by J. L. Harden
It is a frightening scene. The sight of the infected looking at us and snapping their jaws triggers a rush of adrenalin. We push forward and we are able to put distance between us and them. We round a bend in the vent and we keep going. Eventually we come to what appears to be some sort of junction. The air vents go up a few levels and down a few.
We stop and catch our breath.
We are alive for the moment.
But we have no idea where we are. Are we heading towards the sick bay? Or are we heading towards the holding cells? Towards Jack? I have no idea. We could be heading in the complete opposite direction for all I know. We could be heading towards the subway tunnels.
The fear and the panic and the rush of our narrow escape, of nearly getting eaten and infected, has clouded my judgment and my sense of direction.
To make matters worse, we have no idea if Jack is still alive.
We need to keep moving. We need to act fast.
No time to rest.
Blueprints. Torch.
Kim is breathing hard but she has a look of determination on her face. She is ready to rock and roll.
This gives me hope and strength.
“The good thing about our narrow escape is that it has distracted the infected,” Kim says. “They’re still trying to get us, which means they won’t be looking for Jack.”
I nod my head. This is good. This is the silver lining to almost getting eaten and infected. But listening to their moaning, screaming howls echo through the air vents is making it extremely difficult to concentrate and figure out exactly where we are. It sounds like they are all around us.
It sounds like they are coming closer.
Coming for us.
I need to stay calm. I need to keep my cool. Keep my head together.
But this is easier said than done.
There’s a reason it sounds like the infected are all around us.
It’s because they are.
We are surrounded.
It sounds like they are coming closer, coming for us, because they are.
We are being hunted.
“Jack was on the same floor as us,” Kim says. “So we need to stay on this level.”
“Yeah. OK. And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
Kim has the blueprints and the pen light. She is looking at the blueprints, trying to figure it out. This is a puzzle that we have to solve. If we solve it, we save Jack. If we can’t solve it, Jack is dead and so are we.
We are all dead.
So we have to think this through. We have to figure this out. But it is hard to think. Hard to plan. Kim is shaking her head because she can’t figure it out. There are too many pieces of the puzzle. Too many missing pieces.
Piece one: where the hell is Jack? Where is his room?
Piece two: how the hell do we get there?
Piece three: how the hell do we avoid the infected?
If we figure this stuff out, if we find all these missing pieces and fit them together, we might just have a chance.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I want to say something constructive, something that will help our situation, but I can’t think of anything. My mind is blank and sluggish and drug affected. And I’m starting to panic and fear is taking over.
The noises of the infected grow louder. Closer.
Kim looks back the way we came. The vents are dark and twisted and we can’t see very far. And staring into the darkness of the vents is scaring me more than I already am. So I look back at the blueprints and I’m trying to figure this out, I’m trying to solve the puzzle.
“Let’s brainstorm,” I say. “We just need to get the ball moving. Say anything. Anything you want. There are no bad ideas during the brainstorming session. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We’re both nodding our heads, trying to think, but again we are stuck.
“OK, I’ll go first,” I say. “We track down George and get his gun and shoot all the zombies.”
“And then we shoot George,” Kim adds.
“Whoa.”
“Hey, he left us there to die.”
“Fair point. And he did try and kill me.”
“What?”
“When you were unconscious,” I explain. “When I went to get your meds. He sent me to the sick bay by myself. He knew there were infected in the room. But he didn’t tell me. He tried to kill me.”
“Jesus. This guy is unbelievable.”
“Yeah,” I say because I don’t know what else to say.
“So it sounds like we’re going to need a bigger gun,” Kim adds. “And more ammo.”
“Or a tank.”
“Or multiple tanks. And fighter jets.”
I give Kim a look.
“Hey, you said there are no bad ideas during the brainstorming session.”
“OK, so we get a time machine,” I say. “A DeLorean. And we time travel the hell out of here.”
“Time travel doesn’t work like that,” Kim points out. “We would still be under ground. Time travel can move you through time but not space.”
I shrug my shoulders. “At least there would be no zombies. And who made you an expert on time travel?”
Kim lowers her head. “Jack did. When we were growing up. He used to come into my room and say the weirdest things. Like, he would just walk in, almost in a daze, and explain the love story in the movie, ‘Terminator’.”
“Terminator?”
“Yeah. So Kyle Reese goes back in time, right? To 1984. And spoiler alert, he impregnates Sarah Connor and then he dies in 1984. But then he is born again, in the future. And then he goes back in time again, and impregnates Sarah Connor again, and dies again. Over and over and over. He’s stuck in this weird loop. His whole life, his whole existence is stuck in a loop.”
“He loves that movie,” I say. “I lost count of the times he made Maria and I watch it.”
And I think about the whole time travel thing for a second and I nearly go crazy. Kim echoes my thoughts.
“And I’m trying to study for finals,” she says. “And Jack comes into my room and says this and damn near breaks my mind.”
“Wow. Studying. I remember studying. I remember that I completely sucked at it. I was always procrastinating. Always wasting time. I was always looking for a distraction. I always thought school was a prison. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to a prison. You have your friends. You have almost no responsibilities. Almost no worries in the world. Just do your homework. Study for finals. Eat your vegetables. It’s funny how one little zombie apocalypse can change all that.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s kind of funny. If you’ve got a really sick sense of humor.”
I look back at the blueprints. Our brainstorming session has yielded no results. No useful ideas. Maybe we need a whiteboard. And a whiteboard marker. A focus group.
Come on, Rebecca. Focus.
“Prison,” Kim whispers.
“Huh?”
“School is a prison.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. What’s your point?”
“There is a prison down here.”
“Yeah, so?”
She flattens out the blue prints some more. She shines the torch.
“This is just the processing part. We’ve got the interrogation rooms. The holding cells.” She moves the torch along the blueprints. “This section here, it’s connected to the prison via a tunnel. A corridor. A really long corridor. Two sets of security doors here.”
I’d made a mental note earlier that this corridor would probably be our exit point. The alternative is to make it all the way to the subway station and try and make it through the tunnels. But the subway station is a long way away. And there are a lot of infected between here and there.
“There’s an elevator shaft,” Kim adds. “It leads down to the military prison.”
“Down? How far down does it go?”
“I’m not sure. I think I heard someone say the prison was the lowest point in
the facility. But I can’t be certain.”
“OK, so we somehow get Jack, and then somehow get to the prison?”
“Sort of.”
“Are we sure we want to go to the prison? It doesn’t really sound like the safest option.”
“It’s probably not. But there’s no way we can make it to the subway tunnels from here. And according to these blueprints, the military prison is connected to the civilian prison.”
“So?”
“So we should be able to move through both prisons. Make our way out through the civilian prison system.”
“And what if they’re both overrun?”
“Then we’ll have to come back. We’ll have to figure something else out.”
“Like risk going through the subway tunnels?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
I point to the corridor that contained all the holding cells. “We still need a distraction. We still need to keep the infected away from Jack’s holding cell. And we still need to find his cell.”
Kim is about to suggest an idea but suddenly we feel something crash into the air vents. We feel vibrations through the metal. Something is crawling and scurrying towards us as fast as it possibly can. If I didn’t know exactly what it was, I would’ve thought that maybe it was a giant rat.
But it’s not a giant rat.
It’s the infected.
They are inside the vents. They are coming.
Chapter 17
We start sliding further along the vents. Away from the direction we came. Away from the infected.
“There should be a manhole, a grate up ahead,” Kim says. “It should lead us into a room that branches off the corridor with the holding cells.”
“And the rest of the infected,” I add.
“Yeah.”
“How far away from Jack’s cell?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember which cell Jack is being kept in.”
“So how do we find him? I ask.
“I guess we just call out?”
This part of the plan was possibly stupid and definitely desperate. It reflected our current state of being. We are definitely desperate.
We eventually arrive at the manhole. I still have the screwdriver that George gave me, so I attempt to loosen the screws that are holding the grate in place. Again, this takes a while because my right hand is cut up and bleeding and every time I grip the screwdriver, more blood seeps out of my wounds on to the handle, making it even harder to turn.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and I wipe the handle of the screwdriver on my shirt.
“Here,” Kim says. “Let me.”
Kim takes the screwdriver and gets the job done in under a minute. She moves the metal grate out of the way and we climb out of the air vent and through the manhole and down into an office. The office is similar to George’s office.
“Put the grate back,” I say.
“Good idea.”
Kim stands on the desk and slides the grate back into place so the manhole is covered. “What now?” she asks.
I put my ear against the door and listen for the infected. I can’t hear anything. I open the door slowly. I take a peek outside.
Nothing.
I look up and down the corridor. It is extremely long. The red emergency lighting gives the place a creepy, atmospheric feel, like we’ve stepped into a house of horrors on Halloween. The corridor appears to be empty. Both directions disappear into darkness, giving the impression that the corridor goes on forever. But I know appearances can be deceptive. And I know the infected are close.
I just don’t know how close.
To my left are the holding cells. Jack is inside one of those rooms. And according to the blueprints, somewhere to my right is the entry point to the military prison. The entry point is a large set of security doors. This is our escape route. And I have to be honest, it sounds like the worst escape route in the history of escape routes. Escaping to a military prison? A prison that could very well be overrun with zombies and criminals and more zombies?
No thanks.
But this is our best option. Our only option. This is how desperate we are right now.
I look at Kim and shrug my shoulders. “What now?”
“Call out,” she says.
“Really? You think that’s a good idea?”
“Yeah. But do it quietly.”
“Call out quietly?”
“I don’t know. Whisper.”
I step further out into the corridor. “Jack?”
No response.
“Louder,” Kim says.
“Jack!?”
“Too loud.”
I am about to retreat back into the office when suddenly Jack sticks his head out of his holding cell. His cell is only a few doors down, on the other side of the corridor.
And he can’t believe it.
And I can’t believe it.
He opens his mouth and he’s about to say something, but we wave him back into his room and we join him. Kim and Jack hug and I try and shut the door just in case but I can’t. It’s an automatic door and it’s firmly locked in place. So right now we are exposed and if we don’t get the hell out of this holding cell we will be trapped.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
No air vents to climb into.
This room could very well turn into our tomb.
As I’m peering out the door, checking the corridor to see if we’re in any immediate danger, Jack grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me back into the room and hugs me. He hugs me tight and I know we don’t have time for this but I eventually relent. I hug him back and I am in complete disbelief. And I don’t know why but I feel like I am going to burst into tears. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s all too much. To be honest, I never thought I’d see Jack again. Because the last time I saw him, was in that one horse, one street, abandoned town in the middle of nowhere. I thought that would be my last memory of him. Alone and desperate and broken. Trying to do the right thing, trying to find his sister and failing.
He had been found and captured by the military. He was surrounded. He was on his knees and I thought he was going to be executed. And then Kim appeared from nowhere and vouched for her brother. Convinced the powers to be to let him live.
So yeah, I never thought I’d see Jack again. And the relief and the joy that I am feeling right now is so massive it feels like I am being crushed. I can’t explain it. My chest is being squeezed and crushed, and even though I am happy, I want to cry and I can barely breathe.
Jack hugs me tighter and I finally whisper, “We have to get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”
He takes a step back and shakes his head. “I can’t believe it. How did you get down here?”
“I’m not sure. We got lucky.”
Jack then turns back to Kim. “What took you so long? Where have you been? And why is Maria not with you like you said she would be?”
“I’m sorry,” Kim says. “This whole place has gone to hell. It’s completely overrun.”
“Where is Maria,” he asks again.
“She’s down here,” I say. “She’s in the Control Center.”
Kim looks at me as if to say, how do you know that?
And then Jack says, “How do you know that?”
“There’s no time to explain,” I say. “We have to go.”
“She’s right,” Kim adds. “The infected are all over this place. We have to put distance between us and them. And preferably some heavy duty locked doors.”
Jack nods. “OK, so where the hell do we go?”
“The prison,” I answer.
I have the blueprints tucked into my jeans and I say, “According to these plans, the military prison is close by. Down the other end of this corridor. We can make it. As long as the coast is clear.”
“Is it clear?” Kim asks.
I check the corridor again. “Well, I can’t see very far. But I don’t see anyone, or anything. We should go now. The entry point to th
e prison should be to our left.”
As far as I can tell, George’s office is right down the other end of the corridor. This is good news. It means the infected are all situated down there, as far away as possible.
Out of sight.
Even still, it is extremely unnerving to realize that we are currently sharing, and possibly trapped in a long dark hallway with an entire horde of infected people. Sooner or later they will find us. We need to get out of this hallway. And then we need to seal it off somehow.
“OK, you guys ready?” I ask. “We have to go.”
Kim nods.
“Let’s do it,” Jack says.
We step out into the corridor but then Jack says something. He asks a very important question that I hadn’t given any thought.
He says, “Wait. How do we get through the security doors? Won’t they be locked?”
And I think, damn. That is a very good question. How the hell do we get through the security doors?
How the hell do we get through two sets of large, reinforced doors that are designed to keep criminals from escaping a prison?
I feel like cursing myself. I feel like slapping myself in the face for being so stupid. Of course those security doors would be locked up. It separates this whole section from the goddamn prison. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts. I feel downright stupid. I open my mouth to answer Jack, to say something, to say anything. Something like, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll totally be all right. We’re fine. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
But I don’t get a chance to say this pathetic excuse, this pathetic sentence, because standing a few doors down from us, to our right, towards the horde, is George Walters.
Prison administrator.
The warden.
He has the gun pointed at us. At me. Directly at my chest.
He has a look of absolute desperation on his face.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says.
And I believe him.
Chapter 18
George is standing a good fifteen feet away from us. A few holding cells away from us. He looks like a demon in the red glow of the emergency lights. For a second I think about running, or jumping into one of the holding cells so I’m out of the line of fire. But as soon as that thought enters my exhausted mind I push it out. There is nowhere to run to.