by James Axler
“Why would— How would—” Brigid could not form the question, she was so distraught.
“I don’t know,” Kane admitted. “Mass death cult maybe?”
Brigid looked sullen. “It’s possible,” she admitted. “But this is so huge. It’s hard to imagine—”
“And that’s why we need to find Grant and Shizuka,” Kane insisted. “Think! If they’re caught up in this, then we could be about to witness one of them jumping off that roof.”
Reluctantly, Brigid nodded. She needed no further convincing. “We can’t ignore everyone else, though,” she said.
“We won’t,” Kane assured her, trotting toward the hospital with his burden. “But since Grant is here, if he’s not caught up in this madness, then he may have some insight into just what the hell’s going on.”
* * *
THE HOSPITAL WAS CHAOS.
Just making their way to the lobby doors, the Cerberus warriors saw numerous distraught faces peering out of stalled automobiles, figures slumped on benches covered in blood from unknown wounds. More figures leaped from the roof, falling on the hard, unforgiving asphalt. Brigid reported what they were seeing over her Commtact, relaying it back to Cerberus HQ in an emotionless monotone. It was the only way she could distance herself from the event.
Inside was worse. Whatever had taken hold of the city had clearly done so in stages, which meant that some people had had time to get here and seek help before they had been entirely caught up in the madness. But by the time they had got here, they had begun to lose all rationality, seeking instead only their own deaths and those of the people around them. Now the lobby looked like a charnel house, with blood lashed against two walls and the windows looking out onto the asphalt strip, and dead bodies strewed across the furniture. At the desk, the on-duty nurse was using a scalpel to cut open her own wrists, drawing a long, vertical line from wrist to elbow, the smile widening on her face as she pushed the blade deeper. There were others in the large lobby space wandering aimless as sleepwalkers, two hanging from nooses that they had attached to a metal sign overhanging the desk.
“I…I don’t know what we can do,” Brigid admitted, looking around her at the picture of insanity.
Kane spotted an empty—and blood slick—bench and strode across to it, placing the wounded moped rider there. He figured that patching the man’s wounds was the least of their priorities just now.
“Keep moving,” Kane told Brigid solemnly, “and hope it doesn’t catch up to us.”
Outside, distant, the bells of Zaragoza chimed once again, sounding the final heartbeats of a dying city. Through the lobby windows, another body could be seen crashing to the ground from the roof, feetfirst, his ankles shattering on impact and turning his legs into jagged geometric shapes.
* * *
AT THE CERBERUS REDOUBT, Farrell had been joined by Lakesh and Donald Bry as Brigid’s report came in.
“It’s not unprecedented,” Lakesh told Brigid reasonably once she had described the scene. He worked the advanced Cerberus database as he spoke, bringing up further information, following his instincts. “There have certainly been documented instances of mass hysteria, wherein whole communities have behaved irrationally,” he reported. “Mass hysteria generally begins with one individual who exhibits symptoms during a period of extreme stress. The symptoms then manifest in others, unconsciously copying the first until a full-blown epidemic ensues.”
“People are killing themselves, Lakesh,” Brigid responded. She sounded withdrawn.
“Mass hysteria has been known to go to the point of self-harm,” Lakesh stated. “In Strasbourg 1518 they witnessed the Dancing Plague or Dance Epidemic. Dancing in the streets, often for very long stretches of three or four days. Within a week, thirty-four people had joined the initial dancer, and within a month there were around 400 dancers. Some died from heart attacks, strokes or simple exhaustion. There is no logic as to why people did this—they drove themselves to it, caught up in the mania.
“And then there was the Tanganyika laughter epidemic…1962. A school had to be closed down after most of the student body—almost one hundred in total—couldn’t stop laughing. It spread to Nshamba, a nearby village that was home to several of the students. Over two hundred people had what appeared to be laughing attacks, and the epidemic continued to spread. Thousands of people were hit. Lasted over a year. Reports at the time stated that the laughter was frequently accompanied by pain, fainting, flatulence, respiratory problems, rashes, attacks of crying and random screaming.”
Bry stared at Lakesh with his usual look of shock. “They laughed themselves to death?” he asked.
“They tried to,” Lakesh stated grimly, covering the pickup mic on the Commtact headset.
Brigid’s voice came over the Commtact, sounding firmer than it had before. “So there may be a precedence,” she said. “Lakesh, are you aware of any specific examples which involve self-immolation or suicide on a massive scale?”
“As a protest, yes,” Lakesh said, “or in the case of religious fervor. The Jonestown incident in 1978, for example, which saw extreme paranoia sweep through an increasingly isolated community, preceding a mass suicide.
“All of this has happened before,” Lakesh concluded. “We just need to figure out why it’s happening now. And figure it out quickly. I know it’s hard, Brigid, but let that see you through.”
“I will,” Brigid replied after a moment.
As the conversation was proceeding, Farrell was running through the tracking data for Kane at his own terminal.
“I have Grant almost directly beside you,” Farrell told Kane, mapping their transponders on his computer screen.
* * *
KANE LOOKED AROUND the lobby, his gaze halting a moment to take in the faces of the dead and dying who were situated all around him. Grant was not there.
“That’s a negative, Farrell,” he reported. “Are you sure of his location?”
“Sure as can be, Kane,” Farrell confirmed. “I’ve double checked the readings—you should be able to see him if he’s there.”
Kane’s eyes tracked around the lobby, then beyond to the open doorway that led to the corridor. He glanced back at Brigid. “He’s either above us or below,” Kane reasoned. “Baptiste? You have a preference?”
“I’ll go up,” Brigid said, striding with Kane toward the elevator bank that was located approximately behind the wall backing the lobby desk. “Check the roof.”
Kane inclined his head uncertainly. “Leaves me with the morgue level. Not sure if that’s going to be a better place to be or the worst,” he grumbled as he pushed through the doorway that led into the stairwell. He took the carpeted steps two at a time, jogging down a level until he reached the basement.
* * *
BRIGID TOOK THE elevator to the second floor, aware of how large the hospital complex was. She wanted to check all the floors, not just the madness on the roof, not in the least because she was afraid of getting dragged into it somehow, sucked in by the mass hysteria that seemed to have possessed the city. Was it a death cult, as Kane had suggested, or something even more insidious? And how did Ereshkigal figure into all this, if she did?
The elevator—a large car big enough to fit two gurneys side by side—rose gently, playing a faint music track from a small speaker located beside the call buttons before stopping at the second floor. Its doors drew back gradually, revealing a darkened corridor.
Brigid stepped out warily, listening intently for any trace of sound. As she stepped out, the overhead lights snapped on—motion sensors, Brigid realized. Which told her something—no one had been in this area for a few minutes, at least. Maybe they’ve all gone to the roof, Brigid thought bleakly.
“Hello?” she called out tentatively. “Anyone home?”
There was no answer, only the low hum of air-conditioning units from the walls.
She paced to the end of the wide space dedicated to the elevators, peered up the corridor there. Like the eleva
tor area, the walls were painted a pale, washed-out blue with a cream-colored stripe running along their lowest portion. The floor looked clean—tiles glinting in the reflection of the overheads—and there were doors peeling off to the left and right while the corridor continued to stretch onward. Twenty feet away, the illumination was still shut off, and Brigid suspected that this floor of the hospital, or at least this wing, was currently not in use. That, or maybe they had been abandoned when the whole mess had started—the people here might even now be the same ones that Brigid had seen throwing themselves from the roof.
Brigid turned around and walked back past the bank of elevators until she reached a second corridor that was located in mirror image to the first. This, too, appeared empty, with lights down the far end still extinguished.
She returned to bank of the elevators and pressed the call button, then waited for an elevator to arrive. One level down, two more to go.
* * *
KANE HURRIED DOWN the internal staircase, the soles of his boots hammering against each step like a blacksmith’s hammer against an anvil. Kane slowed as he reached the bottom, tuning in his senses to the environment. He was renowned for his pointman sense, his ability to detect danger seemingly before it happened. He needed that ability now.
He stood before a closed door to the basement level of the hospital. “Farrell, you still receiving me?” Kane whispered as he activated the Commtact in his skull.
Farrell’s response came through haphazardly, breaking up and nonsensical. Evidently, whatever was located in the basement was screwing with the Commtact’s receiving abilities. That could explain why Grant had dropped out of contact.
Kane had hoped to get a confirmation from Farrell concerning Grant’s current location but he would have to proceed without further intel. “Farrell, if you can hear me,” Kane whispered, “no loud noises, okay?”
With that, Kane reached for the door handle with his left hand, leaving his right free to draw the Sin Eater hidden against his wrist should he need it, and pulled the door toward him.
He halted with a gasp.
What greeted him was a scene of eerie carnage. Behind the stairwell door lay a corridor that had once been finished in a soft, pastel green with green floor and white tiled ceiling. Now it was red; the rich, wine-dark red of freshly spilled blood.
There was blood splashed across every wall and drizzled along the floor, layered in great swathes across the once clean surfaces.
“What happened here?” Kane muttered, astonished.
As he spoke, a white-coated figure shambled into view—a doctor? His coat was splashed with red and he had a pair of scissors protruding from his left eye socket, shattering one side of his spectacles, while his other eye was narrow, almost closed. His hair was dark and patchy, matted against his head by sweat…or something else, maybe. He appeared to be bare-chested beneath the jacket. The way he staggered, he seemed to be drunk, lurching across the wide section of corridor where the elevator bank was located.
Kane hurried over to the man and stopped before him, grabbing him by the top of his arms. “What happened here, man? Speak up,” he demanded.
“The patients…” the white-coat said, his words strained and hollow-sounding.
“What about them?” Kane urged.
“They’re…”
Kane felt the doctor’s body tense at that very moment, and something else, too—he felt something wrapping around his leg. He looked down, pushing the white-coat away so that he was at arm’s length. Wrapping itself around the lower part of Kane’s leg was something that looked like an octopus’s tentacle. Only it wasn’t an octopus—it was the doctor’s arm, elongating impossibly and contorting as if it had no bones inside it, like uncooked dough.
* * *
BRIGID BAPTISTE CHECKED her wristchron as the elevator ascended to the third floor. It had been twenty-six minutes since she and Kane had materialized via interphaser in the overgrown churchyard on the east bank.
The elevator came to a gentle halt and its doors drew back on hidden runners. The second floor had been empty, abandoned.
The third floor was different.
There were people all over, a lot like the lobby, and they were hurting themselves and each other, ripping into one another with blades and pens and syringes and anything else that might be used as a weapon, even bedpans and crutches. It was a sickness on a grand scale. But no one moved when the elevator doors slid open. They had been moving, Brigid felt sure, but they stopped moving when the doors pulled back, standing like statues, midcarnage.
Brigid realized that these were the first people that she had seen since she and Kane had exited the blood-daubed lobby of the hospital complex. And it appeared that every single one of them was intent on killing themselves or the person next to them.
As she looked across the wide communal area that led to patients rooms, Brigid saw a familiar figure step from one of those doors. It was Shizuka, and she was assisting the stumbling body of a handsome dark-haired man with blood on his neatly tailored suit, a chunk of glass protruding from his chest.
“Shizuka?” Brigid called.
At the noise, everyone in the lobby turned, almost as one, their faces marred with blood and cuts and bits of glass hacked into them, turning together to look at Brigid Baptiste where she stood framed in the widening doorway of the elevator car. No one looked happy.
* * *
KANE SHOVED THE doctor away—hard—with his left hand, lifting his leg out of the eerie, tentacle-like grip. The tentacle slithered back around Kane’s leg, tightening its grip even as it rose past his knee.
“Get off me,” Kane snarled, commanding the Sin Eater into his right hand with a practiced flinch of his wrist tendons.
The doctor—if he even was a doctor—found himself staring down the thirteen-inch barrel of the weapon with Kane’s glaring eyes focused on him.
The tentacle-like arm wrapped tighter around Kane’s leg, while his other arm seemed to extend even as Kane watched.
“That’s it,” Kane hissed and squeezed the trigger of his blaster, sending a round of 9 mm fire into the doc’s upper left arm. The man fell with a groan, dropping back until he struck the floor. His left arm remained wrapped around Kane but its grip was faltering, and it was a matter of a few seconds for Kane to extricate himself from it.
With the discharge, Kane figured all pretense at stealth was gone, so he called out as loudly as he could. “Grant? You down here?”
It had been twenty-seven minutes since he and Brigid had arrived.
* * *
GRANT HEARD THE call from the back-room theater that led into the morgue. He was wrestling with the naked woman with the open neck while Cáscara reloaded her blaster, having already drilled a full clip into the broad-shouldered bruiser holding the noose. Bruiser had stumbled but not fallen, and like Frankie in the morgue drawer, he had reached for her in response with fingertips that grew far beyond their natural extension, spiraling through the air toward her like seaweed.
Cáscara had thrown herself aside, ducking behind one of the examination tables, pressing her back against it as the elongated fingers wavered in the air just inches above her. Reload, she told herself. Don’t think about it—just reload.
Grant had dropped Julio’s body gently on the floor even as the woman with the open chest turned and hissed at him. “Be cool, kid,” Grant told Julio as he rose again to meet with the animated corpse.
Open-chest kicked out at Grant, swinging her leg high. Grant ducked, drawing a bead on the woman with his Sin Eater and snapping off a shot in the same instant. She may be dead or not dead, but Grant would bet that he was the only one of them trained for combat as a hard-contact Magistrate.
The bullet streaked through the chill air of the surgical theater before embedding in the woman’s torso, just to the left of her breastbone—a perfect heart-shot. The woman flinched at the impact, her outstretched foot coming down again in a stuttered drop.
Grant leaped at h
er then, driving at her with all his weight, shoulders down, and knocking her back before she could catch her balance. She went caroming into one of the surgical tables, flipping onto it then dropping down over the other side. Grant went with her, rolling free as they struck the table and hauling himself up in a lurching kind of landing. Didn’t matter—he was on his feet and she was still on the floor; the advantage was his.
It was somewhere during that brief altercation that Grant had heard the gunshot and then what sounded like his partner, Kane, calling his name from beyond the room. He turned, head jabbing around momentarily to take in the scene through the glass pane of the door, before whipping back to face his opponent again.
What he had seen through the window was the morgue door opening and a figure moving through. He had only stolen a glance but he was pretty certain that it had been Kane, dressed for combat with a Sin Eater in his hand, blasting merry hell out of the swarming corpses as they charged him in the doorway.
Corpse woman was still on the floor, but her body seemed to writhe, muscles showing clearly beneath her naked flesh. Grant’s eyes widened as the woman physically expanded, arms and legs lengthening, fingers and toes becoming longer, like time-lapse photography of a plant’s growth.
“What the hell?” Grant muttered, bringing his Sin Eater up again. He fired, blasting another 9 mm bullet from the chamber into the woman’s forehead. As if that would matter—but he figured that shooting a dead person in the head made about as much sense as anything else he had seen here this past quarter hour.
Beside him, Cáscara reached up from her hiding place and snagged the extended fingers of her own “playmate,” grabbing them as they withdrew across the surgical table. Then she was up on her feet, bringing her Devorador de Pecados pistol up and ramming it against the weirdly extending forearm of her opponent. A second later she fired, drilling a bullet into the man’s wrist from point-blank range. The arm seemed to go limp in her grip.
* * *
KANE COULD HEAR the noises from outside the morgue. He entered warily, turning the door handle to unlatch the door, then stepped back and held his pistol up and ready. He could hear the sound of movement from within, shuffling feet, scraping metal. He kicked the door wide-open in a single swift movement so that it struck the back wall with a crash.
