The Lost and the Damned (31 page)

The tunnel was much cooler now and there was a room in sight. The tunnel opened up into a store room. The pipes alongside us disappeared into the walls, and we found ourselves in a room full of crates and boxes. We agreed to pause and rest as Merill continued.

“Even during this time, Ashborn was relatively normal,” he said.

“That’s normal?” I asked.

“Compared to how he had been? Somewhat. Compared to what I have seen some obsessed doctors do? Possibly. Passionate men sometimes lose sight of the rest of the world as they pursue their research. It happens. But compared to what he became? Yes. After this period of study and collection of odd devices, Ashborn changed. Where before he had his cronies and close associates, now he had a cabal. His close associates now became co-conspirators. They were each sworn to secrecy, an unbroken silence through which they worked toward their purpose. They began to –“

“Wait a minute,” asked Katie, “if they were all sworn to secrecy, how do you know? You told us Ashborn hated you. Are you now saying that you were a member of their secret cult?”

“No, of course not,” said Merill. “But you remember I had a good friend, Doctor Nealand, who was part of Ashborn’s inner circle. Through him I learned of their cabal and its secret promises. As to what they did in the hospital? That was not hard to learn. What they did during the daytime was done with the help of nurses and orderlies. They could keep those activities secret from the outside world, but not to members of the hospital. Those strange therapies they inflicted on those poor patients were known to me. It was what they did at night, in the old part of the hospital that I know only whispers and rumors.”

“What did they do?” asked Katie.

“Experimentation,” he said flatly. “Select patients were put through particular rigors and tests. Painful ones, according to the night nurses who claimed to hear screams echoing through the pipes. I’m not sure what they were looking for. The right patient? Or some sort of reaction from them? Nealand would not talk about this. At first he was horrified. Later on… well, we stopped talking. By that point, Nealand started believing in what Ashborn was saying. It was… unfortunate.”

“Hold on,” I said, leaning on a crate. “You knew that they were experimenting on patients, violently so, and you just sat around and did nothing?”

“Well, I…”

“No, let me make sure I’m clear about this,” I said. “In your hospital patients were being experimented on. In ways that made other doctors horrified and your nurses disturbed. You knew about this, going on for months – “

“- Just this past month –“

“Fine, you knew about this for the past month, yet you did nothing? Are the lives of your patients nothing to you? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Now wait just a minute,” he started.

“No, I won’t wait,” I said. “You’re as much of a piece of shit as them if you just sat back and did nothing, knowing what went on.”

“I didn’t know!”

“You did!” I accused, stepping into his personal space.

“I didn’t know for sure…”

“Ah, this defense again. You didn’t know for sure that I was walking into this mess, but you still let me. You didn’t know for sure patients were being hurt. Sure, maybe they scream for pain when they like it. You disgust me.”

I spit at him and turned around, not even wanting to look at him. Behind me, I heard Katie talking to Merill as he sat down and slumped against a box.

“Why didn’t you do something?” Katie asked. It was hard to guess her voice. She was a patient here too; I immediately became aware that this realization would be much more frightening to her. In a moment I realized something I hope she wasn’t thinking. If she was catatonic, how did she know she wasn’t experimented on?

“I wanted to,” he said weakly, “I really wanted to. But you don’t understand how it is here. Ashborn has all the power. He’s the hospital administrator, the one who signs all the paychecks and contracts. All the top doctors are in his cabal. He would claim that nothing was happening. The doctors would agree. The nurses and orderlies would also agree. They could get fired, or worse the institute could close down due to investigation and they’d lose their jobs.”

“Hrrumph,” I said with my arms folded, finding his excuse lacking.

He spoke again to Katie. “I went to Ashborn. It was dangerous to do, but I went to him and asked him to stop. I told him I would go to the AMA, the APA, the police, someone. I knew someone needed to know. And do you know what he did? Do you know how he reacted?”

“No,” said Katie, prompting him to continue.

“He laughed at me. Really, he just laughed. He told me that he is the one who held power here, that this is his domain. Then he threatened me. He told me that I would be the one who would suffer. He said that if I called the authorities here, I would end up in jail. He said he’d simply show the authorities the patients experimented on and claim that they were my experiments. And I knew he could do it. With so many doctors on his side, everyone would speak against me. I would be the one to take the fall. So you can see why I didn’t go to the police.”

“Poor Doctor,” said Katie soothingly, as Merill closed his eyes and accepted the sympathy.

“Those are some very weak excuses,” she then said in a more assertive voice. We were all surprised. I turned around and saw her standing up sharply. “Seriously, what the hell?” she said. “How weak a person are you?” She turned and saw me looking. “Can you believe this shit? It’s a doctor without a spine.” She turned back to him. “I can’t believe you were my fucking doctor,” she said, poking a finger at him. “How were you supposed to help me when you don’t even have the backbone for your own life? Fuck man, how many people in your career are you going to help in hospitals? How many do you have to help to compare to the amount you could help by stopping people from torture and experimentation? What the fuck is the goal in your life? Aren’t doctors supposed to help people?”

She stormed away from him, taking up a spot in the corner where I heard her rapidly pacing before finally kicking a crate. Wow, I thought, she really ran hot and cold. Was it from her catatonia, or was this vintage Katie?

This left me standing closest to Merill and strangely the most sympathetic to him. I walked over to him and leaned against the crate next to him.

“So finish your story,” I said wearily.

“Huh?” he said, looking up at me, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Is that where it ends?” I asked. “Ashborn starts experimenting, I show up and all hell breaks loose? What about the pillar of light?”

“There’s more,” he said, “I just don’t know much about it. Nealand no longer told me anything, and I knew only what I gleaned from chatty nurses. Ashborn’s threat made me back off, you understand?”

“Sure,” I said, “But I still need to piece this together. What do you think you know?”

“Things had been getting worse in the past week. All the nurses knew it, and they were scared. Everything was mounting toward an apex. Tonight, I think. I know that Ashborn’s cabal had a specific meeting tonight in the old part of the hospital, a section they didn’t want any nurses in. After the shift change at dinner, they disappeared into Wing F with five patients, mostly catatonics, I think. While I was curious, I was just unlucky to have stayed here this late.”

“And then?” I asked.

“And then there was a pillar of light erupting from what I believe was Wing F,” he said. “I think you know the rest of this story, or as much as I know. I felt the hospital rumbling, so I hid in the bathroom because I figured that room was secure. Then you found me.”

“Yeah, lucky me,” I said.

We all sat in silence for a few minutes, breathing the cooler air of the storeroom. I became very conscious of the sweat that covered me from walking through those hot tunnels. I wished I carried a flask or a canteen, but I had nothing to quench my thirst. I mused on what Merill had said. Ashborn and his cohorts had disappeared into the old part of the hospital with five patients. Sometime later a pillar of light erupted from that part of the hospital and the Five rampaged through the halls. Five monsters that I had the unfortunate luck of nearly bumping into as they exited the hospital. Ashborn’s experiments, five patients, a pillar of light, and then the monsters. They were all connected. I didn’t know how, but I knew that Ashborn had caused it. He turned those patients into those monsters. And he was around, somewhere, possibly creating more monsters. The thought did little to calm my nerves.

To get my mind off it, I stood up and walked over to Katie. She had stopped pacing, but she still had her back to the doctor and myself. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She turned around, her face nervous and confused. But that soon changed and she gave me a smile, showing off her perfect white teeth. Even though it was obviously forced, her smile could light up a room. She almost fooled me into thinking everything was okay. I almost wanted to believe that. But I couldn’t believe everything was okay. The question was whether it was just the stress of our situation or if she was cracking up. I still worried that she might revert to her catatonia.

“I’m fine,” she said, pausing a moment before she reconsidered. “Fine as we could be for being in this crazy fucked up place.”

“You sure?” I asked, giving her another chance to confess her problems.

Her beautiful eyes looked into mine for a moment or two before the beautiful smile returned. “I’m fine, John. Just get me out of here. Get us both out of here. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”

“You and me both,” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. She smiled back, and for one long moment we shared weak smiles and the pleasure of standing there.

Then the flapping interrupted us.

It sounded like the wings of a bird flapping, but the sound was magnified much louder than it should be. I wasn’t sure if it was the enclosed space that magnified it; all I knew was that it sounded like flapping everywhere. We stood looking at the ceiling in each direction, trying to figure out which direction the sound was coming from.

The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up; my danger sense was on red alert. I wasn’t sure why, but the flapping put me on edge. I mean, it could be just some pigeons or something that got caught in the complex when they had the door open, right? Just harmless birds, flapping around, just trying to find a window or exit from this building. Nothing to worry about at all.

Then why did my nerves just scream something was wrong?

Something dark darted over a crate and came right at me. I didn’t see what it was besides a flap of black feathers, but some instinct in me made me jump to the side, just barely dodging whatever bird had just dove at me. I heard it glance off the boxes behind me and start flapping again. I turned my head to see another form streak toward Merill. I heard him scream as it clipped his arm and then darted off into the air.

I scanned the ceiling above us for them, but all I could hear was the sound of flapping echoing around the crates. I stepped over to Merill, still looking above us for the birds. Katie was at his side, looking at his arm as Merill slumped against a crate, his face pale. He was bleeding from a wound on his upper arm. I couldn’t tell how deep it was. What I could see was that it was a pretty clean cut.

“Tear off a strip of clothing, make some sort of tourniquet,” I said, fumbling around in my pockets.

“Me?” said Katie, “What are you going to be doing?”

I found what I was looking for and pulled my pistol out of my pocket, chambering a round.

“Oh,” she said, looking at the gun, “that makes sense.”

 I crept to the corner of the crates we were now using as cover. The flapping became slower, and I wondered if they were stopping or if they were getting ready to strike again.

Behind me I heard Katie say, “Tear clothing? With what? Clothing is too well made anymore to tear with hands! Hey, Doctor, do you have a knife?” Merill just groaned in response.

I fumbled in my pocket and tossed my pocketknife behind me, not even looking to see where it went. I heard Katie say “Gee, thanks,” and scramble on the floor behind me. I kept all my attention on peering around the corner. I leaned a little farther and saw two black shapes fluttering near one of the lights in cages at the ceiling. I couldn’t see them well enough to tell what sort of bird they were, but knowing where they were was good enough.

I leaned out farther in a squat and brought my pistol to bear. For now the birds seemed to be fluttering around the light, so I could take my time. I slowly lined up my shot, watching their pattern. I didn’t want to take too long, in case they went on the offensive, but I also didn’t want to fire too hastily. I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

There was a deafening noise as the gun discharged in such a confined space, and with pleasure I saw one of the birds explode into a cloud of black feathers. I smiled, but immediately pulled the trigger again, trying to hit the other bird. It had already started to frantically dodge, so my second shot just left a hole in the ceiling. The bird began to curve and I fired again, missing again. It started coming in on a wide arc and I knew was coming for me. I fired again, but it banked right. I fired again and it swooped lower. Miss. Now it was very evident that it was diving in my direction. I knew it was coming at me. I could get out of the way or take it down first. I squeezed off two more shots, blowing the corner off a crate and catching two black feathers in the air, but the bird was still coming at me. I could see its sharp beak now, it was kind of silvery. I fired twice, but firing so quickly with so much kickback killed my aim, and the bird easily dodged it.

The clip was empty, my ammo spent. I had another clip in my pocket, but there was no time to grab it. There was no time to dodge. Almost in slow motion I saw it swooping toward me, on trajectory to dive under my arms, evading any further shots. What I did next even surprised me. It was a weird hybrid of calculation and instinct, but I acted without really thinking about it. As I saw its sharp beak zooming straight at my face, I brought my arms down, trying to slam the butt of my gun against the bird. The chances of me getting the timing right were so unlikely, but I felt a crunch as my strike connected, slamming the bird against the ground. It made a strange clink noise as it hit the floor and bounced a foot or two away. Without thinking about it, I stepped to it and slammed my foot down on it, feeling the unpleasant sensation of blood squirt from the sides of my shoe.