Sato stepped through the doorway, trying not to show his eagerness too much. “Nice to meet you, uh, Klink.” Though toasty wasn’t exactly the word Sato would use to describe the air inside, it sure beat the frigid bite of the outside.
Klink walked down the long, dark tunnel; Sato followed, listening, observing.
“Can’t say as I’ve ever had a stranger knock on that door before,” Klink said. “Only when the Cleaners come back after droppin’ some Loons, that’s all. Quite nice to have a visitor after all these years.”
“They throw crazy people off that cliff down there?” Sato asked. “When they do something bad or what?”
“If they’ve done somethin’ bad, or grown too old, or if they just need more room—whatever tickles them Cleaners’ fancy. They ain’t too particular when it comes to shovin’ off the Loons, ya know.”
They reached the end of the hallway where a small opening led through the stone to a sparsely decorated room: a floor rug, a chair, a filthy mattress. An old kerosene lamp flickered as it burned, somehow making the pathetic place look welcoming.
“Spend most of my days here,” Klink said, looking around with his hands on his hips, proud of his homestead. “Beats the socks off where I used to live, that’s for sure. If anyone ever offers ya to live in a cave full of flying rats, I recommend you say no thanks and move right along.”
“I’ll remember that,” Sato half-mumbled.
“Want to sit a spell? Take a blink or two?”
Sato shook his head. “No, I feel much better now that we’re inside. Could you take me to where they keep the inmates locked up? Maybe where they have the more recent ones?”
“Right, come on then,” Klink said, moving along the hall again. They reached a metal grid door, which he slid open, a horrible screech piercing Sato’s ears. On the other side, a boxy elevator awaited.
“This lift will take you all the way down to the Loons,” Klink said as he gestured for Sato to enter. “Down ya go, then.”
Sato, fighting his uneasiness, stepped inside and turned to face Klink just as the man slid the grid door shut. His pale eyes peeked through the slits.
“Best stay on your toes,” Klink said.
“What do you mean?” Sato replied.
Klink reached through a large space in the door—mangled and jagged like it had been ripped out with teeth—and slammed a lever inside the lift toward the floor. The elevator lurched and slowly started going down, the squeaks and squeals of chains and pulleys filling the air.
“Didn’t you know?” As Klink’s body seemed to move upward, he called down to Sato just before he was out of sight. “Ent no one locked up ’round here!”
The trip down the dark elevator shaft was long and cold—especially in light of Klink’s pronouncement that the crazies weren’t locked up at all. Sato’s stomach turned queasy from the jostling and bumping of the steel cage. He saw nothing outside the mesh of metal but black stone, heard nothing but the screech of the lift’s mechanics. Impossibly, the seconds stretched into minutes, and he thought Klink surely must have sent him to the middle of the Earth.
Without any hint of slowing down, the elevator jolted to a stop, making Sato’s knees buckle. He sprawled across the cold mesh floor, biting his tongue when his chin slammed into the hard surface. He quickly pushed himself back to his feet, rubbing his jaw as he stepped forward to look through the lift door.
Another dimly lit carved passageway led into the distance, no sign of anyone nearby. Having expected someone to greet him—crazy or not—he warily reached out to test the sliding door. It pushed aside easily, groaning as Sato slammed the metal mesh all the way open. The sound of the squeal echoed off the stone walls, and any doubt of his arrival was now wiped away. But still, no one came.
He stepped out of the lift, his eyes focused along the dark tunnel since that seemed to be the only place from which someone could appear. He took another step. Another.
And then he heard a scream.
It started low, an eerie moan that rose in pitch, escalating quickly on the creepy scale to a perfect ten. Sato stopped moving to listen, the hairs on his neck stiff as arrows. The sound was the wail of a lost child mixed with the terrified squeal of an animal in the butchering house. The effect of it bouncing off the walls made it seem like it was coming from every direction at once. Sato felt like getting back into the steel cage of the lift and going back up to safety.
The sound stopped, slicing silent as quickly as if someone had turned off a loud television. Shouts rang out, several voices yelling something incomprehensible—but Sato could clearly hear the anger and the lunacy in the voices. Sato’s wariness turned into downright terror.
He closed his eyes, breathed, worked to calm himself. His heartbeat slowed; the blood in his veins stopped acting like it was trying to find a way to escape. After a full minute, he opened his eyes and took off his backpack. He rummaged around its contents until he found the packet containing the blood sample kit. There were three syringes in case one of them broke, each with a very long and nasty-looking needle covered with a plastic sheath to prevent unwanted pokes. He’d never been fond of shots, and the sight of the needles made him thankful he’d not be the one getting stuck.
Sato set the syringes on the stone floor, then looked back at the elevator, checking to make sure he knew how it worked. Just inside the cage, the lever Klink had used jutted out of a dented box of rusty steel, slanted toward the ground.
Sato entered the elevator, gripped the lever with both hands, and lifted; he groaned and felt blood rush to his face until the lever finally gave way and snapped up. With a loud clunk the elevator started moving upward. Sato quickly slammed the switch back down. The steel cage jolted to the floor with a metallic boom.
Some escape route, he thought.
He stepped out of the elevator, slung the backpack onto his shoulders, then very carefully put two of the syringes in his left jeans pocket, making sure not to push down on them. The other he held in his right hand, gripped like a dagger, and removed the protective plastic covering. Having no idea what he was about to get into, he had to be ready for quick action. Stab, extract, run, he thought.
His only problem—other than perhaps being mauled to death by a bunch of crazy people—was knowing which of the asylum inmates were infected with Chu’s mysterious disease and which were simply crazy. They probably wouldn’t be too keen on chitchatting about it.