by R. J. Spears
“But why is he unconscious and why does this woman looked like someone went to town on her?”
“The woman was trying to convince us to let the boy go.”
“And who is this woman and why does she want him released?” Jones asked as he got beside Lodwick.
“She’s his mother.”
Jones turned from Lodwick and asked, “Where was the boy going?”
Ellen took a moment to regain her composure, “I don’t know. He’s just a boy. Maybe he was scared and made a run for it.”
“And maybe he was going to find some weapons outside the complex,” Lodwick said, taking a step toward Ellen, who shrank away from him. “Or maybe some allies? Who the hell knows? The Colonel said no one leaves.” Jo stepped in front of Ellen to block any chance Lodwick might hit Ellen again.
Lodwick took a step back and spoke loudly, taking in the whole crowd. “If anyone knows about anything about why this boy was leaving, they need to speak up now.”
Both Jo and Aaron scanned the crowd, looking for anyone that might be ready to talk, especially those usual suspects, Steve Hampton, Mrs. Hatcher and their confederates. Jo found Mrs. Hatcher at the back of the crowd, a blank look on her face. Aaron watched a skulking Steve Hampton who was almost to the doorway, slowly backing out of the room.
A heavy blanket of silence fell over the room, making Aaron think of his days in high school when a teacher would ask for someone in the class to admit to some heinous crime, but no one would confess. The stakes were so much higher now, but still, he almost laughed.
“Okay, okay,” Jones said loudly, “this show is over. Everyone, please return to your rooms.”
The ones already in retreat didn’t need any other encouragement and speedily left the dining hall, but a few remained, holding vigil over the soldiers and their hostage.
“We are going to take this boy to our medic for medical attention,” Jones said.
“We have our own doctor,” Aaron replied.
“We need to ask him some questions, too,” Lodwick said, taking a step toward Aaron.
“You mean interrogate him?” Aaron challenged, also closing on Lodwick.
“We can do what we want to him,” Lodwick said, and the temperature in the room seemed to rise again.
Jones stepped around Lodwick and said, “We won’t interrogate the boy. It’s just a few questions. As soon as we’re done with the boy, we’ll bring him to his mother.”
“How long will that take?” Ellen asked shakily.
“As long as it takes,” Lodwick replied.
Again Jones spoke around Lodwick, “Soon. Not too much time at all.” He took in a long breath, the tension obvious in his face, and let it out. “Now, please let me take care of this. I promise that no more harm will come to the boy.” He looked from Ellen to Jo and then onto Aaron, trying to convince them that what he said was true and he would back up his words with action.
Against their better judgment, something about what Jones was saying convinced the crowd to back down. Jo did so because she knew they really had no choice and Aaron did it begrudgingly. The only thing Aaron knew was that this was far from over.
Chapter 5
Taken
First moving bushes, now talking bushes. What next -- singing trees?
I slowly started my hand toward my rifle when the bush spoke again.
“Don’t. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”
I stayed my hand, thinking a talking bush can’t be all that bad, and waited for the next bat shit crazy thing to happen. As if on cue, another bush moved in our direction, but this one was clearly humanoid, moving in fast. Like the one next to me, it had a rifle, too, and it was aimed at Kara. I could now clearly see that the moving bushes were men in ghillie suits. These weren’t cheap suits, either, but allowed the men to blend in with the trees and bushes almost like wraiths. One of the suits was grassier than the other one, while the other had more leaves on it. Both were military quality.
Two more camouflaged forms moved in the darkness closing in on us making their way towards Brother Ed, Jason, and Naveen. I could see that none of them were aware or awake.
I was tempted make a wild grab for my gun in an attempt to defend us, but the barrel of the gun just inches from my head looked like a cannon. I also saw that Kara was targeted. Any sudden movement I made would most likely get is all killed, but I wasn’t sure we weren’t dead already. Stealthy men in ghillie suits coming at us with guns did not bode well for our long-term survival.
I could see the camouflaged men moving towards Jason and the others with rifles trained on them. A sinking feeling overcame me, telling me that I had failed and this time my failure would be deadly.
“I’m reaching in for your rifle,” the bushman said. “Don’t move or try anything.”
What could I do, but comply? The man’s hand carefully reached into my lap, and I felt the weight of my rifle lifted from me, leaving me feeling defenseless. The other bushman claimed Kara’s rifle, and I watched out of the corner of my eye to see the two men in camouflage nudge Jason and Brother Ed awake.
Brother Ed’s arms flailed in the air for a moment, and he let out a startled sound, but the man covering him stuck a gun in his face, stifling any prolonged outburst.
Jason’s eyes blinked awake but unlike most people, he seemed less concerned about the men with guns in our midst. In fact, he seemed almost serene. Maybe it was because Naveen remained asleep with her head in his lap and he didn’t want to startle her. She was unaware of the danger that had befallen us, and maybe he wanted her to stay that way as long as possible. I envied her. Maybe she would die without knowing what had happened, unlike me who know that I had doomed us.
“Don’t lie about this,” the bushman spoke softly into my ear. “Do you have any other weapons?”
I had a pistol in my waistband that I had no chance of getting to with the bushman right on top of me. I had a hunting knife in a leather sheath on my belt. I considered attempting not to reveal them, but these guys were just too good. I would imagine lying to them would come at a considerable penalty.
“I have a pistol in my waistband and a hunting knife on my belt,” I said, trying to sound confident, yet conciliatory, hoping to curry any favor from these dangerous men.
“Thanks,” the bushman said, and a moment later, I felt his hand pat its way down to my waist and retrieve my two weapons. Plus, they took my baseball bat. It made me feel more vulnerable than I had felt in a long time. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a weapon on my person. And to think that before the zombie apocalypse, the most dangerous weapon I had on me was my rapier wit.
I sensed movement beside me and concluded that the man beside Kara was relieving her of her rifle.
“Wha? What’s happening?” a voice asked off to our right and I recognized it as Naveen’s. She was barely coherent and still half asleep but obviously startled
“Wait, you’re hurting me,” she said, and that was followed by a yelp of pain.
I started to rise from my sitting position, but the man next to me said, “Stay down.” A moment later, I felt the cold circle of the barrel of his gun against the back of my neck. I surrendered and sat back down.
Kara tried to get up, too, and said, “She’s just a kid. Don’t hurt her.”
A bushman said, “Easy, easy,” as he pointed a gun at Kara’s chest. She fell back down beside me and I could see the distress on her face.
Jason pulled Naveen in close to his chest, putting his arms around her in a protective gesture. Brother Ed looked frustrated but stayed seated against the pine tree. In the next minute, all of us had been patted down and our weapons taken.
They had us. What they were going to do with us was the big question.
If they were going to kill us, you would have thought they would have done it already, but in this new reality, there were worse things than death. I only hoped that one of the thousands of the worst things filtering through my mind at that po
int wasn’t one of them.
The bushman next to me spoke in a very measured and deliberate way, “Okay, this is how it’s going to go. You’re going to get up slowly. Then we’re going to walk to our camp and then we’re going to have a little talk. Depending on what you say, we’ll decide what we are going to do with you.” He paused for a second, then asked, “Understand?” He looked to each one of us and waited for some sign of assent. We tacitly got the message, and each one of us nodded with exception of Naveen who looked on wide-eyed.
We all stood up slowly, and I spoke the bushman closest to me, “Those are pretty nifty costumes, but they look like they might get a little hot in the summer.”
“Yeah, and itchy, too. Now, move,” he said, pushing the barrel of his nasty and deadly looking assault rifle into my back and nudging me forward. I got the hint and started walking.
At least the rain had stopped.
Chapter 6
The Night Visitor
Colonel Kilgore moved restlessly in his bed, his thoughts tangled together, coalescing into a jumble of images colored in red. The images were violent and disturbing and filled with blood, smoke, and screams. Yet, they were all indistinct, with no real focus or purpose, other than serving some sort of tortured chaos.
Just on the edge of consciousness, he caught the scent of smoke in his nostrils, and some sort of internal alarm knew that smoke was bad and that he should wake up, but he stayed down in that murky world of unconsciousness. A soft, silky, but rough edged voice, like that of a person who smoked a thousand cigarettes a day spoke. There was some other worldly about the voice, as it seemed like it was inside and outside his head all at once. Kilgore sat bolt upright in the bed.
“You’re failing,” the voice said. “He’s getting away.”
Kilgore sat up in his bed and his eyes fluttered open, but a part of him remained semi-conscious. “What?” he asked, feeling a sense of dread seeping into his body like cooling lava.
A silhouetted figure stood at the end of the bed rimmed in wisps of smoke. Its eyes glowed red like hot coals and Kilgore thought he could catch glints of light coming off fang-like teeth in its mouth. “You’re letting Jason Carter escape just when you had him so close.”
Kilgore brought up his hands and rubbed sleep from his eyes, hoping that the figure would not be there when he reopened them, but when he stopped rubbing, the figure was still there.
“Who are you? Kilgore asked.
“You really don’t want to know that, but probably already do,” the smoky figure responded.
“Why is Jason Carter so important?” Kilgore asked.
“You know why,” the figure spoke. “He will shift the entire balance back toward the other side.”
“But if he might be the cure, isn’t that a good thing?” Kilgore asked, the question coming out in a timid and child-like way.
The figure leaned over Kilgore impossibly fast and shot out a large black clawed hand. The hand encircled Kilgore’s face, nearly encompassing his entire head, and started to squeeze. The hand was as warm as an oven and the pressure was immediate, making Kilgore’s head feel like it was in an overheated vise. He let out a high pitched scream in agony.
“Fool,” the figure shouted, the sound of the voice resounding off the walls. “This is my time. This time I can win.”
Kilgore tried to pull the huge hand away from his head, but it was locked in place, squeezing ever so tightly. The pressure increased and Kilgore felt as if his skull might crack open at any moment when the hand finally released him and he fell back onto the bed, panting.
“You must do this,” the figure said.
The sound of running feet came from the hallway approaching quickly.
“Why can’t you do this yourself?” Kilgore asked, his voice raspy and tight.
“There are rules,” the figure said. “There are rules.”
Someone tried to open the door, but it was locked. They pounded on it and shouted. “Colonel, are you alright? Colonel? Colonel!”
“Get this done!” the figure said and smoke began to swirl around its body like a miniature tornado, slowly at first, but gaining speed whipping faster and faster like an uncontrollable vortex. The figure’s body seemed to dissolve in the vortex of smoke and when it was entirely gone, the smoke broke up and dissipated leaving only the smell of brimstone and sulfur behind.
The door frame shattered, broke open, and Sergeant Jones burst into the room, looking wild-eyed at the Colonel. Jones flipped on the lights and then blinked his eyes several times against its brilliance. Jones sucked in a deep breath and coughed, then covered his mouth with a hand.
“What’s that smell?” he asked. He saw what looked like a red and angry sunburn across the Colonel’s head and face. It seemed selective, though, only affecting specific areas, wrapping like a huge handprint around his head.
Kilgore looked dazed, barely recognizing that Jones was even in the room. His gaze seemed to be seeing miles past Jones into the infinite.
Jones was stunned to see the Colonel in such a state. He had seen the Colonel through so much after the world slipped down the drain and, through it all, the Colonel had always kept his head on straight, a calm beacon in the chaos around them. Sure, lately, he seemed to be on the edge of anger throughout the day, but he had never looked as lost as he did then.
Jones took tentative steps toward the bed when Kilgore slowly turned his head in his direction. Still, Kilgore looked through and past him with a glazed expression.
Jones felt as if he were caught in a no man’s land, waiting for some sort of clue from Kilgore, but got none. So, he took a chance and reached out a hand and placed it on the Colonel’s shoulder. No sooner did it land than Kilgore bolted out of the bed as if he were on fire. The action was about as fast as Jones had ever seen anyone move.
“Sergeant Jones, I need to get more men up in the air,” Kilgore huffed out as he stood with his back to Jones, breathing hard as if he had just run a marathon. “We need to find Carter as soon as possible.”
“We only have two choppers, sir,” Jones said.
“Then get men out in the jeeps, or on foot if you have to.”
“Sir, that will seriously deplete the men we have watching over the people here,” Jones said, but not feeling confident anything he had to say would truly register. “Plus we still have a lot of zombies in the area.”
Kilgore slowly turned and caught Jones in a stare, “I don’t give a flying fuck if an army of dinosaurs led by Godzilla breathing fire is out there. You’ll get this done, and I mean now. Do you understand me?”
A fierce and frightening light shone behind Kilgore’s eyes, and Jones knew better than to question anything. It was better to go along and hope that some semblance of sanity reappeared because the Colonel was teetering toward the land of the cuckoo bird.
“Yes, sir,” Jones said, “I’ll get right on it.”
He waited for Kilgore to go out the door, but Kilgore stood locked in place, the manic drive that shot him out of the bed momentarily gone. Kilgore’s expression seemed to relax some, and he said, “Send out three jeeps, have them head north. There’s no need to send out men on foot. I was a bit agitated.”
“Yes, sir,” Jones said, still holding his place. “I’ll send the jeeps out ASAP.” He paused and said, “I’ll do that while you get dressed.” He knew the Colonel never went out among the men out of uniform.
Kilgore looked down at himself and saw that he was still in the sweatpants and a t-shirt he had gone to bed in. “Yes, let me do that.” He still seemed a bit lost, but he backed away from the door and opened a path for Jones to leave. Jones took the cue and left the room quickly, uneasy about leaving his back exposed. It was an unsettling feeling.
Chapter 7
Visions by Daybreak
The men carefully marched us through the woods, down a path that only they seemed to know was there. We hiked along for a good fifteen minutes before we came to a clearing. The dawn that had been threateni
ng earlier finally broke and the pink and yellow light of it spread across the field of tall grass filled with sunflowers. The night rain weighed down the grass and sunflowers, slipping off them in misty droplets. A few birds flitted above the grass, chirping away happily.
Had the situation been different, I might have taken a moment to admire the quiet and beautiful setting, but with four men with guns nudging us along, there was nothing idyllic about it. Even if I had decided to take a moment, I doubted our captors would have been happy about that.
“Keep it moving,” one of the men said, noticing my hesitation
I took one step forward and that was it.
Usually my visions came down in a flash, a gentle one, but this one fell on me like an iron blanket, hard and fast. I hate calling them “my visions,” because sometimes I really think they are more like a curse.
The last thing I sensed was the sight of the wet grass rushing toward my face. I also distinctly heard Naveen cry out, then everything went white and silent.
The world I was in was white from one end to the other, flat and endless. I began to question whether I had stroked out and this was a transitory limbo, a waiting room before I entered the next world, but the white began to swirl like mist. This went on for several seconds until it was replaced with darkness that gradually brightened to reveal a dim room viewed from above as if I were hovering in the air with a bird's eye view of this new scene.
The room I was in was somewhere I had never been before. It was narrow and cramped, almost claustrophobically so. The floor was made of unforgiving hard concrete and was crisscrossed with narrow bands of darkness breaking up the dull light. Naveen sat on the floor, her back against the wall. She held her arms wrapped around herself as she rocked back and forth the slightly and looked clearly like she had been crying. Jason and Brother Ed sat on the floor at the other end of the bed. Brother Ed’s face looked bloody as if someone had busted his nose. It looked a little crooked on his face, but from this bird’s eye view it was hard to tell. Kara was noticeably absent from the scene.