We Are Monsters (31 page)

Chapter Sixty

The risk in playing dead is that you can lose the game and not even know when it's done.

Bear.
Bear man.
Bear.
Bear man.

What do you do when attacked by a
Bear
man?
Play dead!

This ridiculous jingle had been running through Alex's mind since he woke up while being dragged across the floor. Instinctively, he had remained motionless, letting his body be pulled along like a bag of sand. Like a corpse.

He could feel himself growing weaker. He wanted to examine himself, determine the extent of his injury, but was afraid to let Bearman know that he was alive.

He knows you're alive, idiot. Why would he bother to drag a dead body?

He couldn't get his mind to make sense. It felt like his brain's battery had been drained. But he decided that the safest thing to do at this point was stay compliant and let Bearman drag him as far as he'd like.

What do you do when attacked by a
Bear
man? Play dead!

If it weren't for that stupid saying, perhaps he could think.

Bearman was beginning to strain. He had already dragged him around several turns, covering the full length of each hallway without taking a break. And that was just as long as Alex had been conscious. He had no idea how long he'd been out. Bearman's movements were coming now in spurts; he was beginning to grunt with exertion. He was beginning to growl.

Alex could hear voices ahead. A man and a woman. They were drawing closer.

Bear.
Bear man.
Bear.
Bear man.
What do you do?
Play dead!

They rounded another turn and Bearman dropped him with a final grunt. Alex's head bounced against the ground. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and a metallic tang filled his mouth. He had bitten his tongue.

“You're back,” the woman said. “Where are the others?”

“They goddamn disappeared.”

“Say again, Soldier!” a man said.

Alex kept his eyes closed. He kept his breathing as shallow as he could.

There was a pause.

“Who the fuck is this?” Bearman said.

“What did you say?” the man said. He sounded like a drill sergeant. “You better speak to me with respect!”

Alex could hear foot stomps and heavy shuffling, the sounds of two alpha dogs fighting for dominant position.

“You will stand down!”

“I don't take orders here!”

“Stop it. Both of you,” the woman said.

The scuffling stopped.

“He's on our side,” she continued, her voice flat and ambiguous. More husky than feminine, like someone with emphysema. “He's going to help retrieve my son.”

“I'm an expert in reconnaissance,” the drill sergeant said. “I've smoked my share of gooks out of their gopher holes.”

“Shut up,” the woman said, and was greeted with silence. “What do you mean the others disappeared?”

“I chased them down. Had them cornered. They went back into a patient's room, but when I followed them in they were gone.”

“Did you check the ceiling tiles?” the sergeant said.

“There were three goddamn girls. I went in seconds after them. There was nowhere for them to go. I'm telling you. They just disappeared. I don't know what else to say.”

“What happened to him?” the woman asked.

Alex could feel himself being looked at. He held his breath and remained still. After just a few seconds he felt like he was going to suffocate.

“He was slowing me down.”

“And dragging him all across the hospital sped you up?”

“I mean earlier. When I was chasing the others.” Alex heard pacing. “What are those other things, anyway? Those two women. They look dead.”

“Have you looked at yourself lately?” the woman said, and the sergeant snickered. “Don't worry about it. They're not our friends.”

Alex realized that if he continued to hold his breath much longer he was going to have to gasp for air. He slowly exhaled the carbon dioxide from his lungs and quietly sucked fresh air in. Blood was collecting in the back of his throat and he struggled not to gag.

“Is he dead?” asked the woman.

“What am I, a fucking doctor?”

Play dead, but don't lose the game.

Having had his eyes closed for so long, Alex's hearing had grown more acute. He could sense a resonant, echo-like quality in the sound of their voices, as though they were in a large space. That meant that they were either in the dining hall or the rec room.

“Oh well. We don't need him. And we can deal with the others later. We know where he is.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“In there.”

Alex heard shuffling feet.

“In where?”

Silence, then, “Oh…” It had come out of Bearman's mouth in an awed and reverent tone.

“There're a bunch of spooks in there. I scouted it out already,” the sergeant said.

“My poor son's scared.” The woman moaned sensually, as though letting dark chocolate melt on her tongue. “And he should be.”

Alex's body began to tingle. He was getting cold. But he was comfortable now. The voices were oddly melodic. He was content to lie here and listen. And he didn't notice as they began to fade. Or as the darkness grew deeper. Or as…

The risk in playing dead is that you can lose the game, and you won't even know when it's done.

Chapter Sixty-One

“Wait, stop.” They had just left Eli's office. It felt like leaving the safety of a reinforced bunker to rescue a soldier from enemy fire. This, Eli would know. “Has anyone tried their phone?”

“Sorry, left mine back in the great beyond,” Miranda said.

A pallid hue was blanching Angela's tan face. The sockets around her eyes looked bruised. “They don't work.”

“What about the exits. Has anyone gone outside?”

They exchanged glances and then Angela shook her head.

“Let's start there,” Eli said.

Eli took the lead, walking fast. There was an exit just beyond the nurses' station, which opened out onto the staff parking lot. Their footsteps echoed down the dimly lit hall.

The hospital felt empty, yet not, as though it were occupied by people just beyond their realm of observation. And there were just enough inconsistencies with the true architecture of Sugar Hill to suggest that they were somewhere else. It seemed incomplete, somehow. As though it had been recreated from memory with certain details left out.

The exit was just up ahead. Emergency floor lights offered a dull illumination of the door. It looked murky and smaller than it should.

He stopped in front of the door and the women crowded behind him, pressing forward, eager to get out. “Hold it,” Eli said. He didn't bother trying to listen through the door. It was made with reinforced steel. But he wanted a moment to collect himself.

Sometimes it's better to just press on.

He opened the door.

It was like plunging underwater. The air was sucked from their lungs. Sound ceased. Eli's mouth moved, but nothing came out. He could feel pressure building between his ears.

Outside was erased. It was nothingness. An empty void, absent everything. No sight, no sound, no up, no down, nothing. It was reality in reverse. And, like a black hole, it seemed to have its own gravity. Eli felt like he was being pulled in.

Eli closed the door. It slammed against its frame as though caught in a backdraft. There was a moment of vertigo—
the building is floating through eternal dark
—and then Randall's words came back to him:
“We're all dead here. We're caught in the in-between.”

God help them if they are,
Eli thought.

But Eli didn't think God was going to save them. It was up to him.

“Jesus!” Angela exclaimed as if sharing his thoughts on divine intervention. “What is this?”

“How long are you going to keep asking that?” Miranda said. She looked bored.

Lacy's scorched voice hissed like steam. “Out there hasn't been created yet.”

“If you have all the answers, why don't you help us more?” Angela's voice was rising. She was fighting hysteria.

Lacy answered, “We're helping as much as we can. He brought us here. Only he knows why.”

Miranda combed her fingers through her hair and a clump of it fell out. “Fiddly-fuck,” she said.

Eli was thinking. “It hasn't been created yet?” He pondered. “Who's the creator, then? If you're here because of me, that suggests I am part creator.”

“We all cocreate our shared realities,” Lacy said.

“Learning how to do it is the bitch,” Miranda said.

The dim overhead lights flickered. The emergency lights near the floor flared and then went dead, casting them further into darkness. The silence of the hallway screamed.

“Fuck this,” Eli heard Angela say. “I've overcome scarier shit than this before.” She started out ahead, one arm swinging in a purposeful stride, the other swaying limply by her side. Eli and the others were forced to follow.

“Stay calm,” Eli said. “We don't want to rush into anything.”

“We're reacting too much,” Angela said, speaking to the open hallway before her. The forceful march was pumping invigorating blood throughout her veins. “We need to be proactive. That's the only way to make anything happen. That's the only way to create.”

Eli trotted beside her. “Let's be balanced,” he said. “Cautious.”

“Being cautious has never gotten me anywhere good in my life.” She clenched her fists and picked up the pace. Her dark eyes flashed under the flickering lights.

She passed Eli's office, the door blurring beside her. She reached the end of the hallway and turned. Her right foot almost slipped out from underneath her. She looked down. It was smeared in blood.

“He's down this way,” she said, wiping her shoe clean before rushing on.

The blood trail was back. It looked like Bearman had slowed once they made it this far, allowing the blood to pool. It was even thicker up ahead, near the entrance to the rec room.

Angela was the first to reach the corner, which she rounded and stopped. Both hands went to her face.

Alex was on the floor. His eyes were closed, eyelids robin's egg blue. His face was pale and shiny with oily sweat. His bangs clung to his forehead in boyish curls.

Angela kneeled on one side, Eli the other. They lifted his shirt. Angela grimaced. The hole was triangular, just below the sternum. Blood oozed out in slow, pulsing waves.

“He's still bleeding. That means he's still alive,” Eli said. He took off his white-cotton coat and crumpled it into a ball, laying it against the wound and applying pressure.

Alex stirred.

Angela brushed the hair from his brow. His forehead was so cool. She said his name, whispering it like a worried lover. Then louder, more urgent, like a nurse. “Alex. Wake up. Are you with us? Come on. Wake up!”

His eyes fluttered, then opened. His brow creased as he struggled to focus.

Eli adjusted his weight, pressing down harder against the wound.

Alex winced in pain. “Ow, shit.” Alex shut his eyes and sucked air through his teeth.

Eli didn't let up. “Stay with us.”

“I'm here, I'm here,” Alex said, his head rising a few inches off the ground. “Holy shit. Where have you guys been?” He scanned their faces; then his eyes bulged wide.

“Hiya, handsome,” Miranda said. Dark sludge had seeped into her irises, turning them black. “We're with Eli.”

Lacy smiled, pulling her tortured skin tight against her skeletal face. Her nurse's cap had tilted back while running, revealing her ravaged head.

Angela guided Alex's attention back towards her. “Don't try. None of it makes sense. They're okay, though. They brought back Eli. They woke him up.”

Eli leaned in. “I don't think you've lost too much blood. You're going to be okay. You need to stay strong, though. Focused.”

Alex nodded. “It's…good to see you,” he said.

Eli focused his attention on Alex's wound. He feared looking into his eyes. He wasn't sure what they would show. “You too,” he said.

“Where did Bearman go?” Angela asked.

Eli began treating the wound, fixing a tourniquet as they talked.

Alex pointed towards the far wall. “In there.”

They all looked. There was no exit that way. Only the wall covered by a large mural that a patient had once painted. Eli couldn't be sure in the dim light, but it looked like the mural had changed.
Hadn't there been a drawing of Adam and Eve before?
Now it was just a dark and ominous garden in the ghostly glow of twilight.

“Where?” Angela said.

Lacy and Miranda were both walking towards the mural to get a closer look.

“Oh wow,” Miranda said as they approached.

“It's alive,” Lacy said.

And even from here Eli and Angela could see. The limbs of the large apple tree were swaying, as if stirred by some impossible breeze. The tall grass fluttered; the full moon reflected a sepulchral light that seemed to radiate outward from the wall. Small creatures rustled quietly through the far shadows, and they could hear the faint chirrup of insects performing their nocturnal song.

“Why?” Eli said.

“They're going after Crosby,” Alex said. His eyes rolled back in his head, then refocused.

Eli forced him to lie down on his back. Through shallow breaths Alex said, “His mom is here. She's the one who chased me. She's looking for her son.”

“Crosby's mom? Impossible. She's dead,” Angela said.

Lacy rejoined the group. “Not anymore,” she said.

“Bearman's with her. But it's like he's been lobotomized. He's completely insane.” Alex glanced down at his bloody stomach. “Obviously,” he said. “And someone else. Some army asshole who looks like he's straight out of
Apocalypse Now
.”

“Did you get a name?” Eli said.

Alex nodded. The stress of talking was weakening him. His forehead was dappled with sweat. “Wagner.”

Eli's eyes swung back to the mural. He studied it for several seconds, listening to the night sounds emanating from the animated garden. “That's enough for now,” Eli said. “You need medical treatment. Where are your supplies?”

“The nurses' storage room is fully stocked,” Angela said.

“I know that,” Eli said. “But they don't have everything I need.”

He leaned down and whispered into Alex's ear.

Alex's eyes flickered side to side, relaying his whirring thoughts. He shook his head, and Eli spoke again. Alex's lips paled as they pressed together, then he raised his head and spoke into Eli's ear.

Eli stood. There was a wheelchair stationed in a far corner. Walking towards it felt like navigating a balance beam. His equilibrium was off-center. The room kept trying to warp into a different shape.

He slowed. He turned his attention towards his breath and focused.

There has to be another way,
his mind tried to convince him.
Take the time to think this through.

But there is no time. I don't think time even exists here. Besides, no one else will die on my watch.

No one, that is, except me.

He grabbed the wheelchair and began rolling it back towards Alex and the others, his fingers digging into the foam handles. “Help me get him in,” he said.

Gently, they lifted Alex into the wheelchair. His head was beginning to loll.

“You're doing great, Alex. Hang in there,” Angela said. She grabbed the handlebars as Eli turned and strode away.

Eli led them back towards Alex's office.

“Why are we going this way?” Angela said. She had to trot to keep up. Her main focus was on Alex, but she was beginning to worry about Eli as well. He too looked pale, and was starting to wheeze. “Slow down,” she said, as she herself sped up.

They arrived at Alex's office. Eli held the door open and ushered the two women through. He stopped Angela before she could enter. “I need you to go to the nurses' closet and get what we need to stabilize him.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “That's what I was trying to tell you.”

Eli disengaged her hands from the wheelchair handlebars. “Hurry. Bring them back here.”

“I don't understand—”

“There's no time now. Hurry, please go.” He wheeled Alex into the room, turning his back on her.

Angela stood in the hallway and watched the door close in her face.

She listened to the hum of the lights. Then, in the distance, she heard footsteps. A slow, steady tread coming closer. She looked both ways. The hallway was empty, but a shadow was emerging at the turn on her left-hand side.

She didn't wait to see what was coming. She turned the opposite way and sprinted towards the supply closet. It wasn't far, and she never knew she could run so fast. She flew on the legs of a little girl.