Desolation

by Mark Campbell

  “I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Chris said quietly. “I just didn’t want you to freak out…” Andrew spun towards Chris angrily.

  “You never said you chased her!” Andrew shouted. Chris recoiled and held his hands up defensively.

  “N-n-now, I just misremembered that bit! That’s all!” Chris explained, half-pleading. “I would never hurt anybody. That was the deal, right? I take a little here… a little there… and nobody would notice! It’s a victimless crime!”

  Andrew rushed over and grabbed Chris by his shirt, ripping a small tear in the fabric.

  Chris let out a pathetic whimper and shielded his face. “Shut up, you stupid junkie! Just shut the fuck up! Do you understand me?!” Andrew shouted into his face.

  Chris nodded enthusiastically and held his open palms up to Andrew, trying to pacify the situation. “Now look, I need you to get out of here… Things have degenerated beyond the point of repair outside. Can you get us to Camp 7?” Andrew asked.

  “I’m not going with him,” Jerri said as she pointed an accusing finger at Chris. “He’s high right now! Look at his pupils!”

  Chris looked down at the floor, stunned by Andrew’s request. “W-well I uh… you want me to… take someone and…? Well and I-I-I” Chris stammered.

  Andrew shook him.

  “Answer the question! Remember what we talked about? Remember the tunnel? Our deal?” Andrew shouted.

  Chris palled at the mention of the tunnel.

  “YES! Yes!” Chris shouted, kicking his feet. “Just put me down! I’ll take you there! I’ll take you all there!”

  Andrew dropped Chris and watched as the man crumpled onto the floor, tears running down his cheeks. “Andrew,” Jerri said, staring at him with her piercing eyes. He turned towards her.

  She motioned for him to step closer to her.

  “What is it?” Andrew asked quietly as walked towards her.

  Jerri looked over at Chris who was still crumpled on the floor, crying.

  “I don’t want to go with him,” she whispered. “What are we going to do when he starts going through withdrawal?”

  Andrew looked down and nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry… if I knew you were the one who… caught him dosing… I would have thought of another way if there was one.”

  Jerri narrowed her eyes and looked accusingly at Andrew. “How could you look the other way on his actions?” she asked. “We hardly have any medicine left and he used his position to steal what little we got…”

  Andrew thought about the question for a moment and then looked back at her. “The same way I looked the other way at all of the other shit I witnessed inside this camp,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, but bartering with the devil is the only way to survive sometimes. He’s the only one who knows the location of the tunnel, so if I wanted to get someone out, he is the only one I could go to. I could have tortured him for the information… but that isn’t my way. I did it the only way I knew how.”

  “Doesn’t make it right,” she snapped, cradling Jacob in her arms. “No, and I’m sorry,” Andrew said with a sigh.

  “There were others you had smuggled out?” she asked, suspicious.

  He nodded. “I tried to get the ones out who couldn’t survive on their own in here. The rules here are dangerous and mistakes deadly,” Andrew explained. “The children are always the first to suffer, so I got as many of them out as I could.”

  Jerri studied him for a moment and then asked the question that had been bothering her.

  “Those… those creatures. You’ve seen them before, haven’t you? You knew…” she asked. “Lazarus.”

  Andrew shook his head and closed his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that right now,” he said. “I’ll explain it all soon, I promise.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Just please come along. I know you don’t like him, but if he even looks at you funny I’ll kill him myself.”

  Jerri considered it and looked over at Chris.

  Chris was busy wiping his face and dusting himself off, standing up.

  “Are you sure we need him?” she asked. “Positive,” Andrew said. “I have no idea where the tunnel is and I’m not sure about how to get to Camp 7. He had had a whole underground network he used.”

  Jerri nodded and rocked Jacob in her arms.

  Jacob squirmed underneath the blanket, making cooing sounds. “If he tries anything,” she said, “I’ll kill him myself.” Chris approached the group and cleared his throat.

  “So, um, I guess I’m taking you to Camp 7 from what I gathered?” Chris asked with a shaky voice, “Um, is everybody ready?” Andrew turned towards him and nodded.

  “Excellent,” Chris said, forcing a smile. “Well, uh, let’s head to the tunnel and get out of here?”

  24

  Chris led Andrew down medical’s administrative hall towards a secured room located at the very end.

  Jerri cradled Jacob close against her and followed from a conservative distance. She didn’t like the arrangement, but she felt like it was her duty to get Krystal’s baby out of the camp. She owed that much to her friend.

  Chris stopped at a door adorned with the Homeland Security logo. The sign on the door read ‘Medical Surplus’. It had a small window in the center and was locked by a biometric scanner.

  Jerri remembered it quite well.

  Chris gave Andrew an uneasy glance and pointed towards Jerri.

  “The blindfolds. Those goddamn blindfolds!” Andrew said with aggravation.

  “The blindfolds?” Chris asked.

  “Yes! I refuse to wear one this time! I don’t care what you say!” Andrew shouted. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Chris.

  “Well… that’s my policy,” Chris said, shuffling his heel on the ground. He picked up a lab coat off of one of the wall hooks and tossed it over to Andrew.

  Andrew caught it.

  “Fine, dammit, fine!” Andrew shouted.

  “Blindfold…? What are you talking about?” Jerri asked, looking at Andrew with confusion.

  Andrew shook his head and groaned.

  “He refuses to take anybody through his tunnel without blindfolding them,” Andrew said, giving Chris a disgusted look. “That’s the price of passage… Isn’t that right, you asshole?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Chris said. “No blindfolds? No passage.”

  “You’re not touching me,” Jerri snarled, cradling the baby close against her.

  “I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “I’ll keep you and Jacob safe, I swear it. If he tries anything funny, I’ll kill him.”

  Andrew tore the sleeves off of lab coat and tossed the rest of the shirt aside.

  “I’ll do yours then he can tie mine,” Andrew said. “I don’t want him touching you.”

  Jerri tensed but relaxed as Andrew’s harsh battle-scared hands turned to velvet in an instant. She allowed him to gently wrap the cloth around her eyes and tie the blindfold around her head.

  Besides, she figured, if worse came to worse she could always rip the damned thing off.

  Andrew turned towards Chris and nodded, stuffing the other piece of fabric into his pocket.

  Chris nervously turned back towards the biometric scanner and placed his hand on it.

  “Welcome, Dr. Christopher Kilpatrick,” the computer announced as the supply door slid open.

  Jerri blindly stepped into the storage room. The boxes of bandages still sat in the corner and the air smelled stale.

  Andrew stepped beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder, making her startle.

  “Just hurry up,” Andrew snapped. “I can’t see a fucking thing with this on!”

  Chris punched in a code using the keypad underneath the biometric scanner.

  “I’ll lead you both down safely, don’t worry,” Chris said.

  The floor rumbled and a portion slid back, revealing a spiral staircase that led underground.

  The stench that came up from the hole was horrendous and smelled like formaldehyde
. A series of harsh white lights powered on in the hole and illuminated the metallic steps.

  “Take my hand and follow me, Andrew,” Chris said from behind Jerri and Andrew.

  “Andrew…” Jerri whimpered, cradling Jacob.

  “I’m here,” he assured her.

  Andrew led Jerri down the staircase slowly, keeping his arm cradled around her.

  Jerri blindly walked down the steps nervously, clutching Jacob with one arm and the knife with the other.

  Chris followed in the rear.

  The stairs were covered in rust and the paint was peeling off of the walls. Mold and moss covered everything. As soon as the group made it halfway down the staircase, the hole above them sealed shut.

  Jerri startled badly and almost tripped down the stairs.

  “Relax,” Andrew said, preventing her from falling. “It’s on an automatic sensor.”

  Jerri almost asked where they were going, but she didn’t want to know.

  At the bottom of the staircase they came to a large room, the walls lined with rusted shower heads. Racks of dusty biological white hazmat suits hung neatly on the wall at one end. The overhead lights were dim, but still functioned. A sally port stood on the far wall. Unlike the other sally ports on the surface, the subterranean one was massive and had heavily reinforced doors that were caked with rust.

  A sign hung above the sally port:

  It had been nearly six months since the last virologist and chemist were extracted and taken to Camp 7’s larger research division.

  With Camp 6’s research halted, it had been a long time since the white-suits on the wall had been worn.

  Chris walked over to the sally port and slid the heavy door open. The computer had been deactivated and the decontamination systems had been powered down for ages.

  The door groaned as it slid along the track.

  “What’s happening?” Jerri quickly asked, reaching to take the blindfold off.

  Andrew lowered her hand back down.

  “It’s just the door leading to the underground tunnel. Chris opened it. Everything is fine,” Andrew said.

  “Now, um, keep your blindfolds on,” Chris said as he led the way down the hall.

  Abandoned laboratories lined both sides of the hall and empty steel holding pens lined the center. Dust and cobwebs covered the once pristine equipment and rats scurried across the floor.

  Andrew walked with the blindfolded Jerri at his side, staring uneasily in the empty recesses and crevices of the research department. He felt bad about blindfolding her, but he knew that she would never understand the importance of what they were once trying to do here. She would never understand the importance of the test subject’s sacrifice.

  At the end of the hall Chris pushed open another door and nervously motioned for Andrew to walk through.

  Andrew led Jerri through and came to the end of the hall. He turned towards Chris and nodded.

  Chris grunted and rolled the sally port shut, resealing the desolate lab.

  “You’re clear,” Chris said.

  Andrew took the fabric out of his pocket and pretended to remove it from his eyes just as Jerri removed her blindfold.

  Jerri quickly stepped away and looked around, confused and frightened. She clutched the baby tightly and looked at the massive sally port.

  “What was in there?” Jerri asked, eyeing the door behind them closely.

  “Just a hallway,” Chris lied.

  Jerri knew that he was hiding something from her. Before she could protest, Chris brushed past her and walked towards a sealed hatch on the wall.

  The hatch was etched with the words Surface Access.

  Chris grabbed the large wheel on the hatch and started turning it, grunting with each rotation.

  The hatch swung open and revealed an iron rung ladder.

  “I’ll hold Jacob while you climb up,” Andrew said, holding his hands out towards Jerri.

  “I’ll manage,” she said. She held onto the baby with one arm and grasped the ladder with the other. Moving slowly and methodically, she ascended up the ladder.

  Andrew frowned and reached for the ladder when Chris grabbed his arm with a weak grip.

  “Why are you doing this to me?!” Chris whispered.

  Andrew tore his arm away from Chris and narrowed his eyes at him.

  “Keep your voice down!” Andrew whispered. “What are you talking about?”

  Chris held his arms out at his side, pleading.

  “Since when did I run an underground freedom railroad? That was never part of the deal! The people you brought me never left the lab! I never even have been up that manhole! I just waved to the white-suits as they came and went! Remember?! You help me find… volunteers… and we both got paid a few extra rations! That was the deal! Now you have me traipsing civilians through classified areas and risk exposing everything?! What are you doing?! What are you doing?!”

  Andrew clenched his teeth together and jabbed his finger in Chris’ chest to drive home his next few words.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up. It’s in the deal now, okay?! I like this girl and I don’t want to leave her behind! Be happy I care enough about our friendship that I convinced her to let me take you with us, even if just temporarily,” Andrew whispered harshly. “Besides, you want to talk about deals…? Was selling serum to religious radicals ever part of the deal? What were you thinking?”

  Chris backed down and held his open palms up towards Andrew, nodding, defeated.

  “I-uh…” Chris stammered. “They told me that they would seal their dorm shut… they just wanted something strong… I didn’t have any Acexa and, of course, they were immune to PT-12… it was the only toxin I had available… They promised to keep it quiet and ceremonial-like.”

  Andrew resisted the urge to strike him.

  “And you believed them? You jeopardized the safety of the entire camp, you idiot!” Andrew spat. “Why?!”

  Chris looked away, ashamed.

  “They had some M for me… and our supplies are getting low… I didn’t see the harm in it, honest,” Chris whispered. “They said it would quiet and they wouldn’t let it spread, honest to God, Andy.”

  Andrew shook his head, disgusted.

  “It’s pathetic what you’ve become,” Andrew said. “You need to let that bitch go. It was an accident, okay? How was I supposed to know?!”

  “Are you coming?” Jerri shouted down the manhole, voice echoing.

  “Coming!” Andrew shouted in a pleasant voice. He gave Chris a cautious look and whispered, “Keep the act up. Don’t fuck this up for me.”

  Andrew started climbing up the ladder.

  “Like you fucked up everything for me,” Chris said under his breath, full of pain and resentment. He knew that Alison would have liked to escape. Sadly, she never had a chance.

  25

  Jerri grunted and shoved the hatch open. Granules of sand fluttered down the shaft and pelted her face, making her cough and close her eyes against the onslaught. She shielded Jacob against her chest to protect his delicate eyes and peered out the top of the hole.

  The desert seemed to stretch out endlessly. Camp 6 was burning over a mile away and looked out of place in the desolated landscape. Aided by the flicker of flames and the moon shining above, she saw the marauder encampment set up on a hill a few miles away from the camp. Their campfires flickered as they waited for the camp to tear itself apart.

  Deeming her immediate area safe, Jerri scurried out of the hole like a rat, looking haggard, dirty, and exhausted.

  Andrew and Chris followed up behind her, keeping quiet. Andrew surveyed the area and saw the remnants of a trampled path along the desert floor, all flattened shrubbery and desert fauna. At the end of the path there was a dirt road that stretched out for miles into the darkness away from the camp. He figured that was the path that the research team used to use.

  Chris stared in awe at the burning camp, both captivated and terrified at the same time. He never wanted a spike so ba
dly in his life. “Well, you know the way better than I would,” Andrew said to Chris, snapping the man out of his meditative stance. Chris spun towards Andrew, confused.

  “Lead the way,” Andrew said as he pointed towards the dirt road.

  Chris spotted the path and quickly nodded as he started to walk blindly into the desert.

  Andrew followed with Jerri by his side. As they walked along the dirt road, darkness swallowed them and made every thorny bush around them seem like an observing foe. Jagged stones jaunted out from the sand and lizards slithered through the small tussocks of dead grass that peppered the landscape.

  The bonfire that was once Camp 6, the marauders, and the shamblers soon became a distant spec and an unpleasant memory as the group trudged on for miles through unknown territory.

  Jerri cradled Jacob’s sleeping body close against her as she walked next to Andrew. She was freezing and could see her breath; quite a contradiction from the scorching daytime highs.

  “You know,” Jerri said, finally breaking the long stretch of awkward silence between them, “when I was a teen I used to love hiking in the desert at night.”

  Andrew looked over at her, teeth chattering.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t exactly how you remember it?” Andrew said. “Well back then I usually had beer, a campfire, and good friends,” Jerri said with a smirk. “Now I have a baby, a dope fiend, and a cop for company. It’s also a lot colder than I remember.”

  Andrew laughed.

  “Sometimes you have to make do,” he said. Jerri smiled.

  “What kind of things did you do… before?” she asked. “What? Before I found my calling working at Best Buy?” Jerri laughed.

  Chris, walking ahead of the group, rolled his eyes. He was starting to feel like he was coming down with the flu, the first effects of morphine withdrawal. It had been over twenty-four hours since he last got high.

  “Well,” Andrew mused, “I guess I liked to travel more than anything else.” He stopped and looked over at her. “I guess that’s kind of a cheap answer, isn’t it?”

  Jerri nodded.

  “Everyone says that they love to travel,” she said.