Something to Die For by Kaye Blue

Six

Angel

This is happening.

I wished it wasn’t true, but I knew that no matter how much I wished, this was definitely happening.

But I couldn’t think about that now.

Instead, I needed to confirm a suspicion, one that couldn’t be true, but one that I knew, knew as well as I knew my name, was.

“Help me,” I said to Crowe without looking at him.

“What do you need?”

“Can you hold his arm down? Don’t let him touch you, and don’t let him touch me either,” I said.

He looked like he wanted to deny me, but a beat later, he was moving forward.

He grabbed the IV stand, then used it to shove Mr. Brown—Moose, the inmates called him, I remembered now—against the bed.

He held him down, though Mr. Brown struggled, his teeth snapping that horrible gurgle-moan coming out of his throat.

I approached quickly, moved before I lost my nerve, and buried the small scalpel in Mr. Brown’s ear.

Twisted.

Watched as he fell slack against the bed, finally still.

I watched for a moment, looking for signs of anything, knowing I shouldn’t see them, but knowing that whatever I thought I had known this morning didn’t matter now.

He didn’t move. Just stared at Moose a second longer.

“You want to fucking explain yourself, Dr. Albert?” he finally asked.

The way Crowe said “doctor” still annoyed me, a feeling that I wanted to latch onto, one that I understood.

But shit was bad, really bad, so as comforting as it would have been to be annoyed by him, I had other much more pressing concerns.

“What is there to explain?” I asked.

I wasn’t that stupid, but I didn’t know if I wanted to speak the words that were floating in my head out loud.

“You just murdered two patients right in front of me. My word’s not worth shit, but you still can’t skate past that,” he said.

“I didn’t murder them,” I whispered.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t murder them. They were already dead.”

Just as I expected he would, just as I would have if the shoe were on the other foot, he looked at me like I had lost it.

I wished I had but knew I hadn’t.

“What?” he said again, though I knew he’d heard me.

“There were already dead.”

“Dr. Albert, I’ve been in prison for nearly seven years. I can’t even imagine all the shit I’ve missed out on. But, unless something has drastically changed, dead guys don’t walk.”

I didn’t respond immediately. Instead, I looked at him, locked eyes with his, again noticing how dark his were.

“Something has drastically changed.”

* * *

Lucas

I believed her.

Didn’t know why, but I did.

The fact that I was out of my cell and a whole fucking SWAT team hadn’t descended on the prison by now told me that things were radically wrong.

What I had seen so far confirmed that.

And the look on her face, the terror, but more importantly the absolute certainty, made it impossible for me to deny what she’d said.

But I had questions, ones that she was going to answer.

“How can you be so sure?” I said, my gaze never leaving her face.

She blinked, the terror fading, the certainty becoming more intense, if that was even possible.

“Mr. Johnson, he had end-stage lung cancer. I had to hold his head up to give him water not two hours ago.”

“So maybe he got a burst of energy,” I said, knowing how lame it sounded, knowing I didn’t even believe it.

“Maybe. But even if he did, he’d still need to breathe. He didn’t breathe. Neither of them did, not once.”

“Not once that you saw,” I said.

“Not once.”

Her tone didn’t allow for any argument, and I didn’t try.

“And those Achilles,” she said, going on, even though, at this point, I didn’t really need her to. “He should have responded.”

“And that he didn’t makes you think he’s reanimated dead?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She didn’t waver, didn’t do anything but speak the single word.

I stayed quiet for a moment, stared at her, looked at the two corpses that lay on the ground.

“So we’re pretty fucked, huh?”

“Yes, Mr. Crowe, we are.”

* * *

Angel

And we were.

How badly was yet to be determined.

But if the last fifteen minutes were anything to go by, pretty badly.

“How did you get in here?” I asked, ignoring one problem to face another.

“How do you think? I walked through the door,” he said.

“Look, Crowe, I’m in no mood,” I said, allowing some, but not all, of the frustration I was feeling to seep out.

“No ‘Mr.’?”

I chuckled softly, but as quickly as the surprising moment of levity came, it was gone.

“The bars were open. Looks like all of them are,” he finally said.

His tone was low, sober, and yet again I was hit by the seriousness of the situation.

“That can’t be,” I said.

“Look like a lot of things that can’t be are happening, Dr. Albert,” he said.

Which was true, but the bars being open…

A part of new-hire orientation was learning about the prison’s security, and as medical staff, I was given more information than rank-and-file guards.

I knew that each of the blocks, even some of the cells within the blocks, ran on different electric and manual locking mechanisms. The only way all the cells would be open was if there was a complete electrical failure across the entire prison.

I looked at Crowe, the impossibility of him being here, the fact that no guard had shown up, all that I had seen before, telling me that was exactly what had happened.

Which meant all the cells were open.

All of the inmates could move freely.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, not allowing my panic to come out, but somehow knowing he sensed it.

“Not more than I have to get out of here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, tilting my head to stare at him.

“You’re the doctor. You figure it out.”

He had moved, was headed toward the supply closet, the one that only I had a key to.

The one that I had left unlocked.

I didn’t even try to stop him, but instead watched as he emerged a moment later, scalpels no doubt tucked in his pocket, one in his hand.

It looked cartoonishly small in his giant hand, but I knew, and not just from today’s experience, that that scalpel was lethal.

Maybe even more so in his hands.

“Well, Dr. Albert, can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but—”

“Wait!”

He had taken a step but stopped.

I approached him, my eyes not leaving his.

“What are you doing, and where are you going?”

“I don’t know if you believe in God. I don’t know if I do either, but something opened the doors of that cell, and that’s not a chance I’m passing up.”

“You don’t want to do that, Mr. Crowe,” I said, making a point to add the “Mr.” this time.

“And why is that, Dr. Albert?”

“If you try to leave, that’s escape. That will only add more years to your sentence,” I said.

“If they find me,” he responded.

“And they will.”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m gonna take my chances.”

He went to move again, and, acting on impulse, I stepped in front of him.

“What about me?”

His gaze roamed over my face, his eyes completely unreadable before he said, “What about you?”

“You can’t just leave me here.”

“Oh, I can, and I’m going to.”

The ice in his voice sent a chill through me, but I refused to react to that and instead pressed on.

“You know what’s going happen to me,” I said, a statement and not a question.

He didn’t respond, didn’t really move, but I saw a flash of something in his eyes, something that told me he knew exactly what was going to happen to me.

“Be smart. Be fast. You might make it out.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. I wouldn’t make it five feet before…”

I trailed off and noticed that he was looking at my face again. I stared back at him, hoping for something, praying for it.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. That I was praying for a chance to cast my lot with him said more about my predicament than I ever could. But despite that, being stupid and headstrong wouldn’t help me now.

I was in deep, deep trouble, and he was my only lifeline.

I wouldn’t let it—him—go.

“Good luck, Dr. Albert,” he said after a long moment.

My heart dropped and I stared at him, not bothering to hide my disappointment.

“I thought you’d say that,” I whispered.

I moved before he could react, moving faster than I ever had before to click one metal bracelet around his wrist and the other around my own.

“What the fuck?”

He glared at me, that chill I’d felt moments ago intensifying. The moment stretched, but after a breath, I broke it by giving him a half smile.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked, my eyes not leaving his.