The Fall of Society Page 21

  Maggie covered her mouth and nose. “That’s disgusting,” she said as she backed out with Corina.

  “Huh, I knew about this cafeteria, but Ceraulo told me that all the food was kept in the main cafeteria,” Alan said.

  “Now I know why you hardly took any of my food, Doc,” Tom said.

  “Okay, you caught me. I kept the food for myself and what of it?” Ceraulo said. “Tom has a lot more food than this in his trailer. I work for the hospital, and that makes this food hospital property.”

  “You’re sick, man,” Derek told him.

  “Look, you want the food, then take it, I don’t care,” Ceraulo said boldly. “Are we done here? Because I’m leaving.”

  He turned to leave, but John stopped him. “This isn’t what I smelled, and you know it.”

  “What do you mean, John?” Ardent asked.

  “Out here,” John said and he forcibly escorted Ceraulo.

  They emerged back in the reception area, and John stopped with Ceraulo before the large, wide staircase that went up one flight into darkness.

  John looked up the stairs and sweat dropped down Ceraulo’s forehead.

  “Up there,” John said.

  Everyone looked up the stairs and didn’t see much because of the darkness, and then Tom and Anthony produced some flashlights. Light splashed the path and even with the flashlights, it was still dark up there.

  Ceraulo’s eyes blinked fast, almost twitched from nervousness and they all knew it.

  “What’s up there, Ceraulo?” Bear asked.

  “Nothing,” he said in a hurried state. “There’s nothing up there.”

  “Sure there’s not,” Tom said and he ascended the steps.

  Everyone followed, except for Ceraulo; John had to force him up.

  He resisted, and Derek offered some help. “Allow me, John…”

  Derek took Ceraulo’s arm and twisted it behind his back.

  “You’re hurting me!” Ceraulo cried.

  “No, you’ll know when I’m hurting you,” Derek said as he gripped his arm tighter. “Now shut up and climb.”

  As they neared the top of the stairs, they could see a sign posted over the corridor entrance, MAXIMUM SECURITY WING.

  At the top of the second floor was a long corridor with offices on both sides, some were regular hospital offices, a couple were patient holding cells, but others were security offices, and they were full of riot gear and restraining equipment—handcuffs, straightjackets, ankle bracelets, and other rusted items.

  They continued to the end of the corridor and reached a junction.

  To the left and right were open corridors, but directly ahead was a closed off corridor with a sign on top that read HIGH RISK WARD. It had a security desk that was behind bars and a set of closed double doors.

  “Open it,” John said to Ceraulo.

  The Doctor didn’t do or say anything, so John took his keys and unlocked the doors himself. The metal doors creaked opened, and the group entered; Maggie and Corina were last, because she was visibly uncomfortable in here. Corina didn’t look well, either; her little face was sweating just a bit.

  They were now in another corridor, but this was an isolated one with no offices or doors, only a barred barrier halfway through it. John used the keys, and they proceeded. Ceraulo didn’t want to go on. “No, no, no,” he muttered under his breath like a child.

  “Shut up,” Derek said and forced him on.

  They reached another door at the corridor’s end. John gained entry, and they all entered. Inside was another security station protected by bars and thick Plexiglas.

  “What’s that smell?” Milla said.

  “Smells like shit to me,” Derek noted.

  “Overflowed toilets, most likely,” Alan said.

  John unlocked the solid door to enter the secure area and when the door’s seal was broken—

  The full intensity of what they smelled escaped and filled the room, it overwhelmed some of them as they covered their mouths and noses.

  The dank order repulsed all of them.

  “Jesus Christ!” Bear said with a gag reflex.

  Maggie couldn’t take it, and she backed out with her daughter. “My God!” she cried.

  After a moment, it wasn’t the smell that bothered them, it was something else that they heard as they entered the threshold—

  Voices.

  Goosebumps appeared on most of them, like needle pricks all over their bodies, they heard tiny, thinned out voices from all over. It was ghostly communication.

  “What the hell is that?” Milla said.

  They didn’t hear clear words, but they were definitely human voices that loomed ahead of them. For a moment, they thought it was the undead that waited for them inside; they readied their guns and prepared for anything. They stepped into the door and stopped within a few feet when they realized what they were in.

  It was a cellblock of seventy cells, stretched across from one another, thirty-five deep. There were two emergency lights at both ends of this cellblock, which barely gave it any light at all, and the windows at the top of the ceiling were too small to provide adequate light. The flashlights that Tom and Anthony had were the best source of illumination. The beams glided back and forth over this dark, dismal scene, and as the flashlights past over the cell doors, the inhabitants reacted to whatever thin streams of light that broke through the door seams. At first, they were inquisitive cries of something new, but then, as the group stepped a few more feet into the cellblock…

  The voices changed to something stronger…

  The inhabitants realized that it was more than one person.

  More than their usual one visitor.

  And they erupted into rage.

  “Oh…my…God…” Anthony mumbled.

  Derek looked down at his feet when he felt something squish under his shoes—

  “Shit,” he said.

  Because he was standing in it.

  They realized that most of the floor was covered in feces and urine that flowed from under the doors of the cells.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Bear said.

  All of them tried to stand where it was clear of excrement, but there wasn’t much of that. Derek felt disgusted by touching Ceraulo, so he pushed him away ahead of the group.

  Some of the cell doors began to pound violently from the beating of the caged occupants.

  Extremely violent.

  They screamed and roared with anger, desperation, no words, just primal declarations of basic instinct. The doors muffled them slightly, but they were still loud enough to scare most of them, especially Maggie, as she left with her daughter, almost crying. The cell doors had observation windows and Bear shined his flashlight on one for a better look, but it was blocked from the inside, smeared over with old shit and blood, you couldn’t see inside any of them. Each cell door had a small food slot for inserting meals and handcuffing prisoners before they opened the door; the closed slots were also caked in filth and fingernail scratches from when they were opened.

  The contents of each cell were held in visual secrecy.

  But they made their existence known with loud madness.

  “You have…” Milla couldn’t comprehend it. “…You have patients in there?”

  They all looked at Ceraulo as he stood there before them as if he were on trial.

  He was.

  “You have goddamn patients in there!” Joe said. “For six months?”

  “You’re a fucking sick bastard, you know that!” Derek said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lauren stated.

  “Why would you do this? Huh?” Bear said and Ceraulo said nothing. “Answer me!”

  Bear walked up to him and put the barrel of his weapon in Ceraulo’s face.

  “Bear…?” Ardent cautioned.

  He ignored Ardent. “Answer me,” he said calmly with his finger on the trigger.

  Ceraulo was so scared that he was about to add to the pile on the floor. “I,
uh, when…” he muttered, “…when the infection hit, they sent people to evacuate all the patients, but they planned to evacuate these last, because they were high risk.”

  “So why didn’t they evacuate them?” John asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ceraulo told him. “I guess when it got really bad out there, they stopped coming. We were alone.”

  “So you just left them in there?” Tom said. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “How could they survive living in their own shit for six months?” Derek asked.

  “They don’t have toilets in their cells, they have a pipe in the floor to use, they started filling up a couple weeks ago,” Ceraulo said.

  “And you didn’t let them out, you sick bastard!” Bear said.

  Ceraulo snapped from implications, and he pushed the gun barrel out of his face, Bear was surprised and didn’t do anything about it.

  “What the heck was I supposed to do? Huh?” he raised his voice. “Should I have just let them out! Hmm?” Ceraulo shouted at them. “Do you have the slightest inkling as to what, and I mean what, not who, is in these cells?”

  “Crazy people?” Derek said.

  “I wish,” Ceraulo said. “They’re some of the finest psychotics that this country has to offer. Most of them have killed, and all of them are more than capable of killing.”

  “Especially now,” Lauren said.

  “Yes, especially now,” Ceraulo agreed.

  “Why didn’t you just kill them?” Bear asked. “You should have just killed them, instead of leaving them here like this, anything, but this. This is sadistic.”

  “I’m not a killer, Bear, and I don’t believe in the death penalty.”

  “But this isn’t humane, goddamn you!” Bear shouted.

  “This is sick!” Lauren added.

  “This isn’t right,” Ardent said.

  “Exactly,” Bear said and looked at John. “Give me his keys.”

  John tossed the keys and stood by as Bear went to the first cell and tried to unlock it. “I’m gonna put these poor bastards out of their misery!”

  “No!” Ceraulo insisted.

  Ceraulo tried to stop him but Bear pushed him away, and then Derek grabbed Ceraulo from behind and held him back. Bear couldn’t figure out which key it was.

  “They’re my patients! I took care of them all this time, I fed them, gave them their medications!”

  “They’re not your patients anymore, and you can’t keep them locked up like animals!” Bear said angrily.

  “So you’re going to shoot them like animals!” Ceraulo shouted.

  “It’s better than this,” Bear said and then he got the right key into the lock.

  “This is murder!” Ceraulo said to the group. “You’re all just gonna stand there while he murders my patients?”

  Bear got his weapon ready and was about to open the door—

  Ceraulo lowered his head in shame. “My son is one of them,” he said quietly.

  Bear stopped.

  “What did you say?” Tom asked.

  “You heard me,” Ceraulo answered.

  “Why is he here?” Derek asked.

  “Why do you think? As a child, when he displayed the first symptoms of a disturbed mind, I chose to ignore them, because I thought that couldn’t be happening to my son, not my boy. But it did.” Ceraulo tried to hold his tears but they flowed. “And when he was nine years old, he was alone with my wife, Alyssa, one day, and our son killed her with a knife from our kitchen. It was part of a silverware set that was given to us on our wedding day.”

  Derek let go of him and everyone was silent.

  “So go ahead and kill them; you’ll be murdering my son, too.”

  Bear locked the cell door and removed the key.

  “Exactly how many patients are here?” Ardent asked.

  “Forty-seven,” Ceraulo said. “I did a head count yesterday and there was forty-seven.”

  “They had more than forty-seven patients in here,” Anthony said. “I know that for a fact.”

  “Yes, they did. Sixty-two, actually,” Ceraulo told him.

  “So what happened to the other fifteen?” Tom asked.

  “They died,” Ceraulo said. “They developed illnesses that I couldn’t treat, or I ran out of the medications that they needed to survive. I did my best to keep them healthy.”

  Tom was confused. “Where did you bury the bodies?”

  “I didn’t. How was I going to drag a body outside and dig a hole without any of you seeing me?” Ceraulo said.

  Now they realized why some of the cells were quiet.

  “You left the dead ones in their cells?” Milla said in disgust.

  “What else was I supposed to do with them?”

  “That’s it!” Bear said and he aimed his weapon at Ceraulo’s head. “I’m not killing them, but I’m wasting you!”

  “Bear, no,” Ardent told him.

  Bear held his anger and didn’t fire.

  “I’ve got a better idea for him,” John said.

  Moments later, they were all in the entry corridor of the cellblock. They had just tossed Ceraulo into a holding cell and locked the door on him. “We’ll decide what to do with him in the morning,” Ardent said. “Right now, we need to finish getting ready to leave.”

  John was in the cafeteria, grabbing some canned food for Ceraulo. Maggie was near the entrance to the north wing with Corina. “Was it what it sounded like in there?” Maggie asked John.

  “You don’t wanna know,” he said and went back up to the corridor with the food.

  He arrived back at the cell as most of the group left; only Lauren and Anthony remained. John tossed the cans through the bars at Ceraulo and a can opener. “That should hold you over until morning,” John said.

  “You mean when you kill my patients, don’t you?”

  “They’re not your patients anymore, you delusional psycho,” Lauren said.

  “They are my children,” he said under his breath.

  “What did you say?” John asked.

  “I said that they are my patients,” Ceraulo barked and he looked at the canned food. “I don’t eat meat,” he said about one can and tossed it away.

  “Then why don’t you do us a favor and use the lid to cut your wrists,” John said.

  John turned to leave, but Ceraulo stopped him—

  “How did you get in here, John, huh? I had this place locked down tight.”

  John leaned in close to the bars and grinned. “I didn’t.”

  He walked away with Lauren and Anthony smiling.

  Ceraulo chuckled. “Sonuvabitch.”

  • • •

  A couple hours later and the boat was almost completely loaded with the supplies from Tom’s trailer. Ardent and Bear just finished putting the motor back together. “That should do it,” Bear said as he tightened the last bolt.

  “Okay, let’s fire it up,” Ardent said.

  Bear walked over the boat’s wheelhouse. “Ready?” he asked Ardent.

  “All clear, go ahead.”

  Bear turned the ignition and the motor stuttered for a moment, but then it roared to life, and the propeller spun. The noise immediately stirred the dead outside the back gate and they gathered against it and pounded for a way in. Ardent signaled Bear to cut it off and the engine moaned to silence, and the dead continued to storm outside. They were ravenous, but the strong gate held them at bay.

  “They really want in,” Bear noted.

  “Yeah and we want out.”

  “I’ve noticed that more have showed up.”

  “Me, too,” Ardent said. “They’re desperate for something to eat.”

  “Well, that’s too bad for them because they’re not getting me.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Tom approached. “I heard the motor.”

  “Yeah, so did they.” Bear gestured to the dead.

  “So it’s running, we can leave now?” asked Tom.

  “It’s running, so if e
veryone is in agreement, we’ll leave in the morning,” Ardent said.

  “They’re eager to leave,” Tom confirmed.

  “Good, we’ll discuss the details at dinner tonight,” Ardent told him.

  “I’m gonna make a special stew for dinner and you guys are having some,” Tom said. “I don’t wanna hear any of that,” Tom mocked Derek’s voice—“‘We eat MREs because we’re a unit’ crap.”

  “Oaky, Tom, we’ll have some of your stew,” Ardent said with a smile.

  “Tom, we need to get your truck back here and hitch the boat to it,” Bear said.

  “Okay, I’ll bring it right over,” Tom said and he dug for his keys in his pocket.

  “You can’t drive it here, Tom,” Ardent said. “We had the boat motor on for five seconds and look at what that did,” he said about the wild dead at the back gate.

  “Push it here?” Tom asked.

  “It’s the only way,” Ardent said.

  “That’s one heavy mother,” Tom said.

  Bear told him, “We’re gonna need everyone to help.”

  • • •

  Sometime later, most of them were at the sinkhole in the front courtyard and they noticed that Tom had just finished spray painting the trailer doors and the sides of his trailer with big black letters: DON’T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE!

  “You planning on storing some corpses in there, Tom?” Bear asked.

  “Nope, it’s to keep out looters,” Tom said. “I’m leaving a lot of supplies behind, and maybe they’ll be here if we ever come back.”

  “I’m not ever coming back here,” Derek said to himself.

  The depression in the ground from the continued collapsing of the sewer tunnel had moved another several feet since the last time they were here, closer to the front outer wall.

  “It’s moved almost ten more feet since this morning,” Tom observed.

  “So how long until it reaches the wall?” Bear asked.

  “At this rate, it will reach the wall by tomorrow,” John said.

  “Then we leave tomorrow before lunch,” Ardent said.

  “No, we leave in the morning at dawn,” John told them.