I realized what was wrong with the people lying in the
beds. They were fully grown men after all, but every
last one of them had had their arms and legs removed.
Clear plastic intravenous tubes were stuck in some of
their shoulder stumps, chests, or in the side of their
heads, and a dark fluid ran into several of the mutilated
men from small machines sitting on the floor beside
some of the beds.
What happened to these poor people?
I noticed the industrial-sized refrigerator with the
sliding glass doors on the front of it, and the stacks of
small liquid-filled bags separated into sections with la¬
bels like A NEG or O POS. Then I grasped the true
horror of what was happening here in this secret room.
The machines on the floor and the IV tubes weren't
giving the limbless men the dark fluids—they were tak¬
ing it.
My ears were ringing, vividly recalling how Dr. Mar¬
shall had said they had a problem keeping up with the
constant need for fresh blood for his experiments.
Sweet mother of God!
This awful room was the solution to the surgeon's
ongoing supply problem. They were his Bleeders: men
kept alive for the sole purpose of being continually
tapped and re-tapped for that most precious of human¬
ity's resources. This wasn't a room full of sick men—it
was Dr. Marshall's blood bank.
C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N
I couldn't move. I tried, but I couldn't. My feet felt like
they were nailed to the floor. I'd seen a lot of weird
things in my life, and I knew humans were capable of
committing copious amounts of cruel and vicious acts,
but I'd never seen anything as nasty as this. This was
cruelty so extreme my mind was short-circuiting, over¬
loaded trying to somehow justify what I was seeing. I
couldn't do it. This wasn't something that could be ra¬
tionalized. The only explanation for this was madness.
Taking a few deep breaths, I forced myself to calm
down. I needed to think, decide what this meant in re¬
gards to my situation, and then figure out what my next
move should be. I was j u s t getting focused, when a
strong, clear, man's voice said, "Hey, mister, you're not
a guard, are you?"
For a second time I nearly screamed, the booming
voice startling me badly, but at least breaking me out of
reverie. N o t having a clue who the voice belonged to, or
where this man was, I darted my head left, then right,
panic swelling inside me because I couldn't find him.
"Stop flapping your head around, boy, and get over
here. Behind you, second bed from the door."
I turned and finally saw him. A tiny little b u m p of
meat hidden under a blanket with his seemingly large
shaven head turned on its side watching me. He looked
wide-awake, alert, and a little tense. Probably had been
watching me for a while, maybe scared at first, wonder¬
ing who I was, and why I was sneaking around in the
middle of the night. Judging from his rough, gravelly
voice—and from the way he'd addressed me as "boy"—I
figured he was an older man, maybe sixty, but from what
was left of his ravaged body, that was only a guess.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked, once I'd walked
over to the foot of his bed.
He was talking too loud, so I hurried to answer him,
more to shut him up than because I wanted to chat. "My
name's Michael Fox," I whispered, "and n o , I'm not a
guard. I'm just a guest, and I'm not here to hurt you, sir,
so quiet down a little, okay?"
"Quiet down?" he spoke in the same loud tone.
"Why? For these veggies, you mean?" sweeping his
eyes around the room. "You don't have to worry about
bothering any of these fellas. Trust me. Their cabooses
are still here, but the rest of the trains left the station a
long time ago, if you catch my drift. The only one who's
somewhat with it is Charlie, the guy snoring his head
off over there, but he fades in and out. The rest, well,
they're in a better place, I hope."
Quieting down a little regardless, perhaps for my
sake, he said, "You can call me Lucas, Mr. Fox. Okay if
"Sure. Make it Mike."
"Fine. N o w that we've been introduced, j u s t what in
blazes are you doing here?"
"Well, I couldn't get my room door to open," I lied,
stumbling to find an explanation that wasn't totally idi¬
otic. "It must be j a m m e d , or the lock might be broken.
It's the middle of the night, and I didn't want to bother
anyone, so I tried my window and noticed—"
"No, no," he interrupted. "I don't give a damn why
you're here in this room. Why are you here, in this
godforsaken hell house?"
Hell house?
"Oh, I'm here to help Dr. Marshall with, ah, one of
his experiments. He's paying m e — "
"Let me guess?" Lucas interrupted again. "A million
dollars, right?"
"Two million, actually. Already been wired into a
bank account in the Cayman Islands. W h a t do you know
about it?"
"Two million? Wow. The stakes sure are going up. And
you can forget the Caymans. You might have thought all
that malarkey with the secretary and fax machines was
real, but it was bullshit, Mike. They play that game with
everyone. W h e n I arrived, must be nearly two years
ago, I was stupid enough to agree to six hundred thou¬
sand. Mind you, that was only for my right hand, Char¬
lie, he was the one who said he'd signed for a million. I
think that was for one of his legs, but I can't remember
for sure now.
"Doesn't matter. N e i t h e r does the money. Doesn't
matter what body part you agree to donate, or for how
much. Hell, Doc Marshall could've promised you two
billion dollars for y o u r toenail, M i k e , you won't see a
dime."
My ears were hearing the words this partial man was
speaking, but I was having a hard time m a k i n g sense of
them. After building up my hopes and dreams for a
better life for my daughter and me, it was difficult let¬
ting myself believe what my heart had been trying to
tell me all along. It was a lie. All of it. Dr. Marshall
never had any intention of paying me for my arm. I had
all the proof I needed lying all around me.
This revelation, although I'd had my suspicions and
this was exactly the evidence I'd gone searching for,
still hit me like a ton of bricks. A major part of me had
desperately wanted this to work out, for something to
finally go my way, j u s t once. I should have known bet¬
ter. I bowed my head, stunned into silence.
"What are you supposed to be giving up?" Lucas
asked.
"My right arm. I'm left-handed, and I figured, I j u s t
figured ... ah fuck! I don't know what I figured."
"Listen to m e , boy. Listen good. Dr. Marshall will
take your right arm, but he won't stop there. He's been
trying this shit for years, and it never works. N o t the
way he wants it to, anyway. The donor parts don't last,
or they don't function right after a few weeks. He prob¬
ably told you he's setting all these records for keeping
body parts alive, but he's bullshitting you. He replaces
the parts with new donors, and pretends it's the same
one. He's crazy, man.
"He's not even a real doctor. N o t anymore. From
what I hear he was once a damn good one, but he lost
his mind around the same time he lost the use of his
legs. Something snapped and he ended up losing his li¬
cense because he was caught doing unethical research.
They nailed his ass to the wall, but he had family money
to fall back on. Eventually he opened this place and
hires all the failed surgeons and discredited nurses he
can round up. T h i n k about ic W h o else would work for
a bastard like h i m ? "
I had no idea. My mind was spinning too fast to
think straight. W h a t a nightmare. Maybe I—
"Don't do it, Mike. Don't you give that crazy man
anything, you hear me? He'll cut you to pieces, boy, just
like he done me. First your arms, then your legs, then
one day when you're of no further use to him, you'll end
up in this room with me. Run away, right now. Run as
far from here as you can, and never come back. Never!"
N o d d i n g my understanding to the old man, I knew it
was time to leave. I'd seen and heard enough. Dr. Mar¬
shall might be a brilliant surgeon, and an incredibly
smart man, but somewhere along the line his obses¬
sions had pushed him over the edge. He wasn't bug-eyed
crazy, j u s t psychotic, a man driven to succeed at any
and all costs. No sane man could justify the crimes he
was committing inside this room. There was no way I
was going through with the operation now. This room¬
ful of Bleeders was more than enough to convince me it
was time to pull out of D o d g e , get as far away from this
crazy place as I could.
And I'm taking my arm with me.
Turning on my heel, I started back toward the open
window, intending to climb down to my room long
enough to quietly gather my stuff, then use the trellis
again to head for the ground and make good my es¬
cape.
"Wait," the old man cried out, sounding panicked
that I was leaving. "You can't leave me here. N o t like
thisV
"I'm sorry Lucas, but there's no way I can take you
with me. I'll be lucky if I make it on my own, never
mind trying to carry—"
"I don't wanna go with you," he whispered, and when
I saw the pleading look in his eyes, I finally understood
what he wanted me to do.
"Oh no! No way, Lucas. I can't do that."
"Sure you can. Use my pillow, it'll only take a m i n
ute. Look, I know you don't know me, or know n o t h i n g
about me, but I used to be a proud man, Mike. That
bastard Marshall stole more than my limbs, he stole my
life, my humanity, my soul. I can't live like this any¬
more. You're my only way out. Please Mike, I'm begging
you."
Son of a bitch. How did I get myself into this mess?
The sad part was, I agreed with him. No man should
have to live like that, existing j u s t to supplement a crazy
man's depraved obsessions. I couldn't imagine what Lu¬
cas's life must be like, having his life fluids drained on a
continuous basis, with no hope of relief until his body
was spent, or his mind snapped like his companions.
He didn't deserve this cruel rate, and I felt a need to help
him. I j u s t wasn't sure I had the strength to go through
with it. Regardless of whether he was giving me his
blessing, mercy-killing this poor man would still be
murder. Wouldn't it?
I walked to the side of Lucas's bed and slowly wiggled
his pillow out from under his shaven head. In doing so,
an IV line that had been cruelly inserted into a vein
above his left ear popped out, spilling fresh blood onto
the white bedsheets. The blood, which appeared black
in the moonlight, startled me but it wasn't gushing
out—merely dripping—so I ignored it, not even both¬
ering to mention it to Lucas. Why bother?
"You sure about this, Lucas?" I asked, hoping with
all my heart he'd changed his mind.
"I've never been so sure of anything in my whole life.
Bless you, Mike. I'm ready."
There were tears in his eyes as I lowered the pillow
down onto his face, but he was smiling and nodding his
head the whole time. I felt like a total bastard, but, at
the same time, I knew I was doing the right thing, giv¬
ing him the peace he deserved. He'd suffered enough.
Never having done anything like this, I wasn't sure
how much pressure I should apply to the pillow. I wanted
to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possi¬
ble. Trusting my instincts, I pressed down until Lucas's
torso began to shake. He was struggling for air, but
without any limbs he wasn't able to put up much of a
fight. I turned my head away, hoping it would be over
soon, unable to watch as his body continued to fight
beneath me.
W i t h everything going on, I failed to realize the
snoring coming from the other side of the room had
stopped. It wasn't until the man Lucas had identified as
Charlie began screaming at the top of his lungs that I
clued in someone was watching everything I was doing.
"Get off him," Charlie screamed, his frightened
voice as high-pitched and ear-shattering as a y o u n g
girl's. "Leave Lucas alone you cocksucker. He's my
only friend."
I tried to talk to him, tried to reason that I wasn't
hurting Lucas and this was what he'd wanted, but Char¬
lie was having none of it. His mind wasn't altogether
there anymore, and all he could see was a man h u r t i n g
the only companion he had left in this world. He kept
screaming, "Leave him alone, leave him alone," beating
his head against his pillow every time he said it.
"Calm down," I yelled, but then I saw the red light
flash on above his bed and understood immediately
that Charlie wasn't as out of it as I'd thought. He hadn't
been thrashing his head against the pillow; he'd been
t r y i n g to activate the call button strapped to his bed,
desperate to get help for his friend. Unaware he'd al¬
ready succeeded, he continued to pound his head in ca¬
dence with his screams until the flashing red light went
solid and a deep angry-sounding voice came through a
small speaker mounted above his bed.
"What's going on in there? Charlie, is that you?
W h a t the hell do you want at this time of night?"
"You gotta help us. Someone's trying to kill Lucas.
Get in here, quick!" Charlie wailed, his voice shrill,
hitching with s
obs, borderline hysterical.
W h o e v e r was listening on the other end didn't
bother replying to Charlie's rant. All I heard was some¬
one curse as he fumbled for his walkie-talkie, keying
the mike four or five times before shouting, "Carl? Are
you there, Carl? Get y o u r ass up t o — "
The red light above Charlie's bed blinked out, dis¬
connecting me from hearing the rest of the message. I
had no trouble imagining every walkie-talkie in the
medical complex beginning to squawk, and every guard
r u n n i n g as fast as they could to get to this room.
Ob shit! This is trouble, Mike. Big, big trouble. Get the
hell out, fast.
I lifted the pillow from Lucas' face, h o p i n g he'd
passed on, but it wasn't meant to be. He was uncon¬
scious, possibly near death's door, but I could clearly
see his chest still rising and falling as his defiant body
labored to breathe. N o t knowing how much time I had
before this r o o m filled with angry guards, I couldn't
risk taking the time to try smothering him again.
"Sorry, Lucas," I whispered in his ear, then quickly
headed for the open window.
Stopping at my room to pick up my stuff was out of
the question now. I'd j u s t take the trellis right to the
ground and make a run for the surrounding woods.
Hopefully I'd be able to outrun anyone they sent after
m e , or at least find a hiding spot to lay low until they
went away.
I was j u s t about to step out onto the metal trellis,
when a noise below nearly caused me to fall off the
ledge. One floor down, a guard with blond hair and
glasses stuck his head out the open window of my room
and spotted me right away.
"I see him," the guard calmly spoke into his radio.
**He's still on level four. R e p e a t . . . suspect is still on
four."
This must have been the guy standing outside my
door earlier. W h e n the shit had hit the fan the first
t h i n g he'd have done was check on me, and found
n o t h i n g but an open window. After reporting my cur¬
rent position, he tucked his radio away in his jacket
and started climbing up the trellis toward me. My
escape route effectively gone, I had no choice but to
step back into the Bleeders' room and lock the window
behind me.
W i t h i n seconds, the guard's face pressed up against
the glass inches away from me, and he tried his best to
talk me into opening the window.