I started walking, my feet splashing through the rainwater as the road rushed to meet me. Before I knew why, I was running, sprinting as fast as my shattered body could manage. Rain whipped into my eyes, forcing me to close them. It didn't matter, I knew this route. My body moved, pain shaking throughout it with each thundering stab of my foot onto the ground. When I opened my eyes again, I was at the junction. Ahead of me lay a wide expanse of empty road, leading to two large black painted metal gates, hanging wide open either side of a driveway. There were signs next to both sides of the gate that stated this was the Elucido Institute, though I didn't need to read them to know that the driveway led to a hospital. A centre of healing. A centre of death.
All three were stood between the gates, waiting for me. Perdita was an adult now, crisp and clean in her sky blue uniform, the rain not touching her but simply beading and falling from her body in crystalline marbles. Her chestnut hair was hanging loosely about her shoulders, framing her sharp features. She held Marcus and Cato by their wrists as they struggled and screamed whilst trying to get away. The woman was as rigid and cold as a statue and she would not be denied. (Cannot be denied.)
I crossed the road slowly. Perdita pulled the other two aside to let me pass. I walked a little way ahead before looking back. The unearthly woman threw the other two towards me where they tumbled and collapsed onto the driveway, before turning and pulling the huge iron gates closed with a merest flick of her wrist. It was as if we were pets, tossed into a cage, impotent and with little idea of what was to come. When she turned back to face me, her mouth was wide, her jaw surely dislocated to be in such a position. It was dark inside, no sign of tongue or teeth, simply infinity, the depths of loss. Marcus and Cato struggled to their feet, moving close to me in collective fear. That was when she spoke, though not using her gaping mouth. She spoke with some other force as her voice tore through the sky and cut into my soul.
“There are only two outcomes for a truly sick patient, recovery or death.”
She pointed past us. I followed her finger, spotting a dark shape around fifty metres away, just visible through the lashing rain. It was large and imposing, a vast modern structure that jutted out of the gloom at the end of the driveway. As with everywhere now, there was no electricity. It felt strange to see such a large building without lights, especially one that was so used to continuous habitation. It was as if I knew instinctively how this building should look and how it usually looked, yet now it truly had the appearance of having been contaminated, becoming rotten and dead.
The sky was so dark now that it must have been approaching night again. I had never seen so much rain, cold heavy streaks lancing down, hurting where they struck my head, soaking my hair and dripping down my neck. Marcus walked to my left, trudging with slow, tired strides, head down, spines hanging like the tentacles of a dead octopus. Cato on the other hand was a whirling dervish of nervous fear, skipping from foot to foot as his size fluctuated wildly. He was muttering platitudes to himself to try and calm down but it was clearly not having the desired effect.
It was the longest walk I had ever undertaken. Every step of the way, she was behind us, pushing us forwards with her sheer presence. Though I had sprinted the last leg of the journey here, now I had crossed the point of no return I would have given anything to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Even though they were my family were Marcus and Cato worth dying for?
The walls of the building rose above me as we picked our way through ambulances, some with their doors hanging open and blood stained equipment, beds and sheets spilling out onto the car park in front. The heavy rainfall over the past few days had filled the drains to the point where they were overflowing, spilling out and spreading in waves over the concrete. The strangest thing was the absence of dead outside but that was soon explained when we came closer to the entrance. The doors were automatic but shut tight, keeping the dead inside captive as they scraped their gory hands on the already blood soaked glass. There were so many, maybe hundreds, green and white, black and putrid, blood and bone and gristle. Doctors and nurses, patients, porters, all job roles forgotten, irrelevant. Now that they had spotted fresh meat they were building up into a frenzy, slamming their hands against the doors, the sheer weight of numbers threatening to shatter them. Clawing, biting, crawling, wailing.
I almost fell backwards at the sight, knocking into a corpse behind me that had risen up from underneath a bloody sheet which still clung to its rubbery bloated form. It tried to throw its arms around me but Marcus was at my side and still had enough power and wherewithal to kick it away hard, sending it tumbling into the concrete. Cato skittered behind a toppled wheelchair as Marcus reached into the back of an open ambulance, pulled out a fire extinguisher and strode over to the still floundering corpse, smashing the makeshift weapon down several times until the thing's head was a spreading stain, being washed away by the water from the drains. The hospital had obviously been sealed in the vain attempt to halt the spread of the disease but they had failed miserably, creating instead a house of rotten bodies, clawing at each other until tissue damage and decomposition felled them.
“Where are we supposed to go now?” I asked Cato, crouching behind the nearest ambulance in the hope that it would calm the horde, pulling Marcus down with him. “This place is suicide.”
(Recovery or death.)
“What did you say?” I whispered, a band of pain running from my neck to my forehead, a strange wave of discomfort I had never felt before.
“I said that this place is suicide!” shrieked Cato. “We can't leave. Perdita will hold us here, pushing us inwards. See, she's almost here now.”
The girl, now a woman, was walking carefully and purposefully up the drive, her white shoes parting the drainage water, leaving a clear path in front of her. As she entered the car park she turned quickly towards me, standing watching me from afar, mouth agape. The uniform... I could tell now that it was a doctor's scrubs: blue fabric, with the name badge indistinguishable at this distance. Her steely grey eyes started to roll back in her head as her shoulders started to twitch. She started to involuntarily snap her jaws, as if regressing into some sort of beast. Her eyes were... gone? There was nothing there, not even blood, just an unfathomable Stygian abyss.
“Name me.”
The command came violently, words thundering through my body.
As she started to again walk towards me, purposeful, powerful, I knew she had brought me here for this. The name badge came into view but all I could focus on was the mouth, the eyes, the emptiness. Perdita was finally hungry.
11
Consume
The water scattered itself, as if rushing to get away from this thing that moved towards me with ever increasing speed. Another memory surfaced as I backed away as quickly as I could, turning on my heel in the deluge and running towards the left side of the hospital building. It was the memory of a childhood fear: staring up at a giant model in some museum or other, terrified by the colossal jaws of a basking shark. The soothing words of a parent trying to convince me that it only ate plankton were nothing in the face of the that huge orifice, easily large enough to fit me inside. My mind had reeled with the image of it swallowing me whole, pressing down with the hundreds of tiny teeth that it possessed.
The exhaustion that had gripped me before and pushed away my fear was nothing in the face of this terror. I watched almost transfixed as Perdita threw herself forward onto the concrete before pushing up on her hands and following me on all fours, her legs thrust out at her sides at impossible angles. Perhaps it was the weight of the mouth that seems to be constantly growing that had dragged her downwards, pulling her prone. Her body seemed to extend as a counter balance, as her torso stretched and twisted as she changed before my eyes. I could hear the bones crack in her hips and knees as she crawled quickly towards me, her hands scrabbling across the car park.
“Here, look, I found it. A way in!” called Cato, his voice drifting shrilly from around the corner.
I scrambled past the curb, over pebbles and weeds, onto grass and around the corner, until I saw the small man waving excitedly from half way along the wall. He was holding on to a soaked and blood stained sheet rope that led up to a third storey window. Without a further word he scrambled up the rope with lightning speed, disappearing over the windowsill. I grabbed on and tried to pull myself up but my shoulder and injured collarbone screamed with pain and my hands slipped on the slick cloth as I fell back down, my boots splashing uselessly back into the mud. As I turned I saw a white shoe move around the corner, twisting as it negotiated its way onto the grassy verge. The mouth was huge as is slid into view, lips stretched and tongue long gone into the depths, the orifice having distended to almost a metre across. The cracking, bloody lips closed once, slowly, as if tasting the air, turning towards me as the rest of the long body followed.
“Come on you wretch, get some fight in you,” grunted Marcus, grabbing my hands and throwing me on his back as he grasped the rope tightly, pulling me upwards slowly but surely, hand over hand. The rain was still falling, stinging my eyes as I gazed upwards into the darkening sky. I could hear the howls of the dead inside the hospital, waiting, just waiting to get their dead fingernails into my flesh. Was I running from one death just to be confronted by another, eaten alive by the trapped corpses? Would I ever learn the truth? Onwards, onwards he pulled me, Marcus, my violent and murderous saviour.
Just as we passed the second floor I felt the rope shift. I looked down to see Perdita pulling on the sheets, yanking them again and again with her hands as she started to crawl up the building towards us. I looked up to see the knots in the rope tightening, slipping...
“Faster!” said Cato, poking his head out of the window above. His eyes went wide as he looked past us. I glanced down to see the huge mouth wide below, ready to swallow us should we fall. Perdita's hands moved effortlessly up the rope, pulling her to less than five feet away. If I fell, I knew I would fall forever, deep into that somehow bottomless mouth, to be swallowed and consumed.
Marcus found a burst of strength from somewhere, pushing me over the lip of the window, where I tumbled forwards, awkwardly trying to halt my fall by grabbing on a radiator and succeeding only in twisting my hand, slamming down onto the rain soaked carpet inside.
As I was struggling to my feet, I heard Marcus give out a weak gasp. I pulled myself up to the windowsill in time to see the huge jaws clamped around his legs. His eyes were burning but it was a dwindling fire, the red of sunset. He struggled fitfully, not willing to give up, not willing to see that his life had reached its end.
Perdita's mouth flexed once, opening to let more of Marcus body fall in. There was no blood because there was no chewing... simply swallowing, slowly and painfully. The black vortices that had been Perdita's eyes span with a strange light, glowing red momentarily as she absorbed Marcus’ essence, his reason for being. Violence, rage and revenge flowed out of him, leaving him looking horribly, painfully small. All fight finally left him, and he weakly let go of the rope.
“Please, pull me out, save me... don't let her...” said Marcus as he wheezed, trying to scream the words but having the air squeezed out of his lungs as he slipped further into her mouth. I reached out instinctively but he was so far down now and his fingers were too far away. A further pull and only a small portion of his face was visible, along with one arm jerking pitifully with each contraction of her jaws. I could feel Cato tugging on my sleeve like an insistent child but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene.
With one last hungry swallow he was gone. In an instant the mouth was open again, the vast impossible depths now tinged with red at the edges, though whether this hue was the remains of Marcus' inherent rage or simply his life blood I had no way of knowing.
“Escape, escape, deeper, further,” babbled Cato, his little hands pawing at me. His insistent tone cut through me and I quickly pulled the window shut, pulling the handle down tightly. Perdita slid up the side of the building, still dry despite the thundering rain. She turned her head and I saw the side of her face, skin stretching so tightly that rips were starting to appear. Her empty eye sockets peered inside, fixed on me and Cato. The window had a thick frame and was double glazed, so it would resist her for a while, I hoped.
She raised a hand, her fingers rigid, though she did not plunge them into the glass as I had expected, instead climbing further up, scaling the building. It was a blessed moment of rest, allowing me to gather myself and check my surroundings.
The room was a waterlogged office, damaged from the several weeks of rainfall that had spattered through the previously open window. There were two desks covered in sodden papers and notes, filing cabinets, an overturned laundry cart spilling out sheets, along with shelf upon shelf of medical texts. My eye was somehow drawn to a small section at the end of one of the top shelves, which seemed out of place. There were books on languages from all over the world, the spines all well worn from regular reading and reference. One book in particular stood out, having been hastily shoved back into place, its cover crumpled and torn as it was pushed violently between the books either side.
As I reached up to pull it down, Cato grew to his full height and grabbed my face, tearing it around to face him in the most violent motion I had ever felt from the small man.
“Who are you? Who are you really?” he screamed.
I pushed him away, surprised by this sudden change in his character, this sudden backbone.
“What the hell?” I asked incredulous. “You're asking me? After all this time you're asking me?”
“It's important,” said Cato from the floor. “She's after you most of all. She hungers for you, I can see it...”
“She hungers for both of us, who I am doesn't really matter,” I said, pulling the crumpled book from its place and laying it on the desk. I craned my neck to glance outside but there was no sign of Perdita, for now at least, simply a cold and wet darkness that had made everything outside the hospital vanish.
There was brown, dried blood on the edge of the pages and as I flicked through them I found where the gore was thickest. It was a Latin dictionary and history treatise, with names picked out in red... Marcus... Cato... even Guy...
“What does this mean?” I asked Cato, throwing the book towards him where it landed with a thump on the sodden carpet.
“It's a secret...” Cato whispered, “that we don't know, we can't know...”
(Try to remember.)
My hand reached for something, I needed names, they needed names. Their deeds were manifest. I want, I want...
The flash of the bloody hand, my hand, was burned in front of my eyes. What had happened in this place?
The fading light was making it almost impossible to make out details now, so I pulled out the bottom drawer on the left and picked up my torch. I stopped before turning it on, self awareness flooding over me.
This was my office. That was my torch, exactly where I had left in case of emergencies. I had always been so careful, so prepared... hadn't I?
I was scraping at old cuts here, pulling up scabs like flagstones, exposing wounds as wide as the cosmos, delving into their blood. My mind was in turmoil, a mix of pain, realisation and such a profound regret that it almost brought me to my knees.
(Keep going. This is all part of the process.)
I had to keep going. Something was here, somewhere in this dead place, something that would reveal everything, a spotlight on my soul. I turned the torch on and swung it around. There were other signs of blood in the office, wiped across surfaces and papers. I followed the trail, arriving at a photograph. It was gold framed, in pride of place next to a desk lamp so it could be seen whenever work was undertaken.
The picture showed a woman, brimming with pride in her graduation hat and gown, skirted on one side by a young man with similar features, straw coloured hair and sparkling blue eyes, and on the other side by a small man with thinning hair, his wrinkled face creased with a wide smile.
&
nbsp; Cato, Perdita and Marcus.
This was another piece, another slice of the truth, even though none of it fitted. Were they really a family? Were they my family? Where was I?
There was another picture, a scene from a fishing boat in a tortoiseshell effect frame. It showed Marcus standing holding a mackerel, freshly caught, with Cato inspecting it comically over his shoulder. The island in the distance was hard to make out but it was there. I knew it would be.
I looked for more blood. I found some on the floor, traced in smears across a road map that lay crumpled under the desk. A cigarette lay amongst the blood, stubbed out in the centre of the map, creating a small hole.
“We can't stay here, we need to get out, out, out...” muttered Cato, aggressively biting his fingernails.
“Out of where? This place is just things, all joined, all familiar but... mashed up in front of me as if somehow I'm expected to make sense of it all,” I said, looking around me as if answers would somehow materialise if I just looked hard enough.
(I can help you, if you'll let me.)
“Whose voice is that?” I asked, pulling myself out from under the desk and standing up, casting my torch around. I looked at Cato, yet now that I was seeing him as the old man in the picture I was seeing him in a new light. He had always tried to look out for me and Marcus, always keeping the huge man's strange desires in check as best he could. Cato was a good man.
“Maybe we have to find out,” he said, almost sobbing. “Maybe it's all we can do.”
(Focus on my voice, follow me back. I'll keep you safe.)
The corridor beyond the office was in complete darkness, with no windows along either side, just rows and rows of doors. The scent of death was strong. This was the centre of it all, all the chaos, all the horror.
“Which way?” I asked Cato, who was holding my arm protectively. He shrugged, looking around us with his tiny eyes flashing in the torchlight.
Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead Page 21
