The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) (30 page)

           
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?”