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  14 Hours Until the Massacre at Ffirth Asylum

  Two hours later, Amy was still sitting at the bus stop.

  It hadn’t been John coming around the corner and it hadn’t been a Bronco, it was a different make. Some hillbilly behind the wheel.

  She called John for the fifth time. Voice mail.

  As she hung up, two guys walked past her on the sidewalk carrying shotguns. Right there in broad daylight.

  She was freezing, her butt numb on the bus stop bench, sitting there with her pillow on her lap. She called the front desk of John’s motel to ask if they could check on him (they wouldn’t). She called Nisha, to see if she’d heard from him (she hadn’t).

  No crying. She imposed a no-crying rule until further notice. She had eaten half a dozen of the Red Vines.

  An SUV pulled over about a block down. Four guys got out of it, all of them carrying hard plastic cases that were shaped like they held rifles. Some had little briefcase-shaped ones that she guessed held pistols or some other kind of littler gun. They all headed off in the same direction.

  She stared at her phone, willing it to ring.

  * * *

  At around 1:30, she finally got John to answer his phone.

  “Hello?”

  “John! Oh my god. Where are you?”

  “I’m, uh, at the motel. What’s happened?”

  “What do you mean what’s happened? I’m here at the bus stop.”

  “Okay are you taking the bus here or…”

  “What? John? It’s Sunday.”

  Pause.

  “The buses don’t run on Sunday?”

  “John…”

  “Yeah? What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

  She took a moment to compose herself, failed.

  “Hello? Amy?”

  “John, we were supposed to go down to the city today. To see David.”

  “Oh, yeah, okay. I didn’t hear your voice mail until just now. My phone has been messing up, I think the network is dropping a lot of calls because of the—”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Today isn’t good, I’m really sick. Think it’s food poisoning. Probably something going around at the motel, everybody has it. But it’s probably for the best anyway, I think we should hold off. But I’ve been doing a ton of research. It turns out the government has put up a list of names on their Web site. I haven’t been there yet but let me give you the address—”

  Amy hung up on him, and turned off her phone.

  It was, she would have to say, the angriest she had ever been in her entire life. She took a dozen deep breaths, trying to remember the techniques from the meditation class she had taken (somebody claimed it could do as much to control pain as any prescription painkiller, ha-ha).

  She only had one other option. She dug the zombie flyer from her purse, unfolded it, and dialed the hotline number the guy had given out during the press conference.

  She punched her way through a series of voice options, then when she reached an operator said, “Uh, hi. My name is Amy Sullivan. My boyfriend’s name is David Wong. His house is where the infection started. Both of us were there. I’m showing symptoms. I think I should be quarantined but I’m two hours away and I don’t have transportation.”

  Long pause on the other end.

  “Please hold.”

  After a minute, a friendly sounding male voice came on the line and said, “Ms. Sullivan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll come get you. Stay exactly where you are. Don’t panic.”

  “Okay. Do you know where the bus stop is in front of—”

  “We know where you are. We’ll be there within thirty minutes. Please stay where you are. If someone else approaches you, ask them to stay at least fifty feet away. Remain calm.”

  Thirty minutes? So they did have people in town.

  She hung up and bit into a Red Vine. She felt stupid. This is what she should have done all along. She’d be in Undisclosed before dark.

  13 Hours, 30 Minutes Until the Massacre at Ffirth Asylum

  Dark. Thirsty.

  I had been hospitalized only once before, for a concussion and some cuts and a fractured eye socket I suffered in a car accident, and for a minor gunshot wound unrelated to the accident. I don’t remember any of it clearly, it happened during a period of my life that is mostly lost to my memory. But one thing I do remember is the long, slow, touch-and-go bob to consciousness that came with the artificially induced coma of anesthesia. Sights and smells drifting in under the haze of nonsense dream logic, and a sense that the world had skipped ahead in time without me. And under it all, the thirst. This was like that.

  My last solid memory was stepping through the Porta-Potty, stepping out of the BB’s restroom door and into a shouting, shoving crowd that had gathered behind the store. The people were being herded into that spot by National Guard—confused, scared kids with assault rifles and no protective gear. Somebody started shooting and a head burst like a balloon next to me, the dead guy flailing back through the door I had just exited.

  Days had passed since then. I knew that. I could feel it in my sore joints, and I had a vague sense of cycles, of consciousness and unconsciousness—sleeping through a night, drifting in and out of a day that was just as dark. I had been moved, and moved again, rolled down a hallway on a gurney. I remember having an IV in my arm for a while, and then they took it out, and then put it back. I had been outside at some point, behind a fence, talking to other people. I remembered screams, and panic. All of it just flashing through my brain, like headlights passing a bedroom window at night. There and gone. Meaningless.

  Sleep.

  * * *

  Awake.

  Dark.

  I had eyes. I felt the twitch of my eyelids opening and closing, though the view remained the same either way. Was I blind?

  I moved my right arm. I couldn’t feel the dragging weight of plastic tubes attached, so I had been unhooked at some point. With some effort I lifted my hand to my face, to see if my eyes were covered. They were not. I blinked. I tried to lift my head, and groaned—a bolt of pain fired up my neck. I looked around for the glow of a digital clock, or a slit of light under a door, or blinking green lights on a console measuring my vitals.

  Nothing.

  I tried to sit up. I peeled my back off of the sheets, but my other arm wouldn’t come with me. I tugged on it and heard the clank of metal and felt cold steel around my wrist. I was handcuffed to the bed.

  That is never a good sign.

  I peeled apart dry lips and croaked, “Hello?”

  Nobody would have heard it unless they were sitting on the bed with me. I tried to swallow and give it another shot.

  “Hello? Is anybody out there?”

  Something about the echo of my voice told me I was in a small room.

  “HELLO?”

  I waited, for the sound of a shuffling nurse’s footsteps outside, or even the jingling of keys and a burly prison guard to tell me to shut the hell up or he was going to put me in solitary.

  Nothing. I thought I detected the sound of water dripping, somewhere.

  Suddenly I was certain—absolutely certain—that I had been abandoned here. No question, they had stuck me in a building, chained to a bed, and left me here to die of thirst. They didn’t even leave a light on. I’d lie here, for days, pissing and shitting myself, like a neglected dog in a trailer park whose owner was off doing meth somewhere.

  “HEY! ANYBODY?”

  I yanked at the cuffs. It didn’t do anything but make an irritating noise. I couldn’t even see a door.

  There isn’t a door, they just built up a brick wall over the opening, or locked me in a shipping container and bulldozed a thousand tons of dirt on top of it or sank it to the bottom of the ocean.

  “HEY! HEY!”

  I got one leg up—neither was restrained as far as I could tell—and kicked at the railing the cuffs were attached to. I had no strength in the leg.
The railing didn’t give.

  “HEY! GODDAMNIT!”

  “Sir?”

  A tiny voice. I froze.

  Did I actually hear that?

  I blinked into the darkness, stupidly, looking for movement. Somebody could have been sitting on my lap and I wouldn’t have seen them.

  “Hello? Is someone there?”

  “It’s just me.” Sounded like a little girl. “Can you be quieter? You’re scaring us.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Anna. Is your name Walt?”

  “No. My name is David. Who’s Walt?”

  “I thought they called you Walt earlier. When they brought you in.”

  “No. Oh, okay. Wong. They probably said Wong, that’s my last name. David Wong.”

  “Are you from Japan?”

  “No. Who else is in here?”

  “Just us. You me and Mr. Bear.”

  “Okay, Anna, this is going to seem like a weird question but is Mr. Bear an actual bear or a stuffed bear?”

  “He’s stuffed when grown-ups are around. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “What are you doing here, Anna?”

  “Same as you. We might be sick and they want to make sure other people don’t catch it.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Why didn’t you ask that question first?”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t make sense to ask me what I was doing here if you didn’t know where here was.”

  “Are we in the hospital?”

  No answer.

  “Anna? You there?”

  “Yes, sorry, I nodded my head but I forgot that you couldn’t see me. We’re in the old hospital. In the basement.”

  “Then where is everybody? And what happened to the lights?”

  “You can ask the spaceman when he comes by again. There were lots of them here before but everybody has been gone for a while.”

  I didn’t need to ask who the spacemen were. Guys in contamination suits.

  “How long has it been since they’ve come by?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t have my phone. It was two sleeps ago. I’m sure they’ll be back soon. Maybe they close on the weekend.”

  “Do you remember when they brought you here?”

  “Sort of. They came and got my dad and they told us we couldn’t go home and moved everybody downstairs to the special hospital. And, that’s where we are now.” In a whisper she said, “I think we should be quiet now.”

  “How old are you, Anna?”

  She whispered, “Eight.”

  “Listen to me. I don’t want you to be scared, but they left us here with no power, and no food, and no water. Now hopefully they’ll come back and take care of us but we have to make plans assuming they won’t.”

  “If you drank all of your water you can have some of mine.”

  “I … do I have water? Where?”

  “On the table next to you.”

  I reached over with my right hand and hit a row of shrink-wrapped bottles. I dug a bottle out and drank half of it and went into a coughing fit.

  “Sssshhhhh. We really should be quiet. There’s a box of granola bars and stuff over there, too, but they’re not very good.”

  “Why are we being quiet?”

  “I think I hear the shadow man.”

  I choked on my water.

  “Shhhhh.”

  “Anna, we—”

  “Please.”

  We laid there in silence, floating in still darkness like a pair of eyeless cave fish.

  * * *

  Finally Anna said, “I think he’s gone.”

  “The shadow man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “He’s a shadow with eyes.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “Over there.”

  “I can’t see where you’re pointing.”

  “Over in the corner.”

  “When? When did you see him before, I mean?”

  She sighed. “I don’t have a clock.”

  “What … uh, what did it do?”

  “It just stood there. I was scared. Mr. Bear growled at him and he eventually went away.”

  I had read somewhere that you could get out of handcuffs if you broke the bone at the base of your thumb. Or maybe just dislocated it? Either way I’d have to find out if my legs were strong enough to do that. The issue would then be trying to get the presumably locked door open one-handed. Maybe Anna could help.

  I said, “Okay. We have to get out of this place.”

  “They told us we couldn’t leave.”

  “Anna, you’re going to find out soon that grown-ups aren’t always right. We … let’s just say that it’s better if we’re not here when that thing comes back. But if it does, I don’t want you to panic. I don’t think it’s here for you, I think it’s here for me.”

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “He talked to you?”

  She hesitated. “Sort of. I could hear him. I don’t think he had a mouth. Like Hello Kitty.”

  “And … what did he say?”

  “I don’t want to repeat it but I don’t think he likes you.”

  I said nothing.

  Anna asked, “Do you want Mr. Bear?”

  “No, thank you.”

  I pulled my hand as far out of the handcuff as I could, which wasn’t far. I could feel the little knob of bone stopping it, two inches down from the thumb. If I yanked it hard enough, surely it would scrape off that bone, and the blood would lubricate it. Be a matter of not passing out from the pain. And me not being too much of a pussy.

  Metal scraping. I was about to ask Anna what she was doing when it registered that—

  HOLY SHIT THAT’S THE DOOR THE DOOR IS OPEN

  I sat up and threw aside the blanket. The room was bathed in light, a pair of powerful flashlights in the doorway, side by side like the eyes of a giant robot that had poked his head up through the floor. I was momentarily blinded by the light, but I squinted and looked to the corner, yelling, “Anna! Get—”

  The words died in my mouth. The room I was in, now fully illuminated by the flashlights, contained a small bedside table, a toilet, a filthy sink, and one bed. Mine.

  I was absolutely alone in the room.

  On the floor was a tattered, filthy old teddy bear.

  * * *

  Gloved hands grabbed me, holding me to the bed. It was two dudes wearing decontamination space suits, but the suits weren’t white—they were black, and they had pads on the arms, torso and thighs like body armor. Their faceplates were tinted, so you couldn’t see the face of the wearer.

  The cuff was removed from the bed rail and locked around my other wrist. Leg irons were placed around my ankles. I was dragged from the bed and marched down a long hallway lined with rusting steel doors just like the one I had been yanked through.

  There were other people here, roused to life by the sound of us passing their cells. I heard an old man screaming for his wife, or daughter (“KATIE!!!! KAAAATIE! CAN YOU HEAR ME??!?”) with no response. I heard a scraping from behind one door, like somebody was clawing to get out. I heard someone beg for food, I heard someone beg for pain pills.

  At the moment I passed a particular door, a male voice on the other side said, “Hey! Buddy! Hey! Open this door for me. Please. It’s my wife, my wife is in here and she’s bleeding. I’m begging you.”

  I stopped.

  “I’m here. What’s—”

  The gloved hands clamped on me again to pull me along.

  “Hey! Are you gonna help that guy? Hey!”

  No answer from the guards. From behind me, the desperate voice begged and howled and wept.

  The hallway came to a bend and continued to the right, but I was stopped in front of a TV screen that had been mounted on the wall. There was a speaker mounted below it, with a “push to talk” button. The screen blinked to life and there was a man in another decontamination suit, this one the n
ormal, friendly white like you’d expect from a government agency. The face behind the clear Plexiglas mask was familiar to me, the neatly cropped silver hair and weathered wrinkles.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wong. How are we feeling today?”

  “Dr. Tennet? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Am I dreaming this?

  “If we just keep answering each other’s questions with questions this conversation won’t go anywhere, will it?”

  “I’m feeling like shit. Why are you here?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “A bunch of guys in space suits were shooting people in BB’s parking lot. Guts sprayed all over me. Next thing I know I’m chained to a bed in this prison. And now my therapist is here for some reason.”

  “Prison? Is that where you think you are?”

  “There are tiny rooms with locks and handcuffs and I can’t leave. Call it whatever you want. How long have I been here?”

  “You honestly don’t remember? Anything at all?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve lost all memories from your arrival until now? Think hard for me.”

  “I don’t remember anything, goddamnit.”

  “I completely understand your agitation. But I’m going to have to beg for a little bit more of your patience. I’m part of the team sent to observe you and the others. We’re trying to get you well.”

  He looked down and was doing something with his hands. Tapping on a laptop. Making notes. Immune to the sound of muffled suffering echoing down the hall behind me.

  “Doctor, is somebody going to help those people back there?”

  “That would be … ill-advised. I assure you that the patients who actually need help are receiving it. Again, this is not a prison.”

  “So am I free to leave?”

  “If I’m satisfied that you’ve stabilized, you’ll be free to rejoin the others in quarantine.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Over at the hospital grounds. The primary quarantine area.”

  “But I can’t leave there?”

  “I’m afraid not. The government would have some very strong words for me if I were to let any of you wander out.”

  “Where am I now?”

  “In the old Ffirth Asylum, the abandoned TB hospital just down the street. Temporary REPER command center and patient processing.”