Robin Cook - Host

“Where, exactly?” Michael asked. He went up on his tiptoes, his eyes jumping from face to face, searching for a familiar one.

“I lost him,” Lynn said. She, too, was straining to see better.

“Are you sure you saw him?” Michael asked. “Or might it have been your imagination?”

“I saw him!” Lynn snapped angrily.

“Okay, keep it cool, girl.”

“I’m going out there,” Lynn announced with determination. The cage had a door made of the same wire mesh as the rest of the structure. It was secured with a normal throw bolt. Lynn gave it a twist. The door opened a crack.

Michael grabbed the door to keep it from opening more than a few inches. Several of the patients bumped into it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, trying to be calm yet sound forceful.

“I don’t care what you think,” Lynn said. “I’m going out there and find him.”

“And do what?” Michael demanded. “Seeing him in here is going to be worse than seeing him in one of those damn cylinders, which would have been bad enough. Don’t do this to yourself! Be smart!”

Lynn pushed on the door. Michael kept ahold of it. It was a bit of a tug-of-war. Another patient bumped into it and then veered off like the others but not before hitting up against Michael’s fingers. By reflex of having been unexpectedly touched by one of the ghoulish ambulating inmates, Michael let go of the door. Before he could reach out and grab it again, Lynn had it open enough to squeeze out onto the main floor of the room.

“Shit, Lynn!” Michael yelled after her. “Get your ass back here! You’re acting crazy, girl! Fucking A,” he fumed under his breath. He pulled the door back into its jamb as another patient careened into it. It clicked shut. Michael went back up on his tiptoes. He had already lost sight of Lynn in the jerkily roiling mob. For a brief moment he debated what to do, wondering if he should just wait her out or go after her. It wasn’t as if he thought she could get hurt except emotionally. What he really wanted to do was get the hell out of the Shapiro.

Michael’s momentary torment was suddenly interrupted by the sounds of footfalls and voices in the hallway. He leaned back out through the open door into the corridor and shot a quick glance back up the way they had come. Approaching at a jog was a bevy of uniformed and armed hospital security people.

By reflex, Michael leaned back into the cage and hit the electronic door closer. On the outside was a thumbprint-activated touch pad, but on the inside there was a normal one. The door activated and slid closed, but before it could close completely, a hand shot in and halted it. Michael lifted a foot and gave the intruding fingers a significant kick. With an audible cry of pain, the fingers disappeared and the door sealed shut with a thud.

Faced with this new situation, Michael quickly ended his debate about what to do. He assumed the door to the hallway would not be a significant impediment to those out in the hall. Without further hesitation he opened the wire door and started in the general direction Lynn had gone. Within seconds he was completely surrounded by ambulating patients in various states of coma.

As Michael dodged the erratically plodding people, he experienced a weird déjà vu from having been a high school and college running back. Since he was plainly more eager than they to move quickly and cover ground in a specific direction, he bumped into a few with more force than he would have liked. To his astonishment, none of the patients fell down, a fact that impressed him. He guessed that the computer programs that were directing their walking were able to deal rapidly and appropriately with sudden changes in feedback information and recover enough to keep the patients on their feet.

After progressing twenty or thirty feet from the cage, Michael slowed and stopped, again going up on tiptoes. He had thought it would be relatively easy to locate Lynn since he was looking for the only person in the crowd with clothes, and in white, no less. But there were just so many people. The good side, he thought, was that it was going to be equally hard for the security guys to find them.

All at once Michael caught a momentary glimpse of Lynn’s white hat. Quickly moving in that direction, he came up behind her. She had found Carl and put her arms around him in a hugging embrace. Of course Carl wasn’t able to respond in kind. His arms were limp at his side, his face a tabula rasa, and his legs were continuing their walking motions even though Lynn was holding him in place.

Michael went behind Carl so that he could look into Lynn’s face. She had her eyes closed.

“We’ve been discovered!” Michael said to her. He shook her arm to break her trance.

Lynn’s eyes popped open.

“A bunch of hospital security appeared out in the hall,” Michael said anxiously. “Luckily I got the door closed before they could come in, but they are probably in now.”

Lynn nodded understanding, her face reflecting the same panic Michael was experiencing. She let go of Carl, and like a wind-up toy, he immediately veered off aimlessly.

“There is another entrance at the opposite end of the room,” Lynn cried.

“I’m sure that is what they expect,” Michael said. “They will catch us for sure. We have to do something unexpected.”

Despite the ambient noise from the grapplers and the conveyor systems, they could hear the unmistakable sound of the door to the cage being thrown open, clanging against the cage’s wall. Their pursuers were coming into the recreation room.

Both looked up at the grapplers, which were continuing their ceaseless operation. “No, that’s not going to work,” Lynn said. She sensed Michael had also briefly wondered if they could somehow use the grapplers to get out. “But maybe the conveyors.”

The duo had been aware that the grapplers were depositing and bringing back people from beyond an eight-foot-high barrier on either side of the room. Without even discussing the issue, they started off toward the right side. Lynn got behind Michael and held on to him as he forced his way through the crowd. Behind them they were aware of a major disturbance and assumed the security people were trying to force their way in their direction through the wandering, blank-faced patients.

Hoping they had an advantage of being only two and working in tandem, Michael and Lynn reached the barrier wall that ran along the right side of the room. Sensing the security people were closing in on them, they searched frantically for a door. When they found one, they discovered it had no electrical lever on the wall to open it, apparently for fear the patients would bump into it. A quick inspection revealed there was a handhold depression on the door itself. Lynn put her fingers into it and pulled. The door slid open with relative ease.

Shoving patients away to keep them from following, Lynn and Michael quickly stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind them. As they had assumed, they found themselves in the terminus for the conveyor systems for Clusters 4-B, 5-B, and 6-B. Each was conveniently labeled. Lined up like duckpins were three lines of patients waiting to be either returned to their respective cylinders or lifted and placed out in the recreation space. As in the cluster room they had visited, the handling of the patients was done by robotic machinery. The ambient noise from the conveyor systems was significantly louder than on the recreation-room floor.

“If this is going to work, we should try the conveyor belt for Cluster 5-B,” Lynn shouted over the din of the machinery. “We’ll be on the same floor as the exit door.”

Michael flashed a thumbs-up. As quickly as possible, they worked their way around the crowd of patients who were lined up, waiting to be sent back to their respective cylinders. In contrast to the other patients out on the floor, these patients were standing motionless, a feat as difficult from a programming perspective as making them walk.