by James Harden
“We got away just in time,” I say. “Just before the outpost exploded. We got away in one of the Humvees.”
I tell Kenji what happened at Daniel’s camp and how we left him there because he went crazy. I tell him that Jack ran off to find Kim, and then Maria and I followed the military here. And then we were captured by General Spears and locked up.
I tell him about the man in the gas mask.
I tell him that he injected me with a time-release nano-swarm. I show Kenji my watch, and I tell him that in exactly twenty-four hours, the nano-virus will be activated and it will eat me from the inside. It will eat flesh and bones and everything.
I tell Kenji that the man in the gas mask has taken Maria. And that he is going to execute her on camera and show the world. And that this public execution, will most likely coincide with my death. I tell him I don’t know why. Most probably because he is insane.
I say, “Maria has been taken to the Control Center. This is where she is right now. This is where she will be executed if we don’t do something.”
Kenji nods his head. He is not surprised or shocked. He is not surprised to hear about a man who has stitched a gas mask into his scalp. He is not surprised by any of it.
He has heard this madness and madness like it all before.
“Who the hell is Tariq?” I ask. “Who is he really? What was he doing there, at the outpost? What is he doing here, in this Fortress, in this country?”
Before Kenji can tell me who Tariq is, before I can put the pieces of the puzzle together, we hear a gunshot.
It sounded like a cannon blast.
It was Ben’s shotgun.
The others are in trouble. And we are all in trouble.
Chapter 34
“Oh no,” Kenji whispers. “The shotgun. Too loud. We’re being too loud. They followed us. They found us.”
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
“Up ahead. They’re close.”
We run. And it’s at that moment we hear the howling, moaning, scream of the infected. The noises echo off the walls of the maze and the catacombs. It is impossible to tell where they are.
There is no time to think things through. No time to plan.
The infected have arrived.
We make it to another burial chamber. A circular room. More dead buried in the walls. But apart from the dead bodies, the room is empty. The others are nowhere to be seen.
We move into the next room. And now we are no longer alone. There is a group of infected. They are feeding. Kenji holds me back.
But I need to see.
Who are they feeding on? Who?
There are four infected people.
They are feeding on one woman.
Anna?
Kim?
Did the death squad throw Kim down here?
No, they wouldn’t do that. Would they?
Kenji is backing away, backing out of the room, trying to pull me with him.
But I need to be sure.
Suddenly the woman looks right at me. She is still alive.
It is not Kim.
It is not Anna.
And I am relieved that this person who is dying, this person who is being eaten alive, is not someone I know.
This is the main emotion I am feeling right now.
Relief.
We back away slowly.
The group of infected people haven’t seen us yet. They are content to feed. So we let them.
But the woman has seen us.
The woman is looking right at us.
“Help me,” she whispers. “Please. Pleeeease. Kill me. Do it.”
But we can’t help her and we can’t kill her because we are unarmed. We can’t do a goddamn thing. The only thing we can do is run. And this is what we should be doing. We should be running.
We should be running fast and far. But we are not running. We are frozen. Our feet are nailed right into the ground.
“Go,” Kenji whispers. “We have to go.”
We take one step.
And then big Ben enters the room.
And before Kenji can stop him, before Kenji can do anything, Ben uses the shotgun to kill the four infected people and the woman who was being eaten alive.
Everything happens quickly and the blast of the shotgun is incredibly loud, but in my head all five shots sound muffled and distant.
“They’re here,” Ben says. “They’re all over the place. We gotta go.”
Chapter 35
We can hear the infected, and they sound like they are all around us. Right throughout the catacombs. They sound like they are getting closer.
We move. We finally begin running.
Kenji is in front, leading the way. Thomas is right on his heels, followed by me, Jack, and Anna.
As per usual, Ben is bringing up the rear.
Suddenly, Anna trips and falls, and when she falls, she reaches forward and brings down Jack.
I turn around to see what the hell is going on.
And what I see is Anna struggling.
She is pale.
Shivering.
Sweaty.
I see blood.
I see blood everywhere.
Jack brushes himself off and gets to his knees. Kenji and Thomas stop and come back.
“Anna, are you OK?” I ask. “What the hell happened?”
She waves me off. “I’m fine. I...”
She can’t finish. She can’t speak.
Ben finally catches up to us and the look on his face says it all. It is a look of acceptance. It is the look of a field surgeon on the battlefield who knows what a lost cause looks like.
Thomas stands over Anna and he is the first one to say what we’re all thinking. "She's been bitten."
“No,” Anna whispers. “I wasn't bitten. I swear.”
Her back and her right shoulder are covered in blood. But it doesn't look like a bite wound.
“So what the hell happened?” Thomas asks.
Anna looks at her shoulder. It is only then she realizes how bad it is. It is only then she realizes how much blood she has lost. “The monster. Its claws. Grazed my shoulder. It's just a scratch. Just a scratch.”
Thomas does not believe her. “A scratch? You really think so?”
“It happened so fast,” she says. “It might’ve been the rocks falling on me.”
“It's not just a scratch,” Jack says. “This is a deep laceration. This will need stitches. A lot of stitches. It looks like Freddy Kruger has taken a swipe at you.”
Ben places his shotgun on the ground and kneels down next to Anna. He rips the sleeves off her shirt and tries to use them to stop the bleeding.
“I’m fine,” Anna says. “This is nothing. Barely a flesh wound. I’m fine.”
She keeps telling us she is fine.
But she is not.
Thomas is shaking his head. “We can't risk it. We have to take care of her.”
“Shut the hell up,” Ben says.
“You know I’m right. She’s going to turn any goddamn minute now.”
Ben stands and moves over to Thomas. “If you don’t stop talking, I will break your jaw.”
A scream from the darkness makes us all jump. It could’ve come from anywhere within the tunnels of the catacombs. Thomas is looking all around. He is becoming more and more erratic. He is scared and nervous. He is jumpy as hell and paranoid, but the son of a bitch has a point.
Anna could be infected.
She could be about to turn into an undead monster.
She could be about to attack us with single minded aggression and unimaginable ferocity.
All of this could happen in a heartbeat.
We would need to make a decision on her life. We would need to make this decision right now. And we would need to live with the consequences of this decision, for the rest of our lives.
I look at Anna and I can’t help but be reminded of my mother. She is a nurse. She was left behind. She was betrayed.
She is
so dead.
Ben has managed to staunch the flow of the bleeding. But it is too little too late.
Anna’s face, her skin. She is so pale.
She is shivering.
I want to give her a few more minutes. I want to give her the respect she deserves, but we do not have minutes to give.
“What do we do?” Thomas asks. “We have to do something.”
“We should give her time,” Jack says.
“We don’t have time!”
“We’ll take her to the research lab,” Kenji says. “There’s a medical facility there. It’s her only chance.”
Maybe she’s immune, I think to myself. Like Maria.
We would never have known if Maria was immune if we had just killed her.
“Are you going to carry her?” Thomas asks.
“I’ll carry her,” Ben says.
Thomas can’t believe it. “Are you crazy? What if she actually is infected?”
“We don’t know that.”
“I can’t believe you are prepared to take that risk. I can’t believe you are prepared to risk all of our lives. You are risking the entire group for one person. Do you realize how insane that is? Do you realize how stupid that is?”
I know the odds are not good.
I know she is probably dying.
I know she will only slow us down. But we can’t just give up on her.
I know if she’s infected, she will turn.
Ben walks away from Thomas and turns to Jack. “Give me your t-shirt. Need to stop the bleeding.”
But before Jack can take his shirt off, and before we can stop the bleeding, Thomas lunges forward.
In his hand is a knife that I don’t think any of us knew he had.
It was concealed. It was hidden.
And now it is in his hand.
And now it is running and slicing through Anna’s throat.
And there is nothing we can do to stop Thomas because he is too quick.
It happens in a heartbeat.
We are all stunned as Thomas slashes Anna’s neck and picks up Ben’s shotgun and runs off.
He does this quickly. Before anyone can stop him. Before Kenji or Ben can tackle him to the ground.
He is a snake striking his prey.
And he just made the decision on Anna’s life. In a heartbeat.
He chose death.
Anna slumps over on the ground with blood pouring from her throat.
And I feel like I am watching my mother die.
Ben puts his massive hand over the wound, trying once again to stop the bleeding. And once again he is failing.
Jack is in shock. So is Kenji. They are both frozen. Mouths wide open. They can’t believe what has just happened.
Ben is trying to stop the bleeding. But it is utterly hopeless.
And I have just watched my mother die. She was not given a chance.
They left her for dead.
They betrayed her.
They locked her up. Slit her throat. Fed her to the monsters.
She was a nurse. She stayed behind to help. It was her job to help. But they made the decision on her life in a heartbeat.
Before I can stop myself, before Kenji or Jack can stop me, I run after Thomas.
Revenge is on my mind and in my heart.
I am going to kill Thomas.
Chapter 36
We are our own worst enemy. And there are no monsters in this world except the ones we create.
I am running blindly through the catacombs. I see Thomas up ahead. I see the torch on the shotgun. The shotgun that he stole from Ben. I suddenly realize that if I lose him, I will be plunged into darkness. I will be completely, totally blind. So I lock onto him like a heat seeking missile of revenge and hatred.
I am going to kill Thomas or I am going to die trying.
This is pure and simple. This is the world we live in now.
We can’t go back.
“Rebecca! Stop!”
This is Kenji yelling at me from somewhere behind me. But I can’t stop now. I won’t stop. And we can’t go back.
Thomas is deceptively fast and I have to dig deep to keep up with him. As we run through the twisting tunnels, I am constantly bumping into the walls of rock, constantly grazing my arms and elbows and shoulders.
But I don’t care.
I don’t care because Thomas murdered Anna, and someone just like him killed my mother.
Eventually the tunnels of the catacombs open up. I have arrived at a set of stairs. Thomas has disappeared from view, but there is only one way he could’ve gone.
Up.
I climb the stairs quickly and when I get to the top, I realize I have arrived at the other end of the arena. Directly in front of me is what appears to be a mansion. A luxurious mansion. It’s at least three stories high. A ten foot wall surrounds the house. The wall is topped with razor wire. I guess it’s more of a compound. Maybe it’s another training facility for the death squad.
I see a torch moving back and forth in the front windows of the mansion. Thomas has already made it inside. He then fires the shotgun and the muzzle flash is blindingly bright.
I run towards the house and the torchlight and the muzzle flash. I make it to what appears to be the main entrance, the main gateway. I walk through and close the gate behind me.
I make my way inside the house. The massive front door is wide open.
I am not prepared for what I see inside.
I am not prepared for the stench of rotting flesh.
As I walk through the large double doors of the front entrance, and make my way inside the extremely grand and extremely over the top foyer, I realize that this place is from a crazy person’s nightmare.
It is a mansion. With endless hallways. With countless rooms branching off.
There is a large stairway directly in front of me that leads to the higher floors.
Hanging from the ceiling in the foyer is the largest chandelier I have ever seen.
I have no idea what a luxurious mansion like this is doing in a place such as the labyrinth.
But the reason this place is from someone’s nightmare?
There are bodies. In the foyer. On the stairs. In each of the rooms that branch off from the foyer, and probably in all the other rooms.
There are so many goddamn bodies. And these bodies are all dressed in full battle armor, full military getup. Most of the bodies are decomposed beyond all recognition. And most of the bodies are secured to the floor, either with a pole or a stake of some kind. This gives the impression that they are standing up. It gives the impression that they are still alive. That they are looking right at me.
Some of the bodies are hanging from the ceilings.
Some of them are swaying back and forth because Thomas has just run through here and he probably bumped into them.
“Thomas! Where the hell are you?”
Suddenly Thomas appears at the top of the staircase.
He hasn’t seen me yet because he is not facing me. He walks backwards down the stairs.
Four infected people stumble out of a room and Thomas shoots them in the head. He kills them, like he killed Anna. Without a second thought. Without any respect.
He turns and walks down the stairs and then he sees me. He aims the shotgun right at my head. Right at my face.
But he does not pull the trigger.
I don’t know why he doesn’t.
Maybe he wants to defend himself and his name and his actions. Maybe he wants to make sure people know that what he did and what he’s done, was the right thing to do.
The heroic thing to do.
“She was infected,” Thomas says. “I had to do it. You know I did!”
I stare at Thomas and I study his features. His face. His eyes. I pay close attention to the way he speaks. I need to remember these things. I need to remember because this is what a monster really looks like. This is what a monster really sounds like.
I had already learnt this lesson. But
I need to learn it again.
Thomas pumps the shotgun, ejecting a spent shell. “What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“She was hurt,” I say. “She needed our help.”
“She was dying. She was already dead.”
“You don’t know that. You didn’t give her a chance. You betrayed her. You just... you just killed her!”
Was it a scratch? Was she bitten? Was she infected? I had no idea. But Thomas had no right to end her life like that.
No respect. No humanity.
“You killed her like she was an animal,” I say. “Like she was nothing. Like she meant nothing!”
I am yelling and we are being way too loud.
“She was already starting to turn,” Thomas says. “She was a threat. She had to be dealt with. You know I’m right.”
I don’t know. I don’t know a goddamn thing.
“She would’ve done the same thing to me if the roles were reversed,” Thomas says. “And I’d expect her to. I would want her to. If I’m infected, kill me. This is the world we live in now. Don’t you understand? I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just doing what had to be done.”
“What had to be done? For the last time, we had no idea if she had been bitten. We had no goddamn clue. She needed our help. She needed stitches!”
“I saw the monster,” he says, pausing, hesitating, thinking. “Yeah, I saw the monster’s claws graze her shoulder. And then we ran into a group of infected people in the catacombs. She wrestled with one before Ben had a chance to kill them.”
He is lying, and he is really good at it.
“Anna was infected,” he continues. “I’m looking right at you, I’m being honest. I swear. I swear on my life.”
Thomas is lying, like General Spears lied, like George the Warden lied, like Tariq lied.
And we are our own worst enemy. And there are no monsters in this world except the ones we create.
I take a step forward, ready to charge, ready to pounce. I don’t even have a weapon but I don’t care.
I am fed up and I am too goddamn angry.
“Stop right there,” Thomas says. “I will shoot you. I will kill you.”
I believe him. But I don’t care.
I take another step forward.