The Hospital (3 page)

“I gotcha in tight there, mister.” She giggled a long reedy laugh. With a grunt, she got to her feet and looked to her right. The noise was coming from that direction, even in his pain-livid state, he could discern that. But what was making that noise?

“I saw you drive up from the roof, ya see. I saw you, but you didn’t see me. That’s cuz I do this,” and the dirt-black bottom of a bare foot thrust into his face. “And I knew you were down below. Probably coming for medicine or whatever. Just like all the rest. Oh, plenty come here. I just let them scrounge around below. Usually they go into the basement, and that’s that. Only one way down there, and I can close the door and lock it when folks are down there. And oh, the
squeals
! It’s a metal door, but you know something? When someone is scared enough, they put dents in that thing. Not for long, though. Never for long.”

As Alice went on, Gus looked to his left. There on the padding was a clump of what look to be a human scalp, complete with a few strands of hair. His stomach went cold.
Who was this woman?

“Not for long at all. But the ones in the basement are greedy. I have to wait for the stragglers to come along, someone I can handle by myself. You were heavy! Too much shit on you. That’s why I stripped you bare.” She winked, sizing up his prone form, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lots of fat on you. Not like the others. The kids like fat.”

Whumpwhumppatpatpatpatpat!

Gus’s features twisted. What in the hell had he gotten into? He could feel the air tracing the edges of his cuts, the cuts Alice had made, and he bared his teeth.

“You’re probably wondering why I cut you so many times,” she said idly. She yanked the scalpel out of his belly, getting a hiss out of him, and slashed open his right arm with one flick. Gus bucked against his bonds. “It’s because they smell, you see.” She slashed the other white arm, as neatly as opening a fish. “That’s why they’re making a racket. My babies are hungry. Sooooooooo hungry. Am I bad for doing this? I don’t think so. I’m cleaning the world of shitheads like you. What did the babies ever do? Huh? What? Nothing. They just… they just… were here. Not fair. Never fair.”

With that, she sat back on her haunches and looked off in the direction of the noise with a sad expression. A big sigh left her and she shrugged, as if confused by it all. The commotion coming from beyond didn’t confuse Gus. His senses were returning, along with his need to get the hell away from this place… and Alice’s children. He suspected now—oh Christ, how he suspected—but he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be here to find out. He knew why she was cutting him up, like a deep sea shark fisherman throwing fish entrails and pig blood over the side of the boat.

Chum
. The word popped into his mind.

“They can… smell you,” Alice confirmed with obvious satisfaction. “Mommy’s brought suppers. Mommy’s brought suppers!”

She struggled to her feet.

Gus glanced around urgently. He’d never been in one, but he knew by the chairs and the soft pinks and blues, that he was in a waiting area of sorts. A waiting area in the Maternity Ward.

“Suppers!” Alice suddenly yelled. “Mommy’s got suppers for you! One big fuckin’ roast tonight, my little sweets!”

She stepped back. The hand with the scalpel dropped to her side, as if she was mesmerized, and then she walked away. Gus knew he didn’t have much time. He heaved against his bonds again. He yanked upward, kicked, and felt the tubing slip into his wounds. Firecrackers of pain went off, and he bucked again, gritting his teeth.

“Hungry, aren’t you? Yes, you are. Yes, you are!”

The drumming and squeaking of flesh on glass intensified.

Gus relaxed, just for a moment, to catch his wind. He heard Alice calling out to her children at the far end of the room—her unholy children that he did
not
want to see. He had seen enough of the dead walking around to forever have nightmares where only alcohol would let him sleep, and where the alcohol still brought the nightmares. The sound got louder, and Christ almighty above, he could hear them now; he could hear their little whiney vocal chords crying out that yes,
yes
, they were
famished
! They were ready to eat the whole damn thing once dear old Alice let them into the waiting room. They would stampede him then, and he wouldn’t be able to do a goddamn thing while their little mouths fastened onto his body and ripped and tore and suckled.

“Go get him!” Alice screeched from beyond.

Upon hearing those words, Gus did something for the very first time. He defecated himself right there and then. He was careful, so very careful about what he did and how he proceeded in town, and by sunny Jesus, if he got out of this one he was going to get so fucking shit-faced drunk, it would be a thing of legend, and fuck the dreams, but right now, right this very moment, he could feel the pitter-patter of bare hands and knees as they scurried about the tiled floor, like the charge of newborn sea turtles trying to reach seawater before starving gulls swooped down and snapped them up. He could hear the brazen sound of dead flesh being forced into movement by a will that he didn’t understand, but
knew
was frightful and unholy. The tiles trembled as this tide rushed toward him as fast as their little limbs could carry them along, and he could hear Alice, that bitch from hell, cackling like a vamp in heat. She commented proudly on how her children from the abyss were
growing,
as if such a thing was possible! And he heard their
voices
, their little infant
voices
, making the sounds of something so incredibly hungry.
Starving
, the word popped into his head; they were actually
starving
for him.

And they were coming.

That last thought threw Gus into such a fit of pure, adrenalin-injected terror, that he bucked, thrashed, twisted, roared, and shook against his bonds until his right arm came free with almost enough force to punch through steel plate. He immediately found the tubing holding his left arm and ripped it free. He sat up, and his mouth dropped open.

He didn’t have a chance.

The door to the chamber where the newborns were incubated or placed just after birth was dark, dreary, and flung wide open like the red painted steel doors to an abattoir. Alice had made some sort of pulley system to open the sliding doors, with some effort on her part no doubt. But that really didn’t interest Gus at the moment. What interested him was the black oil stream of babies, coated by the slick gloom of the room. Dead babies came at him on their hands and knees, their bald heads gleaming in the sparse light like rotten eggs. He couldn’t see their features yet and, God help him, he had no desire to as he knew he would have nightmares aplenty from this evil burst of flesh crawling toward him at top speed. Gus’s fingers hooked into claws and, he tore at the bonds across his lower legs. Somewhere he heard Alice shriek in protest. She had seen what he was doing. He felt himself moaning now. The sound of little feet and hands grew in his ears. Alice was cursing and screaming oaths that would embarrass Satan himself. He raked fingers over the tubing, but it wouldn’t give. It would not release him.
What the
fuck
did they make this shit out of?
He lost several fingernails on the tubing, railing, and his own flesh, but still he couldn’t free himself. The
babies
, the bloated corpses of the babies, were no more than a leg length away, and he could smell the dried blood on their little bodies. Gus thrashed and pulled and clawed and one leg came free. Alice was screaming, “
You fucker! You fucker!”
But he got to his feet and, with a strength born of an animalistic fear of being eaten
alive,
he whipped the gurney about with his free leg into the oncoming tide, just as he saw the first of the little monsters’ eager grins. The gurney smashed into them, and he pressed its length against the rush. He reached down and freed his second leg, straightening just in time to see Alice, her face full of diseased gum hatred, stabbing downward with the scalpel. He felt the blade pass through the meat of his left forearm, and his fingers went funny, like guitar strings snapping, but his right arm was free. He slammed his fist into the side of the slut-bitch’s head with as much power he could muster, and Alice flew away from him, unconscious upon impact as if hit dead-on by an out-of-control Mack diesel truck. Into the rush of dead bodies she went, and the babies immediately crawled over their adopted mother, adoring her with their ghastly affections. Gus caught a glimpse of the dead newborns tangled in her wild scrub of hair, biting with lipless mouths, gnawing with black gums. Little hands covered her face, and she slipped as quickly as that underneath the grey-black skin of her children.

Naked, trailing shit and blood, Gus ran.

He bolted out into a hallway. He tried to turn, but slipped and fell hard on his right side. His elbow smashed into hard tile, and the tip of the bone punched through the baggy flesh located there. Baring his teeth, he got up and looked behind him. Nothing pursued him yet. Not yet, and he wasn’t hanging around for whoever was in the basement, as they sure as fuck had to have heard Alice’s screams. Gus stood in the crux of an L, with both corridors leading off into the shadows. Without thinking, he ran up a hall, stumbling over the debris covering the floor. Alice seem to have made the whole section her nest. He ran, feeling the air lift the sliced flaps of his flesh and grimacing against the pain of his many wounds, yet star-bursting with relief of having escaped. He padded his way down the hall, the dark offices zipping by, feeling the cold tiles, and slowed down. Ahead of him there were stairs heading up.

Jesus Christ
, Gus thought, both of his hands clasping the bald crown of his head. Where was he? He looked around frantically. Was he in the basement already? No, he could remember being hauled upwards by his ankles with his head smacking against the metal-lipped stairs. He wasn’t downstairs, he was up. But how far? He looked back the way he came, and without pondering anymore on it, he ran back, back through the gloom of the corridor. He cringed upon hearing the feast when he turned the corner and went the other way. Down a short hall he went, past paintings still hanging on the walls, past trolleys and stretchers pushed to one side, and broken––

The glass sliced through the padding of his right foot, stabbing into the flesh between his big toe and the one next to it, spurting out between both like a shard of dark crystal. Shrieking, Gus hopped on one foot and collapsed over another gurney.
Glass!
He flipped onto his back, and held up his foot. Even in the dim light, he could make out the piece embedded in his foot. He could clearly see the gleaming rivulets running from the wound and the multitude of slashes inflicted by mad-bitch Alice.

Snarling, he reached up and tried to grip the glass. It was small, and the blood made both it and his fingers slippery.

“Piece of
shit!
” Gus winced, sat up, and dug into the space between his toes. The pain sparkled, and the gurney began to whirl. As he fought against the dizziness, he heard something, a shout maybe. Then he was digging in again, and again the glass refused to come free. Taking in huge gasps of air and squeezing his eyes shut, he flopped backward on the gurney. He had no time for this. He had no fucking time. Once more, he sat up, grabbed his gashed foot, and with all of his might remaining squeezed the flesh until enough of the glass oozed out, and he could get a hold of it. He yanked it out with an agonized squeal. He lay flat again, taking in deep great breaths and staring up at a blue-black ceiling. He knew that he had never been in such a dire situation. He felt giddy from blood loss, but forced himself to sit up. He placed weight on his forgotten elbow, and
that
reminded him not to fuck around.

He looked back the way he had come and, as if in a dream, a bare head, all in shadows, came around the distant corner. It turned his way and began crawling toward him in a low, rumbling shuffle of flesh and bone on floor, like a box of oranges spilled across a wide expanse. The sound grew. Behind the lead baby, obviously the quickest of the bunch, two more turned the corner, followed by three others, then a storm surge. They came like a broadening wedge. Gus took a breath, blinked, and then moved to get off the stretcher. When his foot hit the floor, it crackled with pain. With a sigh, he started skip-walking away with one hand against the wall and his eyes set on the far wall. He shot a look over his shoulder, taking in the close-to-the-ground mass hunting him. There were low squeals emanating from them, little sounds of newborn discontent that could only be comforted by the meat on his bones.

Then, a shriek stabbed the air, stopping Gus in his tracks like a sword to the chest. He stopped and glanced back. There, at the far end of the corner behind the advancing horde, stood the disheveled form of Alice. Her features were swathed in shadow, but Gus could feel the evil emanating from her. She stood hunched over like a mythical troll, with one hand low at her sides and fingers flashed wide as if extending talons. The other hand held something Gus just knew was the scalpel.

Another scream, one with both lungs behind it, and the inky outline of Alice started after him. She quickly caught up with the infants in the rear and pushed past them. She booted dead toddlers out of her way. The mother presently had no love for her adopted ones.

Mommy fuckin’ Dearest
, Gus thought as he pulled his carcass around a corner, out of view. He squinted in the gloom, realizing that it was darker than the rest of the hospital. A third scream lit up his spine and senses, prompting him to hop-skip ahead. Blood continued to dribble from him, and he could smell his own excrement. The tip of his elbow resonated as if someone was tapping the raw bone with a rock hammer.

Then he saw one of his boots. It was right before a stairwell, left on the landing. Just ahead on the stairs, there was something else that made him blink in astonishment.