by J. L. Harden
“I have no fear of death,” he says, ignoring my question. “Not anymore.”
And I say, “Bullshit. You are afraid. Just like the rest of us. You wouldn’t be wearing that mask if you weren’t afraid.”
“We all wear masks. We are all liars.”
He is not making any sense because he is insane and I need to come to terms with that.
“Did you kill my friends?” I ask.
“No,” he answers. “I did not. They are not part of the plan. They do not matter. Do not let your fears for their safety cloud your judgment. Do not let your fears stop you from seeing the big picture.”
“What plan? What big picture? What the hell are you talking about?”
I look at my watch.
I still can’t put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Let go of them,” he says. “Let go of everything. Then, you will no longer be afraid.”
I shake my head. I can’t let go. My friends are the only thing I have left.
“You are close,” he says. “In the labyrinth. You were close.”
I begin to realize that he’s probably been watching us move through the Fortress. He’s been watching us the whole time.
Watching us struggle and argue and run and fight.
He has been watching us die.
I wonder if the catacombs have security cameras. I don’t remember seeing any.
“I have been scared the whole time,” I say. “It never gets any easier.”
“It does,” he says. “If you spend enough time on the battlefield. If you let go of all worldly attachments, you will lose the fear of death.”
He picks up a decapitated soldier. He picks him up by the belt of his pants and throws him into one of the morgue freezers. He then shuts the door and locks it.
“Once you lose the fear of death,” he continues. “You begin to look for him. For Death. And he is there. On the battlefield. He is always there. And he is down here. He is down here right now. And you can find him if you want.”
He picks up another body. Again, he picks up the decapitated soldier by the belt. The belt is a large, thick, canvas belt.
It’s almost like a utility belt. So many attachments and hooks. For water. For ammo.
A knife.
Each belt has a knife attached to it. A large hunting knife.
There is one body left. One knife.
I need this knife.
“The first time I saw him, the first time I saw Death, he was riding a horse. He was wearing a black, hooded robe. I have never seen his face. Never seen his eyes. But I will. One day. And so will you. You will see him very soon.”
He says he has never seen his face and never seen his eyes, and I think that maybe I am face to face with the Angel of Death right now.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” I say. “Why are you torturing me? Why did you inject me with a time-release nano-virus?”
He places the decapitated soldier in the second morgue freezer. “Because you have proven yourself. You are a fighter. A warrior. I saw you. At the outpost. I have seen what you are capable of. You have fought your way across this country. And I have watched you fight your way through this Fortress. You are strong. You are a survivor. And your death will be remembered. You, and your death, will become legend.”
Yes. He is absolutely insane.
And there is one decapitated body left on the ground, right near my feet. And there is one knife left.
“You’re just like General Spears,” I say. “You’re just crazy. You’ve lost your goddamn mind. You think you can play God. You think you are God. But you’re not. You’re just a man. A stupid man, who thinks he can save this world by killing millions of innocent people.”
“Billions,” he says.
“What?”
“I am going to kill billions of people. And they are not innocent. No one is innocent. And I am nothing like General Spears. Nothing.”
The man in the gas mask is still over by the morgue freezers. He is checking the locks. Checking the other freezers and the temperature readings.
He has his back to me, and he is not paying me any attention, so I make my move. I dive forward and slide the knife out of the dead soldier’s belt.
It is a large knife. It has a slightly curved tip. A serrated edge.
I hold the knife with two hands, like a sword. Like it has special powers or something.
I sit back down against the wall, and hide the knife behind my back before the man in the gas mask turns around.
He is still checking all the freezers. He is making sure each one is locked. He is checking and re-checking the temperature readings.
Maybe this morgue contains infected specimens.
Freezing is the only way to contain them.
“What about children?” I ask. “What about people who have never done anything to you or anyone else in their entire lives. These people are innocent. And you are sentencing them to death.”
“A perfect circle has no beginning,” he says as he checks the locks. “It has no end. We raise our children in our own image. In the image of God. Because we think we know best. We think we are all knowing. We think we know what is right and what is wrong. But we don’t know a thing. And these children are not innocent. They are the seed of the next generation. They are the fuel for the never ending wars. They are just a number. A number to increase the ranks. A body to recruit. A soul to poison. A vessel to spread hate. That is all they are.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t predict the future. Just listen to yourself. You’re insane!”
He finishes locking the morgue freezers and he moves over to me. He bends down and picks up the last remaining body. He does not notice the missing knife.
“The children are the future,” I say, arguing with him.
I know I am never going to change his mind, but I am trying to keep him distracted so I can end this. So I can slide the knife into his neck.
“There is hope,” I continue. “They can have freedom. They can choose peace. We can have peace.”
He throws the last body into the last freezer and locks the door. “No. A child will become poisoned. And then they are poisonous. And then they are the cancer spreading. It is inevitable. And therefore it has already happened. You do not need to possess the gift of foresight to see this. You do not need to predict the future to see the future. No one is innocent. The crimes, the wars are never ending. They have already happened. The only way to win, the only way to have peace, the only way to have freedom, is to set the world on fire. Burn the old Empires to the ground.”
The man in the gas mask makes his way back over to me.
I need to keep him talking. He needs to be closer. “What is your name?” I ask.
“My name is irrelevant,” he answers. “I am irrelevant.”
“Tariq?” I ask. “Lucifer? What the hell is your name!?”
“I lost my name. A long time ago. I have stopped looking for it. You should stop looking as well.”
He is getting closer.
“You crazy son of a bitch. It was you at the outpost. You killed all those soldiers! You tried to kill Maria! We should’ve listened to that dying soldier. We should never have let you out of that storage closet. We should never have untied you!”
“And your friend would have died. He would have bled to death. Is that what you want?”
He continues walking towards me, and he has a point. Ben would’ve died if he hadn’t saved his life.
I realize now he was doing this to buy our trust.
Trust is a dangerous thing. A deadly thing.
“For every action,” he says. “There is a reaction. There is a consequence. A butterfly flaps its wings. A pebble is dropped in the ocean. A child learns about a vengeful God. Don’t you see?”
He is close now. He kneels down in front of me because he doesn’t see me as a threat. He doesn’t know I have a hunting knife in my hands, behind my back.
And when he says, ‘don’t y
ou see’, the only thing I can see is my own reflection in the black goggles of his mask.
“The only thing I see is a psychopath,” I say. “You won’t kill Maria. I stopped you once before. And I’m stopping you right now. You won’t kill Maria.”
And now all I see is my own reflection in the black goggles and I see the knife appear from behind my back.
I move fast, before he can react, before he can stop me. I stick the knife in his gut and I twist the handle.
His black, lifeless eyes stare at me and I cannot tell if he feels pain.
And he really does not fear death.
He grabs the knife handle, wrapping his hand around mine. “You are right. I will not kill Maria.”
He slides the knife deeper into his gut and he pushes me back against the wall.
And now I am one hundred percent convinced that he does not feel pain. And maybe he really is a God. Maybe he really is the Angel of Death.
He stands up and removes the knife from his gut and throws the knife away.
“Not yet,” he says. “Not yet.”
The man in the gas mask turns away from me and walks out of the morgue.
Chapter 40
I pick up the knife and wipe the blood on my jeans. I need to finish this. I need to kill this bastard like I should’ve killed him.
I stand on shaky legs. My vision narrows and darkens and the whole world tilts on its axis. I lean against the wall for support and I take a few deep breaths to regain my composure. I ignore the fever that has racked my body. I ignore the aching of my joints. I ignore the fact there is a time-release nano-swarm flowing through my veins and my arteries and every single one of my blood vessels.
I ignore the fact that I have forty-five minutes left.
I move slowly through the morgue, following the blood trail between the stainless steel autopsy tables.
On some of the tables are hacked up bodies. They could be infected. They could be innocent people. Or both. One particular body has its chest sliced open and ripped open, its rib cage broken apart. All of its vital organs are missing.
This could’ve been me.
I shudder at the thought and I follow the blood trail out of the morgue and into another room. A large, industrial sized room.
The first thing I notice is the cold. I can see my breath in front of my face. The air stings my skin.
This room is so damn cold.
And I lose the blood trail.
Actually, it’s not that I lose the blood trail. But I can no longer see the trail on the floor because the floor is stained and splattered with an ocean of blood.
There is blood all over the tiled floor. The tiled walls. And the tiled ceiling.
There is blood in between the gaps in the tiles.
There is blood everywhere.
For a second I feel like I’m inside a slaughterhouse, and I’m probably feeling this way because I am inside a slaughterhouse.
An abattoir.
Hunks of meat are hanging from chains that hang from the ceiling. Row after row. Each chain has a massive hook attached to the end of it. And these hooks are being used to pierce the hunks of meat.
But they are not just hunks of meat. They are human bodies. Bodies that are mutilated and butchered and infected. Again, some of them might not be infected but it is damn near impossible to tell. Some of the chains are rattling and some of the bodies are swaying back and forth. I see movement in the corner of my eye. One of the bodies is flailing about.
The body has been impaled through its chest with the hook. It is hanging from the chain, hanging from the tiled ceiling.
And it is moving.
It is dead yet alive.
It is reaching out for me.
How many more bodies are infected? How many more bodies are dead and alive?
I need to make sure I keep my distance from each body, from each chain, from each hunk of meat. I stick to the middle of the room. The center aisle. But I can’t stop staring at the infected person. He has seen me and he is reaching out for me. It is kicking its legs.
The chain rattles.
A door slamming shut gets my attention and brings my focus back. The noise came from the far end of the room.
I make my way slowly, carefully, down the center aisle. More and more bodies spring to life. More and more bodies are reaching out for me.
The infected are secured with a hook through their chest and several other chains. Another hook is placed strategically, with surgical accuracy, through their skull. This hook has not pierced their brain, but if they move far enough, if they fall, if they somehow get free from their chains and the hook through their chest, the hook through their head will tear the brain apart. Kind of like a dead man switch. A failsafe. I guess these people, the military, the company, really wanted to have live specimens.
I ignore the infected and make my way down the center aisle. I need to get out of this room of death but I can’t even see the exit. I keep moving, and in the middle of the room there are no chains. It’s almost like a clearing in a forest. And right in the middle of this clearing is what appears to be a massive fish tank. I move closer and I realize it is not a fish tank. But it is a tank. Multiple tanks. Maybe nine or ten. The tanks are full of a weird yellow liquid. The liquid appears to be glowing.
And inside the tanks are bodies.
One body per tank.
The bases of the tanks are lit up with a full array of electronic readings and display screens.
I circumnavigate the tanks, keeping my distance, mesmerized by the glowing liquid. I was so mesmerized I almost didn’t see Kim or Doctor Hunter.
I almost tripped over them.
Both of them are on their knees, with their hands above their head, handcuffed to a chain hanging from the ceiling. Doctor Hunter has just the one hand tied above his head.
Their shoulders look like they are on the verge of being dislocated.
Kim appears to be unconscious. But then again, she could be dead.
I run over to her and shake her. I search for her pulse but I can’t find it.
I put my ear up to her mouth, and thankfully, I can hear her breathing.
She is alive.
They are not part of the plan. They do not matter.
I unhook their handcuffs from the hook attached to the chains. I lay them both on the tiled floor. They both appear to be unconscious. Although Doctor Hunter’s eyes are flickering open and shut.
“Did you see?” Doctor Hunter asks, slurring his speech. “The body.”
“Huh?”
He opens his eyes and points to one of the tanks with the weird yellow liquid. He is pointing at a body.
“General Spears,” he says.
Did you see the body?
I see it now. General Spears.
It looks like he is suspended in mid-air. Suspended in some sort of yellow fluid. Suspended and frozen in time.
In front of the tank are the electronic display screens.
They are displaying his vital signs.
Heart rate.
Body Temperature.
Heart rate. 30 bpm.
He’s alive.
He’s still alive.
“Forget him,” Doctor Hunter says. “He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt anyone.”
“He’s still alive,” I say, completely dumbfounded.
“Technically, yes. But he is not a threat to anyone.”
“Not a threat?”
“He is in a vegetative state. A death like state.”
“Why is he even still alive? Who are these other people? What is this?”
“Cryo-stasis,” Doctor Hunter answers. “And the reason he is alive is because the company wants him alive. We are the death squad’s leverage.”
I look at the display. “How do I turn it off? How do I kill him?”
“You can’t cut the power. Not from here. You should forget him. He cannot hurt you anymore.”
“How do I cut the power? Tell me!”
“Why not?”
“How much time do you have left?”
I check my watch. Not long.
Forty minutes.
“You need to keep moving,” Doctor Hunter says.
I know he is right and I hate the fact that he is right.
“Who has the keys for your handcuffs?” I ask.
Doctor Hunter is rolling his shoulder. “The death squad.”
“Where are they?”
“Some of them are hiding,” he says. “Some of them have gone bye-bye.”
“Why are they hiding?”
“Because they are scared. Because the company is coming.”
Doctor Hunter has been slurring his speech. He looks drunk and happy.
“What the hell did he do to you?”
“He?”
“The man in the gas mask.”
“Not him. This is the work of the death squad. They didn’t know where to keep us. So they put us here and doped us up with a cocktail of sedatives and painkillers. It would appear Kim has no tolerance. I on the other hand, have developed a tolerance for painkillers over the past few months.”
Doctor Hunter has clearly given up and yet he is still alive. Like a parasite.
“That is the handy work of the man in the gas mask,” he says, pointing to more dead soldiers scattered under the hanging corpses.
“Who is he?” I ask. “The man in the gas mask. Who the hell is he?”
Doctor Hunter bites his lip, like he is nervous. He lowers his head like he is ashamed.
“Tell me!”
He brushes Kim’s hair out of her face and looks at her with a kind of loving admiration. “He is a doctor. He was one of us. Together, we could’ve performed miracles. Together, we did perform miracles. But he had other plans.”
“Wait, he helped create the Oz virus?”
“Yes.”
“He was part of your group? He was part of the ‘holy trinity’?”
“Yes. He was the mastermind. He orchestrated everything. And then he sabotaged everything. We didn’t know at the time. No one did. No one could’ve known it was him. But it was him. All along. It was him. Every containment failure. Every single one. The outbreak. It was him. He wanted to set the virus loose. He wanted the plague. He made the Oz virus into what it is today. He caused the virus to mutate uncontrollably, to bring the dead back.”