by J. L. Harden
The infected man goes limp.
No more energy.
No more aggression.
“Face George,” the man in the gas mask says. “Face the warden. Tell him you know everything. Do what you need to do.”
Chapter 10
The man in the gas mask disappears and I am left alone in the sick bay.
I am in shock. I am in shock because I am still alive.
Why doesn’t he just kill me?
“Why don’t you just kill me?”
I whisper this and no one hears me. Maybe God does. But I have a feeling God is not listening. He hasn’t been listening for a long time.
I move one of the beds underneath the air-conditioning manhole so I can climb back up into the air vents. I slide along, back through the five junctions. I make it back to George’s office and I prepare myself to confront him. But when I climb down into the room the first thing I do is check on Kim.
And the first thing George says is, “I thought you were dead.” And he pauses, he swallows hard. “I mean, I saw you. I saw the infected. The man in the gas mask. The camera cut out. I thought you were dead.”
I lean down next to Kim and give her the NVX injection and I don’t know what to say to George. I feel my heart rate increase. I am in the room with a killer. A murderer. Someone who wants to kill me. Someone who tried to kill me. This is an uneasy feeling.
“Why didn’t you give me the code?” I ask.
“What code?”
“The code for the restricted room. The room that contains the restricted antibiotics. Pain killers. NVX.”
“Restricted room? No. There should’ve been some in the sick bay. In the medical supply closet. Not locked up. It’s not restricted. They, the doctors, the research scientists were coming in here all the time. It wasn’t under lock and key. I swear.”
He is lying and he is very good at it. I want to ask him about the infected people who were hiding in the room, behind the curtains.
Did he see them? Did they show up on the CCTV?
Why didn’t he warn me about them?
Why does he want to kill me?
I know he will lie. He will try and weasel his way out. He will try and blind me from the truth. And if I don’t buy it, if I call his bluff, he will be backed into a corner. A wild animal, backed into a corner.
A snake.
A reptile.
He has a gun. I’m not sure if it’s loaded. But I do not want to find out. So I don’t ask him any more questions. I stop interrogating him. I pretend like I’m not on to him. I pretend like he didn’t just try and kill me.
I turn my attention back to Kim.
“How did you get inside the lock box?” George asks.
“The man in the gas mask knew the code,” I answer.
“How the hell did he know the code?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why is he helping you?”
“I have no idea.”
I brush Kim’s hair out of her face. Her breathing has slowed, it is less labored. Her body seems to have responded well to the injection.
“All right,” I say. “As soon as she can move, we’re out of here.”
I say this because it is genuinely what we need to do. And I have no idea what to do about George.
When do we part ways? Do I tie him up? How the hell am I going to do that? How the hell am I going to take the warden, the Prison Administrator, as my goddamn prisoner?
The impossibility and the irony of the situation is making me dizzy and I can’t figure it out. I have no idea what to do. Maybe I really am going to have to kill him. Maybe the man in the gas mask is right.
Maybe he is right about everything.
I shake my head and I blink my eyes. I order myself to stop thinking like that. Do not let him seduce you. Do not let him cloud your thoughts. Your morality. Do not let him poison your goddamn soul.
I should probably wait for Kim to wake up. I hope she wakes up soon because I’m getting more and more uneasy. I am trapped in a room with a person who tried to kill me, who sent me on my merry way to be eaten.
George has proven himself to be ruthless and I’m getting anxious.
When is he going to strike?
I am tense. And I keep my distance.
“We can’t leave,” he says. “Not yet.”
“What? Why not? We need to leave. We can’t stay here. I know we’re safe for the moment, but we can’t stay here. We need to move. I need to find Maria before it’s too late. We need to get out of here before they find us. We can bring the blueprints with us, plan our escape as we go.”
“We can’t leave,” he repeats.
“Why the hell not?”
He turns the computer screen around. “Look.”
On the computer screen are shots of the holding cells. They are full of infected.
But the last holding cell is not full of infected.
It contains one person. Not infected.
The person is sitting down on the floor, sitting against the wall. Head buried in his hands.
It is Jack.
Chapter 11
“Oh my god,” I whisper. “How?”
Jack is leaning against the wall. I can’t see his face. But I can see his shaggy hair. His broad shoulders. His worn and faded jeans.
“What the hell is he doing here?” I ask.
“The General must’ve moved him here,” George answers. “Before he got a chance to throw him in the prison.”
“And you didn’t know about it?”
“No. I had no idea. I swear.”
I do not believe him. Not for a second.
“We have to get him out of there,” I say. “Open the door. Open his cell. Release him.”
“I can’t. If I open that holding cell, they all open.”
“They all open?”
“Yes. It’s a master switch.”
“Then we’ll have to break down the door,” I suggest. “Break the hinges. We have to do something. We can’t just leave him there.”
“We open the doors and hope for the best.”
“What? No. That’s crazy. That’s suicide. The infected will swarm. They’ll get to Jack before we can.”
And I know George wants to kill us. He wants to kill all of us.
Me.
Kim.
Jack.
I know. But I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t know when to call him on it.
I’m going to have to lunge at him. Wrestle him to the ground.
With a cut up hand.
While I am drugged up. While I am lethargic and weak.
This will not be a fair fight.
I am no match for a fully grown reptile of a man.
I am no match for a snake.
“You’ll kill us,” I say. “Not just Jack. Not just me. All of us. You included. You don’t want that, do you?”
Suddenly Kim coughs and splutters, and this sound, this proof of life startles me and scares me and I actually jump.
“Kill?” she whispers. “What are you talking about?”
Kim slowly gets to her knees, taking deep breaths.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. A lot better.”
The NVX has worked extremely quickly. Within minutes.
“What are you guys talking about?” Kim asks. “What’s going on?”
“Jack is in one of the holding cells,” I say.
George swivels the monitor around so she can see her brother. Kim is silent for a few moments and shakes her head slightly. She knows she put her brother there. She knows that his predicament is her fault. But I guess maybe it could’ve been worse. Much worse.
“Oh my god,” she finally says. “He’s so close. When? How? I thought he was locked up in the prison. What the hell is Jack doing here?”
“We don’t know,” George answers. “The General’s men must’ve moved him here a few days ago. Or maybe he never made it to the
prison.”
“Bastards,” Kim says. “I knew I couldn’t trust them.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“When I convinced them to let Jack into the Fortress, when I convinced them to let him live, they swore to me that they would provide him with a place in the barracks. Under their protection and care. They swore to me that he would be looked after.” She lowers her head. “They lied. I should’ve known.”
“Protection?”
“Yeah. The Fortress was already starting to fall apart. There were containment issues all over.”
“So how did you know Jack was in that town?” I ask. “How did you know he was hiding in the Post Office?”
“General Spears had surveillance drones all over the desert. All over the country. From coast to coast. I was helping him with his search for Maria. When we found Jack, I told him that we should save him, bring him in. Use him to lure Maria to us. I thought it was the right thing to do. I had no idea it was going to end so badly.”
Kim is breaking down. She begins to cry.
“You have to believe me,” she says. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought I was saving Jack. I thought we would find Maria and make a vaccine. I didn’t know it would end like this.”
I hug her and tell her that it’s going to be all right and that we can still fix this. We can save Maria and we can rescue her brother. We can release him from his cell. He is just down the other end of the corridor. We are so close.
“They were going to throw him in the prison,” Kim says. “They were going to let him rot. They must’ve run into trouble before they got the chance.”
“I know this seems like a good thing,” George says. “But I can’t open his cell without opening all of the cells. And as you can see, the rest of the cells are full of infected people.”
Kim gets to her feet and studies the CCTV images. “Wait. Why can’t you unlock his holding cell?”
George hesitates. He doesn’t want to answer Kim. “I can’t open them,” he explains. “If I open one cell, they all open.”
He doesn’t want to answer Kim, because Kim is not going to buy that bullshit answer. Neither am I.
I slowly catch on.
He is lying about the cells.
And he tried to kill me.
And he probably wants to kill Kim, and I have no idea what his motivation is.
Something is wrong.
Something is messed up beyond comprehension.
I can’t figure it out.
What’s his motivation?
Why is he doing this?
Why is he lying? Why did he try and kill me?
I can’t figure it out.
And I can’t see the gun.
I need the gun.
I can’t trust him with it.
I don’t trust him with it.
It.
A deadly weapon. A means to an end.
A means to our death.
“That’s bullshit,” Kim answers. “I was a cop before the world ended. That’s not how this shit works. Well, not at our precinct. It doesn’t make any sense.”
George is starting to sweat. “It’s because the General shut down the servers. It screwed the system up. Normally, I would be able to open one cell at a time. But since the shutdown and the reset, nothing works. Trust me. If I open his cell, they all open.”
I look at the security camera images of the holding cells.
The infected.
Jack.
Suddenly the man in the gas mask reappears again. He is somewhere out in the hall. And again he points towards the holding cells. I finally realize this is a message for George. I didn’t pick up on it last time. But I do now.
I’ll do it, he said. I just need time, he said.
Time to get the system back online.
George is going to open the holding cells. He is going to release the infected.
Why?
Why did he try and kill me?
The man in the gas mask is slowly walking backwards. Down the hallway. Out of sight. There is something unnerving about the way he walks, the way he moves, the way he disappears.
“Find him,” I say to George.
“I’m trying!”
“Where did he go?”
“He’s gone. He just disappeared.”
George types a few more commands into the computer.
A big red button appears on the screen. A big red rectangle. It is flashing.
George moves the mouse cursor over the button.
The button reads:
UNLOCK HOLDING CELLS
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “What the hell happened?”
George has his hand on the button. His hand on the trigger. “I don’t have a choice.”
He is about to seal our fate. He is about to kill us all.
And I can’t figure it out.
Chapter 12
“Don’t do it,” Kim says. “Let’s just think this through. Let’s all take a deep breath and think this through.”
The warden wants to unlock the remaining holding cells. Kim and I can’t let that happen.
“I don’t have a choice,” George repeats.
“You do have a choice,” I say. “We can figure this out.”
“I have to open them,” George continues. “There is no other way. I need to open them.”
“Why? Why the hell would you want to do that?”
He takes a deep breath. Hand on the button.
The flashing red button.
Unlock Holding Cells.
“Why are you so afraid?” I ask.
He shakes his head. He does not want to answer.
“What are you so afraid of? Who are you so afraid of?”
Beads of sweat form on his forehead.
“He can’t get you,” I say. “He can’t. We will help you. We will protect you.”
And as I say this, I feel like I’m lying and I don’t even believe myself. The truth is, the man in the gas mask is a ghost and a god and he can disappear and reappear at will. He can cheat death. He can cause death. He is one step ahead of everyone. One step ahead of the infected. One step ahead of General Spears and his death squad.
He is everywhere and nowhere.
And I tell George we can protect him but I am lying.
And George says, “You’re kidding me, right? How the hell are you going to protect me?”
I think to myself, I am a survivor. I am strong. One of the strongest.
“Besides,” he continues. “It’s the only way we get out of here. We have to leave. We have to unlock the security doors. General Spears reset the system. So I have to open the doors. But they will all open. The security blast doors, the holding cells. Everything.”
He was talking fast now. He was trying to conceal the lie.
And it was almost working.
Was he telling the truth? Did General Spears shut down the system?
Was it screwed up?
“You can’t unlock the holding cells,” I say. “They’re full of infected people. We will have to get Jack out some other way.”
“There is no other way,” he answers.
“Just relax,” Kim repeats. “Come on. We need to think this through. We need to play it careful.”
George’s eyes are wide, and they are darting back and forth between all the different images on the computer screen. He would then look over at the door. He wasn’t afraid of the infected. He wasn’t afraid of the virus.
He was afraid of the man in the gas mask.
And I can’t blame him.
“Why do you want to open the holding cells so bad?” I ask.
“I don’t want to,” he says. “But I have to. I need to do this.”
“Why?”
George takes a deep breath and he finally speaks the truth. “Because he said he would save me.”
“You can’t open the holding cells,” Kim says. “It’s the only thing keeping Jack safe. You open the cells, you kill him. And you
kill us.”
“No. He is coming back for me. As long as I open the cells. That was the deal.”
“Who? Who is coming back for you?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
“The man in the gas mask. He’s the one who can fix all of this. He’s the only one.”
“Don’t do it,” Kim says. “There’s too many of them. We won’t make it. We won’t last five minutes in here. They’ll find us. They always find us. We’ll be trapped.”
I check the CCTV footage of Jack. He has no idea that his life is hanging in the balance. I wonder how long he has been locked in that room for.
Jack was an easy going kind of guy before the world went to hell. Before his girlfriend turned out to be immune to the Oz virus. The pressure had slowly gotten to him. It took a while but eventually he began to crack. Not that I can blame him. A lesser man would’ve cracked a long time ago. A lesser man would’ve given up completely. It’s funny to think of him as a man. A few months ago we were kids. We were teenagers dealing with school and homework and graduation and college applications.
Not anymore.
We had to grow up real quick. The alternative was to give up, wait to be rescued. Wait for something that was never going to happen.
So we grew up and we got on with the job. And we cannot give up on Jack because he would not give up on us. He will never give up on his friends. Or his family. He will fight to the end. The very end. And if we don’t stop George, if we don’t get him to calm down and think this through, the end will be coming very soon.
“Just slow down,” Kim says to George.
Her hands are up, her palms facing out. She is trying to convince George to stop what he is about to do.
“We can figure this out,” she continues. “Let’s just wait for the system to fully reboot.”
George shakes his head. He sheds a tear. “I’m sorry.”
He presses the button.
And he seals our fate.
Chapter 13
How long do we have? How long does Jack have?
Seconds. Minutes.
How long would the door to this room hold?
Seconds. Minutes.
The door is made of wood. I am reminded of the story of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf made short work of the house made of sticks.