At the end of the hall, I stopped a moment, unsure where to go next. The glass curved behind us, preventing the little creatures from continuing alongside us. They knew they couldn’t follow us and let out a string of frustrated howls. I was pretty sure the glass wouldn’t give, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out.
There were two doors in front of us: the one on our right had been kicked in, and there were bloodstains on the frame. The one on our left was closed and intact. The push bar was on our side and couldn’t be operated from the other side. A priori, the intact door offered greater security, but I had the feeling it led back to the main section of the hospital. Hoping I wasn’t all turned around, I decided on the shattered door, headed in the direction we’d just come from.
A slight breeze was coming through from the dark room behind the broken door. That tipped the balance. After flipping the bird to the raging little monsters, I opened the door on the left, hoping that would confuse our pursuers if they made it this far, and pushed the wheelchair through.
Again, I felt the breeze. Air was coming in from outside. We walked about ten minutes in total darkness. A couple of times we came to a dead end and had to retrace our steps. Prit was starting to worry me. He was now lethargic and indifferent to everything. At one point we passed a couple of steel fire doors that shook violently. A horde of undead was crowded on the other side, uselessly beating against the doors. Someone had nailed some wedges into the door frame to keep the doors from opening. Not even that aroused the slightest interest in the Ukrainian. He was struck dumb.
We rounded a couple more corners and reached an area with some light. The breeze was stronger, and we could hear the rain. My mood lifted. We had to be close. Damn close.
When I opened one last swinging door, I couldn’t contain myself—I shouted for joy. A huge lobby stretched out before us in the shadows, lit up by lightning we could see through a long glass wall. The room overlooked a huge park and weed-covered gardens, silent in the downpour. The lobby was deserted. A pole with a tattered, scorched Spanish flag stood guard next to an identical pole lying on the floor. I didn’t see a single creature in the rain, human or otherwise. I smiled with relief. We’d made it. We were saved.
The lobby floor was littered with papers, medical files, and flyers in every color. On one end was a closed café, waiting for employees who’d never open it up again for medical staff that no longer existed. At the other end was an empty reception desk crowded with phones. Some of the headsets were off the hook, hanging by their cords, mute and motionless.
In the middle of the lobby stood a newsstand, like an abandoned monolith. Stacked against it were magazines and newspapers still in bundles. Out of curiosity I picked up a copy of each publication. They were dated four months ago. Their front covers announced the creation of Safe Havens and asked the public’s cooperation in addressing “this crisis of epidemic proportion whose origin is still unknown.” Safe Havens. Yeah, right. And unknown origins. What a load of shit!
I’ve always been an avid reader of the press, so out of habit I began to flip through the pages. The international section was down to the bare minimum; the sports and business sections didn’t exist. Some newspapers had no more than thirteen or fourteen pages, all devoted to the pandemic. The articles must’ve been written by a skeleton team of journalists, the ones who dared to keep going to work.
I smiled at the foolish ideas and nonsense I read. The public was blind right up to the last minute. Arrogant, foolish sons of bitches.
I looked up to discover that Prit was not in his chair. Dropping the newspapers, with my soul on tenterhooks, I scanned the lobby and spotted the small figure of the Ukrainian, silhouetted against a wall by lightning. He was absorbed in something on that wall. When I figured out what had caught his attention, I felt my stomach shrink.
In a bright flash of lightning, I got a good look at that wall. It was covered with hundreds of messages and photos that had one thing in common. They were all notices of missing persons. Family or friends had stuck them up there, hoping for news of their loved ones. Photos of smiling people gazed down at me. Heartbreaking notes. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Little Johnny, please call this number right away. Mr. So-and-So disappeared three days ago. Little Susie and her entire school bus vanished a day and a half ago. If anyone has seen our child, please contact us at this number. “Missing” was written in bold letters with a red marker below the picture of an older woman sitting at a table decorated for Christmas. The photograph of an entire family smiling in a garden, in summer, with “disappeared” written over it with a cell phone number. “Javier Piñon, we’re at your parents’ house. Meet us there.” “Luisa Sabajanes, if you see this note stay where you are. I’ll come by every day till I find you. I love you.” “If anyone has seen this man, please contact this number.” And on and on.
It was a sickening sight. I took a couple of steps back, stunned. Of course. A hospital was the logical place to look for a missing person. Thousands of missing people, in fact. You got a feel for the magnitude of this chaos. Fuck. It was chilling. I could feel pain and anguish oozing out of that wall. I was staring at pictures of thousands of people who were dead. Or worse.
I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked into Prit’s infinitely sad eyes. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s get out of this place right now, or by God, I’ll go crazy. Doctor my wounds someplace else, anywhere, just not here. We gotta go. This place is bad, very bad. Come on. Please.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. The Ukrainian wasn’t the only one on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I wanted out of that macabre place, too.
I went to the door, with Prit leaning on my arm, limping, and a rather cowardly Lucullus tangled around my legs. As we approached the door, an alarm went off in my head. Something wasn’t right. What was wrong with this picture? I couldn’t figure out what until we were standing right in front of the door.
Of course. Those ultramodern glass doors slid open on rails. There must be a sensor nearby. With no electricity, the doors remained obstinately closed.
Yet there we stood, Prit and I, like fools, expecting the doors to open by magic. When it dawned on us that those doors wouldn’t open by themselves, we calmly thought through the problem. Pritchenko said that kind of door had an emergency backup system. There should be a lever located on the door frame that could be activated manually in case of a power outage.
Nervously I felt around the edge of the doors, until my fingers found a recessed compartment on the floor, next to the door. I pulled off the cover and froze. All I found was the symbol for emergency and a diagram explaining how to use the lever. That was it. That and bare wires. Someone had ripped off the lever.
Fearing the worst, I rushed to the other two doors, but those levers were ripped off too. Someone had turned that sector of the hospital into a fortress and wanted to make sure those doors couldn’t be opened, even by accident.
I felt Prit’s eyes boring into me. I had a look of shock on my face. I picked up a heavy red fire extinguisher. I reared back and threw it as hard as I could against the glass. A loud Bam! echoed through the lobby, sending a million more echoes throughout the building, but the glass held fast. Only a slight scratch marked the spot I’d hit with the fire extinguisher.
Seeing red, I threw the container against the glass again and got the same result. Choked up, unable to swallow, I cocked the pistol and, holding it with both hands, shot into the glass. The weapon kicked savagely and almost jumped out of my hand. A tiny hole opened two feet above where I’d aimed. I fired again. And again.