of this hall—a utility elevator. And as loath as I was to trust another elevator, we had no choice. I pressed the button for the elevator to go up, hoping it wasn’t too many floors away, or already occupied.

  Down the hall, the corpses caught up with Thorpe. His shots to the heart—or gland—must have missed, because one of them caught him by the throat and threw him back in the elevator and jumped down in with him. The doors closed behind them a moment later, and the other corpse kept running, rapidly closing in on us.

  The utility elevator beeped and the doors opened. We both stumbled in, and I reached the panel first and jammed on the Close Door button. The doors did close—just as the corpse reached us. He went to grab the doors to stop them, but Jack kicked him in the groin. Even without pain, the corpse went stumbling back, and I jammed on the button.

  The doors closed, and the elevator began to ascend.

  “We don’t dare do this for more than one floor,” I said. All around us, I could feel corpses converging on our location. The one back in the other elevator was just reaching the floor above us.

  I searched for Thorpe, but his empty spot was gone.

  The utility elevator opened up in a large supply room filled with spare beds, IV racks, medical carts, wheel chairs, and shel
ves and shelves of sheets, bandages, and box after box of who knew what else. I began to move across the room, dodging shelving units as I went.

  “Wait,” Jack said. He grabbed a large bottle off a shelf—rubbing alcohol—and then produced his Zippo lighter from his pocket.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’ll burn fast,” Jack said, pointing his lighter at the ceiling. “Look, there’re sprinklers in every room.”

  I supposed a hospital in which it was raining was marginally better than one that was burning, but still. Jack pulled the lid from the jug and poured the alcohol out onto the floor, then lit it on fire.

  Flames leapt from the floor, and I dashed around them, moving toward the doors. Jack, on the other hand, walked purposefully through the flash of flames as if they weren’t even there.

  The fire caught on his pants, but he ignored it, hurrying toward the door, the flames flying out behind him like streamers from a bike.

  I grabbed a sterile blanket and followed, batting out his flames. They might not kill him, but he was going to be naked if he kept that up, and I wasn’t ready for that.

  We left the utility room, racing past the empty oncology wing and a locked door labeled Mother/Baby.

  “You set the floor on fire,” I hissed, “next to the maternity wing.”

  The fire alarm—and sprinkler system—engaged half a second later. All around us lights flashed, buzzers buzzed, and water rained down from the ceiling, leaving the floor wet and slick.

  Jack looked unreasonably proud of himself.

  We reached the stairs. I could feel a corpse waiting for us—the one that had been with Thorpe in the elevator. With the others moving toward us from all over the hospital, going up those stairs would be our only way to reach Vance.

  Down the hall, nurses and doctors were emerging from various offices and rooms, no doubt enacting whatever protocols were in place should the hospital spontaneously catch fire.

  We didn’t have much time.

  “There’s a corpse waiting for us,” I said to Jack. “But it’s this one or the lot of them.”

  “You get the door,” Jack said.

  I grabbed the handle to the stairwell door and hauled it open.

  Jack bent over and charged up the stairs, the angle of his body obscuring a clear view of his chest. Thorpe had said that the corpses weren’t armed, but this one fired four shots at Jack before he reached him at full speed, and they both went sprawling onto the stairs. The gun fell from the corpse’s hand and I looked down at it.

  Thorpe’s weapon. I picked it up and shoved it into my pocket, sending a bullet through my own thigh.

  I hoped that wasn’t the last one, because without Thorpe and Jack to help me, I was going to need it. I put my hands on the hand rails and kicked my feet forward, propelling myself over the corpse and Jack and landing on the stair above them.

  The corpse grunted and struggled beneath Jack, but Jack planted a hand on his forehead and jammed it back into the stair with a squelch.

  “Go,” Jack said.

  I ran up two flights of stairs until I got to the floor with Vance’s office, and stepped out into a dark hall. Alarms still sounded, but on this floor, the sprinklers hadn’t activated. And then the alarm turned off, and the hall went eerily silent.

  I put my hand on my bag, feeling the outline of the dart gun.

  And though everything in me wanted to run, I made myself walk forward. Toward Vance. Toward the end, for at least one of us.

  Twenty-one

  I could feel Vance’s void down the hall in front of me. Every step drew me closer to him, and my body wanted only to turn and run and never stop until I reached the other side of the earth. Instead, I recited Tennyson’s poem again. O yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt, and taints of blood.

  Despite their indestructibility, my legs felt like rubber. I was impressed they were even capable of moving me in Vance’s direction. Maybe this was progress—a sign I’d be able to face him without melting into my usual puddle. That nothing walks with aimless feet, I thought. That not one life shall be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void, when God hath made the pile complete.

  As I moved to the end of the hall, I drew deep, slow breaths. This was it. I pulled myself up to my full height and took the final turn, facing the office.

  Vance’s door was closed. I could feel him on the other side. Unlike the other corpses, I couldn’t tell what position he was in—what he might be doing. But he was still. He was waiting for me.

  Behold, I thought. We know not anything. I can but trust that good shall fall, at last—far off—at last, to all, and every winter change to spring.

  So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: an infant crying for the light—

  “And with no language but a cry,” I said. Then I pulled the dart gun out of the bag, tucked it behind my back, reached for the handle, and pushed open the door.

  My knees wobbled. Looking into that room was like being transported back in time. I’d sat across that desk so many times as a beater, talking about my volunteer work, thanking Vance for saving my life.

  Until the day he took it.

  Vance sat behind that desk, hands resting on top, watching me calmly. Beyond him was the door to the closet where he’d kept me after he turned me. Where my heart had stopped, and I’d died.

  This time, I looked Vance in the eye. My body shook, but I held my gaze steady.

  “Hello, April,” he said.

  My finger trembled on the trigger of the dart gun.

  Vance smiled, reached beneath his desk, pulled out a pistol, and aimed its sight right at my chest. I turned to the side to give him a smaller target, lifted my arm and advanced on him.

  He shot me in the chest, but apparently not with enough accuracy to pierce that gland. The force threatened to knock me back, but I kept going, aware that I was holding my breath.

  I was ageless. I was timeless. I was death.

  Vance focused on the dart gun with one moment of stunned recognition. And then I fired, even as he shot at me again. The dart hit Vance in his shoulder, just below his shirt collar. He reached up and plucked the dart away, but the damage was done.

  White dots appeared in my mind, marking Vance’s body. He was normal. I could sense him.

  I could feel the shells of corpses around me softening—like butter in a microwave. Surfaces that had been rigid caved in.

  And then hardened again.

  Vance was controlling them. Delia hadn’t been able to do that after I’d shot her, but Vance must be different. Was it a deviant result from his experiments, or had he kept that power on purpose somehow?

  Vance fired his pistol again.

  I ducked. One of the bullets lodged in my skull before I knew what was happening. I swatted at it, feeling my brain come away with the bullet. Fluids ran down into my eyes and pooled there like tears.

  I fell to the floor, closed my eyes, and reached out, pushing at the dotted image of Vance the way I had with the corpse at the mortuary. The webbed dots connected, slowly, a few at a time.

  I could feel Vance standing over me, still holding his pistol. I pulled at his image, trying to gain total control over him, to freeze him in place.

  But then the webbed outline twisted away from me, like it’d been ripped from my hands.

  Vance. He was using his abilities to control himself. Vance wasn’t going to let me win.

  I pulled the pistol from my pocket and shot up at him, miraculously hitting him in the chest. At point-blank range, the bullet stripped flesh away, revealing bare, gray metal before skin and bone closed back over his heart.

  Vance had a steel plate inserted over his heart. He must have had it done surgically—to prevent anyone from killing him. His undead flesh had grown right over it, leaving the plate inside. His body should have rejected it.

  Another thing Lyle must have been good for.

  I
scrambled backward. I was going to die. Again. But this time I was going to die on my feet.

  I rolled to the side and stood, facing Vance. He was less than a yard away, and a good head taller than me, but I looked him in the eye again.

  Vance just smiled, like he was waiting for something.

  My body wanted to crumple, but I wouldn’t freeze in Vance’s presence anymore, even though it was all I could do to stay on my feet.

  “I won’t help you,” I said. “You can’t turn me into Delia, no matter what you do.”

  “I see that,” Vance said.

  Beneath us, I could feel the other corpses approaching—a group of them. They passed the empty spot that was Jack—still there, thankfully—and gathered the corpse he’d been detaining with them, all of them ascending together. Their outlines had all gone glassy. Vance wasn’t using his subtle touch this time.

  But his own form didn’t feel solid or glassy anymore. His touch on himself was webbed. Loose.

  Controlling that many corpses outright—it must take a tremendous amount of concentration.

  I pushed between the tendrils, testing. The other corpses felt slippery, like there was no place for me to take hold. Not so with Vance. My mental fingers curved into the web of his shoulders.

  I pulled.

  His web seemed to crackle, then. Vance’s own hold on himself receded, and I pushed forward, grappling for control.

  I fixed my eyes on him and took a step toward him.

  Vance’s eyes grew wide. For the first time, he looked frightened.

  I tore the gun from his hand and dropped it. Holding tight to his shoulders, I stepped into him and pressed my gun against his stomach, aiming upward toward his throat.

  His body spasmed in fast jerks as he fought me. He moved a finger, I pulled it back. He shuffled forward, I stopped his feet.

  I couldn’t hold him like this forever. My arms quivered. I pulled the trigger.

  Vance fell backward onto his desk, eyes widening further.

  And then his features crumbled to dust. His hair flaked away onto his desk planner. The parts of him that hadn’t hit the desk remained formed—a shadow of his undead body. Then his legs began to crumble away, and his suit collapsed inward.