by Castle, W. A
“Huh,” his Adam’s apple bobbles up and down. He sheaths his knife and takes out his gun. He walks slowly, lifting his gun to eye level as we walk through the store.
I look up at the signs above each lane and tap his arm when I see the sign for canned goods. “What are the odds there’s still food left?”
We make our way there and I jump up and down when I see most the isle still has cans on the shelves, most of them are knocked over but it doesn’t even matter, they’re still good.
“We’re going to need something to carry all of this back with us,” Ulises says once we fill our bags with cans and there’s still plenty left.
“Oh!” I snap my fingers, “I saw a buggy in the next isle, be right back,” I take off in a power walk to the end of the isle.
Inside the store is muggy and stuffy and there’s an unpleasant smell in the air that makes me not want to be here any longer than we need to. I’ve been keeping the flesh eaters at bay but before we leave I am definitely having myself one or two of them-
“Hey, you guys in here?” I hear a familiar voice call out.
“Clara?” I call out, taking the buggy with me and heading to the end of the isle.
“Maddie,” Ulises calls out in a panic, I hear him drop a few cans and hear him run towards me.
He reaches me moments before Clara, Trevor and Jax emerge around the corner.
“What are you guys doing here?” I ask surprised. I look at Jax and then at Trevor, I blink when Trevor doesn’t meet my gaze. I want to tell him something, anything, but my mouth remains closed.
“We’re here to help you… feed,” Clara steps closer to me and takes my hand, squeezing it lightly. My eyes bug out and I look at the men. They told her?
Ulises places a hand on my shoulder and nods at me. Oh yeah, I was going to end up telling her anyway once we got back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks gently, not accusingly or hurt.
“I,” I pause, “I was… ashamed of what I have become,” the words that come out are true and they hurt, “I’ve turned into something I don’t understand and I was terrified of anyone finding out, I was just afraid and I am so sorry for not speaking up,” I wipe my eyes to not let tears fall. Clara pulls me into a tight hug for a good long while before letting go.
She places a hand on my cheek, “Have you, ahem, fed yet?”
My eyes fleet to Ulises, “Some, but I need to feed more. There are some flesh eaters towards the back of the superstore. I was going to head there after we filled up the buggy.”
“We can fill up the cars and then head back, we should see if there’s any water left here, though I doubt it. While we do that maybe you can feed? This place gives me a bad feeling and I want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible,” Jax says already taking the buggy from me.
Oh. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that,” I smile to hide the feeling of irrational disappointment brewing in me as I take a step to leave.
“I’m actually a bit curious how you feed. Can I tag along?” Clara asks. Her eyebrows rise suggestively.
“If you’re not queasy, sure I don’t mind,” I smile at her.
I briefly glance at Jax and Trevor but the latter is still avoiding my gaze and the former only briefly looks my way then at Clara’s.
“Don’t go too far off, yell if something happens,” Ulises tips his head and gives me a look.
“Yes mother hen,” I grin and run away from him, taking Clara with me, when he fake lunges in my direction.
I’m ashamed I can’t even hold her eyes when she looks at me.
Kuso, she could have come to me, but does she really not trust me? After everything we’ve shared?
“Knock it off,” Ulises throws a can of peas at me, pulling me out of my brooding.
“What?” I ask rubbing my chest and throwing the can into the shopping cart.
“You two are acting like children. Man up,” Ulises growls, “She wanted to tell you what was happening with her, she was just afraid. Fuck.”
“I’m not saying anything man,” Jax says dryly.
“The fuck you aren’t. You need to cut her some slack, put yourselves in her shoes. You fools can’t go running off every time she tells you something… disturbing,” Ulises chastises us and my guilt triples. I didn’t handle the information overload well, and the jealousy I felt at seeing Maddie and Ulises together didn’t help.
“Since when have you become her advocate?” Jax snaps.
“Since she feels like a monster and the two people who should be there for her just bail on her at the drop of the hat,” Ulises snaps back and kicks the shopping cart away.
His words gut me. I’ve been so ashamed of how I reacted I haven’t been able to bring myself to comfort Maddie. She needs me and like Ulises said, I’ve been acting like a child.
“Fuck off, man,” Jax turns and starts walking away.
“You’re a coward. I cannot believe Maddie actually considers you her best friend, and you her boyfriend or whatever,” Ulises mutters refereeing to Jax and me.
Jax whirls around looking pissed, “You don’t know jack shit about my relationship with her.”
“I didn’t run because of what she said but because I was jealous,” I say softly. It’s hard admitting this in front of these two. They’re older and would make a much better match for Maddie than me. Jax has a goddamn bunker and Ulises is an expert with weapons, I’m just a twenty-something has-been ex-high school football player. I know she’s attracted to both of them, I’ve just kind of been turning a blind eye to something I’ve known for a while.
“You were jealous, jealous of what?” Jax asks taking a few steps back towards us.
“Fuck man, what do you want me to say? We walk in and find Maddie and Ulises together, she’s crying, he’s comforting her,” I turn to Ulises, “She trusted you enough to tell you her problems. She didn’t trust me enough to turn to me in her time of need.”
“You fuckwad she loves you she was afraid you would stop loving her,” Ulises throws a few more cans into the cart before turning to Jax, “It really messed her up, you icing her out.”
“I didn’t ice her out,” Jax replies immediately.
“Didn’t you though?” I ask him, “Just like I’ve been doing, also, fuck.” I rub my hands up and down my face.
Before anyone one of us could continue, a shrill scream comes from the other end of the store, in the direction where Clara and Maddie have gone.
“Maddie, Clara!” I forget my pack as I take off in the direction of the scream.
“Trevor, wait up man!” I hear either Jax or Ulises yell behind me but I don’t stop. My heart is hammering against my ribcage as I run towards the screams. I feel like I’m going to pass out when I hear deep shouts and Maddie’s voice yelling back. Strangers are here.
I pump my legs faster, but I’m thrown back brutally against the shelves when the ceiling a few feet away collapses. An explosion? “Maddie!” I yell so loud my throat becomes raw. Ulises skids to a stop and helps me up. He and Jax are wild eyed as they stare at the rubble a few feet away.
“Maddie… Clara…” Ulises doesn’t look away from the dust settling around us.
“Are they… what happened?” Jax is white as a sheet as he takes a step towards the rubble. But as he steps closer another section of the ceiling breaks off, suffocating us in dust. I push Jax away as a beam comes crashing down, it would have crushed him.
My vision is blurry and I feel the ground swaying under my feet as I try to stand up, but the wave I’m riding is too much and I go crashing down unto my ass.
“Easy there,” Ulises presses something to the back of my head. I look up at him and see he is covered in dirt. Dazedly, I look down at my hands and legs and see they’re also covered with dirt and dust. The dust settling down over everything makes it hard to see beyond the fallen ceiling sections. Off to a side a pipe must have broken because there is water sprinkling down turning the dirt into mud.
My ears
are ringing but I can swear I can hear yelling. Is that Maddie or Clara crawling from under a piece of broken ceiling?
“Someone’s coming out,” Jax yells and he takes off, Ulises hot in his trail. I try to move to help but as soon as I do the ground becomes a wave again.
“Help!” the voice calls out. The desperation in the disembodied voice has me trying to stand again. I sway a few steps to the side but I manage to stay on my feet.
By the time I make it to where the guys are reaching in to pull either Clara or Maddie out Ulises is calling me over to help lift a beam. Jax and I hold the beam up a few feet as Ulises reaches in to pull whoever it is under the rubble.
It’s Clara. The dirt and blood sticks to her skin in such a way that for a moment I fear she’s been badly skinned by Ulises’s pulling her through the rubble.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Clara wails, holding tightly unto Ulises. “She saved me,” she points to the rubble and begins to cry hysterically.
“Where is she? Where is Maddie?” Jax is heaving from the exertion and from the adrenaline.
“Where is Maddie?” I ask, when Clara only covers her face with her shirt and doesn’t answer.
Clara looks at all of us and a gutted look crosses her face. Air gets stuck in my throat as I try to get a breath in.
“She… I… they took her. I tried- I tried but everything was coming down on us,” Clara sobs into her hands.
“We need to get out of here,” I say, already turning to go back for my pack lying a few feet away.
“What are you saying, man?” Jax reaches out for my arm to stop me.
“If they took her then there’s still time to get her back! They might even still be here. Go get the car and meet us out back, there’s no way we can get through this so we have to go around,” I say pointing to the destruction in front of us, pieces of the building still falling every so often.
“You go get the car and take Clara with you, Ulises and I will check the store,” Jax says grabbing his gear and I nod. Clara takes my hand and together we run to the front doors of the Superstore.
When we get to the beat up truck we rode here in we find the tires are slashed. “Fuck,” I mutter, “It doesn’t matter, get in!” We jump in and I peel it to the back doors but there’s nothing back here. No cars, no people, nothing.
I scan the area but I don’t see any receding cars. I try to hold on to hope that the guys will come out with Maddie in hand.
“What happened?” I ask Clara.
Clara stares straight ahead at the closed doors so long that I’m about to ask again when she answers. “Maddie was… feeding. We were joking around and out of nowhere Sargent Kellan and his soldiers appeared. Maddie was so fierce,” Clara turns to me as tears roll down her cheeks, her glasses are broken but they stay put on her face, “She saved us, she saved me. When the ceiling came down there was so much chaos, we both went into the rubble to get away but I lost her somewhere along the way. I called her over and over but she never reappeared. I’m so sorry.”
I stare at the doors willing them to open. How could the soldiers have tracked us to here? And why are they so focused on getting to us. “You’re safe now, Clara,” I pat her hand.
She shakes her head, “But what about Maddie?”
The store doors burst open and Ulises and Jax come stumbling out, faint smoke filters out from the open doors. I sit up straighter and watch as they come to the truck. “Where is she?” I yell out the rolled down window.
Jax rubs his eyes and shakes his head at me. The pounding in the back of my head intensifies. The last time I saw her can’t be the last time I’ll ever see her. I ignored her. She tried to reach out to me but I… ignored her. She thinks I hate her when really I love her more than I ever thought possible and I may never get the chance to show her how much.
I love her.
The realization makes me dizzy. She can’t be gone.
“There was so much blood,” Ulises stumbles closer, he looks dazed and looks like he’s about to get sick. Jax actually doubles over and vomits next to the car.
“We need to get her back. I’m serious. We need-” Jax coughs, “we need help getting her back.”
“I think I know where we can go for help,” Ulises says with grim determination as he hops onto the back of the truck.
Jax grunts as he clears his throat again, “First we need to head back to the bunker. I need to tell Sue-Anne Madeline was taken.”
Clara bursts into tears again and she turns away from us.
“It’s not your fault Clara. Don’t blame yourself,” I tell her.
They have me. I don’t know how but they have captured me. They have me hogtied and gagged. They didn’t even bother to cover my eyes. It doesn’t matter. I can’t see anything since the van doesn’t have windows, not back here at least. But I do see the soldiers that are seated around me.
There are three empty seats that should have a soldier in them. I don’t relish in the fact that I murdered three human beings but I do not feel guilt at killing men that tried to hurt Clara and me.
Clara.
She left me behind. My leg got snagged in a metal ceiling piece but Clara just kept crawling. She knew, too. She stopped to look back and I reached for her but she didn’t stop.
My head pulses painfully and not only at the realization that the woman I called my best friend left me behind, when the soldiers pulled me back out they smashed the butt of their shotgun to the back of my head and I could have sworn my skull cracked.
“Are you okay?” one of the soldiers asks me.
“Don’t engage with her,” another soldier nudges him.
“You mean it. Don’t engage with it,” a soldier behind me quips and others snicker.
I roll my eyes at the statement that I’m an ‘it’. He’s right though. A normal person couldn’t have done what I did to those soldiers back at the Superstore. I ripped them apart with my teeth and my bare hands moments after I had drank a flesh eater dry.
I am the thing that eats the things that eat people.
What does that make me? An it.
The soldier that had asked me if I was okay looks away from me and the rest of the ride to the unknown we ride in silence. My wrists are tied and so are my ankles, even if I could work the knots there is a van full of trained and armed soldiers keeping their eyes on me so I lay still and even close my eyes. How long has it been since I’ve had a good sleep? The overpowering thirst has finally been sated and I can finally focus on something else, but now I have nothing else to concentrate on. So naturally, I fall asleep. I’m sure my death will wait for a catnap.
“We’re here.”
My eyes snap open and I sit up with a start. Some of the soldiers startle and whip out their guns and point them at me. The van doors open, and I am momentarily blinded by the white light that pours in.
“If you try anything you will regret it,” one of the soldiers growls into my ear as he cuts through the ties that bind my ankles. Before I can even nod, two soldiers haul me up by the armpits and help me jump off the van. My knees wobble as I look around us. We’re inside what looks like a hangar. What is this place?
Sargent Kellan opens the passenger’s door and jumps out the van. He walks towards us but doesn’t even glance in my direction as he walks past me. I follow him with my eyes as he types something into a panel right next to the door and then he proceeds to lean over a retinal scanner and then the door buzzers open.
The soldiers push me towards the open door. I drag my feet and try to turn around I even try to trip the men hauling me towards the opened door. There’s no way I’m going through that door.
A soldier grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head to the side and holds me in place as Sargent Kellan walks over to me and prickles the side of my neck with a syringe. The last thing I see as I’m sucked into a void of weightlessness and nothingness is the American Flag hanging high and proud in the center of the hangar.
At least our flag was still ther
e.
Chapter Twelve: Liberty’s Smile
I’m dead.
So this is what hell is like.
Hell looks like a sterile experiment room. I’m on a hard bed with IV’s hooked to my arm and there are about half a dozen medical machines around.
Warily, I move my eyes around the room and I stop short when I notice the glass wall in front of me. For some reason that startles me more than the IV’s stuck in my arm. When I try to get up, I make another realization. There are bands across my chest, torso and thighs that bind me to the bed. I can’t move an inch. My chest heaves as I try not to freak out. My breathing gets harder and I’m soon panting, there’s not enough oxygen in my lungs.
A section of the glass wall disappears and a woman in a blue doctor’s coat enters with a clipboard in hand. “Settle down, Maddie, or you will be sedated again.”
“No more sedation,” I say hoarsely, my throat dry, “Who are you, where am I?”
“I’m Doctor Halen. You’re in a VIO medical facility where we are working restlessly to find a cure to this plague that is running rampage.” Dr Halen says bluntly.
“What do you want with me? How can I help you with anything, I’m not a scientist.”
“Your blood, Maddie, your blood has bonded with the HXTIV virus the way it was designed to do. Well, the virus hasn’t reacted the way it had originally been designed to, but every day we understand more.”
“My blood?” I ask disoriented.
“When the HXTIV virus was created, the scientists who created it didn’t know that the virus would only bond with a certain type of blood type, blood without the Rh protein, causing catastrophic results in people with those that are Rh positive. The antigens are rejected by the virus and once inside the body the virus changes and mutates-”
“Why am I here?” I grit out, cutting Dr. Halen off mid-sentence.
Dr. Halen shoots me an odd look that my having cut her explanation short. “We’ve made progress on the cure. We recently discarded our latest attempt, we were so sure it would work,” she goes off in a tangent, pulling a stool closer to the bed I am strapped in, “but every patient we have injected with it has died within the first three days and there is no reason for it, none that we have discovered anyway. But you,” Dr. Halen stops for a breath, “Sargent Kellan injected you with the late version of the cure over a week ago, and here you are.” She looks at me like she is just itching to get into me, and that is a terrifying thought.