LOCKED (12 page)

The hospital wasn’t far by
any stretch of the imagination, an eighth of a mile at the most.
Hypothetically, all we had to do to make these streets relatively safe again
was turn the dial on that machine... the only obstacle was a dozen or more of
those fiends hounding us the entire way. It was a situation that sounded
tangible only in a thriller, but here it was before the two of us.

Thinking about the trip and
the destination, I came to the realization that the hospital I was trapped in
before must have been under Miller’s control, another breeding ground for this
race of artificial demons! All over the country, these monstrosities were
either hiding or emerging from their subterranean homes in the chaos that was
no doubt spreading like a wildfire, a swath of anarchy riding on the back of
pestilence. To think that our case wasn’t unique, to think that hundreds,
thousands, tens of thousands of poor souls were struggling to hold onto their
burning homes...

“I’ll make sure nothing
happens to you.” Danni nudged me with her elbow to grab my attention. She had a
determined, almost arrogant smirk, though hidden in there was a true,
unmistakable sincerity. I returned the smile, hoping to also return some of the
gift of morale that she just gave to me. Now, it was time to get down to
business.

“Alright, so... it’s obvious
enough that the machine’s either cranked all the way up or ALMOST at zero. We
just have to turn it all the way down to zero, and if everything here is true,
we can head right back to Ortiz and explain that their man is long gone. After
that, I guess we can head back to U.S.P.L., and then...um…” I began to trail
off.

“Don’t think too far ahead
yet. Besides, nothing’s ever that easy.” she warned. I shrugged in response,
and glanced over the documents once more. I began to overthink things... I had
the sinking feeling that she was right, that there was going to be some
variable that was hidden until the least convenient moment.

“Well... there’s really no
better time than now…” I forced myself to weakly mutter, not wanting to admit
that truth. In reality, it was simply the natural response to want to delay
this death wish, even if staying here was equally perilous.

“Ready when you are.” she
replied with a deep breath. She stretched out her sore muscles, ready to sprint
all the way to the hospital and into its basement. Her face was lightly etched
with a sense of concern that she didn’t want to make evident.

I walked over to the door,
and did what I could to throw my fear behind me, just far enough so it couldn’t
breathe down my neck, even if it refused to stop trying.

“We’ll be fine, just trust
me.” she uttered. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason why, but her
short delivery refilled my confidence. My anxiety wasn’t gone, but it was
converted into pure adrenaline. Without giving panic another second to invade,
I grasped the rusty knob, keeping my eyes on Danni. She nodded, and I threw the
door open.

Through the glass skywalk.
Down the stairs. Out the doors. Down more crumbling stairs. I was never more
than a step or two behind Danni. Behind me, the rage of the monochromatic
savages grew in intensity. As we sprinted down the street and past their hive,
they gave chase. Their bloodthirsty wailing echoed through the streets. They
weren’t quite fast enough to catch up with us, but the feeling alone of being
chased was more than enough to call upon a single basic human instinct:
run.
My muscles screamed out for me to stop, but my mind hushed and beat those
shouts back down from where they came.

It may have only been thirty
seconds from when we burst out of the hiding spot, but finally: the hospital
was in sight! We pushed ourselves onward, and burst through the light double
doors to the inside. I didn’t dare to turn my head while we were being chased, but
I had to turn to enter the elevator that Danni was already in, only two steps
ahead of me. The beasts were a bit farther back than I had expected, though
they were far greater in number than when I last checked; apparently, several
packs joined their comrades when their shrieks rang out over the dead
city. 

“Hurry up, HURRY UP!” Danni
yanked me inside the tiny cab of the elevator with one hand, and madly pounded
the button on the panel to close the door. The cheap metal door slid closed
painfully slowly.

So slow was the door, one of
the ghouls forced its ugly head through the door before it could fully close.
So decrepit and defective was the elevator, it began its creaky descent even
though the door was still open. Danni and I pressed ourselves to the back of
the cab while the creature flailed about in a frenzy, realizing that its head
was about to be severed from its slick, putrid body. It finally popped back
out, and some of the black, oily substance it was covered in splashed onto our
faces and clothes. In the few seconds it took to wipe the grime from ourselves,
a smaller member of the pack slipped through the gap before it disappeared!

Dear God
,
we
were trapped in here with it!

The two of us stayed as far
away as we could in the confined space. It sat there trembling, staring at us
with bleak eyes. It snarled weakly and hesitated, like a dog that finally
captured something it had been chasing for so long, then didn’t know what to do
with its prey. Before any one of us could react to the other’s presence, the
dim light in the elevator failed. A twisted shriek from the monstrosity
immediately filled the air, and it threw its gaunt frame all over the carriage
in a blind rage. The movement made the debilitated elevator crash down
suddenly, sweeping me off my feet for a moment. I lost physical contact with
Danni, and the momentary detachment felt as though she could be an inch or a
mile away. The falling sensation stopped; the elevator must have come to a
halt. I grasped for anything, and found her hand. She pulled me right back up
as the creature whimpered in its insect-like tongue, but that turned to a
shrill, layered scream as the elevator fell once more, making both Danni and I
lose our balance and fall. A split second later, the cabin crashed into the
lowest floor, coming to its final stop. The door rolled open, the mechanism
holding it in place finally being destroyed.

“Get up, go!” Danni groaned
through gritted teeth, not wanting to give the black and white devil in the
corner a chance.

We were in a room bathed in
blood-red light. The entire visible spectrum was crimson and black. There were
three rows of computers in the room, leading to a steel door at the opposite
end.

We were about to continue
sprinting through this laboratory in hopes that the machine we saw in the
diagram would be close by, but the demon behind us woke. It frantically leapt
from the cage the three of us were trapped in before, landing just in front of
us. I grabbed Danni’s hand to get her to come with me down the left aisle of
computers, hopefully outrunning it. I heard some sort of mechanical whirring in
the blackness behind and to my left, and the atrocity that was in the cabin
with us reacted to it before I could. In a blur of movement, it passed Danni
and I into the darkness, but its body came flying back as quickly as it
disappeared. A vaguely human-shaped figure came forth, bringing with it a
strong presence and the overwhelming smell of antiseptic. In the vermillion
light, I could just barely make out two prosthetic legs, and several coils of
appendages sprouting from its torso... it took a second for it to register that
these were its innards. Its groan was robotic, its agony being translated by
high-pitched synthetic translators. My best guess was that this was a “later
version” of the half of a man I found bound to life against his will in the
last hospital. Luckily, it ignored the two of us and marched toward its victim.

We dashed to the door, but a
dozen feet from it, we heard the elevator far behind us rattle. That was just
enough of a distraction for our hearts to practically leap out of our chests
when a vent in the ceiling crashed down, and two of the larger monochromatic
monsters tumbled down. I instinctively threw my arm in front of Danni, pushing
her back and away, hoping these horrors would at least focus on me instead. It
didn’t have to come to that though, as a second casualty of experimentation
just like the first that saved us burst forth from the shadows and attacked
both of them. Its ally still struggled farther back, now accompanied by two
carcasses and two enemies that had joined the fray.

It was the hunter versus the
hunted, the perfect distraction. Danni and I turned, finally able to throw the
door into the next room open.

It was too good to be true.

The machine was sitting
right in front of us, not three feet away. It was the sole occupant of the
tiny, unremarkable room. The dial mentioned in the documents was sitting right
there, plain as the drab day. The melee continued behind us, the resulting
noise being a war of parasites and cyborgs, and the scent being a war of oil
and disinfectants.

Without a second thought, I
turned the dial to zero, hoping it would kill the brain activity of these evils
and put them out of their misery.

...It
was
too good to
be true. 

A wicked roar from each of
the abominations in the room behind us. Each of their bodies writhed as if they
were being electrocuted. They writhed in the darkness pierced only by the weak
red light.

“Leo!” Danni grabbed my
attention, pointing to a tiny display above the dial:

“
WARNING- lowering brain
activity to zero will kill specimens in Batch D within a thirty mile range. If
this is the intention and an emergency is at hand, please keep a safe distance
from all specimens, as they may become erratic as bodily functions are halted
before brain activity can safely be terminated. All brain activity of specimens
in Batch D will cease in
86
seconds
.”

It was far too dangerous to stay
where we were. The monstrosities were acting much more erratically than before,
if that was even possible.

We frantically looked for a
safe way out. We had to go back into the room with the rows of computers, and
found several corpses in the corner of the room. Only one of the experiments
that saved us before was still alive, and it was struggling against two brutish
foes, one of which seemed to be dying, as its bites and scratches grew weaker
with every lunge.

Looking upwards, I saw that
our only escape was up through the vent that was broken earlier. It must have
been in place for maintenance, as there were bars to allow one to ascend or
descend the shaft. It was too high up for either of us to access, so I motioned
Danni to let me give her a boost. I locked my hands together, and let her use
that as a stepping stone. She was able to grab the lowest bar, and hoist
herself up. She gasped audibly a second later, and her body suddenly shifted as
though she almost fell.

“Dammit! It’s covered in the
oily crap from those things!” she cursed. She took an extra moment to steady
herself before reaching her free hand down to pull me up. I held on, but the
brawl of the remaining beasts came too close. I was knocked out of Danni’s
grasp, and I crashed down onto the humanoid anomaly. It cast me aside
carelessly with a toneless, electric growl. All three still shook as though
they were tied to
tasers
, though the fight hadn’t
left them yet. Well, the fight hadn’t been taken out of two of them, anyway.
The one that I assumed was dying before was clearly breathing its last labored
breaths.

It felt cruel, but it had to
be done: knowing that the remaining two would likely only become more violent
until their deaths, I forcefully kicked the one whose life was fading underneath
the vent, and stepped on its body for an extra few inches to make lifting me up
easier on Danni. Success! We were both ascending as quickly as we could, even
with the handles slick as mercury.

We ended up in the main
lobby of the hospital again, and it sounded as though all hell had broken
loose. Deathly shrieks and twisting monstrosities filled the street. Without
thinking, the two of us just ran wherever we could. It was so hard to try to
figure out how much time had passed... maybe forty seconds?

All we did was sprint
straight down the street, not daring to look back. We entered a part of the
city that was only vaguely familiar, like a dream that you’re certain you had
once, but couldn’t remember when. Just as I noticed the architecture of the surrounding
buildings downsizing and the faint smell of burning rubber in the air, Danni
and I were stopped as a steel spear lodged itself into a car nearby, piercing
the roof and goring the floor, pinning the vehicle to the pavement beneath it.

We looked towards the source
of the missile, and found a very familiar guerilla standing on top of a
dilapidated brick apartment.

“That’s far enough.” Ortiz
lightly chuckled. He jumped down to meet us, making the city quake. The screen
of his mech was down, showing his tired face with an expectant expression.

“Your man’s dead. We found
him—” I began before I was cut off.

“I know already. We could
hear the creatures from all over the city. That poor soul we lost…” Ortiz
brooded, letting out a heavy sigh.