The End of Us

by D, Hannah

  “I don’t recognise him” Zoe said.

  “Must’ve been locked up in here since the skin eater shit went down” Michael said.

  “I find that cruel” Simone said.

  “You really surprised though considering the group he’s with?” Sarah asked her.

  “I suppose actually” Simone said.

  Zoe was concentrating on the CCTV with Jeff stood at the door on look out. Zoe had managed to figure out how to use the CCTV and was looking through all the camera’s trying to find a way into that back corridor. She had had a look outside and saw a swarm of skin eaters in the car park, oblivious to the fact there were people in here however, all of them just wandering around aimlessly. This made Zoe feel like she was watching a horror movie and that the skin eaters would break into the building soon and eat them all. Zoe did almost jump out of her skin when a skin eater went right up to the CCTV camera outside at the side of the building, it’s lifeless eyes staring right at her, Zoe struggled to look away.

  “Finding anything?” Michael asked her.

  “Oh, uh not yet” Zoe said as she pulled her eyes away from the skin eater.

  Zoe clicked on more of the cameras and brought up one that showed the room with the trapped humans inside. They looked like worms on the camera, all wriggling around in the dark, Zoe could just make out their shapes.

  “There’s the prisoners which means the other camera’s for that back corridor are along this line here” Zoe pointed to the row of CCTV camera footage.

  Zoe was more talking to herself than anyone else and wasn’t expecting a response from everyone. Her tongue began to stick out and she was licking her lips as she concentrated.

  Zoe saw the footage from the room where the skin eaters for the experiment were being held and she spotted someone on the table which she was taking for Ben, she couldn’t really tell since it was dark.

  “It’s weird, they said Ben was in critical condition and yet no one is looking after him and the light is off” Zoe said.

  “Alarm bells are definitely ringing now” Sarah said.

  “Found a way in there yet?” Micheal asked.

  “Not yet, few more camera’s to look through” Zoe told him.

  Zoe clicked on the remaining cameras and was just about to announce their bad luck when she spotted someone coming in from a back door, light coming into the back corridor and walked away without locking it. Zoe clicked back off that camera and viewed the CCTV camera showing the back of the building and saw that it was all fenced off so no skin eaters could get inside.

  “I think I found our way in but it won’t be easy” Zoe told them.

  “What is it? How do we get in?” Michael asked.

  “Through the back door outside. It’s been fenced off though and we have to go outside to get back inside” Zoe told them.

  As soon as she had said this she felt her hope falter. It wouldn’t work. They had no way to even get outside.

  “There are stairs leading you to the top of the building where the roof door is. I bet there are ladders, steps or something to get you down to the ground” Sarah said.

  “How do you know this?” Zoe asked.

  “I’ve been sneaking around here whilst no one was watching. Figured I’d look for another escape route, just in case” Sarah told them.

  “Now you’re the genius! Where is it?” Zoe asked her.

  “Hidden right at the back behind where all the cigarettes are kept” Sarah told them.

  “Alright, lead the way” Michael said.

  They all followed Sarah back out the room, making sure to put the automatic lock on before closing the door. Zoe felt bad about leaving that person in there all tied up and made sure to go set him free once everything was all done, enemy or not no one should be left tied up and forgotten about to starve to death.

  They had to sneak past without Jack seeing them again which was easy enough since he was fully engrossed in Sophia. Zoe heard Arthur bite back a growl and murmur ‘asshole’ under his breath.

  Sarah led them past the cigarettes and up the slight corridor before opening the door at the end to reveal the stairs leading up there.

  “I never seen anyone guarding up here when I found it but we should still be quiet and be aware when going up” Sarah whispered to them.

  “Got it” Zoe whispered back.

  They made their way as quietly as they could up the stairs, forever looking up to see if they could spot someone’s feet above them, however they had managed to make it to the top without bumping into anyone from Sylvia’s group. Sarah went to open the door but found it had been locked.

  “I got it” Zoe said as she knelt by the door.

  This door was a bit more difficult to unlock and Zoe swore a few times and had to stop herself from yelling at the door a few more times but eventually she got it open.

  They made their way onto the roof. Zoe relished in the warm night air for a second. She felt like she was actually a prisoner and was getting out of jail and into freedom for the first time. They could hear the sounds from the skin eaters coming from below them. Zoe went and looked over the edge of the roof and felt her heart stop. From this height they could see a lot further than just what was right in front of them. What Zoe saw was a mass amount of skin eaters wandering along the motorway in the distance with the majority of them coming towards the costco.

  “We have to move fast and get the hell out of here” Jeff said.

  “I’m with you there, lets get going” Simone said.

  Sarah had been right with saying there would be something to get them down to the ground and the very lucky thing was is that the drop down ladder taking them to the ground landed right inside the fence at the back door.

  “Jackpot” Jeff said.

  The drop down ladder was a little rusty and squeaked a little as they started to drop it down. Zoe cringed and kept looking down, paranoid that someone from Sylvia’s group had heard that but they were lucky again and no one came out to investigate the noise.

  The ladder stopped a bit short from the ground but they decided that it was easy enough to jump from the ladder to the ground without hurting themselves.

  “We move down fast and quiet” Jeff said.

  “Let’s go” Sarah said.

  Michael went down first followed by Sarah, Arthur, Zoe, Simone and then Jeff who went last. Zoe could feel the rust off the ladder as she went down it and noticed how old and how little used it was. Zoe prayed that it wouldn’t give in with all of their weight and send them crashing down to the ground where they would definitely be hurt. Thankfully, it didn’t.

  As soon as they landed on the ground they made sure to take out the skin eaters surrounding that fence. The thing with the skin eaters is how noisy they get when they see their food in front of them. They’re like kids when kids used to get excited watching their ice cream come towards them.

  It was easy enough and the skin eaters were taken care of by the time Jeff had landed on the ground to join them. Michael went to open his mouth to speak when they heard a voice coming from behind he door.

  “Yeah, just popping out for a puff, two seconds!” Zoe recognised the voice as Liams.

  Michael pointed towards the wall where they all went to and stood as flat as they could against it. It was dark outside and as long as Liam didn’t look directly at them or turn toward the wall they were standing against then they would be fine. If he did notice they would have to take care of him, hopefully not like they just had to take care of the skin eaters.

  The door opened and Zoe heard the click of a lighter before the smell of cigarette smoke hit her in the face. She was standing right behind the opened door and saw Liams shoes from underneath it.

  ‘Please don’t see us, please don’t see us’ Zoe pleaded to herself.

  “What the..” Liam trailed of.

  Zoe watched Liam move away from the door and walk towards the top of the fence where the skin eaters they had killed were lying.

  ‘S
hit, of course they’d notice’ Zoe thought.

  Zoe saw Arthur sneak up behind Liam, baseball bat in hand. Zoe wanted to shout to Arthur not to kill him but she risked everyone getting caught if she done that.

  Liam turned around and caught Arthur before him with his baseball bat raised, his eyes widened, his mouth opened but he was knocked unconscious by Arthur before he could shout to anyone else to tell them they were all there.

  “Please don’t tell me you’ve killed him?” Simone whispered to Arthur.

  “Nah, just a light tap on the head to make him sleep for a bit. He’ll have a bump and a headache, nothing bad” Arthur whispered back.

  Simone wasn’t too convinced about that and went and examined Liam anyway before coming to the conclusion that Arthur was right and Liam would be fine.

  “Lets get inside” Zoe whispered to them.

  Zoe popped her head in slowly to see if there was anyone floating around the corridor since Liam had been speaking to someone but found it empty.

  “All clear” Zoe whispered as she motioned for everyone to follow her.

  Zoe knew exactly where she was in the corridor and knew where to go to get to the experiment room. It wasn’t hard really, it was a straight corridor with no bend or twists.

  They all kept crouched and low and kept their eyes peeled. They had made it this far and they’d be damned if they were to get caught now. Michael had pointed towards the doors to let Mike and everyone in but Zoe shook her head no. The more there of them then the more likely they were to get caught. One of them could easily run back and open the doors if they needed the others help but for now they’d manage fine.

  They made it up to the room for the experiments and the door was of course locked. Zoe tried to pick the lock but couldn’t manage to do it.

  “Shit” Zoe whispered.

  “Do we need the key for it?” Jeff whispered to her.

  Zoe looked at him and nodded her head. She couldn’t believe that they had managed to get this far and right to them door they wanted to go through and couldn’t. Zoe had no idea what they would do now.

  “Looks like we need to make ourselves known and demand someone to let us through” Arthur whispered.

  Zoe knew he was right but felt deflated that they wouldn’t manage to get any further without being noticed. Zoe had heard voices in the room two doors down from them and moved to go down to them. She took out her knife in her back pocket, wiped the skin eater blood that was on it on her trousers and paused just outside at the side of the door.

  Zoe pointed to the door to make it clear to everyone they were going into that room. Michael nodded his head and got his weapon ready, everyone else following suit and doing the same. Zoe took a deep breath, counted to three, reached up to the door and turned the handle. Thankfully this door was unlocked and she burst into the room with everyone close behind her.

  “Put anything you have in your hands down and put your hands up!” Zoe said to the people in the room.

  It was Claire and Eve standing there. They put down the things they had in their hands, which turned out just to be papers and it their hands up. Zoe felt like she was a police officer making them put their hands into the air.

  “How did you manage to get in here?” Claire asked them.

  “We’re not going to tell you that and it’s us that’ll be asking the questions” Jeff told them.

  “What do you want?” Claire asked.

  “The key to get into that experiment room” Zoe said.

  “Can’t let you in there. Ben is resting and he needs quiet” Eve said.

  “We want to see that for ourselves. We don’t exactly trust you” Michael growled.

  “You’ll have to. We can’t risk Ben getting any sort of infection or you lot disturbing his peace” Eve told them.

  “We’ll make sure to tiptoe in and not touch him. Key please” Sarah said.

  “I’m not going to hand over they key. End of story now please leave” Eve told them.

  “Oh I’ve had enough of this shit” Michael growled.

  Michael walked up to Eve and placed a knife against her throat and held her hands behind her back.

  “Give us the key or we’ll kill you and take it for ourselves. How does that sound?” Michael said to her.

  “It doesn’t sound ideal I’ll give you that but you’re not getting the key so you’ll just have to kill me” Eve told them.

  Sarah had went up to Claire and was holding her back from trying to save Eve. They were not playing around and they wanted answers now.

  “You really are just that crazy you’d rather die than give us the key. Shows your hiding something in that room” Michael said to Eve.

  “I am protecting young Ben actually from you lot. Now leave before you regret it” Eve told him.

  “That’s it, I’ve had enough of you lot and your threats” Arthur said.

  Arthur walked up to Eve and punched her across the temples. Eve slumped into Michaels arms before he placed her on the floor, rummaging around in her pockets for the keys.

  “How dare you just attack her like that!” Claire said.

  “All she had to do was just give us the keys and that wouldn’t have happened” Arthur said.

  “You bunch of..” Claire started to say before Jeff went and placed some of the duct tape across her mouth.

  “Tie them both up” Jeff said.

  “Got the keys!” Michael said as he pulled the keys from Eve jeans pocket.

  Sarah and Jeff tied up Eve and Claire and they walked out the door, not bothering to try and hide since they had pretty much been caught by everyone one pretty much. Zoe was wondering where Sylvia and Tom were, she hadn’t see or heard them at all yet.

  Michael stepped up to the door and managed to unlock it. They all looked at each other with a little bit of fear in their eyes , not sure what they were going to see and find in this room. Michael took it upon himself to all in first.

  When Zoe walked into the room she could hear the stirring of whoever was on the bed moving around. Zoe felt around for the light switch and eventually felt her fingers brush over it and pressed the switch down to turn the lights on.

  “Oh my god..” Simone said.

  Zoe looked in horror at what used to be Ben on the table. Not only was he just missing an arm, he was also missing a leg and his stomach had been opened up and his insides were spilling out. Ben had turn into a skin eater and they had decided to keep chopping off his body parts. Ben was looking hungrily at them all and chomping his teeth together.

  “Why bother keeping him alive as a skin eater when he has his body chopped off and chopped into!?” Sarah gasped.

  “Who knows but we need to go find out now!” Michael shouted as he spun around.

  Zoe turned and went to run out of the door when she ran right into Tom who grabbed her by the arms and spun her around to face everyone in her group. Zoe struggled against him but he had too much of a tight grip on her arms and he was keeping them pinned to her side.

  “Now now now, what do we have here?” Sylvia said as she came through the door.

  “You sick bitch!” Michael roared, coming at Sylvia with his knife.

  “Nuh uh uh, I wouldn’t do that” Sylvia told him as she placed a knife at Zoe’s throat.

  Michael stopped coming towards Sylvia and lowered his knife down to his side, glowering at Sylvia. Jeff looked like he was going to murder her right here and now if she wasn’t holding a knife to Zoe’s throat. Zoe could smell blood on the knife and gagged at the smell, trying to hold it together so as not to give Sylvia any satisfaction.

  “Now, what are we going to do with you lot now?” Sylvia asked no one in particular.

  “What have you done with Ben?” Simone asked.

  “Well as you can already tell we lied to you about Ben making it. We decided to just put him out of his misery and shoved a knife into his head” Sylvia said nonchalantly.

  “You are just a bunch of psychotic animals!” Arthur yell
ed.

  “Well you can think all you want about us but it was a blessing killing Ben really. He has kindly donated his body to science for our experiment” Sylvia smiled.

  “Kindly donated? That sicko Jack chopped his fucking arm off without him wanting that and then you lot kill him and chop him up some more! I wouldn’t call that fucking kind!” Jeff shouted.

  “He’ll be happy we did. We are well on our way to finding this cure and then everyone will love us for doing so” Sylvia said.

  “That’s what you’re after? Fame you’ll never get?” Sarah asked.

  “We will get fame as we will find the cure. We are seeing more of how the infection spreads in young Ben’s body parts than we have in any other skin eater we have brought in. It is probably working because of how fresh Ben was as a skin eater” Sylvia smiled again.

  “You’re vile, vile human beings. And you Tom! You were a doctor, you should’ve tried to save him!” Simone cried out, tears were rolling down her face.

  “One sacrifice for a chance to save the whole world had to be made” Tom told her.

  “You’re not a fucking doctor, you’re a crazed killer” Simone raged.

  Tom didn’t answer her, he just tightened his hold on Zoe’s arms.

  “Now what Sylvia? What are you going to do to us now?” Zoe asked her.

  “Hmm I haven’t quite decided yet” Sylvia mused.

  “Well there’s more of us than there are of you lot! Try taking us all on!” Arthur shouted to her.

  “Ah yes well thank you for reminding me of that. Looks like we’ll just have to take Zoe here as prisoner for now to make sure you lot don’t try anything. Tom, take her into the room with the other prisoners we have in there, Mike sure to tie he up real tight” Sylvia smiled.

  “Don’t you fucking touch her!” Jeff shouted at her.

  “Or what?” Sylvia asked as she pressed the knife slightly into Zoe’s throat.

  Zoe felt the sharpness of the knife cut slightly into her skin and soon felt the warm trickle of blood flow down her neck. Zoe saw Jeff staring at her, lost for what to do and how to help her, struggling with trying to decide if he should stay where he was or go charging at Sylvia and risk Zoe getting her throat slashed open.