Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) Page 11

There is a man with a rifle. He is hidden in the control room. His voice sounds weird because it is being amplified by a voice box that is built into the window. His voice sounds like it is being broadcasted on a crappy AM radio station.

  We stop immediately and raise our hands.

  “Drop the gun,” he says.

  “It’s not loaded,” Kim answers.

  “Don’t care. Drop it.”

  “We’re not here to cause trouble,” Kim says.

  “Drop the gun,” the man repeats. “Place it on the ground. Slowly.”

  Kim does exactly what the man says. “We’re not a threat. We’re just trying to survive.”

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “Does it really matter who we are?” Jack says.

  Jack is obviously fed up with being treated like a prisoner. He is sick of being locked up. Sick of having guns pointed at his head.

  Kim tells her brother to calm down. “My name is Kim. This is my brother Jack. And this is Rebecca.”

  “What are you doing here?” the man asks. “Are you civilians?”

  “Yes,” Kim answers. “We’re civilians.”

  “Are you infected?”

  “Do we look infected?”

  “Looks can be deceiving. I’ve seen a person take days to turn. Took us all by surprise. Not making that mistake again.”

  “None of us are bitten,” I say. “We’re not infected. You have to believe us.”

  And even as I say this, I know that I really am infected. I am infected with a time release nano-virus. And once it is activated, it will eat me from the inside, and then it will be a threat to everyone else.

  I am literally a ticking time bomb. A ticking time bomb of mass destruction.

  I keep this information to myself.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the man says. “The virus has gone airborne.”

  “We aren’t infected,” Jack says. “And we can’t go back. The holding cells are overrun. The rest of the facility is overrun.”

  No response.

  “Please, you have to let us in,” Kim says. “We have nowhere else to go.”

  “That is not my problem,” the man replies. “And we know the rest of the facility is overrun. Why do you think we’re hiding down here?”

  “We have the architectural blue prints of the prison,” Kim says. “We can lead the way out of here. To the residential prison or the research labs. From there we can make it to the Control Center. We can get out of here.”

  “And we have the warden’s access card,” Jack adds.

  “You can’t get out that way,” the man says. “You have to go through the labyrinth. And trust me; you do not want to do that.”

  “Please,” Kim says again. “You have to let us in. Please!”

  This is weird. Trying to convince someone to let us into a prison. The prison is now the refuge. The safe haven. The roles have been reversed. And the world has ended and society has crumbled. And the irony is not lost on anyone.

  This man, this gatekeeper is crouching behind the walls of the security room. He has a rifle aimed right at my chest. He is not taking any chances, and he is not letting us in.

  Suddenly someone else enters the room. We can’t see clearly because the windows are all covered in a thin layer of grime and dust. I’m guessing this place hasn’t been cleaned in a few months. Maybe longer.

  They start talking.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the gatekeeper says.

  “I’m leaving,” a man answers. “I got unfinished business.”

  “Leaving? You can barely walk. You can barely see.”

  “I’m fine. Get out of my way.”

  The voice of the stranger sounds familiar.

  “I can’t let you leave,” the gatekeeper says. “If you get caught, you’ll give away our position.”

  “They already know our position, you idiot.”

  The gatekeeper pauses, hesitates. “I still can’t let you leave. What about the infected? What if you get in trouble? What if you get trapped? What if you let them in through here? We can’t have them attacking from both sides, we aren’t prepared for that.”

  “We ain’t prepared for much. And living like this is not much of a living at all.”

  “At least we’re still alive. At least we’re still breathing. At least we’re not goddamn zombies!”

  “Look, I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. I appreciate the bed and the cell. The food and water. But I am leaving. I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got unfinished business. And I need to pay some people a visit.”

  The voice sounds familiar. The way he speaks sounds familiar. His whole attitude sounds familiar.

  “No,” the gatekeeper says. “I won’t allow it. I can’t let you leave.”

  We hear the noise of a shotgun being cocked. “I wasn’t asking.”

  It is Ben.

  Big Ben.

  He was thrown into the prison by General Spears. He was almost beaten to death. And now he is back on his feet. And once again he is out for revenge.

  Out for blood.

  Through the dirty windows of the control room, I see the gatekeeper lower his rifle and back up against the wall.

  The red dot is no longer pointed at my chest.

  Ben presses a button and unlocks the security doors. He moves outside of the control room and takes one look at us and says, “And Thomas, let them in. You can trust them.”

  “You know these people?” Thomas asks.

  I take a step closer to the security doors, to the prison. “Ben, are you OK?”

  It was a stupid question. His face is still swollen and bruised from his fight with General Spears. He is still hunched over. He is still struggling. He has been struggling for weeks now. But he refuses to stop. He refuses to give up. He waves us forward and we walk through the security doors and across the threshold and enter the prison.

  Thomas is backed up against the far wall of the control room. “Stay right there! Don’t come any closer!”

  He re-aims his rifle. Puts the red dot back on my chest.

  I stop immediately.

  “I’ll shoot you where you stand,” he threatens.

  But he never gets the chance to make good on his threat. Ben reaches out in one blindingly quick movement, and snatches the gun out of Thomas’s hands. The support strap of the gun is around Thomas’s neck, so his whole head and neck and body is dragged towards Ben. When this happens, Ben strikes him with his elbow and Thomas falls to the ground.

  I lower my hands and thank Ben. We enter the control room.

  The control room is basically a small square office. I guess this was some kind of processing room for the prison, where they would check and confirm the identity of a prisoner before they led them inside to their cells. It is a sparse room. One built in desk. One control panel. One computer. There is also a mattress on the floor, like someone has been sleeping and living in here.

  Thomas is on the ground. He’s not totally unconscious but he is still pretty dazed. Ben relieves him of his weapon and turns the infra-red sight off. The fact that Ben is up and walking and talking is an incredible feat of strength in itself.

  What the hell did it take to put this guy down?

  He had suffered bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds. He had survived a savage beating at the hands of a nano-virus strengthened General Spears. He was beaten to an inch of his life only a few days ago.

  This had barely slowed him down.

  He was a survivor. No other way to describe him.

  And now he was strapped up with guns and ammunition. He was ready to go to war. Again. He carried the shotgun with the familiarity of someone who has spent a lot of time with a shotgun. He also has a cowboy style handgun strapped to his leg.

  Kim and Jack are standing cautiously behind me.

  “What’s going on here?” Kim asks.

  “Thomas is just having a little freak out,” Ben answers. “He’s suffering from a little cabin fever. Isn’t that right,
Thomas?”

  There is no response from Thomas. He shakes his head and feels his jaw to check if it is broken.

  “Are you all right?” I ask Ben again.

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” he says to me. Lies to me.

  He then turns to Thomas. “And yeah. I know them. Well, I know two of them.” He points to Kim. “I don’t know her.”

  Thomas blinks his eyes open, and finally regains his composure. “So you can’t vouch for her?”

  “No.”

  “Then she’s not coming in. And if you hit me again…” Thomas begins to threaten Ben, but then he stops. Thinks better of it.

  Kim takes George’s access card out of my hand and holds it up. “I’ve got the warden’s access card. This is our ticket out of here. And we’ve got the blueprints. This means we’ve got the map and we’ve got the key. You need us. You need me.”

  “And we’re not coming in without her,” I add. “We’re not leaving her. You’re crazy if you think we’re leaving her out here by herself.”

  “Don’t care about the blueprints,” Thomas says. “We don’t need them. We don’t want to leave.”

  “Why not?” I ask. “How else are you going to find your way out of here? You can’t go running around blindly. You’ll get lost. You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “What makes you think we want to leave?”

  “Wait,” Jack says. “You don’t want to leave?”

  “This is a safe place,” he says. “They can’t touch us down here. They can’t get to us in our cells. The prison is the perfect refuge.”

  “What the hell are you doing for food?” I ask.

  “Prison cafeteria. It’s not the world’s best food. But it’s pretty well stocked. It should last a long time. Maybe years.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we’ll figure out our next move.”

  “You can’t stay down here forever.”

  “Maybe not. But we can wait it out. Wait for the infected to kill themselves, or die, or starve. Wait for the rescue.”

  “There is no rescue coming,” I say. “They cut us off. We’re on our own. And the infected don’t die. They’re already dead.”

  “They gotta die somehow.”

  “They’re zombies,” Jack says. “The living dead. You can’t just wait for them to fall over. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “There has to be a way. There has to be a time limit. There has to be a life span. There has to be a way.”

  “Yeah. A bullet to the brain,” Jack says. A sledgehammer to the brain. You destroy the brain.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And there is no rescue coming,” I repeat.

  “Bullshit. This is a military installation. A very important military installation. They are coming. Maybe not for us. But they are coming. And once they get here they’ll have to let us out. They’ll have to rescue us.”

  This guy is more delusional than I am. And I think that maybe it’s a kind of survival instinct. The mind doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that you are already dead or slowly dying. So it creates a fantasy for you to believe in. You come to believe in this fantasy with your life. You believe in it wholeheartedly. And then the fantasy consumes you.

  This is where this guy is at.

  This is where I am at.

  He thought he was going to be rescued.

  I thought I was going to live forever and save Maria and save the goddamn day.

  No.

  He is not going to be rescued. No one is.

  And I am not going to live forever.

  I look at my watch. I have less than fifty hours left.

  “Where are all the guards?” Kim asks.

  “They’re dead,” Thomas answers. “Everyone is dead. We are all that is left in this part of the Fortress.”

  Ben unloads Thomas’s rifle and hands it back to him, minus the ammunition. “You guys should talk strategy and logistics later. But Thomas, you want my advice? Let these people in. They’ve experienced the Oz virus up close and personal. They’ve dealt with the infected. They’ve dealt with some very bad people. They’ve got experience. Combat experience. And trust me; you’re going to need that very, very soon.”

  “We don’t need combat experience,” Thomas says. “They’re not coming back. And the infected can’t get to us in our cells. You know what we need? We need less people. We need fewer mouths to feed. We need less noise. We need less of everything.”

  This guy’s line of thought is starting to scare me. He sees us as a threat. He sees us as another mouth to feed. A drain on his limited resources.

  An extra magnet for the infected.

  “And what makes you think we need combat experience?” Thomas asks.

  “They are coming,” Ben says.

  “Who?”

  “The bad guys. All of them. They are coming. And we can’t stay here. Not for long.”

  “The death squads are not coming back,” Thomas says. “And we’ve got food. We’ve got security. The prison is the safest place, the only place to hide. The only possible place we can survive. And that’s all we have to do. Survive. Just a little while longer. This is a war of attrition.”

  “We can help,” Kim says. “We’ll carry our own weight. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

  This is the nicest possible way to gain access to the prison.

  Pretty please.

  With a cherry on top.

  We are awesome.

  We’ll be model citizens.

  The alternative would be to just kill this guy. Take the prison by force.

  This is the way I think now.

  Kill or be killed.

  Pure and simple.

  “These guys saved my life,” Ben says. “I owe them. So they’re coming in whether you like it or not.”

  “I can’t let that happen,” Thomas says. “I’m sorry.” He lowers his head. “You would do the same thing in my situation.”

  Thomas is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He is half dazed, half concussed. He is in no position of authority. He is in no position to tell any of us what to do.

  I know this.

  Ben knows this.

  Everyone in the room knows this.

  Ben points the shotgun at Thomas’s head. “You gonna stop me?”

  Thomas bites his lip. Shakes his head. He doesn’t want extra mouths to feed. But he finally relents. “Fine! Come on in. Help yourselves. But these guys are your responsibility,” he says to Ben. “They are your goddamn baggage. They screw up, they draw attention to us, it’s on your head. You get one chance. You screw up, if any of you screw up, you’re out of here.”

  I guess this means Ben was going to postpone his mission of revenge, or whatever he had planned.

  A suicide mission.

  I am glad.

  I already feel safer with him around. His presence and his massive seven foot frame are very reassuring.

  Ben lowers the shotgun and offers his hand to Thomas. “Come on, let’s go. We gotta give them the grand tour, tell them the golden rules before the door to the labyrinth opens. We don’t have long.”

  Chapter 22

  Ben and Thomas lead us into the prison and I can’t stop thinking about what Ben just said.

  The door to the labyrinth opens. We don’t have long.

  We follow Ben down a corridor that becomes narrower and narrower the further we go.

  The corridor slopes downwards and eventually leads into the prison.

  The design of the prison is not what I expected at all. It’s basically a giant cylinder. It’s about ten stories high. And the actual cells are built into the walls of the cylinder.

  We stood on the top level. One level down is the first level of cells. There are about twenty cells on each level.

  I walk up to the railing and peer over the edge. All the way down on the ground floor, I can see a few plastic tables and chairs and benches that appeared to be bolted into the floor for security purposes. I notice th
e stairs between each level have all been blocked off and barricaded with what appears to be mattresses and bed frames and chairs. It would be impossible to walk up or down the stairs.

  “This place is massive,” Jack says.

  He’s right. It is a large prison. It made me realize how many people had been living and working down here in the Fortress. Thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. A big enough population to require a very large prison facility. Or maybe they were collecting criminals from other parts of the country. Other parts of the world.

  I look over the edge of the railing again and I am overcome with a feeling of vertigo. It is a long way to the ground floor. Ten, maybe eleven stories. I scan the levels for signs of life. For people. But most of the cells appear to be dark and empty.

  Each level of cells doesn’t quite wrap around the cylinder. So each level forms a kind of horseshoe design. The gap is directly opposite from where we are standing. This gap, this section of the wall is made of what appears to be black steel. From the ceiling to the ground floor.

  Thomas points to the black section of wall. “That is the doorway to the labyrinth. It opens at six pm every night. Closes at six am. At night, when this door opens, we lock ourselves up. It is the only way to stay hidden. It is the only way to stay protected.”

  “Protected from what?” I ask stupidly.

  “The infected. The labyrinth is completely overrun with them.”

  The doorway to the labyrinth is as tall as the cylinder is high, and maybe twice the width of one of the cells. The black color of the doorway makes it look like some kind of monolithic structure. I am about to ask questions. What the hell is the labyrinth? What’s the point? Why does it open and close? Why is there a labyrinth connected to a goddamn prison?

  But I am interrupted.

  “Halt! Who goes there?”

  “It’s just us, Harry,” Thomas says.

  There is someone hidden on the stairway, behind a mattress and a bed frame. He had been pointing a gun at us, but then he lowered it once Thomas told him to relax.

  Harry steps out from his hiding place. “I’m sorry, Tom. I tried to stop him. But there’s really no stopping someone of that size. He’s too damn big. Unless I was to shoot him. But I really didn’t want to shoot him. Plus you said no noise.”