The Ward

by S. L. Grey

  ‘You can’t go anywhere like that,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t have any choice. They took my clothes.’

  He pushes the covers from his legs and swings them down onto the floor. His face contorts in pain. ‘Christ!’

  ‘What? Did they do something to you?’

  ‘Ouch! Cramp! Fuck!’

  ‘Do you need help?’

  He waves his hand dismissively. ‘I’ll be fine.’ He grimaces again, but manages to stand.

  He looks at my bare legs again. He points to a pile of clothes on the top of the side table. ‘Why don’t you take my jeans?’

  I grab them gratefully. They’re those skinny jeans that only really thin people can wear, and I pray that they’ll fit. I snug them over my hips. They’re tight on my thighs, but they’re better than nothing. They’re way too long and I roll up the bottoms.

  Farrell unbuttons his pyjama top. His stomach is lean and muscled and I look away before he can spot me staring. He pulls on a fitted T-shirt with the words ‘I hate fucking hipsters’ and a drawing of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles printed on it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he says.

  Then I remember. It’s not just us. ‘Wait! We have to get Gertie.’

  ‘What? What for?’

  ‘We can’t just leave her here, Farrell. You wait here. I won’t be long.’

  He sighs. ‘Okay, but hurry up.’

  I nudge open the door. All clear. God, I hope Gertie isn’t as out of it as she was earlier.

  I tiptoe down the passageway towards her room, and slip inside. The bed is empty, the sheets piled on the floor. Dammit. Where have they taken her? The chart at the end of her bed reads: ‘Gertrude February. Status: Undetermined’. Nothing about where she’s been taken. Damn, we can’t waste too much time looking. If Farrell and I get out, at least we’ll be able to tell the police. If we hang around here…

  In my hurry to get back to Farrell, I almost bang straight into a pink-smocked male orderly who’s pushing a gurney slowly towards the lifts. His matted brown hair drapes over his face and the back of his neck. The body on the gurney is slight, the sheet pulled so far over its head that there’s nothing but a fluff of black curls peeking over the top.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say automatically.

  He raises his head.

  I beg my body to freeze, but I can feel my mouth opening in a silent shriek, and for a second I’m sure that my bladder is going to let go.

  Oh God. His eyes are sewn shut. Thick black thread loops through his eyelids, pulling them down right over his sockets. He turns towards my voice. The strength leaves my legs and I back up against the door.

  If he touches me I’ll scream.

  But he turns away and continues down the corridor, wheeling the body towards the room next to Farrell’s. As he pushes through and into it, there’s a high-pitched mechanical whine.

  I stagger back towards Farrell’s room, starting as the door opens and he emerges.

  ‘Shit, Lisa, you’re shaking.’

  ‘There was this guy… He…’ I can’t finish the sentence. I gulp in a lungful of air, every inch of me yelling: Run! ‘We have to go.’

  ‘Which way?’ he says. A snake of blood is inching along his forearm from where he must have pulled out the drip, but he doesn’t seem to notice it.

  We’ve got two choices: the lift or a dash down towards the end of the corridor. The lift is far closer, and Farrell isn’t in great shape. His forehead is beaded with sweat. ‘Come on.’

  Farrell stumbles. ‘You’re going to have to help me.’

  He leans against me. He’s heavy, but I manage to support him. Together we hobble towards the lift. I push the button. The doors don’t open. I press my ear against them to listen for any sign that it’s on its way, every muscle tense, waiting to hear the screech of an alarm, for someone to spot us, for the sound of running footsteps as nurses race towards us ready to pierce us with needles, to poison us with more drugs, to—

  The lift opens.

  Oh thank you, Jesus. I help Farrell step inside.

  ‘Okay, now where?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I jab the buttons at random. The door closes and my stomach lurches as it starts moving. We’re going down. Within seconds, the lift shudders to a stop.

  The doors open, and I help Farrell to walk out.

  We’re in a long, straight corridor, tiled wall to ceiling in spotless white porcelain. The walls are bare except for another one of those clown posters. This time the clown sits in a toy train, the words ‘Last Stop, Terminal Ward! Choo Choo!’ written in a cloud of steam above its head.

  ‘I don’t think this is the right way, Lisa,’ Farrell says.

  The lift doors close behind us.

  ‘We have to try, Farrell. We can always go back if we can’t find an exit.’ I realise as I’m talking that I don’t believe a word.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ he grumbles, but he starts moving all the same.

  The corridor leads towards a distant pair of black rubber doors, like the kind we saw in the morgue. Apart from the lift, there are no other doors or exits or adjoining corridors. I’m not completely sure how far underground we are, but the air is thick and warm, like in a mine. And as we get nearer to the doors, I totter and almost lose my balance, as if something behind the door is magnetising me. As if it all leads to this. The building draws its breath.

  I push against the doors. They’re as heavy as they look, and Farrell has to help me shove them open enough for us to sneak through.

  ‘Fuck,’ Farrell says. ‘What’s that smell?’

  I breathe in. One minute it smells like artificial flowers – like those strong air fresheners you plug into the wall – the next I’m hit with a whiff of something rotten, like spoiled meat, only somehow sweeter. We’re in another corridor, similarly tiled and spotless, only this one is lined with stainless steel doors. They’re all perfectly blank; no handles or keyholes or windows.

  There’s a sign tacked to one of them, and wordlessly we step towards it. It reads: ‘Pre-recycling’.

  ‘Christ,’ Farrell says. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t kn—’

  The ground beneath our feet suddenly starts vibrating and there’s a clanking, hissing noise as if huge bellows are heaving in and out. I get the sense again that the building itself is breathing – through blocked lungs.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Farrell says. ‘Let’s go back.’

  ‘Wait. Remember that delivery entrance in the morgue in New Hope? The one with the truck and all the—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. How could I forget?’

  ‘Well, maybe there’s something like that down here. Another exit.’

  ‘Jesus, Lisa. You mean that this could be another route to the morgue?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I breathe in. The stench seems to have lessened, but maybe I’m just getting used to it.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Farrell says. ‘Let’s go back. Try another floor. There has to be another way out somewhere.’

  I peer towards the end of the corridor. It ends in a T-junction. The underground machinery clanks and howls again. Farrell has a point. This place just feels… wrong.

  ‘Okay.’

  I turn back to the black doors, but they start shifting. Someone is pushing against them. A hand appears in the gap between them: it’s filthy, the nails long, sharp and yellow.

  We look at each other.

  ‘Come on!’ I grab Farrell’s hand. He stumbles and swears under his breath, but gets moving. Farrell can only manage a lurching jog and it’s all I can do not to sprint away and leave him behind.

  I can’t hear if anyone’s following us – the mechanical clanking is too loud – but over the noise I swear there’s a squeaking sound behind us, like rubbery wheels on slick tiles.

  Don’t turn around. Don’t look back!

  But I can’t help it.

  Oh God.

  A huge bulbous mass of metal, limbs and rags is shuffling through
the door. It emerges and starts weaving slowly along the corridor towards us.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ Farrell says.

  I can’t make sense of it at first. Then gradually I realise what I’m looking at. It’s a man. A hunched, oddly shaped man dressed in layers of ragged hospital sheeting. Is it that grey man? The one who was spying on me? I can’t tell. He’s pushing a creaking rusty wheelchair piled with what looks to be old artificial limbs and other prosthetics. He jerks to a stop as if he’s only just noticed us. I can’t make out any facial features. His face is either covered in filth or wrapped in rags.

  Or maybe he doesn’t have a face?

  My limbs are numb. I have to move, but I can’t. After seeing that orderly and his sewn-shut eyes… It’s too much.

  Farrell squeezes my hand.

  ‘Lisa,’ he shouts. ‘Come on.’

  I still can’t move.

  Without warning, the background noise shuts off and I feel like I’m in a vacuum. The buzz in my ears is replaced by a low mewling sound.

  It’s coming from the rag-man.

  Move!

  I make myself step forward, and then manage a shambling run.

  We hobble towards the end of the corridor.

  ‘Shit,’ Farrell says. ‘Which way?’

  Both directions look identical. Clinical corridors lined with those same featureless metal doors.

  Then I see it.

  ‘Oh thank God!’

  There’s a sign on the wall reading ‘Exit’ with an arrow pointing to the right.

  We’re moving faster now, and Farrell half-runs ahead of me. I can’t tell if the raggedy figure is still following us, but this time I resist the urge to turn and check. I don’t want to know. All I can hear is the slap of our bare feet on the tiles, Farrell swearing under his breath and groaning.

  A door creaks open behind me and someone yells, ‘Oi! Kark off or I’ll call patrol!’

  I run blindly on. The corridor ends in another T-junction, and without hesitating Farrell takes a right. The ground seems to be sloping downwards.

  ‘Look!’

  The passageway ends in a pair of arched stainless-steel doors, a huge exit sign shining in red neon above them.

  Farrell smiles at me. ‘You were right, Lisa.’

  The mechanical throb starts up again, humming up into the soles of my feet.

  Together, we push against the doors and step through.

  Chapter 15

  FARRELL

  This is not the way out. It’s a goddamn waiting room. It’s decorated like a Vegas chapel, dim red downlighting and plastic somethings, not flowers, arranged in a vase on the coffee table in the middle of the plush carpet. A pile of magazines and a couple of stacks of brochures sit on the table alongside the vase. An organ rendition of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ pipes through the room.

  A motley assortment of oddly shaped chairs lines the walls, their seats upholstered in lurid pink crushed velveteen, and there’s a brushed-steel reception desk against the far wall. It’s hard to make out any details in the red light.

  The acid cramps course through me again and I have to sit down. I choose a chair close to the door. It’s like the worst cramp I’ve ever had, only multiplied by fifty and attacking every single muscle in my body. I can’t fucking think.

  It’s only when I hear the echo of my voice that I realise I’ve been moaning in pain.

  ‘Farrell! Farrell!’ Lisa says, touching my arm. ‘Are you okay?’

  No, for Christ’s sake, I’m not fucking okay. You should have just left me in that bed. At least I was fucking comfortable. Now I’m fucking running around this godforsaken place with you. Again. Why is this shit happening to me?

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say and grit my teeth so hard my cheeks hurt.

  ‘You won’t karking believe it if I tell you, that’s why.’

  Huh? ‘What? Talk louder, Lisa. I can’t hear what you’re saying.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ she whispers. ‘It came from over there.’ She points her chin in the direction of the reception desk. After the white glare in that corridor, my eyes are starting to adjust to the dim lighting and I make out a person’s head – a young woman by the tone of the voice – tucked behind the counter. There’s a red neon sign behind her head in that wanky Avatar font: ‘Welcome to Terminal Ward’.

  ‘Browns, I said browns, Styrene,’ she’s saying. There’s some undulating rainbow light which looks like it’s coming out of her right ear. Must be some sort of kids’ hands-free. Her hair is done in a reverse Mohican. A strip shaved out of the middle and big curly puffs on either side. It’s a fucking disaster. Her mom probably copied a style out of a fashion maga zine; she looks like a clown. She peers over the counter top at us as she talks, like a shrunken granny in a Datsun, that semi-opaque cellphone glaze over her face.

  At least she’s no immediate threat. I stretch out my legs and delicately point my toes to try to ease the cramp. It is subsiding.

  Lisa sits next to me, also taking the opportunity to breathe. ‘What should we do now?’ she whispers.

  I don’t answer. I’m fucking tired. I listen to the receptionist’s conversation instead, trying to work out what she’s saying. I can’t understand the teen slang she’s using. God, I feel old.

  ‘No, cereal. Just came in. They’re just reposing there in abnormals… They don’t seem to have, but who knows?… No… no. They can’t understand me… Browns don’t speak —Bellowscum, how the kark would you know? Have you ever even seen a brown?… Shoppers don’t count. You know they’ve been assimilated.… Bixit told me that Shoppers go to school for cycles before… Scum! How the kark would you know?’

  The rhythm of the girl’s conversation is beginning to soothe me, and the pain in my muscles ebbs.

  ‘What do you think, Farrell?’ Lisa asks again.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About asking that… girl.’

  ‘Asking her what?’

  ‘If there’s a way out through here, of course! Haven’t you been listening to me?’ Lisa sounds irritated.

  ‘I don’t think that chick speaks our language, Lisa.’

  She pauses. ‘Okay, well, what about one of those doors, then?’ She indicates the two doors on either side of the reception desk. ‘One of them could lead outside, couldn’t it?’

  The door on the left has stylised pictures of clothes painted on it, but badly, like a kid’s rendition of a suit and dress. But it’s the other door that’s more concerning. ‘Lisa, take a look at that sign.’ The door on the right has a round face with a mask and a reflector strapped around its head. Classic old-style surgeon. Only this one appears to be holding a chainsaw.

  ‘Let’s just go back to the lift, okay?’ I say.

  ‘Farrell. I’m not going back up there. There has to be—’

  The door slams open and two freaks walk in. Lisa gasps. She looks down at her hands and bites her lip. Jesus. They’re sprayed head to toe with cheap orange fake tan. The man is dressed in an expensive threepiece suit; he’s tall and has a massive square head, as if he’s suffered some sort of disease as a child. The woman is leathery and scrawny. She’s wearing stripper heels and a microdress that would possibly suit someone half her age. She’s plastered with make-up so thick it’s peeled in waxy wads onto her dress. Her legs are all sinew and overstretched skin.

  They glance at us as they pass and a shadow clouds their faces before they smile broadly. Their veneered teeth glitter with tiny inset diamonds that catch a white light from somewhere. The effect is incredible, so over the top that it actually could work. You know, in the pages of Itch or something.

  Despite myself, I draft a MindRead update: freekalert, meeps. &KatyaModel did you see *that* O-o lol

  The orange couple walk up to the reception desk. They mutter something to the receptionist, hand something over to her.

  ‘I have to go, Styrene. Got some voluntaries in.’ She hands them each a small parcel. ‘Have a wonderful terminatio
n, Shoppers. The Ministry of Modifications is delighted that you’ve chosen to exit with us. The butcher will be with you soonest.’

  I must have misheard. But I don’t have time to consider the receptionist’s words. The orange couple smile at me and Lisa and they walk over to us.

  ‘Browns!’ the man says heartily as he pulls up a lopsided chair from under a sign reading ‘Custom’. I turn and check out the wall behind where Lisa and I are sitting. The sign above our heads reads ‘Abnormal’. He tweaks at its limbs until it fits his shape perfectly. He grabs another chair and contorts it into a slimmer, higher shape for the woman. ‘I met some browns just the other day. A primo Shopper and… and a Customer Care Officer. Can’t say why she was spending time with him but there you have it. I’m Burt,’ he says, extending his hand. He only has a thumb, a forefinger and half his ring finger. The stumps are lacquered and the half-finger has three bulky gold rings on it.

  I can’t bring myself to shake it. His skin is slick with some sort of perfumed oil. Burt’s smile remains unwavering but his eyes fall. ‘Did I do it wrong? I read about this shake-hand in the Manual of Upside Relations. Published, of course, before the regime change. So it may reflect outdated customs. I must have done it wrong. Forgive me. It’s not often we get to meet real browns to practise with.’ The man seems genuinely upset.

  ‘No. You did it right. I, er… I’m…’

  Lisa jumps in. ‘He’s not well. His hand – he cut it. It’s… um… infected.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s right. It’s infected.’

  The woman instinctively takes two steps back.

  ‘Oh, Leletia,’ Burt says. ‘An infection isn’t going to make much difference now, is it? Brown or not. It’s quite exciting, actually. I’m delighted at this last chance to meet more visitors. We’re being terminated, you see.’

  ‘What… what does that mean?’ asks Lisa.

  Leletia takes a brochure off the pile on the table. ‘Voluntary termination,’ she says. ‘That’s what we’ve chosen.’ Beaming proudly, she links her arm through Burt’s.

  ‘Leletia was dead set on voluntary termination,’ Burt says. ‘She’s an idol, she really is. I said to her, “Leletia, we’ve got a good ten, twelve shifts before we depreciate. We could shop, we could drink and eat. We could even buy a new apartment.” But she said, “Darling, the Ministry encourages scheduled termination to improve systems control. It’s the least we can do to repay them. Just think how viable our parts will be.” I couldn’t argue with that, now could I?’