Bad Glass

“Charlie!” Taylor called. No answer. “Charlie!”

After nearly half a minute, she let out a devastated sob and gave the knob one last upward heave. It didn’t move. Her hands slipped from the knob and flailed in the air for a moment, then she pressed them flat against the door’s surface. Dejected, burned through all of her determination and anger, she lowered her forehead against the immovable panel and let out a pathetic sob.

“I let him go,” she said, her voice choked. She pressed her face up against the door, hiding it from sight. “I … we could have stopped him, but I let him go.”

There was silence for a moment—I didn’t know what to say, I never knew what to say, not when it came to Taylor, not anymore—then a loud peal of laughter rang out at our backs. I turned. It was Floyd, standing in the middle of the corridor, braying like a moron.

“Fuck, I … I’m sorry,” he said, trying to rein it in. He seemed confused and genuinely abashed at the inappropriate laughter. He managed to hold it in for a moment, then it burst forth once again. So shrill. So totally out of place.

The laughter echoed in the empty hallway, filling the space like blood pooling into a deep wound.

Up.

We found the stairwell and started to make our way up, toward the street.

There was no longer any light here. No overhead fluorescents, just the thin beams of our flashlights. Charlie’s parents’ lab had been one floor down in the research facility, but there was no door on the first landing here and no door on the second. I leaned out into the center of the stairwell and peered up toward the top of the shaft. There was a dim light up there, at least ten floors above our heads. The research facility hadn’t been that tall.

As we climbed, the light from my flashlight revealed more words spray painted on the wall.

First: IN ITS PLACE. And then, on the next landing, OUT, followed by an arrow curving up toward the top of the stairs. As soon as he saw the word and the arrow, Floyd let out another shrill laugh.

“There is no out,” he whispered, the laugh still in his voice. “It’s just this, right? This place. And us. And the stuff that followed us in.”

“That’s enough, Floyd,” I growled. “You’re not helping any.”

He laughed again, and I grabbed his forearm. He jumped at my touch and pulled away. There was fear in his eyes. And confusion.

On the next landing, we found a door. It was the first door since the basement, at least six landings down. The door was steel gray and smeared with grime—smoke grime, the exhaust of machines, layered thick and sticky against the metal. I opened it and found a hallway on the other side.

The hallway was a foreign place. Not the research facility; I was sure of that. It was no place I’d ever been. To the left, doorways stretched down both sides of the corridor, each about fifteen feet apart. About half of the doors were open, spilling muted red light onto the waxed floor. There was the smell of antiseptic in the air and, underneath it, a pungent touch of sweat and decay. It was a thick smell. I could almost feel it gathering on my skin, like pollen or lacquer.

Taylor stepped past me and let out a surprised breath. “It’s the hospital,” she said. “ICU.” It took me a moment to parse the initials, at first hearing them as out-of-place words: “I see you.”

I turned to the right, and sure enough, there was a nurses’ station just down the corridor, and a line of rolling gurneys pressed up against the wall. There was a whiteboard posted behind the desk, listing room numbers, patient names, and ailments. 503, MARTIN HELDER, CIRRHOSIS—LIVER FAILURE. 504, EUNICE WEST, ANEURYSM—SHUNT. 505, PETER WILMORE, TRAUMA—FRACTURED PELVIS, RUPTURED SPLEEN, BROKEN LEG/ARM. 506, RICHARD SCALLEY …

It went on and on, scrawled in messy mismatched ink. Patients who were no longer in their rooms—the hospital now empty, evacuated and populated by nothing but silence.

I stepped toward the nurses’ station and then stopped.

“Fifth floor,” Taylor said at my back. There was absolutely no emotion in her voice, just muted, disconcerting calm. “We could find a window and jump out. Like that soldier. Remember the soldier?”

I nodded. I remembered the soldier. Flying through the hospital window, falling through the air, hitting the concrete parking lot and bouncing. Then rising up on injured legs and lurching forward mindlessly.

“There’s got to be an exit,” I said, standing motionless in the middle of the corridor. My body felt heavy, exhausted, and I didn’t want to move. “Another stairwell, maybe, with an exit on the first floor. Or we could make a rope, lower ourselves to the street.”

I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye. Then she turned and peered down the corridor, first to the left, then to the right.

“Where’s Floyd?” she asked. “Where’d he go?”