Will Hill - Battle Lines

Ben slowed the car as they approached the outer fence. The tall metal mesh, easily seven metres high, topped with razor wire and electrified along its entire length, marked the edge of the exclusion zone that surrounded the hospital; inside it, tall brick walls, security patrols, deadlock doors and barred windows were designed to make sure that no inmate got anywhere near the fence. If they did, there was a sharp, unpleasant shock waiting for them.

The gate in the middle of the fence was standing open.

It ran on wheels, dividing in the middle, powered by an automated system operated from the security control room. There was a small box beside the gate containing a telephone, but it was rarely needed; very few people arrived at Broadmoor unannounced.

Ben pointed the Range Rover between the open gates and drove slowly forward.

“I don’t like this,” said Charlie Walsh. “We should go back. Let’s let the police deal with it.”

“We’re here now,” said Ben. “We might as well take a look.”

Beyond the electrical fence the road rose slightly to the main entrance of the hospital. The gatehouse resembled a medieval keep: two towers flanking a vast black gate, above which was set a severe-looking clock, fashioned in black and gold. The outer buildings of the hospital extended away from the gatehouse on both sides, merging into the looming ward buildings and the towering inner wall. The gatehouse gave the impression of being impregnable.

Unless the gate was open, as it was now.

Ben drove slowly through it, unease crawling in his stomach. The gates to Broadmoor were never open, and even if there had been a malfunction in the electric fence, they should never have been able to get this close to the gatehouse without being intercepted. That both gates should be standing open was unthinkable. And Ben noticed something else. He pressed the button on the door handle that lowered his window, felt the mild night air flood into the car, and listened.

The siren screamed into the car, rising and falling. But beyond it, in the gaps, there was no sound.

The hospital was usually a hive of activity and noise, even this early in the morning. There should have been the sounds of footsteps, the barking of the security guards’ dogs, the chatter of the nightshift employees.

But there was nothing.

“What are you listening to?” shouted Charlie Walsh, making himself heard over the alarm. “What can you hear?”

“Nothing,” shouted Ben. “Nothing at all.”

He wound the window back up and gently pressed the accelerator. The big car crept through the gate; beyond it were two small guard posts, plastic boxes like the kind that stand at the entrance to toll roads. He peered into the one on his side as the car rolled slowly past. It was empty. There was no sign of movement, although there was a dark shape on the rear wall, like a tin of paint had been thrown against it.

“What about your side?” he asked. “Anyone there?”

“No one,” replied Charlie and, for the first time, Ben heard the fear in his neighbour’s voice. “There’s no one here, Ben. Where the hell are they all?”

“I don’t know.”

They drove silently into the courtyard beyond the gatehouse. Modern administrative units stood on either side, but rising in front of them was the original Broadmoor building, a towering, imposing structure of dark orange bricks. There was a wide set of steps leading up to an ornate front door, and it was on these steps that Ben saw something out of place.

He stamped on the brakes of the Range Rover, throwing Charlie Walsh forward against his seat belt, causing him to yell out in alarm.

“What the hell—”

“Quiet,” interrupted Ben. He flicked the car’s headlights to full beam, illuminating the courtyard.

Lying on the stone steps was a man wearing a white hospital gown, much of which was soaked crimson.

“Oh God,” whispered Charlie. “Oh God, Ben, I don’t want to be here any more. Let’s get out of here.”

Ben didn’t reply. He was leaning towards the windscreen, craning his neck upwards, awfully sure of what he was going to see. He heard his muscles creak, then saw it.

On the fourth floor, directly above where the man was lying, one of the windows was open to the night, its reinforced glass missing.

“He jumped,” whispered Ben. “You can see the broken window. He jumped out.”

Walsh leant forward, but his shoulders and neck were too wide to see where Ben was pointing. He slumped back in his seat, breathing hard.

“He’s dead, Ben,” he said, his voice wavering. “There’s nothing we can do for him. We go home and we call the police and they can send an ambulance up here. Please, Ben, let’s go. Please.”

“Why is he just lying there?” wondered Ben aloud. “Why didn’t anyone try to help him? Where are all the nurses?”

“I don’t know!” screeched Charlie. “I want to go home, Ben, I want to go right now!”

Ben looked at his neighbour. The man appeared to be on the verge of a panic attack, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and bulging. And he was right, there was nothing they could do for the man: the puddle of blood beneath him was shockingly large. But everything about the hospital felt wrong to Ben. It wasn’t just the open gates; it was too quiet, too empty, and now one of its patients was lying dead in the courtyard and no one seemed to have even noticed.

He unfastened his seat belt, reached out, and opened the door beside him.

Charlie let out a yelp. “What are you doing?” he shouted, over the deafening siren.

Ben ignored him. He stepped out of the car in something close to a trance, his mind racing with what he was seeing all around him, turning it over and over like a puzzle whose solution was dancing just out of reach. Distantly, he heard the passenger door open and Charlie Walsh step nervously on to the cobblestones.

“Get back in the car, Ben,” he yelled. “Please.”

The pleading in the man’s voice brought Ben to his senses and he shook his head, as if to clear it.

“OK,” he shouted, and saw Charlie Walsh’s face crumple with relief. “Sorry, mate. Let’s go.”

He climbed back into the driver’s seat and was pulling the door shut when the dead body stood up and looked at them.

It was a man in his late twenties or early thirties. His gown looked as though it had been dipped in dark red paint, and his left arm was pointing away from his body at an unnatural angle, but his face wore a wide, hungry smile and his eyes glowed the colour of lava.

Charlie Walsh let out a high, trembling scream, and pressed his hands against the dashboard as though trying to push himself backwards, away from the nightmare thing before him. Ben just stared, his eyes bulging, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Then the blood-soaked figure ran forward, leapt on to the bonnet of the Range Rover, and smashed its fist through the glass of the windscreen.

Ben’s paralysis broke as Walsh screamed again. The noise of the siren burst into the car through the broken windscreen, deafening them both. The man with the red eyes shoved his arm through the glass, tearing his skin to ribbons; blood splashed into the air as the man’s fingers slid across Ben’s throat, then lunged for Walsh’s face. The man was yelling so loudly that he was audible over the din of the alarm, shouting words that were unintelligible to Ben’s ears, his mouth working furiously, spit and blood pattering down on to the glass as he fought to reach the two men inside the car.

Then his grasping, searching fingers closed on Charlie Walsh’s lower lip. With a primal roar, the crimson, glowing monstrosity tore it from the man’s face with a sound like ripping paper. Blood burst from the wound, spraying on to the dashboard and windscreen, and Walsh’s screams reached a terrible new pitch.