“He said it was to attach swords to but I don’t see a way for that to work,” he said, feeling around for a part to attach things to. “Must be more to it, or a different piece maybe. Guess it’d make sense. Can’t even have a hatchet, why would I get a sword?”
Holly laughed as the door swung open.
Dressed in an orange hazmat suit, was King Fedrick Arquette. His short grey hair was slicked back. He had a well-trimmed goatee, stunning blue eyes, and a warm welcoming smile. “Hello, Jonathan.”
John stood up and held out his hand. “Hello.”
“It’s nice to finally meet,” he said, shaking John's hand before putting his behind his back. “You saved my wife, and for that, I thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re saving mine, that’s thanks enough.”
The King laughed and put his hand on John’s shoulder. “Son, I met my Magdalene, after, the pits of hell had opened up. I ran a group out of my old police station. My men wore riot armor, they carried shields... We were strong, silent, and smart. The three Ss you need to achieve the fourth. Survival.
“We came here one day while trying to outrun a horde. This is going to sound crazy but some appeared to be able to hold weapons. I’m still not sure if that was heatstroke or not,” he said with a chuckle. “We came here, and that’s when I discovered Magdalene and her knights.
“It was love at first sight... We instantly hit it off, and instantly became a part of each other’s lives...
“Me, giving you aid, that is the least I can do. I can’t play favorites and so you’ll still need to work for your share, but trust me when I say, what you’ve done, by saving my Maggie... I could never repay. And I thank you. This kingdom, thanks you.”
John nodded, staring at the King. “I was happy to help.”
The King slid his hand down John’s arm and squeezed the metal armor on his stump. “Savior.”
“King.”
“In a number of months we’ll allow you from quarantine-”
“Months?”
“That’s how long it will take to make sure we’ve eliminated the virus coursing through your system. Or at least stopped it to some degree. You have tuberculosis, Jonathan. These days, when highly trained professionals, power, and supplies are a rarity, you take what you can get whenever you can get it, no matter the cost.”
“My family- I have a daughter, her friend- my friends-”
The king put his hand on John’s chest. “Don’t worry about a thing. We will go to your home and bring them here to you. They will be safe, and they will be yours once more.”
John nodded and put his hand on his hip. Taking a deep breath, he put his head down. “It would mean the world to me to have them here, to have them somewhere where they’ll be safe.”
He put his hand back on John’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing. For you saved my love, and I will save all of yours.”
“I- I wanna go. When you go-”
“In your condition, I think it’s best to rest. We will bring them back. And in a worst-case scenario where something goes wrong, you will be able to review it. We keep everything documented in film and in writing. We are making history, and one day, our records will be a gold mine.”
After talking for a bit and sharing stories, the King left, and John sat back down.
“Months,” he mumbled, turning to Holly and Jester. “Guess I better enjoy our time while it lasts.” He sighed. “Still beats the cell at the base...”
“Maybe if you’re lucky someone else’ll catch a deadly disease and keep you company,” she joked.
He laid down and put his arm over his head. “I really hope everyone’s okay.”
“Me too.”
He looked at her. “My daughter and brother... Rachel, she’s somethin’... I don’t know if she can bite as good as she barks, but she’s one tough woman... Norman, hell, he’s one of the only people I consider to be a friend in this world...” He looked to the ceiling and closed his eyes. “I just want them to be alive... Beaten, clinging to life, as long as they’re alive...”
“Man, your life really is rough.”
He looked back to her and Jester. “You’d never believe some of the things I’ve been through.”
Some days later, as the Divine celebrated the 4th of July, the King came down to quarantine, dressed in his hazmat suit.
“Jonathan?” he asked, looking at him as he got up off the mattress.
“Are they- they're...” He stared, waiting to see his friends and family walk up from behind the King. “Are- where are they?”
The King stared into John’s eye. Putting his hand on his shoulder, he held out a video camera. “I sent out some scouts... Before you see what is on that tape, I want to warn you that it is, extremely, graphic.”
He stared at the King and glanced down at the camera. “Wh-…" He scratched his head and looked away. “On the video, did you see a-”
“The bodies... All of their heads were... Well they were no more. I couldn’t answer your questions no matter how hard I tried. I’m sorry. But you will forever have home in the Divine.”
Swiping the camera, John chucked it as hard as he could, shattering it on the wall and scaring Holly awake.
“Calm yourself!” the King commanded.
John shoved him aside, leaving quarantine in his jeans and hospital gown.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the King shouted as John left the hall.
As the King clenched his fists, Jester walked over and grabbed his arm.
“What do you want?”
“That man,” he said in his gravelly voice. “He took down the Harbor. I’ll watch him. Make sure he doesn’t kill himself.”
“He was the one who-”
The King stopped talking as Jester grabbed his suit jacket off the coat rack and left the room.
After leaving the Divine Museum, grabbing a hatchet from a hardware store, and taking on a small horde in the city, John saw him. Morgan Williams. He was handcuffed to a stop sign, trying to pull himself free.
John stared him dead in the eyes. “You son of a bitch.”
Morgan stared at him and clacked his teeth.
He shook his head and began approaching him. “I know what you did. To my people.” He was shaking. “You killed them all.”
Morgan began swinging his free hand at him.
Charging at him, John tackled him to the ground, ripping his cuffed hand off.
He punched him across the face and slammed his fist into his nose, smushing it.
He grabbed Morgan’s right ear, the same one he lost to him in Argentina. John spit in his mouth and tore the ear from his head.
“We’re not done yet!” Grabbing his hatchet off the ground, he held down Morgan’s right arm. “Shittin’ yourself yet?” He slammed the hatchet down, slicing his arm off at the elbow.
He grabbed him by the collar of his leather jacket and pulled him up to his face, laughing. “WHO ARE YOU ACQUAINTED WITH?”
Morgan snapped his teeth at him, causing John to fall back and realize it was an infected.
He got up, his eyes were wide. He looked around, hoping there was nobody who witnessed him seeing things.
Shaking his head, he picked his hatchet up and slammed his boot down into the infected’s head, killing it.
Walking out from behind a building was a tall man with a wrinkly face, long bushy bearded, and stringy grey hair.
“It can’t be easy,” he said as John turned to him. “Charlie,” he said, nodding. “Jester.”
He wiped the blood from his face and pointed the hatchet at him. “You’re followin’ me?”
“My sister, she told you we got lost. That’s when we found the Divine. No. I took her away when a group started picking us off.”
“The Acquainted-”
“The Harbor... This man, Rhys, he killed our sister Jasmine... I convinced Holly we got separated. Sometimes it’s good to pretend some things never happened, and that some people never
died.
“I watched you. You broke the camera, but you never watched the tape. You can watch it, and get your answer. Or pretend. You don’t know who’s dead or alive, you can pretend, and people won’t think you’re crazy. You don’t know, you don’t have to know. You can believe.”
John looked down at the mangled corpse and dropped the hatchet.
Taking off his gown, he wiped off his face and arms with the inside of it and tossed it on the corpse.
He shook his head and pointed up the road. “Let’s go...”
Jester unclipped his mask from the back of his overalls and nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, sliding it back on.
After getting back to the Divine and getting a new camera, Jester and John returned to quarantine.
Sitting down on his mattress with Holly, John put the tape in and watched it. It was close to thirty minutes long, and all of the bodies were shown up close and in detail. None of them appeared to be Rachel or Norman, and it wasn’t until he spotted two severed legs with obliterated kneecaps that he calmed down.
John put the camera down and leaned his head back.
“Savior?” Holly asked.
He dropped the camera and put his face in his hand.
“John?”
He laughed. “The legs, they’re Billie’s legs! Morgan hurt them, but he didn’t kill them...” As tears ran down, a smile grew on his face.
“So are you happy or sad?”
He shook his head. “I lost everything... But not my family. Not them. Rachel and Norman, their bodies aren’t there.” He looked at her and laughed. “Their bodies aren’t there!”
She smiled at him as he wrapped his arms around her.
She rubbed his back as he looked to Jester. “Thank you.”
John buried his face in her neck and hugged her tighter. “They’re still out there.”
The next day, after the nurse stopped in to give John his medication, the King came in. He wore his long red robe with a fur collar, and a mask over his mouth and nose.
“Jonathan.”
John turned around and got up. “Sorry about yesterday. Breaking your camera and leaving like that.”
“You should be. You could have spread your disease.”
“I know.”
The King shook his head. “But that’s not what I wish to talk about. Jester, he told me it was you who unleashed hell upon the Harbor.”
He nodded. “Freed their slaves and burned the place to the ground.”
“Here I was, calling you a savior for saving my Magdalene, and I hadn’t a clue what it was you’ve done for this world. That you were the one responsible for it.
“How was he? Arnold?”
“A madman. He justified what his people did the same way Morgan Williams and the Acquainted do. He seen his people as survivors, and he refused to see it any other way.”
“How did you deal with them?”
“Not very good for the first couple months. I went with the idea of killin’ ‘em all, but, somethin’ stopped me.”
“What?”
“I think it was fear. Not bein’ afraid of the Harbor, but the fear of not knowin’ how my family’d take it if I survived and came back... I didn’t wanna die, I knew I’d be comin’ back... I just didn’t know how they'd take it.”
“What made you choose?”
“Along with seein’ how they slaved people, how they treated them. There was a woman, her name was Merida. She was a real good friend and the only thing that made damn sure I wasn’t gonna forget why I went there.
“It was a lot of things. Family, Merida, me wantin’ to rid the world of other animals. But when I did it, I didn’t have the choice.
“We went to New Colombia, it was burned to the ground. They hated me for not tellin’ them about the place and I ended up bein’ put in a fight to the death. I won, and after takin’ a knife to the eye, I killed Arnold, I lit some men on fire, and I shot the rest.”
The king slid off his white glove and held his hand to John.
Shaking it, the King smiled.
“You Jonathan. The man who saved my wife, the man who stopped The Harbor... Are my general.”
John stepped back, and Jester and Holly stared at the King.
“Not that I’ve had to use them all that much, but I wasn’t the best man to lead men into battle... But clearly, Savior. You are.”
John’s eyes were wide. “You’re puttin’ me in charge of your army?”
The King laughed. “One man took down the Harbor. One man. And I want that man to lead mine.”
Chapter 28:
Like Old Times
Two months later, after John’s disease was deemed no longer a threat, he was released from quarantine.
Walking down the hall, leading into the museum, John was dressed in a clean pair of black slacks and a light grey dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
He looked around the room and saw her. She waited.
Her long golden hair spilled over her shoulders. She was dressed in light blue jeans and a white blouse. A wide smile spread across her face as she made eye contact with him.
Time felt like it was moving in slow motion as he walked across the room and they wrapped their arms around each other.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come in to visit,” Janey said with a laugh, tears in her eyes. “The King said-”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to get you sick anyway,” he said, stepping back. “Have you been to Argentina since gettin' here?”
She nodded. “Yeah... Me and a few of these guys rode out a couple weeks ago, just for the heck of it...”
“Nothin’?”
“No.”
“But no Rachel or Norman, right?”
She shook her head. “I looked around, my guess is she and Billie left.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Back at your place, all the photos were gone. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Morgan loved you enough to wanna be reminded of you too much,” she joked. “I don’t know where they are, but we know they’re safe.”
He stared at her silently for a moment before nodding. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“The King, he and I were talkin’ the other night. He wants my first job for the Divine to be clearin’ out a high school. He wants to try movin’ people into it and usin’ it as a way to expand the Divine.”
“So is that why you’re out?”
“I got a doctor’s note,” he joked. “No, I was cleared, I’m free from quarantine and since there’s no reason to head back, figured I’d get the jump on some of these jobs. You wanna come along?”
“Depends, you wanna make things interesting?”
He let out a laugh and nodded. “Sure, watcha got?”
“Just me and you, no guns. We’ll clean the place out quietly and they won’t even know what got ‘em.”
John rubbed the metal end of his armor piece and glanced at his hatchet. “Alright, Alvarez.”
A short while later, the two ended up at the gated high school.
John looked at a small statue of a lion with a traffic cone on its head. “This is the place,” he said, walking through the grass and climbing up over the black metal gate.
Janey climbed up and hopped over. “Okay, no guns.”
“No guns? You’re the only one I see carryin’,” he said, glancing at her holstered pistol.
“Worst case scenarios, alright? I’m not an idiot like some people I know,” she said with a laugh, smacking his empty holster.
“That ain’t fair, the only pieces I ever carried are with Rachel. But I might have one back home unless she got that too.”
As they approached the mossy brick building, they crouched down in front of the cold metal doors.
John reached up, slowly pushing on the door to find it open. “You ready?” he whispered.
She pulled out her hunting knives and nodded. “Ready.”
He held his hand on the door for a moment, ju
st staring at her and trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“Me and you, back in school.”
She smiled. “From class clowns to morbid janitors.”
“Morbid janitors,” he repeated, slowly pushing the door open.
The lobby was a long grey room. A door on the right led to the lockers, the hall to the left led into the gymnasium, and straight down the main hall went deeper into the school.
John slowly crept in with Janey behind him. He scurried over to the right wall and leaned his head in the doorway, spotting two infected. One leaned against a locker, and the other walked around in circles.
He looked at Janey and swung his head to the moving target. “You or me?” he whispered as she crept up to the other side of the entrance.
“Can I get them from here?”
“How?”
She held up her knives. “I’ll throw them.”
He held his hand up, signaling her to freeze. “We show off later, we don’t know how many are in here.”
Sneaking into the locker room, John swung his hatchet up, sinking it into the moving infected’s jaw. Yanking it out, he sunk it into the side of its head and caught it before it could fall.
Janey walked up to hers and grabbed it by the head, snapping it back and then stabbing it in the face. Laying it down quietly, she smirked.
“Creative,” John said, watching as she flicked the blood from her hand.
“Norm taught me everything I know.”
“So is that why you prefer the knives?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “A machete would be cool too.”
“But not a hatchet?”
She shrugged and walked past him. “Maybe an actual axe.”
He laughed, following behind.
Walking down the left hallway, they saw the gymnasium full of infected. Near packed. A place that was once a shelter for survivors was now plagued with the dead. Tables knocked over, tents flattened, blood everywhere.
They stayed low and silent, watching the dead move around.
He looked to Janey who stood behind him. “We could lure them into the parking lot, pick ‘em off along the gate.”
Janey nodded. “That’s probably what we’ll have to-”
When Was? (Book 2): Who Are You Acquainted With? Page 24