by Bowman, Dave
Annie scaled yet another rolling hill, then came to a stop at the crest of the rise.
There was a house down there.
Off to the right, a large field was cleared and surrounded by a tall fence along its perimeter. At the far edge of the field, at the end of a long dirt driveway, stood a single-story wooden farmhouse. A few outbuildings were scattered nearby – a barn, maybe, and a shed or two. It was hard to make it all out in the dim light, and Annie couldn’t see whether it was occupied or in what kind of shape the property was in. But it was something. And the first man-made structure on the road in miles.
As she caught her breath, a smile spread across her face. Finally, a glimmer of hope.
Annie jogged down the hill, reaching the bottom quickly. She followed the road as it curved to the right, leading her to the beginning of the long driveway.
Annie slowed to a stop and looked around. An empty field stretched out to the west. It looked like cattle had been kept on the land at one point, but not recently. It stood empty and unused, and weeds grew tall. Seeing that no one was working the land made her hesitate. What if the place was empty? Maybe it had been abandoned long ago. Maybe she’d make better use of her time by looking for another house farther to the west.
After a moment, she shrugged and started up the driveway. If it was empty, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss. And a few steps down the driveway, she got a better view of the property. The house looked to be in decent repair. And even better, a newer truck sat parked off to the side behind some oak trees. The truck was too new and valuable to have been left on an abandoned property. Someone was living there.
“Hello!” Annie called out with her hands cupped around her mouth. “Anyone home?”
She waited and listened.
“Hello?” she called louder. “Hel-looo?”
She slowed her pace as she got closer to the house. She didn't want to startle anyone. That alone could cause her to be shot, especially with everyone's nerves on edge after the attacks.
Finally, she came to a stop at the edge of the front yard.
"Is anyone here?" she called toward the house. "I was hoping somebody could help me. My car is stuck in a ditch down the road. And my friend is hurt –"
Annie stopped herself. She felt silly talking to the house. Maybe no one was home. The whole thing had probably been a waste of time. But she figured she might as well knock on the door. Surely if anyone were home, they would've heard her shouting by now. But, just in case, she crossed the yard and began to climb the steps to the front porch.
"Hello, hello? Anyone home?" She shouted in the direction of the window.
On the second step, an overwhelming odor assaulted her senses. It was putrid and intense. Instantly, she realized it was the smell of death – of rotting bodies.
Suddenly, her heart was in her throat. Her eyes fell on the window near the front door. Inside the house, she saw someone sitting in an armchair. All at once, her throat went dry. She wanted to run, but for a split second, her legs felt heavy as lead.
The person in the armchair was dead.
It was an elderly man, and his body slumped over the side of the recliner. His discolored arm dangled over the edge of the armrest.
Annie jolted herself out of her momentary freeze. She stumbled backwards down the steps, then turned and began to run across the yard.
Behind her, something was happening. A noise. A movement – coming from inside the house.
Terror filled Annie to her core. She ran through the tall grass of the yard. And to her horror, she heard the front door swing open behind her.
Annie propelled herself forward, picking up speed as she reached the driveway.
But someone was on her tail. Footsteps pounded on the porch, then moved across the yard. He was gaining on her.
She glanced quickly over her shoulder as she turned toward the road. She caught only a glimpse of the young man running after her – his dilated, crazed eyes, his pasty skin. She had time for only fragmented thoughts. Had he killed the old man inside? Was she going to be next?
She heard him breathing right behind her, getting closer. She caught only a glimpse of the young man as he closed the distance – his arms reaching out, the gray of his sweatshirt as he moved.
Then he tackled her. He grabbed her around her shoulders and pulled. She tried to tear away from him, but he was too fast.
Annie felt the wind knocked out of her. In one dizzying movement, she slammed against the driveway, hitting the gravel hard.
3
White Rock, Arizona - Sunday, 7:02 a.m.
“Rise and shine, sweetheart.”
Brent squinted at the harsh light shining in his eyes. He turned over in his bed to see one of the guards standing in the doorway, shining a flashlight on the thin, bare mattress where Brent lay. As always, the guard was carrying a semi-automatic rifle.
“Out of bed. Now, 155,” the man barked at him.
Brent swung his legs around to the floor and felt the cold, dirty tiles under his feet. The man with the gun took a step inside the room, and plunked a tray of food on the bed beside Brent.
"Eat up," the guard said, grinning. "You'll need your energy today."
He turned and left, locking the door behind him.
Brent lightly rubbed his aching side, which was still painful from two days ago. Then he looked down at the tray of food the guard had left on the mattress. There was the same gray stew he got every meal – full of reconstituted potatoes and some kind of fake meat substance. In the compartment next to it, a small package of crackers. An off-brand juice pack stood at the far corner of the tray, completing the meal.
Brent took the plastic spoon allotted him, and began to choke the food down. He was hungry. Ignoring the nausea provoked by the colorless food, he ate it quickly. It was dark in the room, and he didn't want any cockroaches crawling in his food like last time when he didn't eat it quickly enough.
He had spent two nights in that disgusting room. How many more would there be? These people – whoever they were – seemed to have no intention of letting him or the other prisoners go anytime soon.
He was quickly finished with the paltry meal and drink. Leaning against the wall, he ran his fingers along his jaw. It was swollen and bruised. Sighing, he reached under the bed, groping in the dark for his eyeglasses. The frames had been twisted and the lenses scratched badly, but at least they weren't destroyed.
Yesterday, when the prisoners were being marched to the work site, Brent had seen a prisoner falling over fire hydrants and walking into trees. The prisoner had complained that he couldn't see anything without his glasses. In response, the guard had given him a swift kick in his back.
Brent waited for the guard who’d brought breakfast to return to the room. It wouldn't be long. Outside, the sun was probably rising, and daylight was wasting. These guys wanted to get as much work out of the prisoners as possible.
He was on the fourth floor of a college dormitory. At first, on that horrible day he’d been captured, they had taken him to the first floor. But then, after the incident, they had moved Brent up to this room. Plywood was nailed over all the windows. And without power, candles, or flashlights, Brent and the other prisoners were in total darkness in their rooms.
As far as Brent could tell, all prisoners on the fourth floor were locked up in a room by themselves – solitary confinement. The first floor had been different. On the first floor, he’d had a roommate. But that hadn’t lasted for long.
The door flew open, and the guard returned. This time, a second armed guard stood in the doorway while the first approached Brent.
"On your feet, 155!" the first guard ordered.
Brent stood up, facing the wall, and waited while the man handcuffed him. On the first floor, some of the guys got plastic zip ties around their hands. Up here, it was metal cuffs for everyone.
“March!” the guard ordered.
Brent walked out the hall and followed the ten or twelve other prison
ers already heading down the stairs. Armed guards watched them closely and followed them down the stairs to the first floor. None of the prisoners spoke. Everyone with half a brain had learned that talking to other prisoners would result in a beating.
On the ground level, Brent waited off to the side as the guards assigned the prisoners work duty. They were split off into small groups. Each high-risk prisoner like Brent was grouped with four or five low-risk prisoners. Once the men were all arranged into small groups, the guards led them to their work sites. Brent followed the guard and the rest of his group outside the dorm building.
Brent felt a wave of relief each time he was allowed outside. The building he was detained in was claustrophobic and disgusting. And there was always the worry that the guards would somehow forget about him. After all, this wasn’t a real prison. This whole thing was just a slapped-together operation by some wannabe gangsters and their supporters. These guys didn’t know what they were doing.
Outside, he felt he could breathe again. He knew he’d have to do back-breaking work, but at least he wasn’t locked up in that dark little room.
The guards led the men to a makeshift latrine – really, just a hole in the ground with some sawdust to scatter on top. The guard uncuffed each prisoner one at a time and gave him a few moments to relieve himself. Their only privacy were some scattered bushes. Depriving the prisoners of human dignity was part of the process, it seemed to Brent. Everything was designed to break them down psychologically.
Once the prisoners were finished, the guards led the men down the street to the north one block, then west a few blocks. They passed other men working. Some were hauling materials, some were digging latrines. Down one street, some teenagers on bicycles pulled small trailers loaded down with packages of food – supervised by guards on bikes, of course. All of them worked in total silence.
Brent looked carefully at each of the groups. He never saw Jack.
And he never saw any women. There had been no trace of Naomi or Jack since they had been separated two days ago.
The women prisoners were kept completely separate from the men. Brent saw a couple of female guards now and then, but no female inmates. Naomi and the other women must have been kept in a separate part of town.
Finally, the guards stopped the group of men in front of an abandoned lot. Brent and the other men looked at each other wordlessly. What work job were they to perform today, they all wondered?
Nearby, a couple of young guys were unloading their bicycle-pulled trailers. They put their tools on the ground, then rode off on their bikes. Once they were gone, Brent’s crew was led to the end of the block, where the teens had dumped off some supplies. Brent got a look at what they had left behind: shovels.
“You’re first, 155,” the guard Brent knew best said, looking in Brent’s direction. The guard had a huge tattoo of a spider’s web across his neck. The other guards called him Spider.
Spider picked up a shovel and led Brent toward the far corner of the empty lot. The weeds were tall, and the lot was littered with garbage and debris. Once Spider was satisfied with their location, he stopped. He unlocked Brent’s handcuffs, handed him the shovel, then raised his rifle threateningly.
“Don’t even think about trying anything, 155,” Spider warned, narrowing his beady eyes at Brent. “Start digging.”
Brent stabbed the shovel in the ground. The earth was dry and hard. The digging wouldn't be easy. He jumped on the top edges of the shovel, driving it into the ground. Then, lifting a shovelful of dry, rocky soil, he tossed the dirt behind him.
"That's the spirit, 155," Spider said between guffaws. "Guess you got the hang of it yesterday."
Brent didn't look up at him as he drove the shovel into the ground again. He snuck a glance at the other men, who were stationed at scattered points around the empty lot. The other five prisoners were guarded by only two men. Brent was assigned his own guard because he was what they considered a flight risk.
Brent sighed, breathing out a mixture of exasperation and dread.
If only he had been more alert back on the highway. If only he had been paying more attention when Jack was siphoning the gas for the Pathfinder two days ago, he wouldn't be doing slave labor for these lunatics.
The thing was, Brent had been alert out there on the interstate. And he was pretty sure Naomi had been paying attention, too. Those guys had attacked them out of nowhere. They must have have been waiting in damned good hiding places for who knows how long when Jack had stopped the Pathfinder for gas. There had been no movement, no noise, no sight of the men as they lay in wait. Out of nowhere, the guards had attacked Brent and his friends, surrounding them and pointing rifles at them.
Brent, Jack, and Naomi never even had a chance.
And now, the three of them were prisoners.
The people who had ambushed Brent's group had led them to a big adobe house – their headquarters. There, the leaders of this operation had assigned Brent, Jack, and Naomi to separate detention facilities. Camps, they had called them. But really, they were prisons.
Jack, Naomi, and Brent had been handcuffed, then led away by armed guards. Though Brent had tried to see where his friends had been taken, the guards made sure that his friends’ whereabouts were kept a mystery.
Jack had been led in the opposite direction from the others – back toward the interstate. Jack had mouthed off to the head honcho, Oscar. And Oscar had sent him to the C Block. Brent assumed it was a facility for the worst offenders. He shuddered to think what they were doing to Jack now.
And Brent hadn't seen where Naomi had been taken, either. Brent's guards had led him away from the main road. They’d taken him to the west several blocks, then to the south. They had taken several turns, probably intentionally to disorient Brent and make him forget his whereabouts.
Brent hadn't seen where Naomi was taken. There had been two men guarding her, but when they got outside, Brent saw that Naomi had been passed off to two female guards. That, at least, was a small sign of hope that maybe Naomi wouldn't be treated too terribly. But still, he worried about her. She had been in such a state of grief before they had been captured. How was she responding now to this horrific turn of events?
That first day, Brent had been taken to the first floor of the dormitory. He had been assigned a room with a middle-aged man named Quinn. That first day had been terrible. Brent was furious, pacing back and forth across the room they had locked him up in, trying to get free of the cuffs. But Quinn was in a panic.
"We have to get out of here!” Quinn had cried. “They're going to kill us! I know they are, I know it!"
Brent had collapsed on his bed in frustration. At that point, his hands had still been cuffed behind him, and Quinn's were too. Brent looked at his roommate. The normally pale, round man had turned red. His nostrils flared as he breathed in and out furiously. He looked over at Brent, suddenly remembering his presence.
"You’ve got to calm down," Brent said. "You're going to hyperventilate and pass out. Then you'll never get out of here."
Quinn looked at him. "But we’ve got to escape! You're just lying there! You're not just going to give up, are you?"
"No, I'm not giving up. But I don't know how we can get out of here at the moment," Brent said angrily.
Quinn stared at Brent as if he were unable to believe the younger man's words. Then, all of a sudden, he threw himself at the window. He tried to wedge his shoulder behind the plywood on the window and pry it off, but the panel wouldn't budge. Quinn only succeeded in ripping his shirt and cutting a gash in his shoulder. Next, in a frenzy, Quinn fell on the floor and started to kick the plywood.
Brent closed his eyes, trying to shut out the noise of Quinn's frenzied attempt to escape. Brent was fighting back his own panic, and seeing his roommate go berserk wasn't helping. He began to feel like a weight was pressing against his chest. He found it hard to breathe.
How was he going to get out of this room?
Finally, Quinn collapse
d on the floor, groaning and spent from his effort. The plywood hadn't budged.
He looked up at Brent, anguished. "What are we going to do?" Quinn asked. "We’ve gotta find a way out. Now!"
"I want to get out of here just as much as you do. But we have to think about this. We have to plan our best course of action."
Quinn thought about it for a moment while he caught his breath. "Okay, our plan is to rush them when they open the door."
Brent sighed. "I don't think that’s such a good idea. They all have guns. And there are so many of them."
"So, what then?" Quinn demanded angrily. "You're just going to do what they say? Play nice with these . . . these monsters?"
"I don't know," Brent said. "Maybe that's what we'll have to do, at least in the beginning. Maybe we can escape later."
Quinn didn't answer. He just lay on the floor, his face turning redder and redder.
About an hour later, they heard movement in the hall. Brent and Quinn looked at each other. When they heard a key in the door, Quinn scrambled to his feet.
"I'm getting out of here," Quinn muttered under his breath, "with or without you."
"No, wait," Brent said as the doorknob turned and the door began to open. "Wait!"
But Quinn was already charging ahead. Brent rose to his feet, trying to block Quinn. The older man plowed into Brent, pushing the younger man forward just as the door swung open.
"Stop!" Brent yelled.
Then, a deafening blast shot through the room. An incredible force slammed Brent to the floor. He became aware of the feeling of warm, thick liquid on his skin.
At first, Brent thought he had been shot. His looked over his own body, checking for a bullet wound.