by Mark Hobson
A small window overlooked the inner courtyard.
He wondered briefly if this was where they had held Kaatje and lasered her eyes away, but he concluded that was unlikely. They would do that in one of the operating theatres.
Shrugging to himself, content that there was nothing here worth lingering over, Pieter returned to the main corridor outside. Feeling more and more relaxed, sure that the place was deserted, he continued onwards without removing his gun.
Two minutes later and he followed the blue line where it branched away down a short side-passage to his left, and he pushed through a pair of swing doors into the overnight accommodation ward, named THE JACQUES DAVIEL WING.
It was how he remembered it from the photos on the website, which he’d scrolled through on his iPad on their drive over yesterday morning. The large ward was shaped like a huge letter U, with a curving row of large and luxurious-looking beds arranged around a series of couches and coffee tables in the centre. There was also a coffee machine, some games to play and today’s copies of the daily newspapers, including The New York Times and Bild, plus a row of three laptops. At both ends of the U was a matching pair of large tv screens, visible to all of the patients recovering from their operations, but currently turned off. All very plush, spotlessly clean, and empty of patients or staff.
He wandered up and down, taking note of random things:
The neatly made beds.
The lifeless diagnostic equipment.
The half-completed game of snakes and ladders.
A jug of orange juice on a coffee table, with a pair of plastic beakers.
A mobile phone, left behind by someone. Pieter picked this up and saw that it was still turned on but pin-encrypted.
It was bizarre. It was creepy and disturbing. Everything left exactly as it would be if the place had been filled with patients and medical personnel; the only thing missing was the people themselves.
Just like the legendary ship The Mary Celeste.
Done with looking around and realizing he was getting nowhere with his musings, Pieter stepped back through the swing doors and continued, this time following the red line.
Shortly afterwards he reached the point where it disappeared down the cross-hallway and he cautiously peered around the corner, his hand poised to grab the butt of his gun. To his relief, the two security guards were nowhere to be seen. They had apparently upped and left along with everybody else, determined to be as far away as possible before the police descended. Pieter walked down the short hall and paused outside the wide door.
Beyond here were the two operating theatres, and although he was certain they would also be deserted, something made him hesitate. But only briefly. He pushed the door open.
Pieter found himself in a small and enclosed space, and his eyes did a quick scan around, seeing a nurses station covered in slim cardboard packages and a row of disposable urine bottles, each one full, plus some medicine cabinets and a discarded oxygen tank.
A pair of doors signed 1B and 2AB led off from the anteroom.
He was thinking once more about Kaatje, and what they had done to her inside one of the theatres, and he realized he had no real desire to go and take a look because the very idea made him feel queasy. Besides, opposite him was another set of doors, and the sign above drew his attention.
UNIT 1 – RED ZONE
The most restricted part of the clinic he surmised, from reading the notice declaring no admittance without top-level clearance. The place where patients were sent for the SPECIAL PROCEDURE according to the files on Visser’s desk.
This time, before he hit the button that opened the sliding door, Pieter withdrew his gun and flicked off the safety. Then he went through.
He was standing in a dimly lit room that stretched away before him. Down the centre of the ceiling was a single strip light, turned right down so that the place was filled with shadows and blind spots. Nevertheless, the bright light from the anteroom behind him cast enough illumination over his shoulders for him to see by.
Down each side was a double row of hospital beds. He could see that these were quite basic compared to those in the expensive-looking aftercare ward he had just left. There was no comfy seating area either, just a drab and dirty floor down the middle leading to a blank wall at the far end, and there were no bedside tables or visitors chairs either. No windows, and no heating. A very dingy and uninviting hospital ward then, he thought, with absolutely no frills. So much for the high fees and world-class care that the website liked to boast about. Perhaps this area was reserved for the poorer residents, those who claimed off their medical insurance, rather than the well-off clientele who paid with their gold credit cards.
Also, that wasn’t the only thing different about this ward.
For this one wasn’t empty.
Each bed was occupied by a sleeping figure, lying flat on their backs in matching sets of pale blue pyjamas, their faces in shadow.
Pieter stood stock still, a tremor of dread rippling through his body. Which was stupid, he knew. They were just hospital patients, nothing more than that, left behind by the medical staff in their blind panic to flee. They were probably frightened and confused as to what was going on.
With an effort, he turned and moved slowly over to the nearest bed.
It contained a man’s sleeping form. He was lying underneath the sheets, but his arms were on the outside and flat down at his sides, and what he could see of his face in the dimness revealed thin and very pale features. Pieter leaned down for a closer look.
He flinched suddenly and snapped his head away, and his left hand came up to his mouth as bile rushed up into his throat, making him gag and retch, and he just about stopped himself from vomiting in revulsion.
The man had no eyes.
They had not been burned away like Kaatje’s, or even surgically removed. He simply had no eyes. In their place was an area of soft and perfectly smoothed-over flesh. Like he had never had any eyes, as though they had never formed during his life, and in their place was this shallow, empty area beneath his heavy brows.
Pieter staggered back on his heels and nearly toppled over. Quickly regaining his senses, he moved on to the next bed.
Here lay another man, older than the first, and once again with that empty gaze staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. In fact, it was impossible to know if he was asleep or wide awake.
Spinning away, Pieter stumbled across the centre aisle to the opposite row of beds, and this time found himself looking down at a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with long, golden hair. Beautiful under normal circumstances, until his gaze fell upon the centre of her face at the blank space below her eyebrows.
Further along he spotted a smaller figure lying in a bed, this one a child, and Pieter dashed down, wondering if this was…
Yes. He could recognize the face, even with the missing bloodshot eyes. The five or six year old boy from the photo in the file – PATIENT 27.
Pieter felt a sense of pity, even shame, grip him, and he was about to avert his gaze when he saw the boy lying before him stir.
He watched as the child’s face slowly turned in his direction. Like he was looking straight at Pieter, which just wasn’t possible. And the tiny hand came up and reached out beseechingly. The lips of the small mouth parted, and a quiet and pitiful keening sound came out.
Behind him, Pieter heard a general movement, a rustling of bedclothes, and he twisted around, the gun coming up automatically.
All of the patients were sitting upright in their beds. The boy too, he saw.
And in perfect unison they turned their sightless gaze upon him.
The boy started to make that same high-pitched mewling sound again, as though he couldn’t talk properly, and when Pieter glanced back at him he saw for the first time the large white plaster across the front of his throat, just about where the voice box would be.
Suddenly, and again as though at the command of some hidden signal, all of the others joined in,
the keening noise sounding like a quiet hum, or like a swarm of angry bees, growing in pitch. It was the weirdest sound he had ever heard and it made his skin crawl.
Pieter instinctively moved away from the boy’s bedside until he was in the centre aisle. Behind him was the blank wall at the bottom end of the room. The entrance, the only way in and out of the ward, was about thirty paces away. Something about the peculiar noise the patients were making, the way it was increasing in volume, seemed to warn him that something was about to happen, something bad, and so he sensed it was best to slowly edge in that direction. Even so, when the attack came it still took him by surprise.
He was concentrating on those patients sitting in their beds to his left and right, wondering whether he should just walk calmly past them towards the door, not thinking about anything else. So when he heard the sudden patter of tiny feet on the floor coming from an unexpected quarter, from behind him, he had no time to react.
He felt something land on his back, and heard a loud hissing close to his ear, and realized in an instant that it was the boy. The next thing he knew there was an excruciating pain in his right shoulder, a sharp agony like something pricking deep into the flesh. Jesus! he thought in shock. The boy was biting him! His sharp teeth were biting down hard, the tiny jaws locked solid onto him.
Pieter cried out, and then reached awkwardly behind, striking out with the hand holding the gun to try and dislodge the boy, who had thrown himself onto his back. But the child had a firm purchase and now his tiny hands were grabbing for Pieter’s face and clawing at his eyes.
He could have fired the gun. It would have been simple just to jab the barrel into the boy’s body or head and pull the trigger. But something made him hold back, a natural revulsion at shooting a child.
Instead Pieter propelled himself backwards fast and crashed hard into the wall behind him, and the boy’s back hit the hard surface painfully, dislodging his mouth from Pieter’s shoulder and bringing a gasp from his lips followed by a slackening of his grip. Then Pieter flung his head backwards, the back of his skull connecting with the boy’s nose. There was a double crack of the boy’s nose breaking followed half a second later by his head striking the wall, and then the hands lost their hold and the child slithered to the floor, dazed and listless.
Pieter flung himself away and looked around.
To his dismay the young face was covered in blood, and he instinctively reached for him, but then the child hissed in fury, spittle flying from his mouth, and so Pieter drew back.
He turned again towards the room full of patients and cried out in shock.
In the few seconds he had been distracted while dealing with the boy, the others had climbed out of their beds and were now crowding together and moving on him down the centre aisle, blocking his escape route. Their eyeless faces terrified him, the way they scowled and snarled, some still making that dreadful keening sound, others shaking their heads and snapping at the air with their mouths, like rabid animals.
Pieter raised the gun and pointed it towards the crowd, swinging the barrel from face to face. “Get back!” he shouted. “Get back now!”
It had no effect whatsoever. They continued creeping forward. It was as though they could see him, and they encroached nearer and nearer with each second. At his feet, the boy crawled away to re-join his fellow patients, and Pieter found himself backed up against the wall with nowhere else to go.
A sudden fury came over him and he struck out with his gun at the nearest face, that of the old man. The painful blow stunned him and the man staggered away with a whimper, clutching his face, but in an instant someone else took his place. Pieter lashed out again twice, striking two more people, and then he kicked a third in the stomach. The woman with the blonde hair doubled over, coughing and retching from the blow, but she continued to face Pieter, her lips drawn back in hatred, and a second later she stood upright and leaped towards him.
Without thinking twice Pieter fired at point-blank range straight into her face, the roar of the gun deafening as it bounced off the walls. The woman’s face exploded in a cloud of blood and bone fragments, and she toppled backwards, dragging down two more people with her, and creating a small gap in the crowd.
The shocking violence stunned the other patients into immobility, and they stood rooted to the spot, creating a chilling tableau that jolted Pieter’s heart. He saw his chance, and he jumped through the gap, trampling over the pile of fallen figures lying on the floor, and in the next moment, he was sprinting headlong towards the door at the far end of the room.
Behind him the patients snapped out of their brief paralysis and they turned and charged after him, a baying and screaming and hissing mob, intent, Pieter was sure, of tearing him limb from limb.
He punched the button that opened the door and raced through. He made for the exit just opposite, which would take him back out into the hallway beyond, but on the way he grabbed at anything he could find to impede the crowd. He flung a chair in his wake, the table, a bunch of the urine bottles, boxes of supplies, and then just as he was passing through the next door he scooped up the heavy oxygen cylinder propped up in the corner.
Pieter used his shoulder to barge through the swing door and he quickly spun and pushed it shut again, catching a quick glimpse through the crack as he did so, seeing the seething and spitting crowd sprinting towards him.
Wedging the door shut with his foot, he slid the oxygen cylinder through the large door handle and pushed it all the way in, sliding it past the door frame so that it bridged the gap between the edge of the door and the door jam. It was not a moment too soon, for a second later and the crowd hit the other side of the door, and it shuddered and bulged outwards at the impact.
Pieter stepped away, expecting it to cave in as they pushed and shoved and threw themselves bodily at the door, thumping the wood and shouting in anger, but it held, the cylinder acting as a huge bolt and holding it shut fast.
He was shaking and hardly able to get his breath, and his shoulder stung where the boy had bitten him and he could feel blood trickling down the back of his shirt, and he couldn’t think straight.
What the hell? his muddled mind asked. This was crazy beyond words. Who were these people, and what had they had done to them?
The hand holding the gun started to tremble as the shock began to course through his system, and he grabbed his wrist with the other hand to steady it.
He moved back from the door. He needed to get a grip, otherwise he would soon be crawling around on his hands and knees like a quivering wreck.
He needed to think fast.
Suddenly, the banging and gargled shouting on the other side of the door ceased, and a terrible silence stretched the atmosphere so taut that Pieter held his breath.
Then there was a loud shattering of glass somewhere to his left, followed by a tearing of metal, and moments later the rush of many feet heading his way.
Damn. They must have found another way out of the anteroom, perhaps through one of the theatres.
He didn’t stop to think about it any further, but turned and fled. He raced around the corner, back into the main hallway the way he had come, and down the long passage. He risked the briefest of glances back over his shoulder and instantly wished that he hadn’t. Behind him came maybe a dozen of the patients, their pyjamas flapping and their bare feet slapping hard on the floor, faces contorted with hatred. With their empty eye sockets somehow ‘seeing’ him.
A shaky cry of fear involuntarily escaped from between his lips, adding to the general discord of strangled and incoherent voices coming from his pursuers.
Pieter sprinted by the doors leading to the aftercare ward – no escape that way.
The others were gaining on him. He didn’t need to look to see that. They were so fast, inhumanly quick.
A few moments later and the door to the consultation room flashed past, and then he plunged headlong into the gloomy front-half of the clinic, and felt the crunch of the spilled tablets under his
shoes as he entered the curved glass-covered passageway.
Pieter made a snap decision then. He had to slow them, otherwise they would be on him in seconds. So he spun around at the end of the glass corridor, and aimed the gun at the nearest running figures, and holding it in both hands he squeezed the trigger twice.
Both shots found their targets, and two men flew back from the impact of the rounds hitting their bodies. One bounced off the floor, causing those behind to stumble and fall, but the other was sent crashing through the glass wall, bringing half of the passageway cascading down in a shower of tiny glass shards. They glittered and fell on the mob, cutting and lacerating their bare arms and feet and bringing howls of pain from them.
Pieter, being at the end of the glass passageway, was mostly protected from the falling daggers, but he still flung up an arm to protect his eyes from any flying splinters. When he looked again he saw with no small amount of satisfaction that the gunshots, together with the falling bodies and shattered passage, had brought the pursuing mob to a halt as they stumbled around. It had brought him a few seconds grace, and so he turned and fled for his life.
On he went, running hell for leather, skirting around the abandoned wheelchair, his breathing coming in loud and harsh rasps.
More shouting echoed down the hallway as they once again picked up the chase, but now Pieter was bursting out into the foyer area, going by the comfy seats and then the deserted reception desk, praying that the front doors hadn’t slid shut and locked themselves.
To his relief, he saw they were still wide open, and the cold air wafting in gave him an extra burst of energy, and he charged through and out into the car park.
His car was parked in the shadow of one of the trees edging the large car park and now he regretted having parked so far from the entrance, for it meant a long run across the open space. There was nothing he could do about that now, and so he raced along the path leading over the frosted lawn, slipping and sliding through the thin covering of snow. Behind him, the patients flowed out of the clinic like a raging river.
