Desolation

by Mark Campbell

“Please help me,” Jerri told the young officer as she stared at the tip of the chain. It still had the metallic anchor attached to it along with three exposed screws.

  “Shut up,” the officer said with defiance as he kept the weapon leveled towards her. “Can you at least loosen my cuffs?” she asked as she used the corner of the wall to help her get up on her feet. “I can’t feel my hands…”

  “No. Now shut up. I’m not warning you again,” the officer replied.

  Jerri sat in the corner of the room, silent, contemplating. Outside, gunfire erupted in the distance.

  47

  The gunfire, which had lasted for hours, finally started to subside. Seconds seamed to drag into eternity.

  Jerri’s keeper appeared to grow increasingly paranoid as the silence lingered.

  They hadn’t spoken a word since his warning. He continually glanced down at his wristwatch and kept an eye cocked towards the door. Beads of sweat formed across his pale skin and the MP5 shook in his clammy hands.

  Something made a loud clunk in the hallway, making both Jerri and her keeper flinch.

  The noise happened again… and again… and again. “What is that?” Jerri asked, looking down at the chain sprawled between her legs.

  The man held up a single finger and stood up. “Shut it,” the man said as he curiously crept towards the door. He kept his weapon pointed at Jerri as he moved but his attention was firmly focused on the door.

  Jerri gripped the chain with both hands from behind her back… The man pressed his ear against the door, mouth agape. He kept his eyes focused on Jerri.

  The noise happened again, louder. The man let out a panicked cry and darted away from the door. He started to pace in the room, running his fingers through his hair and keeping a firm grip on the MP5 with the other.

  “They’re inside… they’re inside,” he muttered to himself again and again as he paced. “They’re fucking inside…”

  Jerri’s grip tightened on the chain…

  The man suddenly stopped pacing and pointed the MP5 at Jerri, sweat running down his forehead.

  “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” the man stammered.

  Jerri’s blood ran cold; she had to do something fast. She quickly looked over at the door.

  “Wait… they’re opening the door!” she shouted in a terrified tone as she stared at the door with wide eyes.

  The man startled and quickly turned his attention towards the door– As soon as the man turned away, Jerri held the chain that was shackled to her handcuffs and spun around suddenly, lashing the man across the face.

  A large gash opened across his cheek and blood started pouring profusely from his wound. Stunned, he stumbled backwards and squeezed the trigger–

  Nothing happened.

  Jerri spun herself around a second time, screaming, and lashed the chain around the man’s neck.

  Jerri forcefully pulled back, tightening it around the man’s neck. He choked and fumbled with his weapon as he collapsed on the ground, helplessly pulled forward by Jerri’s surprising force. He repeatedly pulled the trigger of the MP5 in his panic but nothing happened; he never disengaged the safety.

  Once the officer was on the ground Jerri wrapped the chain around his neck twice more, placed her knees down on his back, and pulled the chain as tight as she could.

  The officer’s face turned red and his eyes bulged out of their sockets as the chain sunk deeper into his throat and cut off his air supply. He dropped his MP5 and hurled Jerri off of his back.

  Jerri tumbled off of him but kept the chain pulled snug as she lay on the floor, inching away from the man as he flailed and panicked. The man went limp and lay face down on the floor, blood dribbling out of his ears and out from the corner of his eyes. Jerri relaxed her grip and let the chain fall against the floor. She scooted towards the man and quickly unwound the chain from the corpse’s neck. She then brought her knees tightly against her chest and slid her handcuffed hands underneath her feet and up to the front of her body. Such contortionism would have been impossible for her before but her frail frame had succumbed to malnutrition and starvation and made the act surprisingly simple.

  With her restrained hands now in front of her, she quickly searched the officer’s pockets for a handcuff key. No luck.

  The banging outside the door continued.

  She reached down and picked up the MP5 with both hands. Flicking the safety off, she placed the barrel directly against one of the leg irons that shackled her feet together.

  She chose her right leg; she figured that she would only need to get one leg free and then deal with the other leg and the handcuffs when she comes across some keys.

  Her hands were at least in front of her so she savored her small victory.

  She closed her eyes and gently squeezed the trigger. The force of the gunfire sent sparks flying as bullets peppered through the leg iron.

  Sparks and shrapnel pelted her legs and made her scream but the leg iron was defeated and fell against the floor. Jerri, ears ringing, couldn’t hear the banging outside the room or anything else for that matter. Everything had the diluted sound quality as if she were holding her head underwater.

  She quickly stood up and limped towards the door. She tried to open it but it was locked; Lt. Willow was proving to be more formable than she originally imagined. Hopefully he was one of the countless dead now outside.

  Cursing, Jerri limped over to the mirrored window and pointed the MP5 towards it…

  She pulled the trigger and swept the gun across the center of the glass. The glass shattered and pelted down against the floor in small shards revealing a small room lined with wooden chairs and dark computer monitors.

  It was completely empty.

  Jerri, stunned, lowered her gun and walked towards the room…

  She thought she was in a prisoner holding area or an interrogation room but the sign on the rear wall of the room quickly corrected her suspicions.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jerri muttered despite not being able to hear her own words over her tinnitus. She carefully crawled through the shattered window into the small adjacent room and looked back at the place she had spent the past few hours in captivity.

  A sign reading ‘Observation Room D’ hung above the broken window.

  Jerri frowned and made her way towards a wooden door at the side of the room.

  She slowly and methodically pushed the door lever down with the barrel of her gun.

  It was unlocked.

  Jerri slowly stepped out into the hallway and scanned the corridor with her weapon– The hallway was painted all white and covered with mold. The tiled ceiling sagged badly with moisture and most of the overhead fluorescent lights long extinguished. Windows dominated both sides of the corridor along with multiple rooms. Two decaying men wearing laboratory coats lay strewn in the center of the corridor, long since dead. Multiple metallic carts, just like the one Lt. Willow used, cluttered the hall and were overturned.

  A single fluorescent fixture had fallen loose from the ceiling and dangled off of two sparking wires. The fixture struck against the wall as it dangled in the breeze caused by a nearby vent. It struck the wall again… again… and again.

  The strange noise she heard was one mystery solved. She hobbled over to one of the rooms across from her and opened the door. It was an observation room like the one she had just come from. Empty.

  An animal carcass was shackled to the floor but the nature of the decaying animal could be anyone’s guess; rot had reduced the thing down to clumps of fur, putrid meat, and gangly skeletal remains.

  She made her way back out into the corridor and peered into one of the long windows. It was dark inside but she could make out rows of silver tables, toppled microscopes, and other medical devices she couldn’t recognize. A few decomposed corpses wearing tattered white hazmat suits were lying in the room. One of them was sprawled across the table with his arms hanging off of the sides. Each of the large laboratory areas appeared to be connected to th
e corridor by sterile sally ports.

  It didn’t matter; she had no desire to enter.

  Jerri looked down the long corridor and saw a door with a staircase sign on it.

  She found her escape.

  Her weapon felt light and she knew that she didn’t have many, if any, rounds left so she would have to make her shots count. She hobbled quickly towards the staircase…

  The staircase door opened.

  Jerri quickly ducked behind one of the toppled metallic carts and held the gun against her chest, ready. Lt. Willow staggered out of the staircase. He was soaked in gasoline; the stench overpowering. A crimson blossom had formed on his abdomen and blood trickled down his leg. He held a ring of keys in one hand.

  He started to whistle as he limped down the hall.

  Jerri took a deep breath to build her nerve and then bounded up from behind the cart, pointing the MP5 at him.

  Lt. Willow stopped mid-whistle and froze, staring at her with a strange mixture of admiration, disbelief, and disdain.

  “How did you manage…?” he asked.

  Jerri didn’t respond and kept the weapon pointed at him with both hands.

  Lt Willow cocked his head to the side and saw the observation room’s door behind her was open. He laughed and shook his head. “I should have locked that goddamn door,” he said with embarrassment.

  “Don’t move,” Jerri ordered as she narrowed her eyes at him. “I didn’t come back down here to torture you if that’s what you’re worried about,” he assured. “I just came down here to get you... You're going to lead us back to Camp 6 once we get into Arizona. You'd know that desert back-road shithole better than any of our

  cartographers... even if we had any old maps left.”

  “I'm not taking you anywhere,” Jerri said as she carefully took a step backwards. “Whatever. Don't be stupid,” he said, brushing her comment off. “We're overrun here so we can't stay. I have two men and a decently running jeep waiting topside. Of course we'll need gasoline along the way but I'm sure you've sucked enough hose to know the basics on how to siphon gasoline and I'm sure there are lots of abandoned cars on the interstate. So quit wasting time and let's go.”

  “I said no,” Jerri answered. “Just let me go.”

  Lt. Willow tilted his head and stared at her for a few moments.

  “Go? Go where?” he finally asked. “There is nowhere left but Camp 6… Didn't I make that clear enough?”

  “That’s my problem to figure out then isn’t it?” Jerri asked defensively.

  Lt. Willow frowned and shook his head, befuddled and infuriated. “ Your problem…?” he asked through gritted teeth. He took a step towards her. “What about my problem? You and your infected crew brought death to our doorstep! We lost EVERYTHING thanks to you! There is a chance for us in Camp 6!”

  “No, there isn’t!” Jerri shouted as she kept the gun pointed out in front of her. “There never was!”

  Lt. Willow furrowed his brow and gripped the keys tightly in his hand. “There is food… there is ammo… there are men. Fuck the government. We can sustain ourselves…” Lt. Willow said in an exasperated tone. He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “But you ruined any chance of that.”

  Jerri slowly took a step back and shook her head. “You’re wrong about Camp 6,” she explained. “It has none of those things. A raiding party took over the camp. We lost everything… Even before they attacked, things were falling apart. We never had anything to offer you…”

  Lt. Willow shook his head and pointed his finger at her, spitting as he screamed at her. “Hope! You offered hope the second we saw that plane land, you fucking bitch!” he shouted. “Hope was what we needed to survive and even now you’re too stupid to realize that! Now you're standing there and telling me that there is nothing out there?! I will not accept that!”

  Jerri took a nervous swallow and kept the gun centered on him. “Just let me go my own way or I’ll shoot,” she threatened with her finger lightly wrapped around the trigger.

  Lt. Willow staggered towards her in defiantly, leaving drops of blood in his wake. Jerri squeezed the trigger.

  The ‘CLICK’ confirmed her worst fear.

  Lt. Willow froze in shock for a moment and then started to laugh. “Funny how that’s always the loudest sound in a gunfight, isn’t it?” Lt. Willow asked as he chuckled at his own star-crossed fate. A devilish grin formed across his lips as he reached down and picked up a large surgical knife that was lying on a nearby metallic push cart. “You don't want to come? Fine. I'll use an outdated piece of shit map. But for you... well... I’d suggest you run...”

  Jerri threw the empty gun down and took off down the corridor, away from Lt. Willow and the staircase. She looked absolutely ridiculous with her hands cuffed together and one leg iron shackled to her ankle. She hobbled away as fast as she could, dodging the toppled metallic carts in her way.

  Lt. Willow casually followed after Jerri. He let the knife scrape along the cement wall as he moved and created an eerie screech that echoed along the entire hall.

  Jerri arrived at the end of the corridor and found herself at a crossroads. To her left she saw a metallic door that read boiler room and to her left she saw a silver door.

  She heard the screeching approaching closer behind her and quickly made what she felt was the safer choice; she ran towards the silver door.

  “Where do you think you’re going to go?!” Lt. Willow bellowed out, laughing. “How far do you think you’ll get down here?!” She fumbled with the door lever with her cuffed hands. The door was unlocked.

  She quickly ran inside, slamming the door shut behind her, panting. A row of white biohazard suits and gas masks hung on silver hooks on the wall above a table. The lights in the room were dimmed and the ceiling was sagging and moldy. At the far end of the room stood a sally port similar to what she remembered seeing back at Camp 6. The sally port doors were frosted glass and a sign above it read ‘All Personnel Must Decontaminate’.

  Her gut sank; she felt like she picked the wrong room but she knew she couldn’t go back out in the hall.

  The door lever moved as Lt. Willow started to enter the room… Jerri ran over to the sally port and pressed the red button next to the glass doors.

  An alarm blared twice and the sally port door slid open with a ‘HISS’.

  Jerri ran inside and the door slid shut just as Lt. Willow stepped into the room with the knife.

  Jerri backed away from the door, frantic, as her heart thumped madly inside her chest.

  Lt. Willow’s silhouette was barely visible through the frosted glass.

  “Please stand still with your arms above your head. Stand by. Decontamination process in progress,” an electronic voice announced overhead. Blue mist sprayed down from the shower heads and both sally port doors started to fog up. Jerri gagged on the alcoholic stench of the mist as it burnt the back of her throat and made her eyes fill with tears. She forced her eyes to open and stared at the door she came through... waiting...

  A hand print formed on the outside of the glass door and ran down the center, startling Jerri. Lt. Willow pressed his eyes against the glass and tried to peer inside; it was no use trying to see through frosted glass. He bashed the hilt of his knife against the glass repeatedly, but not a single scratch formed.

  The mist stopped.

  “Decontamination process is complete. Thank you.”

  The glass door behind Jerri opened and she stumbled into the laboratory, coughing. As soon as she entered the overhead lights flickered on automatically and old computer monitors powered up.

  The lab smelled like mothballs. Rows of silver tables and metal stools lined the entire lab and were stacked high with boxes of old beakers, microscopes, and diagnostic equipment. It looked like things had been in storage for a while judging by the spiderwebs. Large cylinders of gas were stacked against the far wall underneath another cryptic Project Lazarus poster.

  The glass door behind Jerri slid shut and she heard th
e shower activate; Lt. Willow would be inside any moment.

  She scrambled behind the nearest table and frantically searched for any type of weapon.

  No time.

  The decontamination procedure was complete and the door was about to open. Jerri quickly took one of the smaller microscopes out of one of the boxes on the table and hurled it into the far corner of the room. She quickly ducked down out of sight behind the table and held her breath, waiting.

  The microscope shattered against the far wall and clattered against the floor just as the sally port door opened.

  Lt. Willow's attention immediately turned towards the noise as he entered the room. “Why must you play these little games? We could have been friends. Such a long journey together... We could have bonded,” Lt. Willow said. Treading lightly, he crept towards the noise and gripped the knife tightly in his hand. He kept one hand pressed against his wounded abdomen and ignored the blood trickling through his fingers.

  Jerri, elated that her plan was working, kept quiet and waited for him to get further away... “This is the room where we made it you know... You're treading on some hallowed ground,” Lt. Willow said with a cough. He stumbled and tripped over a stool, catching himself on the table. He kicked the stool out of his way and continued to walk to the corner of the room, keeping a watchful eye out for the girl.

  Jerri peered out from around the side of the table and saw that the sally port door was still open. Lt. Willow looked down at his wound and grimaced. The daunting realization that he would never survive the trip to Camp 6 started to become hauntingly apparent.

  “The toxin lived up admirably to its name... But you don't believe me because you're a stubborn bitch,” Lt. Willow said with a grin. He walked along the side of the table in the corner of the room, tapping the tip of his knife on the table with each step he took.

  Tap.

  “Canada is gone!”

  Tap.

  “China is gone!”

  Tap.

  “Europe is gone!”

  Tap.

  “And now,” Lt. Willow said as he turned the corner, “What was left of America is gone thanks to you.”