The Ones Beneath Us - Chapter Two

A Hundred Miles An Hour

The day Mark got to the “Institute for treating undead” everything happened so fast; days mixed into one long time span of mental vomit. He couldn't really remember what happened to him in his untreated state but then there were the flashbacks and the nightmares that reassured him that whatever he was, he wasn’t human.

Nobody at the institute chose to be the way they are. Some, like Mark, hope to leave and carry on with their life as if their death never happened. Others think that it's a blessing and feel as if they've been chosen as a higher, more elite species, like the believers. Thinking about them made his undead body shiver. Undead bodies don't shiver.

They have no feeling, they don't eat, they don't drink, they just... Are. Yet when someone of the community, all these damn people that everyone's been thrown together with, mentions them, Mark can't help but feel as if someone is walking over his grave; oh the irony, but with his luck, somebody's probably hosting a dinner party on there. Using the upturned soil as a nice, comfy seat and his head stone as a table in which to feast.

The scientist that created the drug only happened onto it by chance, like Fleming, he was on holiday, only Fleming didn't come back to find the undead feasting on the living. No one knows how, his own little secret, but everyone's guess is that it was in a way that was particularly unethical. Knowing how desperate everyone got to try and stop the mindless slaughter, it probably was. No one's ever met the scientist either, a blur of a Saviour.

The institute was so bleak and white, the only colour were that of the guards in their camo uniforms. You'd see them pacing about all the time, a constant reminder of what you are, what you can do. They're here to keep us in line, sure, but some are friendly. They talk and chat like you're just another person, some are cruel although Mark is yet to meet one.

It's not all that bad here, though. Everyone's friendly enough. He has Leah, too. She's great. They met in that place. He was a bit of a loner, and so was she. They found each other in mutual loner-ism.

The doctors are also really great. Although it's their job to look after you, they're not being paid to be kind or make conversation. Mark's doctor, Doctor Williams, he's the best of them all.

Only a select few were chosen to be his patients, again, no one knows why. They're all kept in the dark there.

Once he'd administered his medication he'd sit with him for as long as Mark wanted, keeping him up-to-date on the outside world's events.

Only nine other people see him, ten including Mark.

You really do learn to go with the flow there. It's all you can do. No one knows what's going to happen yet. People dream of getting out of this place but it hasn't been confirmed that they're even allowed out. One can always live in hope even if they're not part of the living, right?

Like Mark said before, a hundred miles an hour. Not going in any particular direction. There are events that happen but they're over so quickly it's like nothing ever happened in the first place. Rumors are spread, heard, and then deleted. It's eerie but you get used to it.

Then there are the believers. They haven't really given themselves a name but that's what everyone calls them. The believers. Believers who believe in what? They believe in something and that gives everyone hope.

A higher power to create order.

There are guards placed any which way and there are a lot of them, they all keep the physical order but the believers keep it mentally.

There are nine believers in total, four in the east wing and four in the west and they all feed off the information given by the ninth who is thought to be the first risen, but they're only rumors and Mark doesn't believe them one bit.

Mark doesn't deny that the work they do isn't helping the others that are losing their minds in that place, but he's just not buying it.

There's a very large area in the institute in both the east and west wing. Very, very large empty rooms with tall, long window that look out onto the most beautiful looking gardens. The doctors say they'll be allowed out there in summer for the first time, when it's bright and beautiful, but for now they'll “just see how things go.”

The large empty rooms have different varieties of furniture filling up the walk-in cupboards on the back walls. Every day the patients empty the cupboards taking out things like sofas and tables to scatter them around for others to sit on and the believers would go sit in the cupboard, upon all the garden furniture that will be used in the summer.

You see people coming and going from the cupboard all day long but you never see the believers unless you go in there. It's probably like that on the west wing too. They're always the first people in the room in the morning and the last ones to leave to go to their rooms at night, they're probably the ones who take all the furniture out and put it away, come to think of it.

Mark has been at the institute for almost a year but others had been there a lot longer than him. Nobody asks anyone how long they've been in this place. It has been rumored that someone once asked another patient when they're first got to the institute and later on that evening the guards found him severely beaten in his room later that evening.

That's what the institute is built on though, rumors. Rumors and lies. Even from the doctors who spread rumors about the outside world to the average desperate, gullible man.

Mark ignores everything he hears from others that sound like it could be a rumor, he doesn't want to be a troublemaker.

There are windows at the very top of the large rooms, so far up that you can't tell who's looking down at you but you can bet it's a lot of guards, maybe some scientists too who are studying their behavior.

It's quite boring at the institute.

You wake up and are left to your own devices all day whilst being closely watched by the guards until “lunchtime” where everyone is taken to their doctor.

Mark is the last one to leave so he doesn't know who else is treated by Doctor Williams. He's sure he'd tell him if he asked but Mark feels rude even thinking about it.

After “lunchtime” everyone is yet again left to their own devices and then are sent to their rooms at the curfew of 9:00pm.

On Mondays the library is open after “lunchtime” where people can go and find some books if they want, but it's so small that you have to be one of the first people to have your medicine administered to have a chance to even browse.

Leah sometimes gets there early enough and if Mark asks, she'd get him a book too, but she'd always ends up reading both.

Mark used be such an avid reader but now that he's come to the institute, he can't really enjoy reading anymore, the books are all about living people's experiences.

There's always a two seater sofa placed in the top corner by the windows, in the same place every day and he'll always go and sit there. Leah will join him and sometimes she'd bring over another patient who she'd deem acceptable to join their little duo but they'd stop coming to sit and chat after, at most, a week.

For that, Mark was grateful.