Status: Redo of my old story

Silence Falls

Chapter 127: Gone?

Jack’s jaw dropped at what his patient, Bert, said. His mind staggered trying to make sense of it. This kid was really asking him to break them out of the Psychiatric Hospital! And he was dead serious about it too. Jack had no idea why he wasn’t laughing his request off and walking out the door right now. Instead, he stood there sparring against the urgency to abet them. “What!? No, I can’t! Where the hell would you even go anyway? Out in the swamps where the soldiers are just waiting to snipe you the second you walk into their crosshairs? Is that where you wanna end up?”

“If not that then fucking demote us back to the Medical Facility! Tell everyone we’re not a danger anymore and that we won’t escape ever again!” Bert blurted out, becoming desperate.

“No, I can’t do that either! That can’t be an option!” Jack rebuked, shooting down that choice rapidly.

“Why the fuck not?” Bert demanded to know since he found it ideally sensible.

“Because the Medical Facility is GONE!” Jack publicized, watching their brows furrowed in bewilderment.

“What do you mean it’s gone?” Cris repeated, not fathoming what Jack was implying.

Jack sighed and ran his weary hand through his glossy black hair. “I mean the place has been burned down to nothing. We don’t know how it happened but the place detonated from the inside out an hour after the patients broke out! This hospital got overfilled so damn fast with you guys that the town was forced to put a bullet in the heads of our elderly patients in the parking lot outback to make room. Their quick deaths were provided to them by the government's firing squad while the rest of the soldiers apprehended the remaining escapees in the swamps. The second time we got overfilled again, the soldiers were ordered to extinguish the rest still hiding in the swamps.” Jack paused for a second as he reflected further. “They had a whole lotta fun with it too. I remember one of them comparing their little ‘adventure’ to some old video game about shooting ducks that flew out of the long grass, or something like that.”

The others were utterly appalled. Those soldiers were even more messed up than they were! They were the psychos that deserved to be locked up in the swamps, not them! Reverting his focus back to the circumstances of the Medical Facility, Bert spoke up. “We had no idea that the Facility was blasted after we left and I swear we had nothing to do with it either. Look, we just wanted to get out and fast, that was it! Our mission was never to blow anything up! We just wanted our freedom back, man!”

Jack could understand that and so he couldn’t fault them for it. He’d feel the same way if he was in their shoes. But still, that didn’t mean he had to keep speaking with them so blatantly. “It turns out you guys were much safer there than you are here, that’s for fucking sure. To this day they still can’t seem to figure out the origin of the explosion. From what we’ve been told, they don’t think it was incited by the patients because they’re either too heavily medicated to figure it out or braindead.”

Cris frowned. “But we’re nothing like those patients, in fact, we’re the complete opposite. Does that make us the culprits that started the blast? Because we have brains still intact to get the job done?”

Jack shrugged. “It'd be more believable than accepting that the explosion just started out of nowhere.”

“We didn't start anything...but I’ll admit that strange happenings have been following us.” Bert divulged, ignoring the warning looks Bam and Cris were directing at him.

“What do you mean by strange happenings?” Jack asked him. He was starting to get the feeling that there was more to this story than what little was recorded on the file.

“I-I don’t think you’re gonna believe what I'm going to tell you, Jack, but I swear this shit seriously happened to us.” Bert paused to scratch the back of his head. “On the day that we were supposed to break out of the Medical Facility, I was told that the staff had enhanced their security. That decision alone eradicated our entire plan since it had been fabricated when they had their old technology. I couldn’t get myself to believe it. What were the odds that they would upgrade everything on the day we were supposed to escape? I was BEYOND pissed! I threw in the towel, I was done!”

“Bam and I were in our rooms when our friend Demitria came running in to tell us that Alexis and Onika were being taken to solitary confinement. I knew deep down that they wouldn’t make it, so I stepped in and they took me instead.” Cris recalled while fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

“You sacrificed yourself for them?” Jack queried, a bit surprised to hear that.

“Of course, they’re my friends!” Cris replied passionately.

Bert proceeded onward. “And when I heard that happened, I knew something had to be done. So I said fuck it. I was going to get us all out without a plan right then and there or die trying!”

Jack held up his finger to halt him. “Whoa, hold on. When do these strange happenings start, exactly?”

“Jesus Christ, there were so fucking many of them.” Bam grumbled to himself as he laid back on his bed.

“One of the most prominent ones that I can think of might pertain to the source of the fire that started in the cafeteria. At that time, we had managed to survive solitary confinement when the elevator opened to a group of security guards on patrol in the cafeteria. We just froze up right where we were. They saw us and came charging. We were petrified, and knew we were gonna die on the spot. But then out of nowhere the power went out and suddenly the guards burst into flames!” Cris detailed.

“And when he’s saying burst into flames, he means it! It was like they were soaked in something flammable as fuck and then a match was flicked onto them. They ignited like nothing I’ve ever seen!” Bam added on, standing up to dramatize the story with rapid hand motions.

Jack merely sat there, looking between the two kids and then to the much saner Bert, doubting that this story was true. But Bert nodded, telling him what he didn’t want to believe to be real. “So you’re saying these men that randomly burst into flames somehow ignited the whole Facility?” Jack interrogated.

Simultaneously, they nodded. “Unfortunately, we do.”

“Okaaaay. Were there any more of these strange happenings going on?” Jack humored with a smile.

“Are you kidding me, they’re tons of them!” Bam exclaimed in frustration, not catching on that their Orderly didn't believe them.

“But that can wait at a later time. Right now, I have to ask you for a favor, Jack.” Bert cut in. “I need you to go to the women’s wards and check to see if our friends over there are okay?”

“Wait, you want me to do what for you?” Jack inquired, blinking skeptically at him.

Bert rolled his eyes and sighed. “Look, it’s not like I’m asking you to take me outside for a walk among the daisies, man? You just gotta find Otep and tell her we’re okay. Please, Jack. Just this one thing.”