The Asylum

“Strauss!”

Jace flinched. The other security guards in the staff room shot him sympathetic glances, albeit with their faces hidden behind their sandwiches. All of the Asylum security guards cowered beneath Chief Ray’s iron double-chin, and if he said “jump”, there was hell to pay if you didn’t start hopping.

“Yeah?” Jace called wearily.

Chief glared at him from the doorway in all of his 5’6’’, 250 pound glory. “Yeah, what?”

“Yes…sir.”  There. It was polite. It was civil. It almost killed him.

“Get off your ass and come with me. This is work, not recess.”

Jace climbed to his feet with a muttered good-bye to the other guards, then stalked after Chief, who had already begun waddling away. It didn’t take long to catch up; his 6’ frame and long legs served him well.

As he came alongside of him, Chief barked, “Get me some coffee first. I’ll be in my office.”

Jace came to a stop. He turned, very deliberately, and walked back the way he had come, shooting Chief the bird as he rounded the corner.

Asshole. Chief had been harassing Jace with belittling comments and pointless chores since he started working there the previous week.  Saturday needed to hurry its ass along; it was only Monday, but already Jace felt his patience unraveling. 
He reached the coffee machine, grabbed a cup and shoved it underneath the dispenser. Murky water trickled out. Perfect. Jace ripped the top off and began measuring out teaspoons of coffee.

“’Sup, Jace”, said Zack, coming up behind him.

“Hey”, Jace replied without turning.

“How’s life?”

“Keeps trying to crush me. It’s mildly successful. I’m shorter now.”

Zack chuckled and glanced up.  Having confirmed Jace was still four or five inches taller than him, he said, “Chief getting on you again?”

“Naturally.” Jace alternated his glare between the brewing coffee and toast tray. His hand itched to dump all of the butter in Chief’s coffee and speed up the heart attack that was surely on its way.

“Sucks. Me, I’m just bored. I got cobwebs growing on my brain.” Zack pulled down his right eyelid. “Look for yourself.”

“Haha. You’re hilarious.  How the hell do you get bored in a place like this, anyway?”  Maybe it was because he’d only been there a week, but Jace still felt uneasy.  He had to walk past the patients’ cells a few times a day and struggle with the knowledge of where he was and what they were; prisoners in an Asylum for the criminally insane.  The looks they gave him…it was just creepy.

Zack seemed to read his thoughts.  “It gets easier…eventually.”

The coffee machine beeped, interrupting the awkward silence that followed.  Jace switched off the timer and held his cup under the dispenser.  Fresh coffee streamed out. “Well”, he sighed, “I gotta get back to Chief, or he’ll rip my throat out.”

“Alright. Good luck.”

As Jace walked out into the hallway, Zack called, “Just remember the magic words: ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘step off, bitch’.”

***

323 had one hell of a headache. 

This was nothing new.  Totaled up, he’d probably spent years of his life with a headache.  Usually they were just annoying, but sometimes they evolved into debilitating migraines that shortened his temper and gave way to what the judge had politely called his “psychopathic tendencies”.  Which 323 didn’t think was fair; he had full awareness of his emotions when he killed people.  He just enjoyed it too much to stop.

323 studied the guards in the Chief’s office, chin resting on his fist the way one might watch a fascinating play.  The knife twirling around his thumb sprayed flecks of blood onto the security monitor. 

On screen, the tall, thin guard burst from his chair and stormed out.  The other stared after him with a sneer.

“I bet you the fat one dies first”, 323 told the guard.

The guard, now just a corpse, didn’t rise to the challenge.

A red light flashed on and off above their heads.  It had been making quite a fuss earlier, but now was silent.  Like the nurse.  She had screamed a lot.  For a minute 323 found it entertaining.  But after a little while it began to worsen his headache, so he put an end to the screaming.  Then the alarm went off.  323 tried to wait it out, but his patience grew thin and he killed that, too.

Now…silence.

He wasn’t what you would call savvy with computers, but judging by the tiny control panel, the lockdown would continue until somebody entered in a code.  The window for said code mocked 323 from the corner of the computer screen. 

He didn’t know the code.  Not good.  Eventually they would find him and throw him back in that godforsaken cell, and he wasn’t going back in there, not ever.  He’d been there for nine years, ever since grandma died on his fifteenth birthday.  His birthday also happened to be Halloween, and he had thought it would be in good holiday spirit to play burglar.  She was not amused.  Which had upset 323.  Very, very, much.  But he still loved his grandma.  In retrospect, killing her probably wasn’t the brightest thing he’d ever done.

“So”, he said, fingering the knife, “if you’re dead and all of the guards are probably traveling in packs, how do we go about getting out of here?”

The guard broached no opinion the subject.

“Well, if you’re not going to help me, I’ll just figure it out by myself.  Can’t be that hard.  But I’ll be needing that chair.  If you could just…move over a bit.  That’s right, just slide on out.  Sorry mate.”  323 plopped down on the chair, his bottom squishing from the blood that had pooled there.  The guard’s body struck the floor with an equally squishy thud.

323 studied the map, speaking the directions aloud and tracing the path with his finger, the way grandma had taught him (that way you were using three of your senses, not just one).  After a few minutes, he could recite them without peeking. 

323 stood and fired the guard’s taser into the fuse box.  A hideous whining followed and sparks shot towards him like grasping fingers.  The air crackled with electricity.  His buzzed, midnight black hair probably would have stood up, except it always did that anyway.

One by one, the lights in the room flickered and went out. 

323 smiled.  He always felt…well, not better.  More capable in the dark.  Powerful. 

They would have back-ups, of course, at least in the main areas.  But dim was better than bright.  In this situation, stealth was best if he came across any guards.  But that wasn’t the only reason; without power, the security system would shut down.  The cells would open, unleashing a horde of insane patients who would run around killing whoever they could get their hands on.  Thinning the herd, so to speak.  Then 323 could find one of the remaining guards and…convince…him to give up the code.
323 dropped the now-useless taser and slid the knife into the waist of his pants.  As he moved towards the exit, another knife caught his eye from the guard’s belt.

“You don’t need it, you don’t need it”, 323 chanted, turning away.  He didn’t want to be weighed down.  Besides, if he did happen to get caught by a group of taser-wielding guards, he wouldn’t be able to break free without a few trained Dobermans and air support. 

But maybe he should take an extra, just in case.  One more knife couldn’t hurt.  Okay, two.  And that’s it.

Time to go hunting.

***

Jace stormed out of the office, ignoring the enraged shout that pursued him as the door slammed shut.  He was beyond caring if Chief fired him.  He had to run papers from one end of the building to the other, feed demented patients and deal with some fat supervisor chewing him out on an hourly basis.  Who wouldn’t want to keep that job, right?  Right?

Caught up in his internal rant, Jace turned a corner and ran headlong into another guard.  They both oofed.

“Zack?”

“Jace?”

“Oh.  Hey.”  Jace backed up and shook his head.  “Sorry.  Wasn’t payin’ attention.”

“I noticed”, Zack muttered.  He grinned to show he was joking, but sobered in light of Jace’s expression.  “What happened?”

“Chief says he’ll fire me if I don’t ‘lose the attitude’.”  Jace made air quotes with his middle fingers.

“Wow.  And here I was, thinking you were the only one that had managed to not cuss him out in person.”

Jace glowered at him.  “I am.  What’s his problem with me?”

“Maybe he’s jealous because you’re better-looking.”

“Zack, I hope you’re not coming onto me, because I cannot handle that right now…”

Zack gave him a look.  “Boy, you wish-“

There was a massive noise, like firecrackers going off inside a trashcan, so loud that Jace’s ears rang. 

They looked at each other.

A hollow droning echoed down the hallway towards them, followed by a wall of darkness as the lights snapped off one by one. 
With a crackle, the two were left in shadow.

“Oh, great”, Jace muttered.

***

All was quiet except for the sound of their shoes on the tile.  Each footstep echoed down the hallway and then returned, until it seemed a group of people was trailing them.  Jace found himself glancing over his shoulder more and more often.  He only stopped when his neck creaked in protest.

“How much farther to the control room?” he asked Zack.  He realized it had come out as a whisper; it felt wrong to disturb the silence, eerie though it was.

“Don’t know.  A ways, I guess.”

“Wait…what happens to the patients when the power goes off?  Their cells have electronic locks.”

“There’s a backup system.”

Jace felt a little sick.  “A backup system, like for the lights?  The one that didn’t work?” 

“Umm.  Yeah.”  Fear trickled into Zack’s voice.  “I…I guess so.”

They turned the corner.  Jace froze.

A line of empty cells greeted them, the doors hanging open.  An ominous silence permeated the room.  The air thickened until Jace thought he would choke on it, and the light from his penlight wavered.

Ten seconds passed, each a century long.

“How many?” Jace managed.

“Ten”, Zack replied in an oddly flat voice.  “Ten in here.  Fifty in the building.”

Jace started to say something; he had no idea what.  But the words never made it out of his mouth, because right then he noticed another sound, one subtle enough that he shouldn’t have been able to hear it.  But he did.

Breathing.

A tall figure barreled out of the first cell, screaming shrilly.  It was so sudden, so out of left field, that Jace couldn’t find the strength to move before the patient slammed into him.  The force of the tackle carried them across the room.  His head cracked against the wall, and stars exploded in his vision.

The patient, a bald man with glistening pale skin, pulled back his fist.  Something glittered. 

A hand caught the fist, and another arm appeared around the patient’s throat.  With a snarl, Zack pivoted and heaved the man over his shoulder.  His body crashed to the ground.  Zack backed up, fumbling for his taser.

Jace slid down the wall as the world spun around him.  A vicious pounding in his head threatened to shut down conscious thought.  Faintly, as if from another room, he heard Zack and the patient struggling.  One of them screamed.  He wished he knew which one.

It wasn’t until long after the silence returned that the fog lifted.  When Jace could think again, his first thought was:

Am I blind?  It’s dark.

And after that:

Zack!

He struggled to concentrate through the pain and sat up.  His right eye refused to open, so he settled for the left and glanced around, blinking slowly.

There were two bodies on the floor.  Neither of them moved.  After a slow ten count, Jace crawled over to the first and was greeted with the patient, very much dead with a knife buried in his throat.  Jace made his way over to the other.

Zack, despite all appearances, was not dead, though the blood that soaked his uniform said death wasn’t far off.  In that absolute silence, Jace could hear the shallow pant of his breathing.

Zack’s voice was barely more than a croak.  “Jace?”

“Yeah”, he whispered.  “It’s me.”

“Wow.  Thought you were dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Zack closed his eyes.  “Damn, Jace.  You sound worse than I do.  Not fair.  I’m the one who got stabbed.”

Jace chuckled, and immediately wondered why.  What the hell was there to laugh about?

“Bastard got me with that knife”, Zack continued.  His hand lifted from where it had been covering his stomach, revealing a series of gaping wound.  His hand and the rest of his shirt were stained red.  “We still beat him, though”, Zack added with a hint of triumph.

“We?  I don’t…” Jace forced down a sob.  “I don’t think I was much help.”

“He meant me.”

Jace was on his feet almost before he decided to move, pointing his taser at the man who had spoken.  Funny; he didn’t recall drawing it.

The man made a peace gesture, holding out his hands.  One of them held a blade slick with blood.  “Relax”, he said, stretching out his shirt to expose the nametag sown into it.  “I’m a guard too.”

Jace couldn’t read the nametag from that distance, and he didn’t recognize the guard, but what did that matter?  He had only worked there for a week.  “Alright”, he said slowly, lowering the taser but keeping it in hand.  He knelt back down next to Zack.  “We should go”, he told him.

“Alright.  See ya’ later.”

Jace blinked.  “We’re…not leaving you here.  We’ll carry you.”

“Oh.  Ok.  That’s good.”  Zack grinned.  His eyes rolled back in his head, and his body seemed to deflate.

For one horrible, terrifying moment, Jace was sure he had died.  Then he realized Zack had only fainted.  But judging by his weak, labored breathing, death couldn’t have been far off.

“We need to get him first aid”, he told the other guard.

“Shouldn’t we keep on to the control room?  It’s safe there.  We can lock ourselves in until we figure out how to get the power back on.”

“No.  He won’t last that long.”

The guard looked at Zack as if he were already dead.  “What for?  Look at him.  He got stabbed three or four times.  He’s gonna die soon anyway.”

Jace found himself hating the guard, hating him with such intensity his clothes might have burst into flame.  “No”, he spat through his teeth.  “He won’t.  We’re going to find first aid.”  He put one arm under Zack’s shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position, then slung him over one shoulder.  His knees threatened to buckle under the added weight.

The other guard watched him coolly, making no move to help.  “Whatever.  But if we die, I’m comin’ back to haunt you.”

Jace stepped around him without answering.  The guard fell in behind him, and they walked in silence.

***

After what felt like hours but could only have been ten minutes at most, they came to a three-way split.  One on the left, to the medical wing, and one on the right, to the control room.  Jace turned towards the left.

“Stop.”

“No.  The control room can wait.  He can’t.”  Jace adjusted Zack’s still-limp form.  His breathing was so quiet, he might not have been breathing at all.  “We-“

“I was just saying”, the guard interrupted, “that you should take a break.  If we run into…more of them…you don’t want to be passed out next to him.”

Jace’s mouth snapped shut.  That wasn’t what he’d expected.  With no reason to point out why they had to take Zack with them and find first aid - why they had to, had to, otherwise he would die and it would be Jace’s fault - his counter-arguments all ran into each other like a pileup on the highway.  Exhaustion crashed over him.  He gently lowered Zack to the floor and sat beside him.

“So”, the guard began, “you know the code to the control room, right?  The one that turns off the lockdown. Could you tell me?  Just in case.”

It took Jace a few seconds to realize the guard was talking to him.  His eyelids felt heavy.  Maybe the blow to his head had been a little worse than he thought.  He knew there was a name for that kind of injury, but it hovered at the edge of his consciousness, just out of reach.

“Yeah”, Jace replied, “I guess we should turn off the lockdown.  Call for help.”

The guard stared at him.

“To round up the prisoners”, Jace explained.  Wasn’t it obvious?

“Yeah.  I thought we established that.  But that’s not what I asked you.”  The guard leaned forward.  “I asked you if you knew the code.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”  Jace thought.  He knew Chief had told him that morning.  Suddenly, he wondered where Chief was.  Dead?  Hiding in his office?  Well, at least he couldn’t fire Jace from there…yup, he definitely had a-

“Concussion!” Jace proclaimed.

“What?”

“I was thinking about head injuries.  Cause, you know…I got one.  From when I hit the wall.”  It seemed very urgent that he understand this.

The guard stood and walked over to Jace.  “Man, listen: tell me the code.  I forgot it.”

Jace shook his head, trying to clear it.  “Okay, yeah.  The code.  I think the code is…”  He stopped cold.

“What?” the guard demanded.  “What?”

But Jace could only stare at the guard’s chest.  At the nametag. 

[Chief Ray Arnolds]

“You…”  Jace stopped, trying to pretend he hadn’t seen anything, but he felt the terror on his face as if he were seeing it in a mirror.

The guard- no, not a guard- shook his head slowly.  “You couldn’t have just told me the damn code.”  His hand whipped out from behind his back, and something hard struck Jace’s temple.

He’d had headaches before.  As a kid, he’d suffered through crippling migraines that could leave him trapped under the blankets of his bed, begging the sun to set.

But this…this was the worst ever.  Even his run-in with the wall earlier couldn’t compare.  The blow was so sudden, so out of left field, that Jace never had a chance to cry out.  Pretty fireworks exploded across his vision, and the floor rushed up to greet him.

He didn’t know how long his daze lasted.  It could have been hours.  But when he came to, nothing had changed, except now the patient had shed his disguise.  That and, instead of being in a position to defend himself, Jace was just a little weaker than most Barbie dolls.

“You’re awake.  Finally.”  323 shook his head.  “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

Jace tried to think of a suitable retort, but thinking was too much effort.

“Hey.”  323 crouched down in front of him and patted his cheek.  “Wake up.  I’m not finished with you yet.”

“Whatever.  You’re gonna kill me anyway.”  Jace laughed.  Not that there was anything remotely funny about the situation, but it might be his last chance to laugh.

“You got me”, 323 admitted.  “But I’ll tell you what.  Usually, I like a slow death.  But I could make an exception…If you’re smart about this.  Now; what is the code?”

Jace sighed and leaned back against the wall.  After a second of thought, it came to him.

“514…323.”

“Hey!  It has my number in it.”  323 announced it with the air of a man who has discovered something amazing.  Shaking his head in wonder, he drew a knife from the waist of his pants.

Jace closed his eyes.  “I knew it.”

“Aw, c’mon.  Give me some credit.  I let you live this long.”

“If my hands weren’t busy, I’d clap for you”, Zack snarled.

Jace opened his eyes, just in time to see 323 turn and take a fire extinguisher to the face.  He hit the floor like a sack of dirty laundry.

Jace wanted to cheer, or shout, or do something, but his limbs were dead.  He couldn’t get up.

Zack stepped forward and swung again, carving a dent in the floor as 323 vanished.  The fire extinguisher slipped from Zack’s grasp.

Fast.  Too fast.  A guy who’d just been wrecked with a fire extinguisher should have been slower.  But Zack was weak from blood loss, and he hadn’t done enough damage.

323 rolled to his feet and charged, murder in his savage, bloodshot eyes.  Before Jace could shout a warning, the knife slid between Zack’s ribs. 

The world ground to a halt.  For a moment, Jace could see everything: the shock in Zack’s eyes; the silvery gleam of the knife; 323’s triumphant grin…

Time returned to the world, and strength to Jace’s limbs.  A roar filled his ears.  He realized it was coming from him.  Jace leapt to his feet, grabbed the fire extinguisher and swung it like a baseball bat.

There was a splintering noise that he felt in his bones. 

323 turned to him slowly, his smile uncertain, eyes wide with shock, fingering the crack in his skull.

“Have fun in hell”, Jace snarled, and swung again.  323’s jaw disintegrated under the blow.  He collapsed.  Jace followed him down and hit him again.  And again.  And again, until his body stopped twitching.

Silence.

Jace let the fire extinguisher roll from his fingers.  It clattered to the floor, rudely disrupting the quiet.  He waited until the echoes ceased before turning to Zack.

His eyes were closed, but Jace knew he wasn’t dead.  Now, seeing his body next to 323’s corpse, he saw a difference between the two he knew he would not forget.  Could not forget.

Zack opened his eyes when he approached.  “’Sup, Jace”, he managed.

“Hey.”  Jace smiled weakly and rubbed his eyes with one hand.  It came away wet.  “Couldn’t just roll over and die, could you?”

“I thought about it”, Zack admitted.  “But I have a reputation to uphold.”  He seemed to realize something, and chuckled.

“What?” Jace asked.  He felt like he had swallowed a bowling ball and was trying to speak around it. 

“I’m gonna die on a Monday.  What kind of crap is that?”

Jace tried to laugh with him, but it came out as a cough, almost a sob.  “Well, at least…”  He stopped.

Zack’s body was still.  Not still like he was sleeping; this was something more.  What had made him Zack was gone now, leaving his body empty, like an abandoned house rumored to be haunted.  Jace looked between his body and 323’s, and could no longer see the difference.

He was one of them now. 

Jace crawled a few feet away and was quietly sick.  Even when his stomach ran dry, he heaved until his chest ached.  Then he stood and began to walk.

The control room wasn’t as dark as the rest of the building, but it wasn’t exactly bright, either.  There were three bodies on the floor.  But at this point, they didn’t bother Jace.  He had seen enough and no longer cared.

The first thing he did, before even rinsing his mouth out at the water cooler, was enter the code.  The computer beeped happily when he pressed enter.  Apparently he wasn’t the only one that wanted this madness to end.  A signal would be sent to the mainland, alerting them of a problem at the complex.  Help would come.

Rinsing his mouth out no longer seemed important.  He doubted the taste would ever leave him anyway; the vile, bitter taste that could only be described as rot. 

Jace collapsed on the chair, spent both physically and mentally, welcoming the silence that followed. 

But it didn’t. 

Because underneath the squeaking of the chair, the hum of the computer and the frantic beating of his heart, there was another sound from behind him:

Breathing.