Status: Redo of my old story

Silence Falls

Chapter 48: They're Mannequins

After Bam had charged up the ladder erected into the side of elevator shaft that led up to the immovable elevator box, everyone else scaled up soon after on that same rusty, but oddly strappy ladder in hopes of reaching the first floor safely. Barking orders from below, both Otep and Bam took turns verbally overseeing their companions past the obstructed elevator and up to the top of it. One by one, they released the hatch on the top and facilitated down as faintly as they could into the elevator box. Once there, everyone took a breather before composing themselves to face the elevator doors that led to the first floor which would technically mean they made it to the surface.

“Oh god, I never thought I'd see these fucking doors again.” Alexis breathed behind her hands in a voice heavy with emotions. Hermanni drifted his eyes to her, sensing her pain. Her brown eyes twinkled with tears at the sight of the doors that had barred behind her years ago, detaining her here for what was meant to be her whole life, and yet here she was, ready to run right back out of it, and for good this time. “I can hardly believe I'm looking at it right now.”

“Fuck me, man.” Bert chuckled, a magnificent smile on his face as he rushed both hands through his long dark hair. “I've been dreaming every night of these same fucking doors for years. This is literally a dream come true for us.”

“I've had nightmares about these doors.” Otep sputtered, her face slacking any form of emotion.

“Nightmares?” Bert asked her suspiciously. “Why nightmares? These are the doors to our freedom!”

Otep afforded Bert a glance. “Because of what's on the other side of those doors.”

She had a good point. Otep may not have been around civilization for years now...hell, even when she was she had difficulty being one of them, and not the abused introvert standing on the outside looking in that she was who also took comfort in contemplating the mishaps in other's impeccable lives. But behind these doors lived a world she used to reside in. Now, everything has changed. Time has passed and the world most likely has evolved since her incarceration. Will it be embracing to any one of them when they entered?

“Whatever the fuck is on the other side don't mean shit to me, we have to get out of here!” Bam griped, separating Otep from her thoughts. “I don't know about you guys, but I don't wanna be sitting here for the next 50 years out of fear much less the next 10 seconds!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bert uttered, before motioning to Connor to take one side of the door and he'd take the other. They each pulled as hard as they could, and quicker than the other elevator doors before this one, it creaked open. The group slowly tiptoed out of the elevator, briefly blinded by the sun shining through the windows as they infiltrated the facility above ground they'd only observed beneath a black bag in passing glance. It was enough to take their breaths away for a minute. The facility looked just as amiable and usable as it ever did before and was the complete reverse of it's underground opposite. But unlike that one, this one contained a secret. A forgery built on top of the truth below.

“Now you see, if they would've just put us up here in this place then maybe things wouldn't have had to ended up murdered, engulfed in flames, or exploded just for us to get out from that subterranean penitentiary. Shit, we probably would've never tried to break out in the first damn place.” Onika protested, sweeping her hand across the tidy comfortable surroundings. Hermmani softly smiled to himself at her sassy character.

“I couldn't agree more. Why didn't they just use this facility to keep us in? I'd take this whole harmonious rehab getaway any day over the murky horror movie dungeon we lived in below all these years.” Cris coincided.

“Wait you guys, I think there are other patients in that room!” Natasha gasped, pointing out one of the accessible rooms closest to their end of the hall. Hermanni's eyes followed her finger to the same area. The others rapidly congregated close to steal a peek into that room, and then the next two beside them, and undoubtedly identified patients either deeply snoozing on their sides, calmly sitting in a chair as they stared out the window outside, or watching TV, all with their backs to them. Questioningly, the young kids shared perplexing glimpses among each other.

“So, all of this time they already had people up here too as well as down below?” Bert whispered to himself, confident that despite his low volume the others still managed to hear him. “I don't fucking get it! Why throw us away underground, and keep these people up here? How did they decide who remains above ground and who moves below ground?”

“That's because these aren't people. They're mannequins.” Otep clarified before making her way down the hall, leaving these so called 'patients' behind. “Come on, this is just another waste of our time.”

Bert caught up with her soon, and snagged her by her arm lightly to halt her. He had no know what she was on about. “Whoa, wait a minute, Otep! What are you talking about that they're mannequins? And how do you know?”

“When they brought me in I put up a fight unlike you. You tried to reason with these people, and I already knew that you couldn't win, so I tried to fight them. I manage to get away for only a few seconds and locked myself into one of these rooms only to discover the woman inside was nothing, but a lifeless mannequin on exhibit to hoodwink others that she was real.” Otep divulged as the others listened in on her previous finding.

“Goddamnit, now I'm even more confused than before!” Bert cursed in annoyance. Just when he was tackling to make sense of these conundrums, another one flourished soon after. “Who exactly were they planning to dupe with a bunch of mannequins?”

“Like she said, it's probably for looks for the people on the outside looking in. I mean, if you knew you were going to be sealed away in a subterranean facility you'd typically flip out right? I mean anything underground doesn't exactly envelop you into a pleasant cloak of solace and security. But if one were brought to a place like this, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad.” Connor contemplated from behind the short girls, shrugging his broad shoulders.

Cris nodded in understanding. “Yeah, I can see less defiance from future patients in a place like this compared to underground. It's very charming up here.”

“It wasn't fucking charming when they brought me here! I mean I saw only shadows with the bag over my head, but still. If they wanted to bring me to a serene place like this than why did they put a bag over my head to begin with and entomb me underground with the rest of you? That only made me flip out even more!” Bam disputed, renewing his arrest and very soon after lock up.

“I guess they might have pegged you for a fighter, Bam, and didn't want to jeopardize accepting hostility to this facility, and so they took you down below instead?” Demitria threw out, turning her head left and right so she can peruse each room while Hermanni's eyes skimmed her up and down from a distant. “But then again, that can't be said for the rest of us that didn't resist arrest...”

“HEY! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

Demitria and the others snapped their heads down the hall and identified a group of average-sized orderlies coming their way. Soon, both parties stood before each other, sizing every single member up. There was about to be another scuffle coming, an orderly pretty much substantiated it. “How did you sinners get up here?”

Otep and Cris receded back a few steps with the goal to be used as covert back ups when the brawl went down. But before then, Cris speedily steered the other girls behind him and hastily into the nearest patient room, quietly directing them. “Lock the doors and don't open them until I come for you!”

Bert, Bam, and Connor got as ready as best as they could when the orderlies surged forward to assault them. Connor dived behind his target, then rapidly incapacitated him by he draping his arm around his neck, and sinking his teeth into the orderly's neck with the intention of ripping out his artery, or as least make him bleed to death. Bam stampeded right back at his orderly, getting tackled down in the process, but managing to veer in more brisk jabs than the orderly could even muster to keep up with. Bert crouched low as one orderly took a swing at him, and then flipped him over onto his back by seizing his arm and turning around with him to heave him up and over his back. Cris used all his might to clobber the hell out of the orderly coming up behind Bam with a cane he located, and Otep bounded onto a man's back who was after Connor and tried to suffocate him with a piece of cord she ripped out of a tall lamp near the doorway of a patient's room. Bert swiftly kicked the man on the ground directly in his face, knocking him out instantly. Connor mopped his mouth clean of blood after hurling the man onto the floor to bleed out from his neck. He turned around to see that there wasn't a menace no longer in sight.

“Is that it?” Bert challenged, catching his breath along with the others.

Bam and Cris peered down each hallway and saw nothing. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Cris verified it to be so as he tapped on the locked door the girls sheltered behind. “Seems like we're clear, boss.”

“That's awfully strange. You'd think there would be more of them up here as there are down there...” Otep contemplated aloud as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Then again perhaps they don't need as much surveillance against an army of mannequins.”

“Or maybe it's some religious holiday, or something. We have been residing underground for ages now, it's not like we'd know if they came up with a new holiday since then right?” Connor proposed with a shrug, having ousted his bloody shirt with one of the orderlies. He didn't want to make any of them uncomfortable that he just took out a chunk of a man's neck not only to prevail in battle, but also because he missed the taste of blood and the way it felt to sink his teeth into muscle again. Fortunately for him, no one seemed to have detected a thing.

Everyone all nod in compliance that they had indeed been gone from the surface world and it's society for a long time. All they had below ground was time, tons and tons of it. What they didn't have were dates, months or years to keep record of on a calendar. There was no exact length of time that could verify that they'd been down there for years or not, there was just a strong faith that they were.