Landis, Jonathan
JOURNAL ENTRY 12

I spend the night watching the security monitors in the control room. One screen in particular is of special importance, as it peers down on Paul Wesley, alone in an empty room on the sixth floor, chained to the floor. For the most part he does not stir except to fish small shapes from his pocket that turn out to be pieces of paper, which he unfolds and reads over and over again. From time to time he cries, then he takes to reading his secret papers again.

My mind is reeling for the first time since I can't remember when. Even when my wife destroyed me and when I destroyed her, my mind felt less active and more stationary. Like a cold cinder block lodged in my skull. I stare at the screen but allow myself thoughts venturing down a dozen roads that have not been previously traversed. The state of things being what they are tonight, the thoughts I am entertaining have very grave consequences. That I even think them is frightening.

Lost in some faculty of my skull, a moment passes before I realize that a woman has entered Wesley's holding cell. When the realization finally takes hold, I suddenly leap to my feet and I'm involuntarily falling back on my months of programming, lifting the walkie-talkie to my mouth, pressing the button, informing Belial of the intruder.

On the grey screen, the woman sets to work releasing Wesley from his shackles. He pauses to gather all his papers before the two of them flee from the watchful eye of the camera lens. I'm frantic, calling in the officers, warning them that Wesley is being escorted from his cell by an unidentified female.

Things are progressing rapidly. I'm tearing down the hallway with a rifle tucked under my arm, four Ziz officers joining me as I go.

"Are you ready Landis?" Abaddon snarls, testing me. "You look distraught."

"I'm ready," I snap back defensively.

Abaddon calls for several officers to sweep the stairs and station themselves at the elevators on every floor.

"Come on," he grunts at me. "We're going to the sixth floor."

The two of us are in the rising elevator when my walkie squeals and an urgent voice is saying "Landis" over and over again.

"What is it?" I bark into the receiver.

"The female has been identified. She was seen running down the sixth-floor hallway with Wesley. Witnesses say she was in her underwear."

"Her underwear?" I wonder aloud to Abaddon.

"It's the schizo, sir," the voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie informs me. "It's Elissa Casey. The secretary."

"Ah, crap," I grumble as the light illuminates the number six and the elevator doors slide open.

Rushing out into the hallway, a low-ranking Ziz is standing in front of us looking perplexed.

"Did the prisoner come by here?" Abaddon shouts.

"I just saw their backs, they were too far gone I swear, I wasn't sure what was happening!"

A muffled pop stings my ears and the Ziz tumbles over, blood surging from the hole in his head.

"Come on!" Abaddon shouts angrily as he takes off down the hall, smoke twisting from the barrel of his rifle.

The elevator comes into sight just in time for us to see the doors closing and the arrow pointing down illuminate.

"They're going down!" Abaddon yells in my face.

"Yeah," I say calmly. "I have eyes." I grab the walkie and warn the team stationed on the third floor to gather at the elevator.

"The prisoner is not to be harmed," Abaddon reminds me. I parrot his orders into the walkie as he adds, "Tell them to shoot the woman if they have to."

"Sir, there's a problem," The voice crackles back.

"What is it?" I ask, frustrated.

"There's an obstruction on the third floor."

"What kind of obstruction?"

"It's a uh... a hermaphrodite with a gun, sir."

Abaddon darts for the stairwell with me trailing behind him. Three floors down, we burst through the doors to find the Ziz officers clogging the hallway. Approaching the group, I notice the body of one of the officers crumpled on the ground, part of its head blown away leaving only the mandible protruding, long red tongue lulling freakishly in front of a single eye twitching in the socket.

"He's nuts," one of the officers warns us. "He shot Temelechus. He's doped up."

Peering over the officers, I recognize the man I've seen far too many times. Standing naked, the way he was behind my wife that morning other than a pair of sunglasses, he's covered in a dark spray of Ziz blood and brandishing the Magnum Belial left in the delivery room, unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. Remains of his recently altered genitals scabbed over with bubbling scar tissue like a tumor growing between his legs.

"Who's got a light?" he slurs dizzily. "Dang sausage fest up in here."

"For God's sake, someone just shoot him!" Abaddon yells, cocking his rifle.

"Back up, lizard man!" The man fires back, pointing the Magnum at Abaddon's head. Abaddon reluctantly lowers his rifle. "That's right!" the man yells. "I done shot one of you guys, I'll shoot another, who cares? Godzilla?"

He cackles at his own joke and attempts to twirl the pistol around his finger like a cowboy, but the weapon fires involuntarily, hitting him directly in the foot, promptly blasting it into a hundred pieces. A toe flies up and hits Abaddon in the eye. The man hops on one foot a few times, blood streaming from his foot making bright red circles on the carpet. He topples over, wailing in pain, and two officers quickly descend on him.

"Hold up!" the man shouts. "Get me the medic; my foot is all jacked up, see?"

The officers begin unloading their rifles into him as Abaddon and I continue down the hall. The area leading up to the delivery room is littered with dead bodies, enormous smoking craters in most of them.

"Does that gun never run out of bullets?" I complain, plodding through the puddles of gore, stepping over all the gunned-down remains of surgical patients.

There's no sign of Wesley or the woman, and I call for officers to search every procedure room and continue to guard the elevators. Belial's voice comes roaring over the intercom asking all the residents to remain in their rooms and report any sightings of the prisoner.

In another twenty minutes, no one has seen either of the escapees. When I return to the lobby, Belial is pacing in front of the security control room.

"Where are they, Landis?" he roars, sounding more animal than human.

"We have officers posted on every floor, in the stairwells, and at every elevator. We'll find them."

"Well, pull one of your groups from their posts and station them at the entrance. All the exits are sealed, and Elissa knows it. It's the only way out of here."

I radio the officers on the third floor where there has still been no sighting of the duo and request half their officers withdraw and station themselves at the lobby entrance. In a few minutes, four heavily armed Ziz are barricading the only possible exit.

Something inside my head is itching. Something isn't right.

Belial takes to pacing in front of the barricade, arms crossed behind his back. We wait for the escapees to make a mistake.

"I'm going to watch the security monitors," I tell Belial. "If they pass by a camera, I can alert the proper officers."

"Yeah, yeah," Belial utters, agitated. "Go watch the monitors."

I step into the control room and collapse into one of the chairs, exhausted. My eyes dart back and forth across the monitors, but all I see are armed Ziz guarding every nook and cranny of the building. Time passes and my mind begins to churn again, adding in this new feeling, the feeling that something isn't right. I'm feeling very uneasy.

Cameras lining the ceiling of each floor rotate slowly one way, then another, scanning empty hallways and stationary officers. Everything is blank except for the medical ward, where the monitor reveals the scope of carnage carried out by the pistol-wielding transsexual. Squinting at the screen, the scattered remains of the patients, I notice an unusually large body in the middle of the floor piled on top of other victims. Leaning forward in my chair, looking closer, I realize it's the man who was surgically fused to his lazy wife. My mind drifts back to the day they wheeled that freak show out of surgery, and as I'm temporarily immobilized by my thoughts the body begins to shift and starts to move.

I rub my eyes and adjust the brightness on the monitor. The camera drifts away from the shuffling body.

"Come on, come on," I mumble impatiently.

When the body comes back into frame, it's just in time to see that it's being lifted by the two victims beneath it, who aren't victims at all, but the prisoner and the secretary who had been hiding all along. I stare at the monitor in disbelief as the two of them rush down the hall and out of the camera's sight.

Not certain of what I'm doing, I begin to act independently of myself. I grab my walkie-talkie and speak, though where the words are coming from I have no idea.

"Attention all officers! Attention all officers! The fugitives have reached the rooftop of building A! I repeat! The fugitives have reached the rooftop of building A! It appears they are prepared to jump. I don't have to remind you all how essential it is that the prisoner remains unharmed until tomorrow's execution. I am ordering all units beneath the sixth floor to form a perimeter around building A and all units on the seventh floor or higher to head to the rooftop now! Let's go!"

"Sir!" A voice comes through the static. "How will we talk them down?"

"Promise them their freedom, offer them money, say whatever it takes, just don't let them jump!"

As I'm saying this, I can see the officers guarding the third-floor elevator abandon their station and head for the stairwell just as Wesley and the secretary approach the elevator and press the button.

I exit the control room and step out into the lobby, where Belial is tossing a rifle over his shoulder.

"If we shoot the woman," he observes happily, "the retard will be too afraid to do anything, we can just grab him. Come on, Johnny Boy!"

"I'm coming, sir," I say hurriedly. "I left my rifle in the control room."

"More shootin' for me!" Belial snickers, galloping toward the elevator.

As the elevator doors close and the hum disappears above me, the lobby is enveloped in a very cold silence for the first time since I've been here. The moment is finally disrupted when my walkie-talkie begins to sizzle with white noise.

"I don't see them!" the officers are shouting. "Did they jump? Landis, are you there? Repeat, I don't see them!"

All the while my brain is humming inside of my head as I retrieve my rifle. Something new is happening. The elevator chimes as I approach it slowly. Standing in front of the doors as they open, revealing the escapees within, I speak very quietly and very quickly.

"They have a perimeter surrounding the building," I warn them. "Head for the alley around the corner; you'll see a large dumpster. Hide in it. Get under all the trash. In another fifteen minutes, we'll assume you've escaped somehow and I'll send the officers to sweep the city. I'll arrange the search to give us enough time, and I'll meet you at the dumpster. I'll knock three times and say my name, Jonathan Landis, so you'll know it's me. Then we'll get out of here."

The two of them stare at me wide-eyed in disbelief.

"You're going to have to trust me," I insist. "What choice do you have?"

They nod and run into the lobby. I step forward into the elevator, arm outstretched to hold the door, watching them as they go. Wesley turns to me as the two head for the door.

"Thank you, mister!" he cries. "Thank you so much!"

I nod and watch as they push the enormous glass doors aside and step out into the cold night.

Before I can pull my arm into the elevator, Elissa Casey's head suddenly erupts into bits, spattering the glass doors with thick chunks. I run from the elevator as fast as I can, but not fast enough to stop Jude Pendington as he steps forward out of the darkness and strikes Paul Wesley in the temple with the butt of his rifle. Paul tumbles over, unconscious, and Jude smiles at me as I push through the glass doors.

"Sorry, Landis. I already got 'em," he boasts. "If you'd have been here a second ago, you could have stuck a drill in her head or something. Come on, help me cuff him."

I'm standing there in a panic. To my right, Elissa Casey's body is twitching in a pile on the concrete, meat tumbling from the decimated scraps of her head. Paul Wesley's face has begun to swell.

"We've got them!" Pendington announces triumphantly into his walkie-talkie. "They made a break for the lobby, but I apprehended the prisoner and eliminated the woman."

On the other end of the walkie-talkie, I can hear Belial's voice as he laughs.