When the Storm Awakens-Ch1

It was water that woke him, falling from high above and landing on his face. He had been dreaming, he was sure, and already that dream was beginning to fade, so much that now it was a dim memory. Another droplet fell, this time waking him further and now he became aware of his condition, that various parts of his body were screaming at him, that pain was assailing him from several quarters.
He was on his side, his right side, on the hard, cold ground. His right arm was twisted and was caught under his body. This was the first source of pain. He knew precisely what the problem was without looking. He felt it where his arm connected to his body, but nothing below it; his arm was dead to him.
There was a sharp, stabbing pain just above his right eye, but he ignored it, resiting the temptation to probe the area with shaking fingers. He tried instead to roll onto his back and off his arm; he failed, and managed only to roll back experiencing again the pain of the joint as it ground into places it was not meant to be. He inhaled deeply in preparation for another attempt, and as his face was hard against the ground, he took into his mouth and throat the dust and dirt that had been stirred up from his feeble movements.
He coughed raucously, gasping for every breath between the hacking spasms of his throat and he was forced to try again, to get his face out of the dust so he could breathe. In one movement he launched himself over, rolling on his back and drawing in the air free of particles.
He laid there for some time with his eyes closed, feeling his right arm slowly coming to life. As it did, the nerves that were once deprived exacted their revenge. Every movement of his hand and arm was like being stabbed a million times with tiny needles.
He had been squeezing his eyes shut against the agony and now as it passed, he relaxed them, allowing them to gradually open. He was expecting the ceiling of his bedroom but instead there was almost complete darkness, nothing to show where he was or how he got there. This world was silent as well.
No, that was not quite true. Somewhere in the darkness there was a faint drop of water onto the ground and a gentle hum of machinery.
He turned his head, looking about for anything that would tell him of his predicament. There was a wall at his feet, only a step away and it reached high up, five, maybe six times his height. All over its surface it was glittered with tiny, twinkling red lights, crimson stars. Also he could see something, long with square edges, jutting out from the wall, hanging over him ominously. This was the origin of the drops of water that woke him.
I’ve got to get up. I can’t stay here, lying on my back.
With his left hand on the ground next to him for support and his right tucked into his belly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, shaking off the sudden dizziness from the change in posture. From here he could see all around; the wall of lights rising up in front of him extended off in both directions and faded off into the darkness. He slid himself along the ground until he made contact with the cold concrete wall and pulled himself up onto his feet, wobbling dangerously against it for several minutes.
Leaning on the wall for support, he lifted a hand up to the pain on his head and felt the ragged cut above his eye. It had long ceased bleeding and now it was hard and crusty, and he suspected that blood was all though his hair. He found his greying locks missing, however, when he raised his hand higher to feel for the blood matted in them. His head was shaved, almost to the skin, and sticky with his blood. Pushing the sweat that was starting to form on his scalp over the back of his head, he swallowed back down the fear that was rising fast from his belly.
No. Stay calm. You can’t afford to panic.
He shuffled to the wall, two steps to the overhanging object he had seen earlier, ignoring the tiny lights. It jutted out perilously at head height and hung two paces out. It was only as long as his forearm in height and he was able to look up and over the edge into the cavity it contained. It was packed with a soft material, making a bed of sorts, and it was moist.
He had come from the bed, rolled over and out, falling onto the hard floor; landing on his right side. Now he knew how he got on the floor, but how did he get in the bed?
Ducking under it, he staggered his way out to the other side, following the wall, using his left hand as a guide as he went; his right hanging down oddly.
Then he saw some vague movement off to his right. There it was, a black shape, standing tall for just a moment, then moving away into the gloom. He blinked. Did he see it or was it his imagination?
He left his support; stumbling off into the open space with his left arm swinging wildly into the void, following the apparition. In front of his eyes, shapes darted in and out, trying to distract him. Still he kept on, ten, twenty steps until he reached the other side, a featureless far wall, panting and sweating with pain and fear.
Then he heard a sound, a scraping of feet to his left, moving away from him quickly. His fear had finally won, and any control that he had minutes earlier was gone. He called out in desperation, “Stop… please.”
When a human voice came back to him out of the dark swearing with surprise, he almost cried. All he managed was a hoarse plea, barely audible, “Help me.”
He stood in silence for a long moment. Whoever it was, was still and quiet. Perhaps they were as terrified as he was.
“I’m hurt. I need some help.” There came no reply, and for a moment he thought that he was still alone and that his imagination had indeed been playing with him. He cried out in desperation again, “For God’s sake! Say something!”
His invisible quarry heard the urgency in his voice and spoke. The voice that returned wavered with poorly contained terror, “Hello?”
A face appeared out of the blackness, a young man’s face. He looked like he was barely out of school and he was frightened, this was obvious by the shake in his voice and the look on his face. The jagged cut above his eye and the sight of the dark and dried blood must have been what compelled the young man to ask, “What happened to you?”
“I’m hurt. I need your help… please.”
The young man kept his distance, still unsure. He decided he had to be more direct: “It’s my arm… you have to put it back in...”
“I don’t know…” The waver in his voice got more pronounced.
“All you have to do is just pull it, that’s all. You can do that.”
Slowly he slid down the wall; the effort of stumbling across from the other side of the room had sapped him of any energy he had. The other man went to catch him, but drew back and let him slide. He let out a grunt of pain when he reached the ground, then whispered: “If you don’t, I’m dead.”
His right hand connected with the ground with a metallic click. He heard it, but the significance of it did not register. He sat there, resigned to his fate. His head snapped up when the young man grabbed his hand and started to gently pull.
“Wait!”  He needed to explain the procedure before any damage was done but the young man seemed preoccupied with something he had felt at the wrist of the arm he was grasping. 
“You’ve got a band like mine!” The stranger sounded surprised.
He looked down. There at the end of his arm hung a cold, grey, metal band - loose enough to fall to the hand but not enough to come off - but he didn’t care. “Your foot… put your foot in my armpit…” he gasped. The mere act of holding his wrist was agony enough, but it nothing like what he was about to feel.
The adjustments were made and before the young man took the strain against his wrist again, he thought it best to warn his rescuer, “One more thing; this hurts a lot. I mean a lot. When you do it, I’m going to yell and swear and call you all sorts of things but don’t pay any attention. Just keep pulling - even if I pass out, just keep pulling.”
“How will I know when it’s back in?”
“You’ll know, believe me.” He breathed in, steeling himself. “I’m ready.”
They counted together and the stranger pulled hard, pushing with his foot into the armpit. He did all the things he said he would, including passing out, and when he woke, the job was done.
He smiled weakly. “Thanks man. You save my life, you really did.”
They sat in silence for what seemed like several minutes; perhaps neither knew just what to say. Then he remembered he didn’t even know the other man’s name. “I’m Jim by the way.” He smiled in the near darkness, trying to appear as affable as he could. “I’d shake your hand but…”
The young man returned his smile and put a friendly hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I’m Lewis.”
Another period of time passed then Lewis coughed nervously. “Jim, where are we?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied absently. While they were sitting there, Jim had been thinking. Now he had made up his mind. Staying here was tantamount to death.  Neither of them would survive staying put; they needed to get moving, needed to find a way out of that place, to find assistance, to find water.
“Help me up,” Jim ordered, holding out his left arm so that he could be pulled to the standing position.
“What are we doing?” Lewis’ voice was as nervous as before.
“We’re going to find out where we are and work out how to get out of here. Pull me up.”
Lewis grasped Jim’s good arm and when he was back on his feet they both leaned back against the wall. The younger man’s voice seemed stronger now they were showing some decisiveness. “What now?”
“You’ve been wandering about, yeah? You tell me.”
“There’s a gap in the wall down here a bit. I was heading there when you spoke to me.” Then he chuckled to himself. “I thought you were going to eat me!”
“What?”
“I must have been walking around here for hours. I saw this thing crawling around in the dark. I couldn’t make it out. It started to chase me; then it… I thought you were coming to get me. It was like some horror movie.”
Jim exhaled deeply. “It sure is just like a nightmare, I’ll agree with that.” He kept walking, his bad arm dragging along the featureless wall on his right. “How long have you been here, do you think?”
“The first thing I remember is walking into a wall. I must have been delirious. I hit this wall and then I found myself here. I think I’d been walking about for the last couple of hours or so. What about you?”
Jim rubbed his shaven head. “The same, I think. I woke up on the ground and that was about the time you saw me.”
“I think something bad happened to us. Look at us.” Lewis stopped and grabbed the back of Jim’s shirt, forcing Jim to turn around and face him. “Someone did this to us. They shaved our heads and they put us in these…”
Lewis grasped the front of his shirt and shook it. Once white, the dirty, thin material resembled hospital clothing and offered very little in terms of warmth or dignity. Jim was dressed likewise but hadn’t cared what he was wearing up to that point. Both men were dirty and barefoot and tired.
Jim turned away from him, continuing along the wall. “We’d better keep going,” he said.
From behind, the questions still came. “Why can’t I remember how I got here? Someone brought us here. Why?”
Jim smiled, but Lewis could not see his face. “I’ll be sure to ask them when I see them.” The wall fell away to the right into an open space. “Here it is,” he announced.
Along the wall, at about ankle height, small lights illuminated the floor at regular intervals. While not bright, they cast enough light so that they could negotiate the corridor with more confidence than in the hall from which they had come. “There’s some light here,” Jim noted, moving from the wall and walking toward the centre, looking left and right for anything that might be of help or interest. The left wall was a sheet of semi-translucent glass and the right opened into a room or another corridor. Jim stopped and squinted down the hallway. The roof dipped down some distance away, and he could see signs of pipes hanging from the roof. He left the end of the passage for later, directing his attention to where the right hand wall had turned into a yawing gap, dark and ominous.
“What is it?” Lewis whispered.
“It looks like a room.” Jim went up to the space and looked in. It was darker than the hall, and Jim’s eyes strained to see. “There’s a bed in there, I think. No, wait - three beds.”
Jim was right. There were three beds and he walked carefully up to one of them. They probably had been made up with crisp linen sheets at one time, the white material still present on the bed, turning to powder as Jim ran his hand over its surface. The other beds were the same. They were metal - cold and functional. “This is a hospital,” he pronounced.
“What?”
“These are hospital beds. This is a medical bay or something.” Jim grabbed his shirt like Lewis had done. “We’re dressed like we’re patients.”
“This isn’t like any hospital I’ve ever seen.”
Jim was busy rummaging through all the cupboards and draws but he didn’t find anything useful until he reached the last one. He frowned and pulled out a sheet wrapped perfectly in plastic, preserved against decay. A pair of scissors from a metal trolley had the bag open and the sheet spread over one of the beds. He repeated the process for one of the others then Jim climbed onto the nearest bed and sighed. “That’s a lot better than the floor.”
Lewis was watching from the doorway, “What are you doing?”
“I need to shut my eyes for a bit.” And he did.

Jim waited for his new friend to awaken. After having gotten some fitful sleep himself, he awoke to find Lewis still deep in slumber. Alone again, he mulled over everything that had happened and everything he had learnt. In the end, he came to a conclusion.
Lewis’ eyes flickered opened slowly. He sat up and stretched looking about. Disappointment rose in his face when he discovered what he had hoped was a ‘dream’ wasn’t over.
Jim’s face showed a grim determination. “We can’t leave. Not yet, anyway.” He swung his legs out over the side of the bed, allowing his bare feet to touch the floor.
“What? Why?”
“There could be more of us out there. Wandering about, or hurt. We can’t leave them.”
Lewis understood, he bowed his head and nodded.
Jim stood. “First, we need to find water.” They were both thirsty. He had ignored it at first, thinking only of his pain and then rescue. Now the first was receding and there seemed no hope of the second. A more elemental need came to the fore. They would be dead soon without water and this place was as dry as dust.
Jim was going back to the corridor, his steps purposeful. “I saw pipes on the roof down the way – some things work down here, maybe one of those pipes has water flowing through it.” He was out of the room and heading right with Lewis steps behind.
They continued down until it came to an intersection. Standing there in the middle, both men looked down all of them, perplexed.
“All these passages look the same.”
“Where are the pipes?”
Jim pointed upwards and smiled. Above them, travelling through the intersection and disappearing down the side corridors, there was a mass of rusted pipes hanging from the roof. They were silent. Maybe nothing ran through them anymore but it was their best chance.
Lewis looked down each corridor in turn, itching his shaven head. “Which way do we go?” he asked.
“I don’t really think it matters.” He shrugged, and then pointed to the left. They followed the pipes to the end of the passage until they stopped above a door, old and rusty, and slightly open. At the obstruction, Jim placed both hands against the door, lowered his head until his forehead rested onto the door and closed his eyes with frustration.
“I guess we try the other way,” Lewis sighed with resignation.
Jim took a hand away and held it out, gesturing Lewis to silence. “Do you hear that?”
There was a faint sound, behind the door. Jim put his ear to the gap and listened. “I can hear water running. Listen…”
Lewis agreed after hearing it himself and they set about trying to open it. It was designed to slide but was reluctant to move. It budged marginally on the first pull, again a second time, and with a sickening grind, slid open enough to admit the thinner of the two. Lewis squeezed through the gap and into the inky blackness beyond.
Jim squinted into the space and the darkness beyond. “What can you see?”
“I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black in here. Shhh… Let me listen.”
Jim waited for what seemed like hours for Lewis to confirm or deny. Then his face appeared through the gap. “I think one of the pipes is leaking but I can’t see where it is. If we can get this door right open…”
With effort they completed the job. There was just enough light admitted to the section behind to find the clear liquid running in a thin line down from a pipe above. It splashed down into a puddle and disappeared into a drain moments after hitting the concrete floor.
Jim held out his shaking hand and allowed some of it to pool in his palm. He desperately brought it up to his lips, noisily slurping the collection into his mouth. Lewis raised both eyebrows expectantly as Jim swallowed and then gave his assessment: “It’s good. A bit rusty, but drinkable I think.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Lewis placed both hands under the flow and slowly filled his makeshift cup, taking the handful down into his stomach after first wetting his lips and mouth. Jim did the same, and continued until they’d had enough to quench the dryness in their throats.

His eyes were becoming gradually accustomed to the darkness, and now he imagined himself being able to see quite well. Now, without the pressure to survive, they observed more of the place where they had awoken. They were walking slowly and deliberately, moving first to the wall of lights.
“Is this what I think it is?” Lewis asked him, pointing to the wall.
“Looks like it.” Jim leant down and gazed at one of the control panels, his face bathed in an intermittent red light.
“I thought that these things only existed in movies.”
“This looks quite real to me.”
“Can you press…” he said eagerly, pushing Jim aside, his finger extended out to make contact with one of the controls.
The older man grasped his hand before he played with anything he shouldn’t.
“I don’t think we should touch anything yet.” A light, formed in the shape of a padlock, was blinking assertively and Jim pointed to it’s presence. “The controls are locked anyway.”
Lewis frowned, looking along the wall. “How many of us are there here, do you think?”
Jim scratched his chin and the beginnings of stubble, “There’s got to be hundreds at least. Maybe even thousands.”
They walked for about ten minutes and as they did, the wall of lights curved gently to the right. Up ahead, another bed jutted from the wall, perhaps a hundred steps away and something was lying underneath it.
Being barefoot, they were reluctant to run over the floor, although it was even and free of debris. Even so they arrived at the bed in a matter of moments. It was empty, and they directed their attention to what was directly beneath it.
There in a twisted heap lay a body. It was old, decayed and skeletal, mummified from the dry, oppressive atmosphere. Bones become white if bleached by the sun, but this collection of old bones had never been kissed by sunlight. They were green, grey and macabre. Hidden in places by the remnants of clothing such as Jim and Lewis wore, falling to pieces with age. Looped around one of its wrists was a dull, grey metallic band.
Jim knelt down to examine the remains, leaving Lewis standing some steps away, the waver in his voice returning as before. “What happened to it?” he whispered, perhaps he feared to wake the dead.
“He must have died of thirst or hunger. Both, probably. It looks like he didn’t get very far from his bed.”
“It’s very old.”
“Yeah. It’s been here a while.” He looked back to his new friend, concern in his eyes. “He’s one of us.”
Lewis leant over Jim’s shoulder, noticing the metal band. “He’s got a bracelet too!”
Jim was already rolling it around to examine it.
“It’s not quite like ours. There’s a number stamped on it. Mine has too, and so does yours.”
Jim could sense Lewis looking at his own wrist, reading the numbers. “They’ve numbered us.”
Jim nodded and stood, looking at the front panel attached to the bed.  “Just what I thought,” he said almost to himself. “This is his bed. The number on the bed matches the one on his band.” He sighed, looking down at the body. “We’d better keep going.”
They kept on for perhaps another ten minutes or so and found two beds which were very near each other and another two bodies. They had died at about the same time, and had found each other in the near darkness, clinging to each other as they clung to life, hoping for help to come. It never did. They were the same as the other one back down the hall, perhaps they had been there longer, but it was hard to say. Neither of the men spoke this time, there was nothing to say. Wordlessly they kept on with their search. Each discovery lowered their spirits, bringing them closer to the realisation that they might never escape this dark, cold hell.
Jim turned, walking to the inside wall where there was a corridor like the one they had been in before. The lights were off and it was dark down there. He pronounced the obvious, “Another hall.”
“Where does it go, do you think?”
“I think this whole place is like a circle. This…” he waved back and forth at the hall of lights, “…is the outside, the wheel. The passages are the spokes if you like. I think if we could actually see down there, we’d find almost exactly the same things as we found earlier in the other place – the beds, pipes.”
Moving to the side of the dark passage, Jim slid down the wall and buried his head in his hands.  “We’re going in circles. This is one big, round tomb.”
Lewis didn’t join him. “What?” he exclaimed, “You’re giving up?”
Jim kept his head down. “These poor people didn’t make it, and I don’t think we will either. Let’s face facts, Lewis. We’re screwed.”
“I don’t believe it! Come on, get up! We’ve got to keep going!”
“It’s hopeless,” Jim declared from between his hands.
Lewis was not about to give up and die. He grabbed the older man and pulled him to his feet. “I’ll drag you out of this place if I have to.”
Jim sighed, and pulled himself out of the young man’s grip.
“Alright,” he sighed. “Let’s keep looking then. Lead the way.”
They were back in the main hall again, with Lewis at the lead and walking to the wall of lights. He started to follow the wall to the right again, his hand running absently over the panels that adorned it. Periodically, one of the controls was selected, but nothing happened. The steady red padlock kept each bed firmly in place and its occupant blissfully unaware.
Another body appeared. This one had not been there as long as the others, perhaps a year at most. Its skin was stretched like thin paper over its bones. Lewis could not look at the sight, but Jim stopped again.
“This poor soul fell. You can see his neck’s broken.” The body’s head was almost at right angles, and the limbs were a twisted heap. Jim looked up towards the roof to where one of the beds was hanging out, high above and shook his head.
Lewis was already on his way. Jim had to jog a few steps to keep up. They continued for several minutes along the rim of the wheel.
“We must be almost back to where we started, surely,” Jim remarked. He ran his tongue over his dry lips. “I need another drink.”
Lewis saw them first. Another set of bodies huddled together up against the inside wall, away from any open beds. There were two of them. As the men approached, it was clear they had been deposited there recently. They were up against the wall. A woman and a man, his arm was wrapped protectively around her.
“These two aren’t long dead,” Jim commented, pushing past Lewis, who stood staring at them. Skin and bones was one thing, bodies that looked like real people were another. Jim knelt down by the man, dark skinned and as bald as all the others, and took his wrist. “He’s still warm!”
Startled, Jim looked over to the woman, whose eyes were open and staring. Then she slowly and deliberately blinked.