Ben turned to Lilian. She was taking little panting breaths and reached for her bracelet with her free hand but the bracelet was no longer there, no totem left to calm her. He cupped the hand he held and squeezed it tightly, giving her a smile of encouragement even though he was just as terrified as she was, just as devoid of any hope.
"Hewwo, Wiwian," the lobotomized zombie said in a mush-mouthed monotone, his tongue too fat for his mouth. "Wememba me? I was cwazy too, but now I'm awwwww betta. You can be betta too, just wike me. Just wike Awwison. Aww you need is a wittle cut wight here," he said, dragging the edge of his blade across his own sutured scar.
"No," Lilian muttered, shaking her head fervently. "I'm not crazy. I'm not like you."
"Don't listen to him," Ben said.
Morton Welles turned slowly toward him, raising the viscera-stained knife. A little runner of drool spilled from his bottom lip as he spoke. "Don't fink I fuhgot about you, Ben. We're gonna save you for wast. Oh yes, we arrre. We're gonna kill aww your fwiends and you're gonna get a fwunt woah seat."
As the zombie spoke Ben realized this wasn't Morton Welles, not anymore. The Garrote virus had infected it. The writer was speaking through him, threatening them, using the zombie to torment Lilian because Welles was her bogeyman, in the same way he'd used the nun, because she'd been who Ben had most feared.
Lilian had saved him from the nun. He would have to save her from Morton Welles.
Splashes from behind made her jump, and Ben along with her. She gasped. He didn't need to turn to know more lobotomized zombies were rising from the baths. This was their sanctuary, a place of the dead. The living were invaders. All invaders would die.
"We gotta get out of here, pronto," Leonard said.
Ben let go of Lilian's hand and began rifling through his backpack. He found the VR controller he'd picked up at the doors, switched it on so the plastic bulb glowed pink, and he lobbed it at Welles, like a miniature electronic hand grenade.
The controller struck the ghost right between the ribs, and the fabric of his grimy hospital gown and flesh beneath peeled back like burning paper. Welles looked down at himself, drool spilling from his lower lip and vanishing in the midst of the swirling vortex in his torso as the small electronic struck the tiled wall and the plastic shattered.
The two other zombies from the steam cabinets stepped back in fear. Ben grabbed Lilian and pulled her along into the next room, hoping Leonard would follow.
A large metal drain occupied the center of the sloped tile floor. Tall, curved pipes with shower heads rose from the floor at intervals along both walls. At the far end of the room, something like a lifeguard tower stood where a mean-looking orderly, his hairy flesh blue and bloated, sat gripping the lever and large copper nozzle of a giant hose in his hairy-knuckled hands. Ben knew the pressure from the hose would push them back. Like the steam cabinets, it was meant to subdue manic patients.
Slippers slapped and wet feet squelched on tile behind them from the other room. Eight lobotomized zombies shuffled and staggered toward the shower room, drooling and dazed, flaps of rotten gray flesh sloughing off their bloated corpses like boiled meat.
They were trapped, closed in on all sides.
With a single stun gun between them, they were also outnumbered. No chance of fighting them off. They'd have to risk the frigid blast of the orderly's hose if they wanted to escape.
"Make a beeline for that door," Leonard whispered. "I'll try to draw this prick's attention."
"But… they'll kill you," Lilian said.
"I'm a Marine," Leonard said. "If I'm gonna die it'll be with my goddamn boots on—now go on, before I regret it!"
They nodded and hurried along the wall beneath the showerheads. Leonard stepped out into the middle of the room and began waving his arms. The orderly tracked him with the hose. "Hey, man!" Leonard shouted. "Hey, what'd they do, shave an asshole and stick it in a uniform?"
Sneering, the orderly pulled back the lever. The torrent struck Leonard and launched him off his feet. He staggered, leaning into the blast like a man facing a hurricane. Then he slipped in a puddle and slid back into the corner of the room, slamming into the wall.
Dr. Death's zombies shuffled into the room but the orderly didn't let up on Leonard. Every time the Marine tried to get up, the water pounded him back against the wall. Gargling and crying out, he raised his arms to protect his face and spat a mouthful of water. "That's all you got? I piss harder than that!"
Another blast made him scream. He wouldn't last much longer, and in the meantime the zombies had narrowed the gap, the first of them, Morton Welles, shambling toward Leonard's prostrate body with a large gaping hole in his torso.
Ben reached the door, Lilian just steps behind him. He grabbed the handle and tore it open. It wouldn't open far, the bottom wedged against the floor where it had apparently caught many times before, judging by the chipped and scraped tiles. Without a word, Lilian scrambled through the narrow opening.
Halfway out the door, Ben looked back at their savior. The zombies had swarmed him. The Marine caught Ben's eye briefly and waved for him to keep moving as Dr. Death's lobotomized patients slashed and hacked at his limbs, his chest, his throat, while the orderly's hose sprayed their blood and rotted flesh away in a pink-gray mist.
Ben pulled the door closed behind them, silencing Leonard's scream. He felt terrible, as low as he had ever felt in his life. He'd promised Niko he would get his partner out of the asylum alive and Leonard hadn't even lasted ten minutes. Allison and Niko and Leonard were gone and he and Lilian hadn't even gotten the door code to make their deaths worth something.
Every minute they'd spent in that hellhole hospital had been for nothing. Less than nothing.
He caught up with Lilian, who stood in the courtyard looking off at the surrounding exhibits. When she noticed him at her side, she grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. They stood in the cold shadow of Bright Falls Sanitarium, weeping in relief to finally leave it behind, and in grief for the friends they had lost.
PART 3
PRISONERS OF THE DEAD
"Things fall apart, Father Brady," the Vampyre said. "It is the one thing you can count on. The only perfect thing in your god's world is Annihilation."
— Rex Garrote, Ghost World ep. 1.4 "Sins of the Blood"
Even when they aren’t performing, ghosts are forced to endure endless torment from this abhorrent technology masquerading as "entertainment." Employees colloquially called "keepers" wear protective suits which emit static charges to "keep ghosts in line," according to an inside source. A more accurate description of this practice is "torture."
— #GRP2 pamphlet
ALONE
LILIAN AND BEN shuffled along the promenade, past silent exhibits and grisly tableaus of death. They hadn't heard or seen any sign of survivors since leaving the asylum, but they'd had to run and hide several times as a spectral creature shot out of a window or a darkened corner and shuttled away from them, heading northeast. They'd crept past a blood-soaked clown cheerily juggling the severed heads of his victims and a woman in a white flowing dress spinning the dead into cocoons made of living vines. And everywhere, corpses littered the ground, hung from trees, through broken windows, in burning trash bins, nailed to exhibit signs.
It was impossible to walk twenty feet without running into the recently deceased, and the bodies were beginning to ripen and draw flies. A sort of vague blue cheese-rotten vegetable smell permeated everything, like the smell that wafted up from the kitchen garbage disposal when Lilian's dad forgot to clean it for too long. She could even smell it in her hair, like cigarette smoke after a house party. It wasn't bad enough yet to make her feel ill but she knew it was the stink of the rotting dead, and she knew it would only get stronger as the day waned and night approached.
She thought they might have to consider making facemasks for themselves soon. If they stayed alive long enough to need them.
Worse, they had no idea
where the Museum of Haunted Vehicles was located. For all the dead they'd seen, not a single map had been dropped nearby. She'd wanted to flick on the walkie-talkie and ask Demont but Ben was adamant it would be a bad idea. In horror movies and video games, the person on the receiving end was often in a tight situation when the call came in and it could get him killed. Lilian didn't think his logic was sound but she hadn't been in the mood to argue. He knew the vague direction it was in from looking at the map back when he'd still had it—he couldn't pinpoint when he'd lost the thing but it had likely been somewhere prior to the asylum, he'd said—and so they'd walked that way, weaving between exhibits, dodging stray ghosts and mass graves, until finally Lilian spotted a dead man sprawled over a trash can and pointed him out to Ben.
"What are we playing, I Spy?" Ben said. "I spy with my little eye, something that's starting to stink."
She swatted his shoulder. "No, you idiot. Look in his pocket!"
Ben looked closer and spotted what she'd already seen: a park map poking out of the dead man's back pocket. His crooked grin widened. "Holy shit! Nice work!" he said and started off across the road toward it. He stopped abruptly a few feet away from the man with a look of sudden realization.
"Well, go on and get it," Lilian said.
Ben reached out gingerly and tweezed the map between his index and middle finger, pulled it delicately out while eyeballing the man's dead-eyed, twisted grimace for movement. Then he hurried back to her side.
He flapped the map open and they studied it together. She found the cartoon icon for the asylum easily and traced her finger along the route they had followed. Their destination was close to Guest Services and unless the scale was off, getting there wouldn't take them too much longer but it would take them quite far out of their way.
Their route planned, Ben folded the map and went to tuck it into his back pocket. He thought better of it, slipped it into a cargo pocket in his shorts and snapped the buttons shut. Then they struck off toward the Museum of Haunted Vehicles. For all the trouble it had been to get them this far, Lilian hoped to hell they would find what they were looking for, and that Demont's sanctuary inside the prison was as fortified as he'd said.
"I guess we're the only ones still left alive," Ben said after a long period of silence. "The last living ghosts."
Lilian gave him a sidelong glance. It was just the sort of weird phrase Ben used to say out of nowhere when they were still close friends. Funny to think he hadn't changed a bit in four years when she was so different. "That's random," she said.
Ben shrugged. "You know me. Rando Calrissian." He gave a weary smile. "It's from a Rex Garrote book. Shōki, it's called."
"I think we've all heard enough from that crazy fucking asshole today. I don't need you quoting him."
Ben apologized. They kept walking.
"I know it's weird, but I actually miss Allison," Lilian said after a time. "She was annoying as hell. But she was only ever trying to help."
"That's not weird," Ben said. "I miss her too. She didn't deserve to die like that. And nobody's going to pay for what happened, that's the worst part. They'll shut this place down, and maybe the company that runs it, Hedgewood or whatever, maybe they'll get sued in a big class-action lawsuit and lose a few billion dollars. A couple of bigwigs might even go to white-collar prison for a few years with Bernie Madoff and that pharmabro dude who listens to the Wu Tang Clan. But that doesn't feel like enough."
"No," Lilian said. "It doesn't. You know if Rex Garrote really was still alive, I think I'd kill him myself."
"I don't know if I could do it," Ben said. "But I want to. It's funny—"
Lilian turned to him, expecting him to continue, but he just kept walking. "What's funny?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."
She shrugged, too tired to prod. Whatever it was, he would tell her in time. If not, it didn't matter. Survival was the only important thing now. Anything else they could deal with once they were safe inside the prison.
"I just realized I haven't gone pee for like four hours," she said, the pressure on her bladder suddenly painful.
"New world record," Ben said. "I wouldn't mind stopping by a washroom if we can find one."
Ben took out the map again and Lilian searched the legend. She found a little toilet icon nearby. They would have to follow below the tram line all the way to the creek. Ben folded the map and tucked it back into the right cargo pocket alongside the lump of his wallet and the two of them headed off toward their destination. High above them the trams hung unmoving, casting long shadows along the path.
Ben said, "Do you think Demont was telling the truth? Do you really think we'll be safe at the prison?"
"Why would he lie?"
He gave her a sharp, condescending look. "You've played enough survival horror to know that. When someone asks 'Would you kindly,' it's not always in your best interest to comply. And just because we bring him the gas doesn't mean he'll let us in."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I trust him, Ben. He tried to help us. And anyway, this isn't a game. You can't equate everything in life to what happened in Silent Hill."
"Bioshock," Ben corrected her.
"Whatever, I was just using an example. And quoting Garrote books isn't going to help us, either."
He shrugged, watching his feet with a cowed expression. They fell into another long silence, accompanied by the sound of their shoes scuffing on fresh pavement and the occasional cry of a distant bird. The sun dipped behind a light cloud as the silence stretched out. A jet trail had cut across the clear blue sky, a stark reminder of the reality they had left behind when they'd first stepped through the entrance into Ghostland.
"Hey," Ben said, and then fell silent.
"What?"
"Were you…" He seemed to be struggling to formulate his question. "…were you really planning on ignoring me forever?"
The question surprised her. She wasn't sure how to answer it without hurting him anymore than she already had. She needed to be tactful, and she reminded herself the reason wasn't entirely his fault, nor her own. It all seemed so silly, avoiding him to avoid thinking about death, now that death surrounded them, everywhere they looked.
"You know my parents want me go to Stanford so I can be close to you, right?" he said.
The Stanford thing again. How did Ben know about that? "I'm not going to Stanford," she said.
"I told them about your scholarship."
"How does everyone know about that?"
He looked at her with a hangdog expression. "I eat lunch at the diner on Fridays."
"I knew it! You have been talking to my mom."
"She's worried about you. So was I."
She eyed him cautiously. "What do you mean, 'was'?"
"Well, I really don't think we'll have to worry about you anymore if we make it out of this place alive," he said. "I know you've been scared of what's out there, after high school and stuff. You're scared of taking a chance. But if you can survive this, you can do anything you put your mind to. And I'll be right beside you if you want me to be. I was thinking about listening to my parents and applying to Stanford, too."
"But I'm not going to Stanford."
"You say that. But I don't believe you."
He kicked a soda can in his path, as if to emphasize his point. It skittered off along the pavement ahead of them and came to a stop at the broken, bloodied corpse of a girl about their age, even dressed similarly to Lilian, except instead of ripped jeans the dead girl wore black yoga pants. Under other circumstances, it could easily have been her.
"You're gonna stay in Duck Farts the rest of your life?" Ben continued, ignoring the dead girl. "You? You're way too smart for that. You could be anything you want." He flashed a sarcastic smile at her. "I believe in you, Lilian Roth."
She felt her cheeks flush. "Shut up."
"I'm serious."
"I'm serious. Quit talking like that or I'll give you a wet willie like I used to."
Ben grinned at her. "You wouldn't."
She stuck a finger in her mouth and he held up his hands in surrender.
"Okay, okay!" He looked off. His smile faded. "There's the creek up ahead."
The pavement ended at the edge of the creek. The tram line continued over the water with a support tower on either side of the divide. Off to the left of the closest tower was a small restroom with a water fountain out front. They turned to each other, both speaking at once.
"Do you want me to wait—?"
"Should I come with—?"
They laughed anxiously. Ben held out a hand for her to finish.
"I don't think we should split up," she said.
He nodded. She could see the blush already rising on his neck. "Classic horror noob mistake," he said. "So… men's or women's?"
"Women's will have more stalls," she said. "For privacy."
"You just want to trick me into going into the girl's room, like that time you pushed me in."
She laughed. "It was way more than once." She used to love pranking him when they were kids because he was so easy to embarrass. Thinking back on it, it had been pretty mean, considering how kids bullied him later in life.
Ben said, "I've blocked the rest out of my memory. Sandy Lewis was in there taking a dump that one time, she stank the whole place up. No one needs to smell that."
She laughed again. "Hey, girls poop, Ben. Get over it."
He laughed with her, then his expression got gravely serious. "Wait, you're not…?" He wouldn't finish the question but she'd already heard enough.
"Don't be gross."
"Girls poop, Lilian. But if you do have to, I'm waiting outside."
"I've got a wet finger with your name on it, Laramie…."
Ghostland Page 18
