Strung, p.13
Strung, page 13
part #1 of Strung Series
When they had advanced a bit further, however, it was the incoming signal from one of his other four senses that caught his attention.
At first his ears claimed that it was coming from the vent in the ceiling above them, but as they approached the door, he started to doubt it. Because the strange noise could also be coming from somewhere out there.
Radio noise?
No, he didn't think so. It was close, but there was a wavy, almost melodic movement in the pitch of this sound that one wouldn't find in static radio noise.
Unlike the door they came from, the door at the other end of the storage room had a small, built-in windowpane that they could use to check if there was a clear path on the other side.
There was … sort of. Because even though there were no people to be seen, the long corridor on the other side of the glass had an obvious problem. There were no adjoining hallways to seek cover in if they should encounter traffic. In fact, the only potential hiding places were two doors, which according to the signs led into the same AUDITORIUM. And both doors they would have to walk a good distance across the open corridor to reach.
"It's too open," Tommy whispered. "You'll have to wait here while I slip over and check if it's safe."
Before the sentence was even finished, David began to shake his head.
"That wasn't the deal," he said. "The deal was that we were not going to do some horror movie shit where we split up."
"Listen, kid," Tommy said, patiently as a teacher working with a slow student. "If the door is locked over there, we are screwed. And then it wouldn't be too bright to have three people prancing around over there if one is enough. Do you see what I mean?"
David stared defiantly at him for a moment. When it produced no useful result, he turned his gaze to Randall, asking for support.
Though he would have liked to, Randall couldn't present a better plan than the one Tommy had thrown on the table, and he let the young man know it by shaking his head. Then he turned to his brother.
"If it's locked, you'll come straight back here."
Tommy nodded.
"I mean it, Tommy. No funny business and no improvisation. If it's open, you give us a sign and we'll come running. But if the door is locked, you get your ass back here right away."
Tommy nodded again. He wasn't quite able to stifle the smile that had begun to form in the corners of his mouth, but he made the attempt, and that was at least something.
"Good," Randall said. "Now, fuck off."
Tommy topped off his last nod with a two-fingered salute, after which he turned around and glanced out the window before pushing the door open.
From the same window, Randall and David followed him with their eyes as he tiptoed across the floor of the corridor.
Once he had safely reached the door to the AUDITORIUM, Tommy—slowly and cautiously—grabbed the handle and pulled. The door followed his hand backward, and he sent them a smile and a raised thumb.
After opening the door a little more, he leaned his head in towards the frame and looked in through the opening.
For a while he stood like that. A long while. And then, instead of fully opening the door and entering, he suddenly let go of the handle and began to—quite literally—back away from it.
That way, staggering backward with stiff, jagged steps, he continued backward until he had covered almost half the distance he had walked to get there.
"What happened?" David asked. "What the hell did he see in there?"
"I don't know, but it …"
The sentence was never completed, because just then Tommy turned around—and the sight of his pale face made Randall's vocal cords tighten up.
"I'm going out to him."
David took a deep breath as if he was about to protest, but then let it out in a frustrated sigh.
"Just be quick, okay?"
"I will."
With those words, Randall pushed open the door and ran out to his brother, who was still frozen in the same spot in the middle of the long corridor.
"It's the kids," Tommy said when there was only three feet of distance left between them. "I found them. Oh God, Randall. They …"
He said something more, but at that point Randall had already pushed past him.
— Chapter 25 —
From the humming video projector in the ceiling and down to the stage at the end of the sloping rows of chairs, the auditorium stretched across at least three of the building's floors, making it by far the largest room Randall had seen at Newcrest Memorial Hospital.
Nonetheless, the room at first glance filled him with a sense of claustrophobia that was stronger and more intrusive than anything he had ever experienced before. It grabbed him, enveloped him like a straitjacket made from concrete, and squeezed until it felt as if his lungs would explode in his chest.
It was no wonder Tommy was pale as a corpse when he came back from here. No fucking wonder.
As they sat there on the rows of chairs, illuminated only by the faint, flickering reflection of the film up on the canvas, they hardly looked real. Had it not been for the faint movement of their chests when they breathed in and out, they could just as well have been wax figures.
But it wasn't wax figures populating the seats in the semi-darkness of the auditorium. It was children. Small, pale children sitting shoulder to shoulder in endless rows, all with their eyes fixed on the incoherent stream of images the projector threw up on the screen.
Nothing about the flickering images made sense to Randall, but he also didn't make any effort to understand it. His full attention was focused on the poles with IV bags that were lined up behind the seats in every single row of chairs—and that drop by drop sent some silvery liquid into the children's veins.
Mercury? No, that would be way too thick for those thin plastic hoses … wouldn't it?
The nearest drop stand was no more than a few feet away. Yet he had to force a deep breath all the way down to the bottom of his lungs before he was able to walk over to it.
With fingers where all feeling seemed to have disappeared, he grabbed the corner of the drop bag and turned it slowly from side to side while studying the contents.
The liquid splashed, faster than mercury would have done, up and down the sides of the bag, but he didn't know if he should feel relieved or not. Because even though it was very toxic, you at least knew what mercury was. This foreign liquid could very well turn out to be ten times …
A gasp escaped his lips, and his fingers let go of the bag, as if it were a piece of burning coal.
Something had moved in there. Something living had fucking moved inside the bag.
He could see them now. No matter how little he wanted to, he could see them swimming around in there. Tiny shadows that occasionally touched the plastic so you could see their disgusting little curvy tails.
Reluctantly, his gaze followed, as one of the shadows slid down through the thin plastic hose and then disappeared into the arm of the little girl who was sitting motionless on the seat in front of him.
In shock he stared at her face, waiting for the reaction that ought to come, but never did. Not even a small pull in the corners of the mouth or a twitch of the hand. The girl just kept staring absently up at the canvas with eyes that never seemed to blink while this disgusting foreign organism invaded her bloodstream.
As she did when Randall grabbed her shoulder and shook it—first gently, then gradually harder.
Neither led to an abrupt awakening—not for the girl at least. As for himself, however, there was an awakening of a kind. Because somewhere, deep down in his subconscious, there was a locked door, which was now ripped off its hinges. And what waited on the other side was a realization that was so unbearable and shameful that it forced him to his knees.
"Tommy?"
"I'm here," sounded behind him.
"It's too much. I can't, I … I'm not strong enough."
"Of course, you are, Randall. Stop saying that bullshit and get up."
Tommy's voice was hard and unwavering, but the touch of his hand, as he placed it on Randall's shoulder, was gentle and soft. Almost unnoticeable.
"Get up," he repeated. "We are so close now. This is the finish line, damn it. For all we know, Billy is sitting somewhere down there right now waiting for us. So, man up, Randall. Man up and get up."
Just as gently as it had been put there, Randall felt Tommy's hand pull away from his shoulder. A second later, it appeared on the edge of his field of vision.
There it stayed, patiently waiting in the air to the left of his face, until he had gained enough control over his emotions to take it and let himself be pulled up.
"Sorry," he said when he was back on his feet. "I … I don't know what got into me."
"Forget about it," Tommy replied, patting him on the back. "You would have to be a pretty cold shit not to let this affect you. Now let's go find Billy, okay?"
Randall nodded, and Tommy turned his attention to David, who was still standing in the doorway.
"We'll need someone to keep watch while we're looking. Are you the man for that, kid?"
For a moment, David looked as if he hadn't understood a single word. Then he made a sound that—understandably—had to be a sigh of relief and nodded.
"I can do that."
"Good," Tommy said. "You keep an eye on the hallway, and if you see or hear even the slightest …"
"Then I'll come running in here right away to warn you," David concluded for him—and when he saw that Tommy was about to say something more, he added, "And I'll make sure to close the door behind me. Quietly."
Tommy gave his approval with a thumbs up and then turned back towards Randall.
"We'll take one row at a time, you on the right and me on the left, and then move downwards … how does that sound?"
Randall glanced across the auditorium and was momentarily caught by the large screen on the back wall, where the film's meaningless images still flickered past at such a high speed that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.
Rorschach tests. That was what it looked like. An endless stream of abstract inkblots like those the psychologists used to find psychological deviations in patients.
An icy cold crept up his spine when he realized that the purpose might be the same here. That someone perhaps was in the process of identifying deviants among the children, using the film as a tool.
It was a frightening thought. Not least because he himself had experienced up close what awaited in this new world for those branded as deviants.
It dawned on him that he hadn't yet answered Tommy's question, but when he turned around to do so, he saw that Tommy had already taken his silence as consent. At least, he had moved to the left side of the room, where he was edging himself forward in the narrow space between the chairs in one of the rows.
Aware that he would have to do so while he could still find the courage, Randall turned around and followed his brother's example on his own side of the auditorium.
Stepping in through the door and spotting the kids in the first place had been bad. But moving through the narrow passage—knowing that he had to look closely at each and every one of those pale, expressionless faces as they slid past—was far worse. Not least because he at the same time hoped and dreaded that one of them would be Billy's.
When he reached the end of the first row, he circled around the outer seat and continued directly onto the next row. Following that pattern, he continued through the rows, and with the exception of a few times, where he jolted because he accidently stroked one of the drop bags with his elbow, he managed to curb his fear surprisingly well.
At least until the moment when his big brother's voice, contorted in a strange mixture between a shout and a whisper, called him over to the other side of the room.
— Chapter 26 —
The unnatural pallor of his skin, the purple glow of his lips, and the empty, glass-like eyes made him fall in with all the other children and look like another figure in this horrifying, living wax gallery.
But the freckled boy with the blonde hair and the striped T-shirt was Billy. They had found him. Some version of him, at least.
"What have they done to you?" Randall tried to say, but his despair suffocated the words and made them sound as if he was trying to speak through a pillow.
Not that it would have made any difference. Billy reacted neither to Randall's voice nor the touch as he laid his quivering hand on his cheek. He just stared blankly up at the blobs of ink that were still whipping by up on the canvas. Just like the girl had done over on the other side. And just like all the other kids were still doing.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Tommy asked, as Randall grabbed the shutting mechanism at the end of the plastic hose, intending to pull the drop's needle out of the boy's arm. "What if they … need it?"
Randall hesitated, but only for a moment, because even though the drop bag on the pole behind Billy's seat was almost completely empty, a few of the small, dark gray shadows were still swimming around in the liquid inside. And he had no intention of leaving the tunnel that gave them free passage down to his son's blood vessels open.
From the hole left by the needle, small, burgundy drops now trickled forth. When there were enough of them, they joined together in two groups and ran down both sides of the boy's thin wrists, forming a macabre bracelet.
But still there was no reaction. Not a whimper, not a twitch. Nothing.
"Hey, BumbleBilly," Randall whispered as he slid his arms under the boy's armpits and locked his hands in a braided grip behind his back. "It's okay, honey. Dad is here. We are … we are going home now."
He tried to lift the boy up and carry him in his arms, as he had done so many times before, but Billy's limp body made it an almost impossible task. It was like carrying around a life-size water balloon that slipped out in all the places where there wasn't direct support.
The fact that his own body still hurt from the injuries it had suffered during the showdown on Highway 55 didn't help either, and after the third unsuccessful attempt, Randall had to give up and put the boy back in the seat.
For a moment, this defeat was dangerously close to pushing him over the edge to a new breakdown, but then Tommy came to his rescue once again.
"You'll never get him all the way out to the car like that," he said. "But if you give us a moment, David and I can get the wheelchair we saw in the storage room."
Not being able to carry his own son out was an immensely bitter pill to swallow, but there was simply no time to dwell on it, so Randall forced it down and nodded.
"Just hurry."
"We will."
With those words, Tommy turned around and edged out to the center aisle between the rows of chairs. When he got out there, he picked up speed and ran up to David, who was still guarding the doorway. The two of them exchanged a few words that Randall was too far away to hear, after which they snuck the door open and disappeared into the corridor.
While he waited for their return, Randall made a few more attempts to get through to Billy, but none of the words he uttered spawned any kind of reaction, and he ended up sitting in silence with Billy's hand in his.
It felt cold, and he wondered—though he told himself not to—whether it would ever get warm again.
And if it would ever again catch a baseball.
An eternity later, the doors opened once more, and Tommy came in. He brought the wheelchair and pushed it in front of him while David stood behind and made sure it went free of the doors.
When they had gotten all the way in, Tommy continued down to Randall while David resumed his job as a watchkeeper.
"It creaks and it's a little shaky," Tommy said, parking the wheelchair at the end of the row Randall and Billy were in. "But it should do the trick."
"It's brilliant," groaned Randall, who had already picked up Billy and was in the process of carrying him to the chair. "Besides, we can't afford to be picky, now can we, Billy?"
"I don't think he can …" Tommy began, but then he went silent and instead spent his energy helping to get the boy in place.
The wheelchair seat had a fixed harness that was really meant to sit across the patient's belly, but because Billy was so small and thin, they could give him a little extra support by sliding the harness up over the chair's handle on one side so it could tighten across his chest, just as the seat belt in a car would do.
"DROP IT!"
In a moment of confusion, Randall thought Tommy's outburst was directed at him, and he stared down at his hands, which had just released the buckle of the harness and therefore were empty. Then he shook his head and instead let his gaze slide upwards.
The first thing he saw was the rifle, which no longer hung on Tommy's shoulder, but was instead held in a tight grip by his hands. The next thing was the person the barrel of the rifle was aimed at.
As he stood there in the doorway at one of the auditorium's other entrances, the paramedic was hard to miss. Firstly, the flickering light from the movie screen was constantly captured and thrown back by his bright yellow reflective vest, and secondly, half of his face was clearly lit up by the mobile phone he held up to his ear.
"I SAID DROP IT!" Tommy repeated as he walked over to the man. "WHAT ARE YOU, DEAF? LET GO OF THE FUCKING PHONE!"
The man looked around as if to assess whether it would be possible to escape. Apparently, he came to the conclusion that it wouldn't, because now he held one hand up in front of himself and the other—the one with the phone—out to the side as if to signal that he was going to put it down.
By pointing the rifle's barrel down at the floor in front of the man's feet, Tommy motioned for him to put it there.
The man followed the order and slowly bent down. But then, just as he had placed the phone on the floor, he did something completely unexpected. He kicked it, making it slide across the floor with a scraping sound and then disappear into the shadows under the chairs.
"Oh, you really shouldn't have done that," Tommy hissed, and for a moment the anger in his voice made Randall think he might actually pull the trigger. Especially if the fool in the reflective vest should decide to try his luck and run away.
