This Would Be Paradise (Book 3)

Chapter 4

I spent the whole night plagued with nightmares. I would open my eyes and see a dead woman hanging from the ceiling fan, then I would wake up realizing it was just a dream. I rolled onto my side and curled up into a ball willing myself to get back to sleep despite the nightmares. But they kept coming. Sometimes it would look like she was mouthing words to me, but I couldn't make them out. The last time, however, it was clear. She had screamed, "Run!"

At that, I jumped out of bed, deciding that sleep was not going to happen. I started to pace until the lights in the hallway were turned on, shining into our room through the tiny window. It must've been time to move us to the common room. It was a lot of effort to keep moving people back and forth from their cells to the cafeteria, but like Mac had said, people needed to be right in their minds and socializing was a big part of that. Even real prisons knew that.

I watched people go by in twos with the guards right behind them back to the cafeteria. After counting sixteen people, the movement stopped.

"Why aren't they taking me?" I muttered.

"Looks like you're gettin' the full-on welcome treatment, kid," the lady spoke up from her bed.

"Don't move, don't breathe, and the dead won't bother you. But a word of advice, let 'em and you'll be released faster."

I refused to look at her, so I fiddled with the door frame, picking at a paint chip. "What the hell does that mean?"

The locking mechanism to our door sounded and Amelia's face appeared in the window.

"You're 'bout to find out. Good luck," was all she said by way of explanation.

"Do I need to remind you to not try anything again?" Amelia asked once the door opened, her face pinched tight causing the glasses to ride up her nose.

She had a guard on either side of her. I didn't answer.

"Well, come on. You too, Rose."

Amelia looked past me to my roommate. She must've been the lady Leo was talking about. He could've warned me she was a joy to be around. Rose sat up and sauntered over to us. Her previously pristine white shirt was now as stained as my own. Blood soaked through from the bulge on her ribs. So she was injured pretty bad.

Amelia's eye's honed in on the blotch. "Come on, Rose. Let's treat that."

"How kind of you," Rose said, her voice sarcastic.

Amelia shoved one hand into her lab coat pocket and used the other to grab Rose's arm. Amelia steered her down the hall and before they disappeared into one of the rooms she turned back.

"Take Bailey to examination room 'F'."

The guards pulled me from my room and steered me down the hallway, but just before we reached the cafeteria, they had us hang a left down another corridor. The further we went, the quieter everything became. The noise level was low in the hospital, but this was deathly silent. Not even the florescent lights buzzed overhead. A nearly peed myself when something rammed up against one of the locked doors as we passed. An infected was snarling and banging from the other side, spittle coating the minuscule rectangular window as it got worked up. He was missing his front teeth like a little kid.

"Keep moving," one of the guards said while giving me a little shove.

I started walking again, feeling more and more like a prisoner on death row. Every step brought me closer to some unknown examination room. My mind ran through all the stories I'd heard over the last twenty-fours and my heart sped up with each one. Examination room 'F' didn't sound like a fun place to be.