Resistant, no. 1

by Ryan T. Petty

  I dropped my bag, my gun, and took flight, dashing between the cars, only seeing the car in which I had awoke out of the corner of my eye. It was all I could do to stay in front of these vicious maniacs that only aimed to kill me. By the time I pulled the door shut and locked it, both of them were on each side of me, scratching at the window and growling at me.

  “Go away!” I screamed back, but they wouldn’t listen. The man hit the glass, but it held firm. When the third person jumped on the hood and slammed into the windshield, I screamed, knowing I was being slowly surrounded as more came from every angle. Everyone showed their teeth as they clawed at me, their leering eyes unfocused. It was apparent they had no soul behind them. Once human, they were now killing machines, nothing more, and I knew eventually they would crack the glass and break through.

  Shifting around, I couldn’t see all of them. When I moved my foot, I kicked something heavy on the floorboard. Reaching down, I found my other gun, the large one I had taken out of my waistband the night before and placed underneath me. It was a small sense of hope, giving me the idea that at least I could fight my way out, however a long shot it might be. But when I looked back around me, at all the lost faces, my hope was soon dashed. The gun wasn’t there for me to make a last stand; it was there for me to make my death much easier. That was where I had found it anyway, in the lap of a skeleton who had taken his life, maybe surrounded just like I was.

  For some reason, in all the commotion, I couldn’t cry. It wasn’t like in the woods, when I was able to take a break; now I thought about what was going on. Here, right now, I felt I had already seen what the world was, or had become, and my death was just a part of the sick, twisted evil that had taken over. The hazmat men who hunted me, the insane woman living off of dead rats, the group of mad cannibals, all of them showing me that this world was not worth living in.

  All the windows began to crack around me from the pounding of brutal fists and hands. It was only a matter of time before they had me, and I was sure I didn’t want to live that long. My hand was shaky when I lifted the weapon, which seemed heavier than before. The blue interior of the car mixed in my mind with the few memories I had made on my journey. Turning the gun around, I put my thumb on the trigger and closed my eyes, trying to calm my breath and wondering which one would be my last.

  Everything went silent. There were no more angry, evil people around me beating on the glass and trying to attack me. My mind slowed. I felt peaceful for the first time since my escape. I pushed my thumb against the trigger. A shot went off and I dropped the gun to the floorboard.

  Opening my eyes, I saw one of the monsters outside slowly slide down the window, leaving a track of blood in his path. More shots rang out, quicker, all around, throwing sparks up off the edge of the car. I threw myself onto the floorboard as well, shielding myself with my arms, hoping none of the bullets found me, prolonging my pain.

  When the gunshots stopped, I could hear the engine of a helicopter overhead, the same type that had chased me through the woods and down the interstate. Looking out of the window, I saw the dead stacked up around the car, their limbs twitching with the last signs of life. Grabbing the gun, I pushed them with the door enough so I could get out and run. The wind from the helicopter blades blew my hair and I shielded my face with my arm. There was nowhere to go though, no hiding spots, nowhere I could duck into before they saw me. Still, I tried, but the engine only got louder and the wind only blew harder.

  From out of nowhere, a strong arm wrapped around me, fighting the gun out of my hand. At first, I thought it was one of the zombies, but the white, plastic sleeve gave it away. It was one of the hazmat men who had tried to grab me in the woods, and now they finally had me. When I finally dropped the weapon, he wrapped his arms around me, and with a violent tug, I was hoisted upward into the air, toward the helicopter that hovered above.

  Fighting was useless. If I would’ve gotten loose, I would have fallen to my death. Ironically, now that people trying to kill me didn’t surround me, I wanted to stay alive. When we reached the helicopter, someone pulled my arms back and tied my wrists with a plastic wire. Soon, my ankles were immobilized, too. I fought, but there was no use. Two men, both in the same plastic uniforms and masks, the same circle and lightning symbol on their arm, sat me on the bench seat behind two others who were flying the helicopter.

  “What do you want with me?” I tried to shout over the noise and confusion, but the one holding me by the arm said nothing. The other manned a large, mounted gun, which he continued to point back and forth across the ground as we flew through the air. Again, I struggled, but the restraints firmly held me.

  The helicopter swung around, picking up speed as it did. They were taking me back, back from where I had escaped, back to be imprisoned by them for some unknown reason. I turned to the man, trying to look through his visor and into his eyes.

  “Please, what do you want with me?”

  He looked at me, at least, and my only hope was that he could see I was scared and needed someone to help me. But soon he looked away, his duty being more important than my emotional well-being.

  The machine gun rifled out multiple rounds at the ground as the man held it firmly in his grasp. He pointed at a couple of different locations, and the helicopter pitched wildly to the left to swerve past whatever he was firing at. The noise of the gun reverberated through my ears, even louder than the roar of the engine.

  Sparks pinged off the edge of the helicopter’s doorframe, and suddenly, a fiery blast cut through the side of it, pitching the gunner backward when it shook and bucked. Before he could grab on to anything, the helicopter tilted so violently he was thrown out the opposite door. Soon, smoke engulfed the cabin and the pilots fought feverishly to keep it in the air, but we were soon spinning uncontrollably fast. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach, as we went down at a fatal speed. At what seemed to be the last moment, the helicopter’s nose fell downward and all I could see were the tops of trees and buildings. The pilots struggled to steady the falling craft, but couldn’t stop us from going down.

  The man who held me by the arm pulled roughly, opened up a knife and cut the plastic wire holding my ankles together. He then forced me toward the same door the other had fallen out and clamped a tether from the door’s edge to his suit.

  “When I say jump, you jump!”

  “What about my hands?”

  “No time.”

  I wanted to protest, but the twirling of the land in front of me made me lose all other thoughts. There were mostly trees down there, and we were fast approaching them. The man leaned into the open doorway, scanning them, and for a brief moment, I thought about trying to escape, but there was no use in trying. I was either going to crash in the helicopter or have a slight chance of survival jumping out. Before I knew it, I was in the air, kicking, trying to find something to land on.

  The man reached the end of his tether and jerked me toward him. My feet hit the solid asphalt surface of a roof, but they couldn’t stop my momentum, and I fell forward, only catching myself with my shoulder.

  I winced in pain, clenching my teeth as the man cut the cord that connected him to the helicopter. Only moments later, the helicopter slammed into the trees, exploding on impact, killing both of the pilots. I gritted my teeth as he pulled me to my feet.

  “We have to get off of this roof. They’ll be coming soon,” he said through his mask. I looked around, noticing we were on a flat, two-story building, not far from the interstate where they had captured me.

  “Cut these off so I can get down,” I demanded, showing the man the plastic tie around my wrists. He hesitated again, but this time he must have seen I was counting on him to help me. He took his knife and cut the binds, allowing us both to climb down a large drainage pipe on the side of the building. He grabbed my arm roughly and practically pulled me to the ground.

  “Don’t try to escape,” he commanded, “You don’t stand a chance of survival without me.”

&
nbsp; I gave him a look, tempted to inform him I’d already spent a week out here, alone, surviving on my own. Still, he was probably not interested in my opinions, so I only nodded. He pulled me up past another building, and I could tell his thought was to get back to the interstate. I ran with him as we stayed close to the buildings, ducking behind large dumpsters. The road was full, not of cars, but of debris, and I finally realized many of the quiet, empty buildings had been destroyed by fire. We ran again, the plastic suit slowing the man down considerably. At our third stop, I asked him whom we were running from.

  “The men who shot down the helicopter, they are SA7. We need to get to the interstate and as far away from here as possible.” I pulled from his arm before he could start again.

  “What is SA7? Are those the monsters who tried to attack me in the car?”

  “No, but we have to watch out for them as well. Now, come on before—”

  We both ducked as bullets ricocheted off the charred brick above our heads and small chunks showered upon us. We ran away from the attack, up the street, looking for some sort of safety, but we both stopped when we heard the roar of an engine. It wasn’t another helicopter flying over our heads, instead, the sound was lighter and of a higher pitch. When two motorcycles came around the corner carrying four armed men, we ran across the street, trying to make our escape.

  More bullets bounced at our feet and I could hear them cutting through the air close to my head. Back down the street, there were half a dozen men approaching us quickly. We ran through the opening that used to be a door and through the burnt out shell of a building. Black soot covered everything. Burnt chairs and tables were turned over and destroyed. The place used to be a restaurant. Now, it served as our temporary refuge.

  Running into a back room, which still had a solid door, we barricaded ourselves in with boxes we found on some shelves. They were light though, so the man pressed his body against the door. I sat down at the door’s opening, trying to brace my heels against the floor. I could hear the man’s breathing through his plastic mask. The white, hazmat suit moved with each breath, but otherwise he stood stoically against the door. I began to wonder why he had forced me into the helicopter and tied my hands and was doing everything he could to protect me.

  “Why do you have to wear that?” I asked.

  The man said nothing, so I asked again. The way he turned his head made me feel as if he was giving me a dirty look through his mask, but there was no way to tell.

  “I don’t want to be infected,” he said, out of breath.

  “Infected? Infected with what?” His mask continued looking at me, like it had done in the helicopter, but he said nothing to answer my question.

  “What is your name?” I asked, seeing if he would actually answer.

  “Alex.”

  “Do you know my name, Alex?”

  Again, he did not answer.

  The silence between us was broken with the movement of furniture. We heard laughing, yelping, noises that people made while they were having fun or being entertained. I braced myself hard against the door, pushing hard with my legs. The sounds from these people bothered me equally as much as the faces did from the monsters that had tried to attack me in the car.

  Then, everything went silent, as if the people hunting us had left. All I could hear was the heavy, rasping sound of our breathing as we spread our weight against the door.

  Suddenly, the door slammed so hard against me that my feet slid across the floor. We pushed back as hard as we could, trying to gain traction, but dirty hands that were painted orange and red had already made their way through the open crack. The whooping and hollering came back loudly, right in our ears, as the men on the other side of the door laughed and cursed while they tried to break in.

  As I continued to slide across the floor, I knew our fight was futile. Collectively, they had too much strength, too much rage for us to hold them back. Still, I fought like my life depended on it, because as far as I knew, it did.

  I looked up in time to see someone’s head pop through the opening in the door. He looked down at me and smiled as one arm reached down and grabbed my hair.

  “We’re gonna get’cha, girly girly!” he yelled with a brutal laugh.

  Alex pushed his head back through, but it took only a moment before they had shoved us both back. I scrambled to my feet, but someone strong and abrasive quickly pushed me toward the back of the room. Still fighting with all the strength I could muster, from elbows to kicks backward, nothing seemed to phase the brute that had me pinned.

  “Mmm,” he groaned in my ear, causing me to shiver, “look what I got, honey.” It only took a second for him to drop a sharpened, rusty blade down against my collarbone, the jagged point pushing into the flesh of my neck. I stopped fighting when he did, hoping it would buy me a few more moments to live.

  He turned me quickly with a strong arm, in time for me to see four more assailants beating and kicking Alex. He shielded himself from each blow as best as he could, but the butt of a pistol soon met the back of his head and he fell to the floor unconscious.

  “You’re next, honey.”

  Before I could open my mouth, I felt a deep thud against the back of my head. The room went white, and then I saw nothing.

  Chapter Four

  “Can you hear me?”

  I shook my head back and forth, but I could make out the words. My head was throbbing, and I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes. The pain of being knocked unconscious was something I had never felt before and something I never wanted to feel again.

  “Well, they will be back soon, so it doesn’t matter much anyway,” said the voice. I could tell it was Alex, but he sounded like he was so far away from me.

  “Who’s coming back?” I asked, letting him know I was at least hearing him.

  “These...people, if that’s what you want to call them. It won’t be much longer now.”

  I didn’t know what to say. All I knew, or at least thought I knew, was that the fanatical people who had stalked us through the streets had captured us. Still, I didn’t know where we were or what they had planned on doing with us. Forcing myself to open my eyes, I found it was nearly as dark where I was than it was behind my eyelids. I tried to sit up, but my hands were bound to a board running across my shoulders. They were fastened with a metal semicircle, which ran through the wood and was screwed in from the back. Another U-joint ran around my neck. It was tight, but gave me enough room to breathe.

  Pulling my legs underneath me, I was able to push one side of the board up and hoist myself into a sitting position on the floor. When I looked around, I could tell there was no escape. Through the darkness, I could see bars beside me. The red triangle, circle, and crossbar was spray-painted on the wall in front of me. The dingy cell was small, empty, except for a pipe running out of the wall in one of the corners of the room.

  “There used to be a toilet there.”

  I turned and looked into the cell across from me, seeing Alex lying on the floor, his mask still on, but his arms and legs tied behind him where he couldn’t pick himself up. He turned on his side so he was facing me, but other than that, he couldn’t move.

  “Are you okay, Alex?”

  “Yeah, just a headache from where they hit me.”

  “Me too,” I mumbled. “Where are we?”

  “I’m guessing the jail in the downtown area. That’s where most of these people stay.”

  I took a few breaths, trying to calm my nerves.

  “Who are these people?” It took a moment for him to answer.

  “They have all been exposed. We call them SA7,” he said, like he was almost out of breath or maybe they had beat up him more than what I had seen.”

  “Wh...what is SA7?”

  But before he could answer, we heard a separate door creak open and a moment later, violent looking men barged through the cell door. A few of them carried torches with them for light. Each one wore his own idea of clothing, but they all were ragg
ed and torn, and they were all covered with tattoos. They picked me up by each end of the wooden beam I was cuffed to. Turning my head to see others kick Alex multiple times in his cell, quickly my own face stung when I was slapped hard across the cheek.

  “You pay attention to me, girly girly.”

  When I turned to the man who hit me, I could see the same face that had peeked through the door right before we were captured. He had no shirt on, but tattoos covered his chest and even parts of his bald head. At the center of his chest, I could see the tangled circle, triangle, and crossbar symbol. He was muscularly built, but you could tell every flex of his body was done with rage. He might have been handsome at one time, except his eyes were filled with anger. There was a small, tight-lipped grin on his face, and I felt like he saw me as nothing more than something for him to destroy and that he would enjoy every minute of it.

  I didn’t dare look anywhere, but locked eyes with the animal in front of me. I was scared, but I did my best to not let it show, hoping the dim light would also benefit me.

  “What are you doing in my town, girly girly?”

  I didn’t answer, but the hard punch to my stomach following my silence would have knocked me to the floor without the support of the other two hoodlums, who only laughed at my pain.

  The man reached forward and grabbed my hair, pulling me close to him, making me cry out just for a moment before I clenched my teeth together.

  “You know what we do with outsiders like you, girly girly?”

  I didn’t nod, I didn’t move. I wasn’t about to let him demean me into submission. I did the only thing I could do—I spit on his face.

  It shocked him enough to back off, but I received another punch to my stomach which knocked all of my breath out of me and brought tears to my eyes. He wiped the spit from his face before grabbing me around the throat and squeezing tightly.