The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (26 page)

Peering out from the first floor stairwell, he realized the noise had come from something else entirely. No one was rushing about. People were simply going about their business. This level would prove the most challenging for him. Not only did it contain the intensive care unit, but also the snack bar along with the doctors’ lounge where those on call waited for a page. Lots of individual places where victims would be waiting for him. Four doctors garbed in white coats were on duty this evening, all presently on this floor. Add these to the four nurses on around-the-clock duty, and things promised to be complicated.

Tiny Tim checked both his silenced Uzi submachine guns and emerged from the stairwell. There was no longer a need to act quietly. The first person he spotted was a bespectacled doctor walking with his eyes fixed on a chart. He never saw Tiny Tim. A burst blew him backward and splattered blood upon a receptionist working the phones. Tiny Tim shot her next and watched her body disappear under the desk. Then, almost mechanically, he moved on toward the wing marked
NO ADMITTANCE
and under that
DOCTORS ONLY
.

The double doors came open as he approached them, allowing a pair of nurses to rush out in the wake of some emergency. Tiny Tim used a burst from each Uzi on them, and the women’s white uniforms leaked red. He burst through the doors to find the remaining pool of on-duty nurses and doctors clustered around a bed on the right. The rest of the ICU cubicles had their curtains drawn. This one alone had been yanked open.

“Clear!” one of the doctors ordered, pressing the wands of a defibrillating machine against the patient’s chest.

There was a thump, and the chest heaved.

“No pulse,” one of the nurses reported.

“We’re losing him,” someone else said.

“Clear!” the doctor handling the defibrillator instructed again.

Tiny Tim liked the sound of that. He waited until the shocked chest jumped one more time before speaking.

“Clear,” he said loud enough for all of them to hear and swing his way. “Lost,” he followed before he opened fire.

The bodies crashed into the monitoring machines, spilling them over. Several IV hookups tumbled as well, and the sound of glass shattering echoed through the unit, along with the clamor of metal striking tile. The ICU patients were stirring now; the ones who could were screaming, and Tiny Tim moved for them with his submachine guns. Incapacitated as they were, it was over very fast. Most died with tubes still pushed up their noses or needles stuck in their arms. The doctors who had been in the on-call room rushed through the double doors just as Tiny Tim was finishing up, and he used the rest of one of his clips on them. Nice stroke of luck. Saved him a trip into their lounge.

His research indicated the hospital’s two sublevels contained a number of labs, pathology, and the morgue. At this hour there might be a few strays left down there, and Tiny Tim headed down to finish his sweep.

Lauren Talley had shown Kimberlain the intensive care unit last, keeping with the theorized chronological progression Tiny Tim had taken. On the floors above, walls had separated the killings, cushioning the shock and disguising the scope of the truth. But ICU was little more than a ward, beds separated only by curtains and rollaway partitions. Some of these had been toppled, a number of the curtains shredded.

And the blood was everywhere, dried and dark; on the floor, on the walls, on the bed sheets waiting to be removed. Kimberlain didn’t want to know the number of victims down here. The exact number was a useless piece of information. The only reality was the river of red.

“This is as far as we traced him,” Talley was saying, “probably as … far … as—”

Her broken speech had Kimberlain moving toward her an instant before she started to drop. He caught her in midswoon and felt her press against him.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“No need.”

“It’s just that I haven’t been able to sleep.” She eased herself away. “Even when there’s time, I can’t sleep.”

“He’s inside you, Lauren.”

She looked up into Kimberlain’s ice-blue eyes. “And how do I get him out?”

“We catch him.”

Chapter 26

“DR. VOGELHUT, THIS IS
Rembart down in the LW. You’d better get down here, sir.”

“Something wrong?”

“You have to … see it.”

The intercom page reached the chief administrator of The Locks in the midst of his usual morning rounds, which ordinarily would not have included what Rembart referred to as the “LW.” The basement wing of The Locks was known in the vernacular as the lost ward, but Vogelhut preferred to think of it as hell. The lost ward contained those incarcerates who had lost all touch with reality. Most had come there in that condition. A few had evolved into it after spending time in one of the facility’s other levels. Either way, those who came to the lost ward were truly the forgotten. No appeals were pending. No lawyers made contact. No psychiatric students sought audience for research.

Dr. Vogelhut heard the inmates’ sounds as soon as he emerged from the elevator. Cries and screams combined with desperate howls and wails. There were animal sounds and loud, angry sobs. A regular pounding as one of the inhabitants repeatedly threw himself at the door.

Vogelhut took a deep breath and headed down the corridor toward the monitoring station each of the floors contained. This one was the antithesis of MAX-SEC’s, however. Only a single video monitor screen and communications apparatus, along with a panel that controlled the operation of the doors along the ward floor. Nothing fancy because the lost ward didn’t require it any more than hell did. Vogelhut swung left at the hall’s end and entered the monitoring room.

It was empty, the desk chair pulled out and left askew.

Through the glass partition he noticed a door on the long, straight ward hall was open. Damn it! Didn’t anyone follow procedure anymore?

Vogelhut leaned over and flipped the microphone to the
PAGE
position.

“Rembart, this is Dr. Vogelhut,” he called, hoping his voice would carry over the sounds of the inmates. “Are you there? What’s going on?”

He could not hear his own words echoing through the hall at all and tried again. When there was still no reply from Rembart, he decided to enter the ward himself. Obviously there was something wrong with the inmate in the open cell. Summon security down here and he would have to file another report. In the wake of the mass escape of not even two weeks previous, that was the last thing he wanted to do. Vogelhut was beginning to fear for his job. If a scapegoat was required, he was the logical choice. Vogelhut would lose everything.

He entered the proper code into the keypad, and the single door leading onto the wing slid open. He passed through and sealed it behind him. Instantly he felt chilled. No longer muffled by the door and walls, the mad sounds of the hopelessly crazed scratched at his eardrums. They were sounds he could never get used to, no matter how often he heard them. There was a rancid stink in the corridor as well; feces and urine, vomit and stale, unwashed bodies. Vogelhut focused on the echoing clip-clop of his shoe heels as he made straight for the open cell the guards had clustered in for some reason.

“Rembart? Rembart, it’s me. What’s happening in—”

Vogelhut swallowed the rest of his words when he reached the door and peered in. Rembart and the other two guards, along with the inmate, were inside on the floor unconscious, legs and hands bound. Vogelhut had started to back away when a voice echoed through the hall.

“Good morning, Doctor.”

A chill grabbed for Vogelhut’s spine, and he turned back into the corridor. “Who is it?” he asked. “Who are you?”

He wondered if he could be heard above the screams, wails, and cries of the lost ward. Not wanting to seem frightened, Vogelhut pounded his way back down the hall for the door. He got there and keyed in the code.

Nothing happened.

He took his time and pressed the proper sequence into the pad once more.

The door still didn’t open. Vogelhut pounded it in frustration.

“I reprogrammed the code, Doctor.”

The familiar voice emerged through the speaker, pushing its way past the sounds of madness down the hallway.

“Who is th—”

“An old friend, Doctor. I’ve come for a second opinion.”

“Open this door right
now
!”

“As soon as we’ve talked.”

“
Who are
—” But Vogelhut had realized even before the familiar face appeared briefly in the lone viewing window beyond. “Kimberlain …”

“It’s nice to be remembered.”

“Let me out of here!” Vogelhut screamed over the sounds of the lost ward.

“I will. After we’ve talked.”

“You’ll pay for this! God, how you’ll pay! …”

“I don’t think so, Doctor. See, the debt sheet’s heavily balanced against you. I know about the game you’ve been playing for the past five years or so. I know about the faked deaths and patients you arranged premature departures for.”

“I don’t know what you are—”

A clamoring thump sounded on the corridor.

“I just threw back the bolts on the last four doors on the hall, Doctor. Shouldn’t be long before your charges figure out they’ve been set free and step into the corridor.”

“Please, you can’t!”

“I already have. How do they feel about you down here, Doctor? Not a place I’d like to be stranded. Wait … on the monitor, I think I see one of the doors opening.”

Vogelhut swung round and jammed his shoulders against the heavy door; he pressed himself tight against it as if trying to melt through. The very last door down had indeed opened a crack, and as Vogelhut watched another showed a break.

“What do you want to know?” he raised pleadingly.

“You were involved. You were a part of it. Yes?”

“I had no choice. This is a federal institution. It was government business.”

“The
government
was behind these faked deaths and reassignments?”

“Open the door.
Please
. I’ll tell you everything.”

“You’ll tell me everything from where you’re standing right now.”

“One of them’s coming out! God, can’t you see? I beg you, don’t do this!”

Another thump sounded over the mad rantings, as Kimberlain opened another quartet of doors along the hall.

“Stop stalling, Doctor. No one’s coming to help you. Everything’s reading A-okay on all the boards upstairs. Captain Seven showed me how to do it.”

“He’s coming this way! Another one! Oh God, there’s another one! …”

On the screen before him, Kimberlain saw two inmates, one tall and lanky, the other short and very fat, sliding tentatively up me corridor. They moved as though each step were a struggle, with hands pressed against their respective walls as if to hang on.

“Talk!” the Ferryman ordered.

“Yes, the government! There was a project. I was briefed but never informed in detail. My God, this is my career we’re talking about. If I tell you, I’m finished.”

“In one piece, though. The same might not be said if you have to face all your guests down here.”

“I don’t know what they wanted them for. That’s the truth!”

“But you knew the profile they were looking for. Peet, for instance.”

“The most violent. The most unsalvageable.”

“Taken from here so they might be salvaged.”

“For what, I don’t know. You’ve got to believe that!”

“Keep talking, Doctor.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Were your inmates actually recruited?”

“They weren’t given a choice. That’s the way I was told it would be. Now open the door! Listen to them! … They’ve seen me! Oh God, they’re coming this way! …”

On the screen Kimberlain could see a man with patches of hair torn from his head stepping into the hall, then a bearded mountain of a man emerging from the other side. All four of the men moved tentatively, as if they expected the world to snap back at them like an angry dog they reached out to pet. Another two who might have been twins were slamming each other into the wall. A man who looked to be all bones advanced, feeling about the air, perhaps checking for invisible barriers.

“What happened after they left here?” Kimberlain asked.

“I was never briefed.”

Thump!

The remaining doors on the right-hand side were open now, allowing hands and feet to probe tentatively outward. Meanwhile, the first four inmates to emerge were drawing nearer to Vogelhut, thirty feet away and closing slowly.

“All right, all right! As far as I know, they were taken from The Locks to be reconditioned. Hypnosis, new drugs, memory suppression. The project was called Renaissance.”

“Rebirth …”

“Only partially. Whoever was behind it wanted individuals who had the capacity to commit incredibly brutal acts without conscience or regret. They wanted to preserve that part of their minds while at the same time being able to control that same part.”

“Who were ‘they,’ Doctor?”

“Conduits, liaisons—that’s all I ever dealt with. I suspected the intelligence community the way things were handled, but I can’t say for sure. Please, let me out. You’ve got to let me out… .”

“Where were your inmates taken after they left here?”

Vogelhut’s lips trembled. His eyes gazed fearfully behind him.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Doctor.”

“All right! It was an island off the coast of North and South Carolina. I don’t know the name. The references were vague.”

The corridor had filled now, and all of the madmen seemed to be converging on Vogelhut. Kimberlain opened the door and yanked Vogelhut free of the hands tugging and tearing at his clothes. The closing circle of madmen resisted, trying to strengthen purchase on their claim. But they were too busy battling each other to stop the Ferryman from stripping the chief administrator of The Locks away. He forced back the hands that had managed to poke through the door and slammed it behind them.

Vogelhut bent over at the knees. He seemed on the verge of collapse when Kimberlain grasped him at the shoulders and slammed him back against the communications console.