by Wood, Rick
Dalton always thought – the day we don’t come back is the day you’ll know there are creatures nearby!
Still, they were trained for this. Their weapons were off safety, ready, and their minds were alert.
The pushing water of a steady stream nearby prompted a glance at each other. They were thirsty, and this stream was normally their drinking spot. It was time for a break.
In silent agreement, they changed course to head for the lake, a ten-minute detour if that.
But, when they arrived, they found far more than they expected.
“What is this?” Dalton exclaimed.
Joe poised his finger over the trigger, ready for danger. But, as soon as he discovered what Dalton had discovered, his gun dropped.
“Well, well, well!” Joe exclaimed.
Both of them looked down at a sight they rarely saw where they came from. A beautiful young woman. Her eyes were closed like Sleeping Beauty, her curly hair spread out across the shore, and she was drenched.
Dalton checked the surroundings, then threw his gun over his back.
“Stay on point,” he instructed Joe.
Dalton crouched beside her and smacked her face – gently, but assertively. The girl choked, spewing water over his knee, but her eyes remained closed.
She mumbled something, but he couldn’t make out what it was.
“We have to take her back,” Dalton decided, hiding his excitement at an attractive young woman.
“They won’t have it.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because – well, look at her. She looks different from everyone in there.”
“How so?”
“Come on, man, do you want to make me say it?”
“Yes. Say it.”
Joe huffed. Looked around.
“She’s black. You see many other black people where we come from?”
“A few.”
“Yeah. And they’ve had to be extra, extra rich for that privilege. They’ll laugh you off.”
“I refuse to believe they won’t accept a survivor because she’s – well, she’s not even black. FYI, mate, she’s mixed race.”
“I’m just saying it’s pointless, is all.”
Dalton sighed. It was true. Unfortunately, the prime minister in charge of their underground fortress had liaised with a president who was unmistakeably opposed to immigration. Not that immigration was a thing now, but he still seemed to hate anything that involved letting in what he termed as ‘outsiders.’
She mumbled something again, but he couldn’t make it out. Her eyes remained closed.
Regretfully, he stood.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, we’re ruled by a dick.”
“Dicks are the ones who survive, mate. Because dicks have the money.”
“We survived.”
“Yeah, but we serve a purpose. What purpose would she serve? How could you possibly sell this to them?”
Dalton shrugged. They turned and began trudging away.
She mumbled something again.
Dalton halted. Listened intently. Turned back to Joe.
“Did you hear that?” Dalton asked.
“Hear what?”
“Her?”
“Yeah, she said something, people do it when they’re out.”
“No, it was more than that.”
He walked back toward her, listened intently. She mumbled again.
“There! You hear it?”
“What?”
“Just listen.”
They both listened intently, focussed, trying to hear. They had to wait another minute but, paying close attention, they both managed to make out the words of her mumble.
“The devil has departed…”
Joe recognised it instantly. Dalton hadn’t shut up about it since they found that kid.
“The poem,” Dalton confirmed.
Joe didn’t know what to say.
“We have no choice. We have to take her back now.”
Without argument, Joe helped Dalton hoist her over his shoulder.
As they stepped carefully, so they could hear her, they could just about make out the other words in her mumbles.
“From now to the end… We won’t be apart…”
Chapter Forty-One
Cia woke up, placid and dormant, a flickering light above her head. She realised she was inside, somewhere she’d never been, but excitement for her safety didn’t register. She felt empty. Drained. Completely void of life and emotion. As if every part of her good will and positivity had been sucked out and removed and replaced with a blankness, a servitude to nothingness, numb in her mind and numb in her heart.
She realised a man was sat next to her. White laboratory coat. Glasses. Stethoscope. Older, sitting on a swivelling stool that only a doctor could truly balance on.
“Hello,” he said. “And how are you?”
His voice had too much bounce for her. She instantly hated it. Days ago, she would have relished it, thrilled to find someone who could match the enthusiasm she had still somehow retained for life – now, she wanted to jump up, bite his throat, and spit his skin back at him.
She didn’t answer.
“My name is Doctor Myers, but you can call me Ethan. I’ve been administering your rehabilitation, and it seems you’ve been through quite an ordeal, doesn’t it?”
Quite an ordeal? Is this guy for real?
“You’re safe now. This is an underground facility, set up by the government of the United Kingdom and the president of the United States. Together we created this place, and it is completely safe.”
Underground bunker?
Set up by the government?
She realised where she was.
And she wondered who might still be here.
“Just so you know, this is the fifth day you’ve been here. It appears this is the most lucid and awake you’ve been. You’ve come in and out, babbling, saying words of some strange poem – which I will get to in a moment, by the way – and here you are, awake and well.”
She looked down at herself with as little amount of head movement as she could. She was wearing a hospital gown, pads on her arms connected to a machine, and a drip attached to her.
She felt for her friendship bracelet, feeling its security still wrapped around her wrist. At least she hadn’t lost that.
“Would you care to tell me what has happened to you?”
Ethan poised his pen over a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard with Government Property embossed on it.
She shook her head. The biggest reaction she’d given yet. She had been trapped outside of this place trying to survive, and here they were spending frivolous money having their clipboards embossed with a shitty logo?
She felt sickened by this place. Repulsed. Furious.
“You want to know what happened to me?” she said, her voice coming out in a croak she didn’t expect.
“Yes please,” he said, his pen still ready.
She locked her weak eyes with the doctor.
“Well. I have rescued an autistic boy from a set of Masketes that ate his parents alive, I had to watch an anorexic girl be eaten by a group of Wasters while I waited to be next and they did God knows what to me as I was unconscious. Then, I took a lovely trip to a place where they raped women to repopulate the Earth, where I was forced to fuck a man in order to kill him and make my escape. I was then forced to climb a ridiculously steep hill in order to reach a Maskete nest, where I witnessed the final moments of a newfound friend’s life before fighting off a baby Maskete and leaping into a lake, hoping I don’t die.”
The doctor remained silent.
“Ah,” he finally muttered, the most he could verbalise.
“But that’s just me. I don’t want to be all selfish and keep the focus on what I’ve been up to. What have you been doing?”
“Well–”
“I hope that while you’ve been here, your food hasn’t ever come out cold, or that your coff
ee burnt your mouth. I hope your friends didn’t ever fall out with you after post-work beers, and I hope your wife never had to have sex with another man in order to ensure her survival.” She locked eyes with him and gave him the dirtiest look possible. “I do hope you’ve been comfortable.”
Ethan stood, dropping the clipboard to his side.
“I think that’s all for today,” he decided.
“No, Ethan – Doctor Myers – you said something about the poem I was rambling.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Could you be ever so kind enough to tell me why this poem matters to you?”
“Well, there is only one man I know of who is aware of that poem, and it is framed in a picture in his office.”
“Daniel Rose,” Cia stated.
“Yes. How did you know?”
Cia considered that question.
“I used to know him,” she answered. “A long time ago.”
She was hoping that the poem had been recognised because Boy had said it, that they somehow knew where he was. As it was, she was probably going to have to leave again to go searching for him.
“And there was another…” the doctor said.
Cia grew alert. She woke up, her whole body tensing.
“Yes?”
“It was a boy. Young, maybe eleven, twelve.”
“He’s eleven.”
“You – you know of this boy?”
“Where is he?”
Ethan didn’t answer.
“Where is he?” Cia demanded, louder. She could see Ethan growing more and more intimidated, but she didn’t care. She liked that he was afraid of her.
He should be afraid of her.
“He’s safe,” replied the quiet voice of the doctor.
“Safe? As in he’s here?”
“… Yes.”
“I want to see him.”
“I’m not sure if that’s–”
“I want to see him!”
Ethan gulped.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He scuttled like a beetle out of the room, and she heard the pathetic patter of his footsteps grow fainter down the corridor.
She sat up and had a proper look around her room. It was spacious. Comfortable seats at the side of the bed. A life of luxury compared to what she’d fought for.
It wasn’t right.
That those like her were outside these walls fighting, and others had this, mostly based on what they were born into.
It wasn’t right.
And she intended to fix it.
Chapter Forty-Two
Cia was given clothes and food and water. From a selection of clothes, she chose khaki shorts that went down to her knee, a black vest, and a pair of Adidas trainers – all the better for running. For food, she had fried eggs, sausages, and beans, followed by a slice of vanilla cheesecake. For water, she had a bottle of Evian, taken from a walk-in fridge that was full of them.
As grateful as she was, and as luxurious as these things were, she hated herself for having them. And she hated this place more for having the resources to not only give them to her, but to give her a choice.
She hadn’t had a choice so far.
A man called Dalton, dressed in army gear and armed with a gun – apparently the man who found her and Boy, though she didn’t remember – led her down a well-lit corridor. With cream walls and a circular light every few paces, the corridor looked clinical. The further they walked, the more the place changed from a luxurious resource of leisure to something more closely resembling a base, where science and army training took place.
Dalton took her to a door displaying the numbers 346. She made a mental note of the room number. As far as she could tell, the top floor was floor 1, and the numbers increased as they descended lower. This meant that room 316 must mean floor 3, room 16, and be near the surface.
“It’s Cia, right?” Dalton asked.
She nodded.
“I need to give you a few warnings before we go in.”
She didn’t reply, but simply looked at him expectantly. He smiled at her.
“You are not to act out in any way once you are in there. You are to remain calm, or I have been instructed to escort you away.”
“Why would I need to remain calm?” she asked.
“If you refuse to cooperate, I do have authorisation to shoot you.”
“Why would I need to remain calm?” she repeated. “And why would you need to shoot me? What the hell are you doing here?”
Dalton gave her a limp shrug, as if to say, not my problem, just following orders. He knocked on the door, and a man in a laboratory coat peered out. His glasses were too large for his face and his balding head made him look even more awkward.
“Have you given her the warnings?” the man asked.
“Yep,” Dalton replied.
The man looked Cia up and down.
“Fine,” he said, and walked back in.
Cia went to enter, but Dalton put a hand in front of her and stopped her.
“Just remember – it has taken a lot of coercing to let you in here. This is a privilege.”
“Get your hand off me,” she demanded.
He let her go and allowed her to walk in.
She slowed down, her jaw dropping, her body tensing in shock. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded of no one in particular.
“I told you,” the man in the laboratory coat said to Dalton.
Cia walked up to the one-way window.
Her shock built up to anger.
She punched the window.
“I warned you, Cia.”
“What the hell are you doing!”
Behind that window sat Boy, on a chair like he was being executed. Connected to machines. His head lolling, groggy, not all there.
“Why is he like that?” she demanded, and punched the window again.
“Please stop–” the man in the laboratory coat tried.
Two men in full hazard suits entered the room with Boy – one with a gun focussed on Boy, one with a tray of surgical equipment. The second man crouched beside him and began preparing his utensils.
“What is he doing!” Cia demanded. “What is he going to do to him!”
“Cia–” Dalton tried.
Cia turned back to them, her palms hurting from the digging of her nails, her lip curling, fire racing through her blood, ready to pounce, ready to fight.
These people think they know what she is? What she can do?
They have no idea.
They had not witnessed what she had. Done what she had. Killed like she had.
And she was ready to do it all over again.
“Cia–” Dalton tried once more.
“There better be a damn good explanation,” she growled. “Or I’m going to rip all of you apart. I don’t care where you point that gun, I mean it.”
“Cia, look–”
“Explain. Now.”
Dalton sighed.
“Cia, I keep trying to say. Look at his neck.”
“What?”
“His neck. Look at it.”
She turned around. Looked closer.
On Boy’s neck was a large, vacant lump, where bloody muscle and thin bone were visible.
“What have you done to him!”
Dalton stepped forward, tried to keep his voice low and reassuring.
“We haven’t done anything, Cia. That was a Lisker bite.”
Liskers. Snakes the length of multiple football pitches. Bodies thicker than houses. Fangs poisonous and sharp. She hadn’t ever actually seen one in person, and for that she was grateful.
“It didn’t go deep,” the laboratory man explained. “But it did get him, and in all honesty, we saved his life. But we’re not clear yet.”
“Not clear?” Cia repeated, poised between wrath and gratefulness.
“He has to be quarantined. We don’t know enough about these creatures to know if expos
ure to them–”
“Exposure does nothing. Trust me.”
“Yes, that’s all well and good, but there is poison in that bite – we don’t know if–”
“Let him out. I don’t care.”
“Cia–” Dalton tried.
“Stop saying my name! You’re not trying to bring him back to life – you’re experimenting on him. Aren’t you? That isn’t you trying to help him, that’s you trying to find out more.”
“He is the only subject that–”
“He is not a subject! He is a boy!”
She realised she was panting. Her chest hurt from the weight of her rapid succession of breaths. She willed herself to calm down, but couldn’t.
“I think it’s time to go,” Dalton decided.
“No,” Cia refuted.
“We have to. There is one more person you need to see.”
She looked back at Dalton, puzzled. Who on earth could be here that she’d want to see?
Chapter Forty-Three
Dalton led Cia through the corridor, down the lift, then into another corridor, around a corner, until they reached a door.
Upon that door was a sign reading: Doctor Daniel Rose.
She thought she’d feel something more. Anger, relief, confusion. But, honestly, she felt nothing. She was numb to the sight.
She wanted to feel more. She wanted to be furious to know he was still alive, or grateful to see him.
But she was full of such conflicting emotions, her body shut those emotions down, and she felt empty. Devoid of complexity, full of impartiality.
“I’m not going in with you this time,” Dalton said. “Now, you’re on your own.”
“Is he expecting me?” she asked.
Dalton nodded. “He is.”
She reached her hand out to the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. She waited. What was she expecting to find behind this door?
Happiness? Love? Remorse?
Or just that same guy who abandoned her all those years ago?
She closed her eyes, resting her head against the barrier between her and him.
“Go on,” Dalton gently encouraged. “I think he’s been waiting for this ever since he heard you were back.”
Waiting for this?
He had been waiting for this?