by D. Laine
I backed into the hole and started down after Marcus, quickly making room for the Ringers to follow me. From the muddy floor, I peered up and watched as Keith ignited the balls in one hand. His other hand gripped the metal door and swung it nearly closed. Through a gap no wider than six inches, he tossed the balls into the room.
The explosion launched him back. Flames shot through the narrow gap before both Ringer brothers managed to pull it shut.
A heavy and suffocating silence followed. Through blurry eyes, I observed the dirt walls that surrounded us. Wide and high enough for two to comfortably stand side by side, yet the seven of us huddled together like we had just been buried alive in a single small coffin. No one moved. No one spoke.
Then a muffled sob broke the silence, effectively summarizing what we had endured. What we had suffered. And, most of all, who we had lost.
7
THEA
Hours of walking dragged by impossibly slowly despite the merciless pace we set. Though no one said the words out loud, I suspected we were all scared by the possibility of the tags following us. The fire had certainly bought us some time, but we had no way of knowing how long.
Pure exhaustion and hunger eventually forced us to a stop. While my throbbing feet and rubbery legs were grateful for the break, I regretted no longer having the distraction of physical pain. That was when the emotional pain surfaced.
David was dead. We had left him.
I leaned against the cold wall and stared at my shoes through watery eyes. Rather than the mud that caked the soles, I saw blood. The icky brown trickle of water that ran under my feet turned red. Before I could stop the illusion from taking hold of me, I was thrust back to the moment David was ripped out of my life.
The screams. The gunfire. The blood dripping from the tag’s mouth—David’s blood.
I jumped from a tap on my shoulder and looked up to find everyone staring at me. The flashlight in Marcus’s hand created a funnel of light around us, illuminating their expectant faces.
Waiting for me to freak out? Well, I wasn’t going to do that.
I bit my lip with determination. “What?”
Jake moved silently to my side. I felt him tug at the straps over my shoulders until the backpack slipped off. Finally freed from the weight, I realized what everyone was waiting for.
I carried most of our food. We had lost a lot of it with David.
I stared numbly as Jake pulled cans of food and bottles of water out of my bag. He handed everything off to someone else.
“Ration it out,” he ordered. “We’ll split one bottle of water tonight. That leaves us with seven more. If we drink twice a day, it should last us.”
Kent nodded as he took the food Jake handed him. Split seven ways, it didn’t stretch far.
I ended up with half a protein bar, two spoonfuls of vegetable soup, and a few sips of water before I was escorted to the makeshift bed someone had spread across the floor of the tunnel. It didn’t offer much comfort, and I was forced to lay in close proximity to Maria, Keith, and Kent, but it was better than sleeping on the hard ground.
I distantly heard something about splitting shifts to keep watch while we rested. I tried listening to the rotation order for my name, but the weight of fatigue was too great. The voices around me faded until they were replaced by the growls and hungry cries of the tags.
They closed in on the outer reaches of my subconscious, always there and always waiting. They grew bolder, chasing me and nearly catching me. But even when they caught me, they didn’t attack me. They darted past, not to take me, but to take someone else.
I never looked—never wanting to see David’s face in that moment—until the one time I did look. It wasn’t David standing behind me, but Jake and Dylan. My mouth dropped open to scream as the tag charged them, and they waited for it to decide which one of them it would take.
I ripped from the nightmare before I saw the end unfold. With wide eyes, I peered into the dark recesses of the tunnel. A soft light shone from somewhere behind me, illuminating the outline of Marcus as he kept watch, but it didn’t chase away the shadows.
I shuddered and rolled to put my back to the tunnel. Maria was gone. Instead of her scowling face, I found green eyes peering at me.
“You okay?” Dylan whispered. His hand rose to brush aside the hair that had fallen across my forehead. When I shook my head, he frowned. “Bad dream?”
I answered with a nod.
“Me, too,” he offered softly.
Someone stirred beside him, and he quieted. He studied me intently for a long time, and I wondered what he was thinking. What did he see when he looked at me?
“Maria and Marcus just started their shift,” he explained softly. “Get some more rest before we move out again.”
“But I’ve got to take my turn on—”
“You’re good,” Dylan assured me. “It was an odd number, so you got a pass.”
“I don’t need a pass.”
“We all need a pass, Thea. We’re all exhausted, but we’ve been doing this for years,” he explained. “We’re conditioned for this. We’ve trained for this. You haven’t.”
“I don’t want a free ride,” I insisted. “I want to contribute.”
“We still have a long way to go.” Dylan swept his fingers through my hair again, and I reluctantly admitted to myself that it felt good. “You can take someone’s spot next time we stop. Fair enough?”
“That’s fair.”
“Good. Now get some sleep.” He slung his arm over me and tugged me closer.
I went, greedily seeking the warmth and protection he offered. After that, I slept. This time, no dreams plagued me.
WE ATE the last of our food two days later. Twelve hours after that, Jake tossed the last empty bottle of water. Another six hours after that, Marcus pulled out our final spare flashlight. We didn’t break for a rest.
Stopping now meant certain death, and turning back wasn’t an option. My steps were heavy with fatigue, but the others kept me moving forward. Each time I glanced up, hoping to see the end bathed in the glow of Marcus’s light, and saw nothing but a black void, I lost a little more hope. My energy died with it.
When the light began to flicker, despair nearly dropped me to my knees. Gruff hands wrapped around my shoulders from behind and kept me upright. I was grateful they insisted on dragging me along with them, but also extremely frustrated.
“I need to stop,” I begged. “Just for a few minutes.”
“If we rest now, we won’t get back up,” Jake muttered over my shoulder. It was his hands keeping me moving forward.
An hour later, we ground to a sudden stop when the flashlight blinked out.
“Fuck!” Marcus roared.
I heard soft thuds of metal striking flesh. Seconds later, I heard a wet splat when he tossed the worthless gadget to the ground.
“Grab the backpack of the person in front of you,” Keith called out in the dark. “We don’t want to lose anybody.”
I felt a small tug on my pack, and knew Jake had taken hold. I reached out in front of me, but felt nothing. Someone had been there a minute ago. Who had I been following? I had been staring at their shoulders for hours, and I couldn’t remember whose they were.
“Thea?” I heard my name drift out of the darkness, drawing closer.
The walls closed in with the voice. I might not have been able to see them, but I felt them collapsing around me. The bag on my shoulder weighed me down. My throat tightened. Noises sounded louder.
“Thea?”
Something brushed against my hand and I tried to jerk away. It took me a moment to realize it was another hand wrapped around my fingers, nearly crushing them in an attempt to keep a firm grip on me.
“I’ve got you.” I stilled at the sound of Dylan’s voice nearby. “I won’t let go.”
I nodded before I realized he couldn’t see me. Then, I whispered, “Okay. I—I—”
“Let me guess. You’re claustrophobic, are
n’t you?”
“Apparently,” I muttered. Who knew?
“It’s fine. Nothing has changed just because we can’t see,” Dylan reassured me, then called over my shoulder, “Jake, you okay back there?”
“I’m here,” my brother replied.
He sounded as frazzled as I felt, and I wondered if my fear of confined spaces was genetic.
“We’ve got to be close,” Dylan offered. “Just hang on and don’t let go of Thea.”
Never before had I been so relieved to be sandwiched between the two of them. Even if Jake was shaking hard enough to rattle the bag on my shoulders, I drew strength from him as well as Dylan.
“Are we all linked up?” Marcus called from the front.
“Who’s holding on to me?” another voice asked.
“I am,” Dylan replied. I felt him move, pulling me with him. “I got you. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Dylan held my hand firmly in his when we resumed walking, his arm angled back so that I remained a step behind him. Feeling his touch, and sensing Jake’s presence nearby, gave me the strength I needed to proceed.
It was funny how being submerged in total darkness heightened other senses. For the first time, the smell of the damp earth bothered me. But Dylan’s hand was warm around mine, so I focused on that. And the sound of steady footsteps around me. It was crazy to think that I had grown to recognize the sound made by individual shoes striking the soft ground, but after several hours passed, I knew I had.
That was how I knew the moment something changed.
Someone shuffled near the front. Another grunted. Marcus mumbled under his breath before speaking up for the rest of us.
“I hit a wall,” he declared. I listened to the sound of his hands moving over the packed earth that surrounded us. “We’re closed off on all three sides.”
Jake let go of my backpack at the same time Dylan dropped my hand.
“Did we miss a branch off somewhere?”
“Everyone feel for an opening.”
“Can anyone reach the top?”
Everyone started talking at once, and a small seed of panic took root in my chest. The group fanned out, searching for an opening. No one ventured far, and that kept the seed from growing. As long as we stayed together.
“Maria, get on my shoulders,” Marcus ordered after a minute. “Feel for a latch.”
Dylan found and took my hand in his. Together, we listened to the sound of Maria climbing onto her brother’s shoulders.
“I can reach the top,” she announced after a moment. I held my breath and listened to the sound of her fumbling around in the dark. “There’s a latch.”
I let out my pent up breath at the sound of metal grating across metal. The harsh noise echoed all around us, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. The dim band of light that shone down on us seconds later was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.
Maria pulled herself out. She disappeared from sight for a moment before her face reappeared at the surface. “We made it to the base.”
Dylan’s hand squeezed mine.
The Ringer brothers climbed out next. Then it was my turn. Taking hold of Marcus’s shoulders, I placed my foot into his cupped hands. I flew up, reaching for the hands held out to me from above. In a blur of activity, my feet were set down on solid ground again.
I blinked against the light and breathed in the air—as fresh as the post-apocalyptic world permitted. I glanced around the large and open building that surrounded me, with a high gray ceiling, three broad walls, and filled with a dozen black helicopters. On one wall, painted in bright white paint, was the label “Hangar No. 6.”
I glanced toward the hatch as Dylan and Marcus climbed out of the tunnel. Then I watched as they reached down to assist Jake. He was the last. We made it.
Thoughts of David tickled the far reaches of my mind, but I shut them down before they overwhelmed me with grief. The rest of us had survived. For that, I should be grateful.
The hatch was promptly shut behind us. Guns were drawn as we started toward the open end of the hangar. From the strength of the light I saw outside, I suspected it was midday. Only a few inches of ash coated the ground here. I marched through it in line with the others, keeping to the back of the group. Only Jake walked behind me. We passed another hangar filled with heavy machinery before cutting between two small, gray buildings. Hidden in the shadows between their walls, we stopped.
“Three guards at the entrance,” Marcus announced.
“Recognize them?” Jake wondered.
I tried to peer around all the high, broad shoulders stacked in front of me, but couldn’t see anything.
“Only one agent,” Marcus replied. “Looks like a couple of flyboys are with him.”
Someone groaned. Someone else muttered an unsavory comment about the Air Force. I didn’t have a chance to ask what the problem was before we stepped out into the open.
“Hold your weapon down,” Jake instructed me urgently.
I copied the actions of the others in front of me, lowering my gun to my hips. We fell into a line, walking side by side, as we approached the three uniformed men standing at the gate of a heavily fenced off area. One was dressed in all black; the other two were in green camouflage. On the other side of the fence was a large one-story building. A massive gray door took up most of the front wall of the structure.
Seeing us approach, the three men drew their weapons.
“We’re with the agency,” Keith called out quickly.
They didn’t lower their weapons. One of the men in green camo barked, “The agency doesn’t have a large team out—”
“Give me names,” the one in black interrupted.
“Ringer,” Keith spoke up.
“Chavez,” Marcus added.
“Romero.”
“Walker.”
The man in black motioned at the two soldiers flanking him, and they lowered their weapons, albeit reluctantly.
“The six of you were figured for dead.” He chuckled as he approached us, and I released my pent-up breath. He stopped to shake hands with Marcus before moving on to Dylan with a smirk. “I should have known better than to believe an announcement like that when your name is involved.”
Dylan’s chin lifted fractionally, but no smartass remark followed. From the frown on the man’s face, I suspected he also knew that was atypical of Dylan.
“The base is secure?” Jake wondered.
“Of course,” the man answered swiftly. As he passed by me, I noted the name etched into the front corner of his uniform: Vincent Alcorn. He waved a hand, beckoning us toward the gate. “Come on. We’ll get you in to see Spence. Get you cleaned up, and some food in you. Sure looks like you all need it.”
My mouth watered at the mention of food. I didn’t care what it was—if it was powder that needed water added to it before it resembled anything edible, or a big juicy steak, I wanted it. And lots of water. And a shower, if they offered one.
If I looked anything like the others in the group, I knew I would see thick smudges of mud and ash covering my face if I happened to pass by a mirror. Not that I really cared at the moment.
I followed the others to the gate. Again, I found myself sandwiched between Dylan and Jake near the back of the line. A soft beep sounded as everyone filed through ahead of me. I assumed it was a standard security measure until Keith voiced a question.
“What is that?”
Vincent scoffed, and tipped his chin in the direction of the two men in camouflage. They still regarded us with a hint of distrust. “After the eruption, we had to let the flyboys at Nellis in on our little secret. They insisted on setting up that tag detection system we created at every point of entry around the perimeter.”
Once through the gate, Keith moved to the side and shook his head. “Wait a minute. What tag detection—”
“This thing detects tags?” Dylan came to a sudden stop just inside the gate. The machine gave him a soft beep—a seal o
f approval and ticket to security.
A red beam of light transected the space between us, and I wanted nothing more than to be on the other side, one step closer to food, water, and everything else the agency offered. Jake’s hand came down on my shoulder as I stepped forward. He jerked me back, but not before the soft beep morphed into a shrill wail.
Dylan’s eyes were wide when he whipped around. “No, wait. She’s not—”
The two Air Force guys slammed me to the ground before I saw them coming. The carefree chitchat turned to barked orders and shouting from all directions. The gray door to the building burst open and five more men in black uniforms ran outside with guns raised. I lifted my head out of the ash far enough to witness Dylan get tackled by three of them.
Behind me, I heard Jake’s muffled voice. “She’s my sister. She’s one of us. She’s supposed to be immune.” Though I couldn’t see him, I pictured his face being forced into the ground.
One of the soldiers holding me down brushed the hair off my neck and snorted. “Yet she has the mark.”
“She’s had it for a month!” Dylan jerked against the arms holding him down. “Does she look like a mature tag to you?”
A month? Tag?
I didn’t have enough time to register the significance of his words, or question what they meant, before I was yanked to a stand. My toes barely touched the ground as they dragged me toward the building.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Jake and Dylan both laid out on the ground with four guns trained on them. The rest of our group stood in stunned silence. That was the last I saw of them before the heavy doors slammed shut behind me.
I WAS coherent enough to count five flights of stairs—five levels down—before I was tossed into a barren white room. An exam table identical to those found in every doctor’s office took up most of the space. Nothing else. No counter. No shelves. No sink. No terrible paper gown.
What was I supposed to do?
What was happening?
I touched the spot behind my ear where I supposedly had a mark that caused me to be hauled away like a criminal. I felt nothing, but the others were convinced something was there. Jake and Dylan had reacted as if they already knew it was there.