Out of Bedlam Read online

  The cafeteria was abandoned except for a single soul. Whitey. They call him that because his right eye was pale white and dead. I want to call him Gus, mainly because his name is actually Gus. He mentioned it when we met. Whatever. But I can’t, you don’t get to pick your own name. At least not here.

  His slumped profile and slow gaze fits perfectly with his old profession. Bus driver. City, not school. He ended up here when he didn’t show up for work one day.

  His boss stopped by his apartment after work to check in on him. Which would have been fine, nice even. Except he found him passed out cradling a bottle of Jack on a table filled with fertilizer, pipes, and survival guides.

  They just wanted to Observe him, too. Just like the rest of us. And so he stayed.

  “Hey Whitey,” I said.

  “Hey Kid! Got anything to trade?” He was looking for food. I always have a few extra bars. Lately I managed to squirrel away an extra week of rations. But the burning in my shoulder made for more pressing business.

  “Nope. Just gonna go see Maggy.”

  “Well if you change your mind I got something special.” I slow down. I stop. Dammit.

  “‘K, what’ve yah got?” Curiosity and the cat and all that.

  He pulled out a bundle from under his chair. It was a grey blanket. Pretty easy to come by. Didn’t get that cold in here anyway. I sighed and turned to leave. He stopped me with a gesture, and with a flurry worthy of a Vegas stage whipped off the top layer.

  Nestled underneath and shaped like a football was a small ‘bot. This one was designed to distribute medication to patients. Little guy had definitely seen better days. Most of the outer plates were torn off. Probably some asshole trying to get any leftover meds out. It looked dead.

  “What is it? A football? Some kind of game?” Play dumb. Make him work for it. I don’t need it anyway, right?

  He let out an exasperated grunt. “It’s a medbot. Last one in the whole place.”

  “Looks dead. What good is it?”

  “I took out its fuel cell. It still works. Trade you ten bars for it.” More than I had. Damn.

  ‘I don’t know. It looks pretty torn up, and ‘sides, what good is it? There aren’t any more meds right? Look, how about you trade me the cell for a bar. I might be able to use that for something. You got any ‘Killers? I might trade a couple bars for those.”

  “Tell you what, I only got a couple. They plenty strong, though. Trade you the bot and them for, uhm, eight bars.” He must really want to get rid of it. Weird.

  “Two.”

  “Get out of here, now you wasting my time,” he said while taking a swipe at me and looked around like he was looking for someone else to trade with.

  “Fine, how ‘bout four? And a trashy romance?”

  He dead-eyed me for a minute. I ignored it and waited. He’d break first. Finally, “These are top quality painkillers! Knock you on your ass! You bleedin’ me. You know that right? Five and the book. But I keep the cell.”

  “I’ll do five and the book for the whole thing. The ‘killers, the bot, and the cell. Final offer. “

  “You’re gonna starve me, Kid. Five and the book, it is.” I pull the bars and the Harlequin I picked up earlier out of my bag and he offers me the bot. He hands me a pair of white pills in a folded piece of yellowed paper. The ‘killers. They have numbers and letters recessed into them. He digs around for a moment in the piles of junk around him before finally producing the fuel cell. It’s little. About the size of a coin. I check it. It reads half potential. Pretty good. Should last a couple years. Maybe less, depends on how efficient the bot is. It goes into the bag as well.

  I want to take the pills right away. Or at least one of them. I fight the urge. Need to be somewhere safe to take them. This place is definitely not. Also, I need to see Maggy, first. Maybe she can fix it before it gets bad. I fold the paper with the ‘killers into the band of my pants and turn to leave.

  “See you later, yah little thief!”

  “Thanks, Asshole! See yah.”

  Chapter 4

  Maggy’s Place

  I turn down the last hallway to Maggy’s and come to a dead stop. A silhouette is standing outlined in her doorway. I can’t see his face, but I know it’s the Beast. His back is to me. His stink drifts to me. I slink away from it and back around the corner. I look for a place to hide.

  Not here. No pills either.

  …but she’s been here. …make her tell you where Red is.

  She doesn’t know. Maybe hiding in the Atrium.

  …hurt her. …it will make you feel better.

  He wouldn’t look like much to you. Before the Last Shift you might have even called him handsome, maybe not. Always wore a suit jacket over his standard issue scrubs. Never asked where he got it. He had a name that really stood out. Like Kirk or Sherlock. Something like that. Maybe it was something normal. Not sure anymore. It doesn’t matter. That man doesn’t exist any longer.

  After he stopped getting his meds the change started. It started in his face. The wrinkles deepened. He looked like he was always in pain. His eyes, gentle before, yellowed, and took on a burning glint. He used to have hands like a doctor; soft and warm, strong and gentle. He would play chess with me. He talked to me. I remember his voice then. Measured. Careful. Patient. Unless, of course, he had a Visitor. That’s what the staff called it. Like something sharing his head. When that happened he had to stay in his room. I wasn’t even allowed to see him. I could hear him, though. He cried. A lot. Not loudly. Hushed, like sound hurt him. Or maybe it was the light. The nurses talked about it, but I don’t think they really knew either. The scariest part was the Voices. When he was alone in his room he would talk to someone else. And they would answer him. In a different Voice.

  Then he got mean. Before the Last Shift, Whitey had a friend. He followed Whitey around all the time. I think his name was Eugene, or something like that. He had a bit of a quirk. He liked to touch people. Especially places you shouldn’t touch people. He came in to get Observed when he hung out too long at a playground. Said he just liked kids.

  One day the Beast was sitting in the cafeteria. It was after the orderlies had left and nurses had learned to stay in the upper floors. He had one of the tables to himself. He was waiting for the rations to be delivered by the UPS ground drones. I hear they used to have human drivers. Talk about inefficient.

  No one sat with him those days. It was after he started talking to the Voices all the time. His back was to the room and Eugene thought it was a good time try and make friends.

  It was so quick. One second Eugene was standing behind him, his hand reaching around the Beast, the next Eugene was on his back on the floor with the Beast straddling him. He screamed and tried to get away. The Beast did something to him that made a loud cracking noise and he stopped moving. Blood splashed out from between them. Then the Beast grabbed Eugene by the head and pulled him out of the room. We never saw Eugene again.

  I hear the door close and risk a quick glance around the corner. The Beast hasn’t seen me. He is walking the other way. What’s left of his hair is wild. His clothes are stained, torn, and dirty. I wait until he turns down the next corner before I dart down the hall and into Maggy’s room.

  I expected a bright yellow room. A bed and a desk along one wall. She normally sits at the table situated to the side of the door. She plays solitaire or occasionally she has a friend over and they play some kind of game involving a pegboard and a deck of cards. I tried to play one time. The rules seemed to change depending on who was winning. I stopped trying to learn the rules and just started putting the cards down and waited until someone told me how far to move the peg. I politely refused later invites to play.

  As I turned into the room, I was suddenly not sure where I was. The lights were out. Not out. Broken. Frosted glass from the light was scattered around the floor. The normally tightly made bed was torn apart. The mattress lay in the middle of the room and the sheets torn and tossed around the c
orners. The table and cards were tossed carelessly across the room. Maggy was slumped in a pile in the middle of the floor.

  She didn’t seem to be breathing. She was in a half kneeling position with her head pressed to the floor. I couldn’t see her face. It was lost in the tangle of her hair. Something smelled sour. Like a washrag left in the sink too long.

  Didn’t know what to do. I stand there staring for a moment. The room is completely still. Then she sucks in a ragged breath and suddenly rolls to her feet. She staggers a bit and sways as she crosses the room.

  “Whatcha yah doing here, kid? Huh?” she hisses into my ear. She sounds horse and thirsty. Leans in too close to me. Her eyes were red and wild. It looks like she had been crying. One of them is almost swollen closed and looks like it is turning dark. There is also a collar of bruises around her neck. Her clothes are torn and her hands shake as she pulls them tight around her thin frame. Her hand reaches for me and almost touches me before she reconsiders and walks past me to try to close the door. It shuts most of the way. The door refused to latch. Nothing in the room escaped the tempest.

  Her shoulders relax and she stands a little straighter. The hunch disappears and her eyes look less intense.

  “Seriously, what do you want, kid?”

  I explain to her what happened as I pull the crimson cloth to the side and expose my swollen shoulder. She hums under her breath a bit while her cool hands explore the damaged flesh.

  “Dislocated.” She diagnosed. Then she took a moment to appreciate the soft material of my new acquisition, “Pretty. Where did you find this? It looks new.”

  I didn’t give her an answer and she didn’t expect one. But her compliment sent a rush of pleasure through to my core. “Make a new friend? He came here looking for you. Kept calling you ‘Red,’ now I can see why,” she pulled the mattress back into place and gestured for me to sit on the bed. She began to manipulate my arm around. Glowing embers of pain wake up in response making it hard not to cry out. The room gets darker and tightens around me. “I’m going to set it on the count of three, ok? One…”

  My world is blinding red pain and then black.

  A few seconds or minutes or maybe hours later I realize I am looking up at the ceiling. It hurts less, and I can move my arm again. Next thought, not safe here. Need to get out. I roll off the bed to my feet and slink to the door.

  “Hold on a second, child. I hope you aren’t leaving before you pay for that. You short or something?” She is lighting a cigarette. The smoke curls up to the ceiling. I trace it with my eyes as I ride the wave of nausea from standing up.

  “Nah, nothing like that. I just wasn’t thinking. What do you want?”

  “Maybe just tell me what happened? Somebody mistreating you?” I look around the room at the broken table, the ruined cards, the torn sheets on the bed. Still damp. The bruises on her face still darkening and looking worse. She winces whenever she takes a drag from the cigarette.

  “Looks like I’m not the only one. What did he want?”

  “What do you think? What do any of them want? He just happens to like seeing me in pain first. It’s not so bad as this. He was sorry afterward.”

  I pull the paper packet of pills from the band in my pants, fish out one of the pills, and set it on the table. She probably doesn’t have much choice. Maybe none of them did. She helped me, but I don’t have to let her in. “I don’t really want to Group it with you. He was a little faster and I was a little slower than I thought.”

  And with that as a final thought, I put myself on the other side of the door. She was saying something about the Atrium as I let the door close, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore.

  I take the stairs this time. It’s getting late and the halls are quiet. Either way, I don’t want to push my shoulder any more. I just want to get to my room so I can pop the other painkiller or maybe one from the bottle I found in the lockers and sleep for a couple of hours.

  The last hallway before my room is almost completely unlit. The maintenance drones keep the floor clean, but whatever ‘bot was responsible for lighting in this hallway must have broken down. The only light for the last thirty feet was the dim green glow from the emergency exit sign. They just led down to the garages and locked gates. No exit there either. Just another lie disguised as a choice.

  The door to my room reads, “Doctor Rashmani” in faded gold letters on a worn black metal plate bolted to the wood of the door. I pull an equally faded ID card from my bag and wave it in front of the door. A soft click signals that the lock has disengaged.

  Chapter 5

  Down the Rabbit Hole

  In the center of the room, behind a heavy industrial steel desk, sat a dried out husk of a body. Crouched forward, still entering the last command into the archaic terminal. His glasses reflecting the changing lines on the monitor almost as if he was sitting there, paused to read the results and in a moment would return to action.

  He used to be Dr. Ben. He always had a smile for me. Now he just always smiled. Back before the Last Shift he never let anyone in his office. It was back behind the nurse’s station. The nurses never let anyone in to see him. Sometimes they would ask him to come out. If you asked politely. Sometimes the nurses were nice.

  Now the office was my room. No one thought to break in. The other residents weren’t scared of him. They respected him. He was the last doctor. I don’t think he minded sharing it with me. He didn’t even smell anymore. At least no worse than anyone else here did.

  I closed the door behind me. After making sure it was locked I sat on the couch that I now used as a bed. It was one of those soft leather ones that you always see in shrink’s offices. Sloped up on one side. It was much better than the foam mattresses on the iron frames in the other rooms. And it still smelled like a new a pair of shoes.

  “Whatcha writing today Doc? Checkin’ email? Anything from your astronaut wife? Or your son the soldier?” He didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t like the family. I made them up with exciting, adventurous, and demanding lives to explain why his family was so busy. Too busy to come find out why he didn’t make it home after The Last Shift. I shrugged and went to the other door in the room.

  The true treasure of my sanctum. The doctor’s personal bathroom. It even had a shower. And it worked. Most of the time the water was even warm.

  After using the toilet, I grab the glass off the sink, fill it with water, and took the other painkiller I got from Whitey. I’ll save the others for later. This one was supposed to be strong and I wasn’t sure what the others were. Then I stripped, stood under the shower head, and slowly turned on the water.

  Cold shocking water pounds down. I could have turned on the hot water, but the cold feels good on my shoulder. I stand under the raining water until I shiver. The soap I found earlier is gentler than I am used to but the towel was rough and cleansing. I slowly put the soft new scrubs back on.

  With a sigh, I walk back into the office. I pull out the bundle I got from Whitey. I sit cross-legged on the floor and carefully unwrap it. She’s in pretty tough shape. One optic is missing. The entire outer shell has been torn off. She has a dozen receptacles that used to be filled with meds. They were probably looking for them when they ripped the parts off. She would not have fought back. She’s not programmed for it

  Her other hardware was in pretty good shape. Three manipulators. She must have been one of the newer ones. Even a vox unit. So maybe she could talk. The brain looked a little scorched but it wasn’t that old, it even has an attached WNI chip for a wireless neural interface.

  After checking for blown caps and shorts I slip in the fuel cell carefully and touch her power button. At first nothing happens and my heart sinks. Looks like I just lost a weeks’ worth of rations. Then she hums to life. Her remaining optic glows a shifting blue and green. She chirps happily as her systems boot back up.

  She lifts off the floor and hovers in front of me. Her optic flashes and an eager sounding chirp comes from her. She lands on m
y unhurt shoulder, her manipulators lighter than a feather as she perches there. A glowing display shows up in my vision. It’s generated by the WNI chip. With a thought I cancel her restock orders. There isn’t anything left for her to deliver any way. I can see the damage alerts flashing dimly on her outline. She’s missing a few parts and I probably can’t replace them. It makes me angry that they tore her apart like that. She didn’t even fight. No reason for that at all.

  But now I have her. I name her Emm Bee. “M” for short. Not very imaginative, she’s a medical bot. But her chirps show her appreciation. I’ll keep her safe. She might be a little broken, and her brain might not run the newest software, and her manipulators might only work some of the time, and her vox unit might be a little buggy but she’s mine now.

  I am staring down at her when the drug kicks in. The pain bleeds away. My eyelids get heavy. By reflex I fight it, but it’s too much and I let it push me down. I ride the wave down and slip through the couch and though the floor beneath. I close my eyes. I dream.

  The dream starts out sort of pleasant. I am looking down at Bedlam from the air. Almost like being in a helicopter, like the ones that used to be on the news. The kind that commented on traffic or you might see hovering over the cops as they chased criminals, at least until the orderlies noticed and changed to another channel saying it was too exciting. Or maybe I am a drone. Cold and precise in movement. Scanning the large white building and its gated exercise area. The grounds around Bedlam used to be a park. There were gardens and you could even walk around under the sun as long as you kept out of trouble.

  Bedlam. It’s what we call it, but it’s not the official name. Can’t remember what the original name was. New Horizons or something. After the Last Shift, one of the older patients, Henry, he pronounced it “On Ree,” started calling it that. He said it was a famous hospital centuries ago. He said Bedlam fit better. I haven’t seen him for a while. He liked the roses. The orderlies let Henry take care of them. He’d hum gently while he weeded or worked the dirt. It’s weird how dirt in the gardens seems clean and fresh and the sterile hallways I can’t get out of now seem gritty and soiled. I miss the gardens. The Atrium is ok. It still has a lot green growing things, but there isn’t any wind or real sun.