Madeline felt impossibly light in his arms. He moved to Rebecca’s position by the door. “Okay, how do we get out of here?”
Rebecca looked again at Madeline. She sighed and rolled her eyes, clearly exhibiting her frustration with Charlie. “They have the pedestrian hallways and entrances well covered, but the staff stairwell only has one guard on it. He always leaves this time of night to get a coffee and stays to flirt with the girl that works the counter in the cafeteria. He just left a minute ago. Let’s go.” She edged out into the hallway, urging him to follow.
They moved quickly to the doorway of the stairwell and entered. “Wait here. I have to buy us a little time.” She went back into the hallway and he listened as her soft footsteps got further and further away until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
He waited. It was all he could do to trust her. He didn’t like it, but he had no other choice. ‘Us’, she had said. ‘Buy us some time’. Charlie suddenly realized how much Rebecca was risking. She couldn’t be planning on coming back after this. They would have to know that she was the one helping them escape.
He heard her footsteps returning, but this time there was another set of footsteps with her. Panic hit him. Was she setting him up? Freeing him only to report him to the authorities? It didn’t make sense! He ran down one flight of stairs, preparing to run the rest of the way if someone other then Rebecca came through the door.
A voice he didn’t recognize came from the other side of the door. “Get some sleep, Becka. I’m sure you’ll feel better tomorrow. Do you need me to finish your rounds for you?”
“No,” she replied, “I just finished them. They’ll be alright for a while. Thanks, Jackie.”
“Bye, Beck.”
The door opened and Charlie breathed a sigh of relief when just Rebecca entered the stairwell. Her eyes went wide when he wasn’t waiting where she had left him and then she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him waiting one flight below. “This way. Quickly.” She ran down the stairs past him.
“How much time do we have?” He asked.
She was breathing heavily, a combination of her extra weight and adrenalin. “Jackie is busy tonight so she won’t start on my rounds for at least an hour.” She took a deep, labored breath. “Two at the most.”
“Oh my God.” He said. “How is that going to be enough time?”
“It’ll have to be enough. Wait here.”
They had come to the bottom floor and the door in front of them was marked ‘parking garage’. She opened it and walked through. A few seconds later, she poked her head back in. “It’s clear. Hurry.” She waved him through.
Rebecca stopped at her SUV and opened the rear tailgate, removing some grocery bags filled with clothes. Get in and lie down. I have to hide you.”
He laid Madeline down first and crawled in next to her. “Get closer.” Rebecca said, shoving him in until he was almost on top of Madeline. Rebecca covered them with a blanket and stacked the grocery bags on top of the two of them. Madeline stirred and Charlie hoped she didn’t wake up while they were in this position. She might be whipped into a frenzy of confusion and blood lust.
He heard the engine start and she began driving. The drive seemed to take forever while Charlie’s internal clock was ticking away the precious moments they had before their escape was discovered. He waited patiently while the truck lumbered on, speeding up, slowing down, and turning every now and again. Madeline stirred at one point, but didn’t wake. Finally, the truck stopped, the back hatch opened, and he could feel the bags and blanket being removed.
When he sat up, he looked into the cruel eyes of a large unshaven man that reeked of body odor. The man held a shotgun to Charlie’s head and looked down hungrily at Madeline. “Who’s the girl?” He asked.
To the man, Rebecca answered, “She’s his friend. He wouldn’t come without her.” And then to Charlie, “I’m sorry, Charlie. I had to make sure you wouldn’t try to run.”
Charlie sighed as he exited the truck at the behest of the man with the gun. “You sure know how to make a guy feel welcome, Rebecca.” He lifted Madeline from the back of the truck and allowed himself to be led into the house. It was a modest home with a worn-out couch and an end table with a scratched and worn finish. The room smelled as bad as the man with the gun, leading Charlie to believe he must’ve been spending the vast majority of his time hunkered down in this small room. Charlie set Madeline down on the couch. It wouldn’t do him any good to be holding her if he had to make a quick move for the shotgun, which at this point, was looking like his best option.
“Okay, John. Give me the gun and go get him.” Rebecca grabbed the shotgun and kept it trained on Charlie while her friend, John, left the room. “My son, he’s sick, and you can help him, Charlie.” John reentered the room with a young child in his arms, but the child wasn’t sick. The child was crazed. The boy squirmed in John’s arms as though trying to break free. It wasn’t until they were completely in the light that Charlie could tell the boy was actually tied with rope. There was duct tape over the boy’s mouth and when he looked at Charlie, his eyes went wild. The boy growled and shrieked from behind the tape that covered his mouth. The boy had been bitten.
Charlie stood in awe. “And just how do you expect me to help him? There’s nothing I can do for this.”
“Oh yes there is. Let him bite you.”
“You don’t honestly expect me to believe that you risked life and limb to free me just to get a meal for your son, do you? There’s no coming back from this, Rebecca.” He was raising his voice now, trying to remain calm while his gut twisted inside at the thought of how desperate she must be to save her child. “How do you expect that to help him?”
“Because you were bitten!” She jabbed an accusatory finger at him. “I saw it when they brought you in! You were bitten and you didn’t turn into one of them! And you healed. Not just the bite mark, all of it! The burns! Jesus, Charlie, the burns! I’ve never seen burns heal that quickly or that well. There’s hardly a mark left on you!”
For the first time since Charlie woke up from his slumber in the hospital bed, it dawned on him that he felt no pain from the burns on his head and arm. He lifted his sleeve quickly and saw only a few remnants of burn scars left. He felt his hair growing from the side of his head that should have been a permanent mass of cruelly warped flesh. He was healing, faster and better than any human should be able to. He looked back at Rebecca, suddenly understanding her train of thought. “You can’t be serious.” He said shaking his head. “This won’t work.”
“It has to work!” She yelled with tears gleaming in her eyes. “Now let him bite you!” She nudged at him with the shotgun while John pulled the duct tape off of the boy’s mouth with an unceremonious rip. The boy didn’t seem to notice.
Once the tape was off of the boy’s mouth he sprang to life so quickly that he wriggled loose within John’s grip. The small body turned into John and his mouth fell on John’s arms. The boy bit down and Charlie could hear the tearing of soft flesh. John screamed, as did Rebecca. She dropped the shotgun and lunged at her son in an attempt to pull him from John’s arm. “Benny! No!” She screamed.
Charlie wasn’t about to waste a good distraction. He turned and scooped up Madeline’s still limp body from the couch and vaulted over it towards the front door. He had slipped out the door just in time to hear the shotgun blast that peppered the top of the door. “You bastard!” Rebecca screamed from the other side of the door. “This is your fault! You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!”
He ran across the yard and turned down the sidewalk just in time to hear another shotgun blast hit a car parked on the street behind him. He kept running. Another turn and then another. He dove through neighbors’ yards and over fences. He didn’t know if he had outrun Rebecca or if she had given up, but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out. He kept running, keeping to alleys whenever possible.
When he felt like he had run far enough, he knelt down in an alley behind
a dumpster and set Madeline down on the cool pavement to catch his breath. She stirred slightly, emitting a small moan and rolling her head. He shook her lightly. “Madeline. Madeline, wake up.”
Her eyes opened slowly at first, and then shot open in panic. She latched onto his waist and tried to throw him but he had both of her arms gripped tightly. They wrestled, both vying for the upper hand. He grunted as her constrictor-like grip threatened to crush his diaphragm and shook her again, harder this time. “Madeline, stop! It’s me.” He was barely able to get the words out.
Her grip on his mid-section eased as recognition set in. “Charlie?” She asked. He nodded. “I saw you in a hospital bed next to me.” She said. “But what’s going on? Where the hell are we now?” He began to speak but she stopped him with a sudden hand on his shoulder that pushed him out to arm’s length so she could better look him in the eyes. “What you told me in the dream… Philip and Ginny… Are they really?”
He nodded and looked down at the ground. He couldn’t stand to see the despair in her eyes again. Once was one time too many. He paused for a moment, allowing her time to muster up her strength. She took a deep breath to stifle off any more tears that might come.
“We need to get moving.” Charlie said. He offered Madeline his hand and helped her up off of the ground.
She stood and looked down at the hospital gown she was wearing, trying to close the back as tightly as she could and failing at it. She let out a sigh of frustration. “Not very flattering is it?”
Charlie looked her up and down. “Oh, trust me, it’s plenty flattering.” He chuckled. She shot him a wry grin and they walked towards the entrance of the alley. There was a coolness in the alley that didn’t spread beyond it, as though it had its own climate. They peered around the corner to examine the street the alley opened up onto.
“Where to?” She asked.
“I need to find my friend, Maggie. The nurse that broke us out said she had her phone number, but everything went to hell before I could get it from her. I don’t even know how to start looking for her.”
Madeline’s mouth dropped open in a bout of horror. “I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that right now, Charlie.” She pointed to something above and beyond his shoulder.
He turned to look at what she was gaping at and suddenly understood her reaction. Oh no. He thought. Not so soon! On top of a building a few blocks from them, stood an electronic billboard that showed their pictures with the words ‘Extremely Dangerous! Do not attempt to apprehend!’ flashing below their faces. The word was out on them already.
Madeline was the first of them to speak. “I think if we’re not out of the city before dawn, we’re as good as dead.”
Charlie sighed. How could he find Maggie? It didn’t take long for him to rationalize that if he were dead, he couldn’t find Maggie at all. They would have to run. They would have to bide their time until he could devise some other way of finding her. Getting out of the city was going to be challenge enough. Rebecca told him she had a phone number, so he had to believe that Maggie was safe. It was also a safe bet that wherever she was, was now crawling with authorities. “How are we going to get out of here? I don’t even know where we are.”
Just then he saw a patrol headed their way. A single humvee crawled down the street with a .50 caliber machine gun locked and loaded on the roof. The soldier manning the weapon was slowly sweeping back and forth across the buildings on either side of the street. He grabbed Madeline and dove into a deep doorway that they had to push into to avoid being seen. As the humvee came up even with the alley, a bright light was pointed down the alley and scanned the area. Charlie had to press up against Madeline to avoid the stream of light that entered the doorway. He was close enough that he could feel Madeline’s breath on his neck. “How are your… urges? Are you okay?” He whispered in her ear.
She swallowed audibly. Her breathing had quickened and he could hear her take a long, deep inhale. Smelling him? “I’m okay, I think. But you smell like Ginny did.” She took another deep inhale and her voice quivered. “So good.” Her body shuddered.
When the light turned away and the humvee continued down the street, he pulled away from her and peered out from the doorway. The patrol was gone. “Are you alright?” He asked her.
She had her hands pressed to the wall as though bracing herself against falling down. He noticed tiny beads of sweat forming on her brow. She closed her eyes and took another breath, steadying herself. “Yeah, I’m okay now. Just need a moment.”
“I don’t know if we have a moment. We need to get out of here.”
Madeline nodded in approval. “We need help from someone that knows how to get out of here.”
Charlie understood what she was getting at. “Yeah, we need a soldier that knows where the patrols and checkpoints are.” They inched back out to the street and looked both ways for any signs of life. When they were convinced they were alone, they moved from the alley. “I assume they are putting up some kind of barrier around a portion of the city. The US Bank building is near the center of the city.” He pointed to the skyscraper behind them. “If I’m right, we should hit the barrier if we just keep moving away from the tower.”
“Sounds like as good a plan as any.”
They began to move towards what they hoped were the outskirts of the safe zone. They ran down alleys with tall buildings on either side of them, always keeping the towering skyscraper at their backs. They zigzagged back and forth through dimly lit streets and finally came to an area where a tall fence stood some fifty feet away. They stopped and watched an ominous sight. On the other side of the fence were a myriad of construction vehicles, bulldozing buildings by the hundreds. Rubble and flat earth encompassed the area for hundreds of yards past the fence. Men with machine guns protected the workers in the construction vehicles and guards in hastily erected towers along the fence line shined huge spotlights around the vehicles. Charlie whistled.
“What are they doing?” Madeline asked.
“They’re creating a kill zone.” His words hung in the air. “The flat ground gives them a clear field of fire. Over time, they’ll fortify the entire area. This fence will be electrified eventually, if it isn’t already. If we can’t get out tonight, we might never get out.” He sighed and continued. “But if we get out tonight, we might never get back in.” His last few words trailed off as his thoughts returned to Maggie. Had he lost her already? He needed time to think. Time. The most precious thing he had. And he had so very little of it. “We have to move that direction,” he pointed to a darker section of the fence, “away from the crews and the lights.” She nodded and followed him as he ducked into another alley so they could traverse the ground quickly but still keep to the shadows.
As Charlie neared the corner of one last building, he heard the quiet squelch of a radio nearby. Human voices were mumbling through the tinny sounding hand piece, too quiet to understand. Charlie peered around the corner and saw the familiar silhouette of a humvee backlit by the numerous search lights passing behind it. It sat in the middle of the street facing the fence and the newly flattened kill zone beyond. He saw movement in the driver’s seat. The radio keyed and a voice spoke, “Foxtrot three four, all clear, over.”
Madeline was trying to lean out to see what was happening so Charlie leaned back against the wall and whispered to her. “Two soldiers in a humvee. If we can get that humvee, we could drive right out of here.” He thought for a minute. “If only we could get the two of them to separate somehow.”
“Man, I gotta piss.” The driver said as he got out of the humvee. The man stood and stretched his legs for a moment as though he’d been sitting in the truck for quite some time. Then he began to walk right towards them. Charlie’s eyes went wide. He shooed Madeline into a nearby stairwell and ducked in behind her. The man was whistling as he came around the corner and turned to face the wall of the building. He rummaged around in his pants for a moment before beginning to urinate on the wall just a f
ew feet from them. When he was finished, he was too worried about properly buttoning his fly to ever notice Charlie sneaking up behind him. Charlie snaked his arms around the man’s throat and locked on a sleeper hold. The soldier struggled for a minute, slapping at Charlie’s face and clawing at his eyes, but Madeline jumped in to hold the man’s arms as they grew more and more limp. When the man was unconscious, Charlie let go of the hold and his body fell to the ground.
“What did you do?” Madeline whispered.
“Sleeper hold.” He whispered back.
“Huh.” Madeline shrugged.
A man’s voice came from around the corner. “Jeez Gary, did you end up having to take a sh..” The soldier entered the alley from the street and never had time to react. Charlie cut his sentence short with a quick chop to the Adam’s apple. As he reached up to grab his aching throat, Charlie brought up a powerful knee to the soldier’s diaphragm, doubling him over. One last shot with a closed fist on the back of the soldier’s neck and he collapsed to the ground, too.
Madeline was beside herself. She looked from the two unconscious soldiers to Charlie and then back again. “What the hell are you?” She asked.
Charlie smiled. “Sorry Ma’am, that’s classified.” He just continued to smile while she stared at him, disbelievingly. “We’re going to need their clothes and equipment. And they won’t stay knocked out forever.”
They went to work busily removing the soldiers’ clothes. The driver’s uniform fit Charlie pretty well, but Madeline’s outfit was almost laughably big on her. He smirked at her again.
“Yeah, like anyone is going to believe I’m a soldier.” She spat as she frustratedly stuffed the extra fabric back up under the cuff of one sleeve.
“I’ll get you a new outfit when we get out of here. Just stuff your hair up under your Kevlar and sit low in the seat. If all goes well, you won’t have to get out of the truck at all.”
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