by J. L. Harden
The two remaining Evo Agents, Parker and Scott.
Me.
Big Ben.
Ben is covered in oil and his clothes reek of fuel. Ben is the only person besides Daniel looking out the front. But the rest of us, including Kenji, are looking out the rear windshield. Watching. Waiting.
For flaming zombies to stumble out of the dark.
For a toxic cloud of smoke to catch up with us.
And that thing, the ghost of George the Warden.
If that thing was a nano-swarm, and I’m pretty sure it was, we all knew it could catch up with us in a flash. We all knew it could drag us off into the dark, drag us off to our deaths. I remember back to when I acted as live bait in the town of Hope. I remember how quickly it moved when it chased me. I remember back to the military outpost when Jack drove a Humvee off into the desert to distract the nano-swarm.
A Humvee just like this.
The distraction worked. The swarm chased, and we were able to do move outside and turn the EMP field on. The only problem was the damn nano-swarm moved so quickly. It moved unbelievably fast. Faster than the Humvee. A lot faster. The swarm caught up to Jack in a matter of seconds. And that was when Jack was driving as fast as he could, as fast as the Humvee could physically go.
We weren’t going anywhere near that fast now.
I lean forward, next to Kim, between the two front seats, looking at the dashboard. We were doing about forty miles an hour. And slowing down all the time.
Thirty miles an hour.
Daniel was struggling to keep the tires on either side of the track. Like I said, these tracks are different to normal train tracks. They are wider and deeper. They are set into the ground, designed for a bullet train. So if Daniel lost concentration, we would slip and the tires would get stuck.
The tunnel dipped. And we picked up a little bit of speed. But not much. Not enough.
“What’s the plan now?” I ask Daniel. “You guys are the experts. What’s your back up plan? What’s your contingency plan? What’s your exit strategy?”
Blank stares from the Evo Agents. Silence. Daniel is looking out the front windshield, eyes firmly fixed on the tracks ahead.
“I thought you guys were supposed to think of everything,” I continue. “You once told me you had backups for backups. So what’s plan B?”
Daniel takes a deep breath. “Worst case scenario, we have to make our way to the next Vehicle Access Point. If there’s no extraction, then we have to make our way to a safe zone.”
“A safe zone?” I ask. “There are no safe zones.”
“There’s a few,” Daniel says. “Extremely isolated towns. We built walls.”
“That’s enough,” Parker says. “Shut it.”
“Walls?” I ask. “What kind of walls?”
“Hand it over,” Parker says to me, changing the subject.
“Hand what over?”
“The EMP grenade. Hand it over.”
“Why?” I ask. “There’s a nano-swarm on the loose. We need to be protected.”
“Exactly. You need to be protected. That’s what we’re here for. We will protect you. You almost got yourself killed before. Now give me the grenade. All of you. Hand them over.”
We hand them over reluctantly.
I feel like this is a mistake. We should be armed. And besides, Daniel was the one who gave them to us in the first place. Shouldn’t he have final say on whether we get to keep the EMP grenades or not? He seemed to think it was a good idea. And since he’s in charge, I thought he would’ve said something. I thought he’d stand up for us. But he is too busy driving, too busy concentrating on keeping the Humvee steady as we drive over the train tracks.
And I want to say to Parker, ‘hey, do you even know how to use one of those things?’ But I don’t say this because of course he knows how to use one and of course he won’t give me one. Not even if I ask super nicely. Not after the stunt I just pulled. And I know it was a stupid thing to do. I knew it at the time. But seeing George, seeing the Warden, it messed with my head. It took me completely by surprise. And as a result, I hadn’t been thinking clearly.
Parker turns to Ben. “You too. Hand it over.”
Ben doesn’t respond. He just stares at Parker. A cold, steely look.
And that was the end of that.
Parker didn’t push the issue. There was no further discussion.
I wish I could do that. I wish I could just end an argument with a look. But I can’t. So right now, I am unarmed. And we all continue watching, staring out the rear windshield, staring into the dark as we continue driving slowly through the subway tunnel.
Maria finally breaks the silence. “So what was that thing back there? Was it really a nano-swarm?”
“It looked like a person,” Jack says. “I could’ve sworn it was a person.”
And I could’ve sworn it was George Walters.
The blindingly bright white business shirt.
The black tie.
But it wasn’t a person. It was a swarm. And it was hunting us.
“Well,” Maria says. “What the hell was it?”
No one answers Maria. Not Parker, or Scott or Daniel or Kenji. So I stop looking out the back windshield and I say, “Yeah. It was a nano-swarm. It’s hunting us. It’s using some sort of camouflage technique.”
I notice Ben nodding his head. Maybe he has seen something like this before. Out in the desert. It wouldn’t surprise me.
“Camouflage?” Maria asks. “It wasn’t camouflaged at all. We could see it clear as day.”
“Yeah,” Jack agrees. “Worst camouflage ever.”
“Well, it fooled us,” I say. “We all thought it was a person.” George Walters. Prison Administrator. “We were all mesmerized, we all dropped our guards.”
And this was the scariest part. The fact that it had completely disarmed us. “And the rest of your men,” I say to Parker and Scott. “The ones on watch last night, they probably thought the same thing.”
Parker removes one of the EMP grenades from the belt. He holds onto it. He holds on tight. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that your men, they didn’t leave us, they didn’t run off, they weren’t killed by the General’s men. They were ambushed. They were taken. They’re dead.”
“No,” Parker says. “I don’t believe you.”
“Yeah,” Scott adds. “We would’ve heard something. There would’ve been a struggle. A gun shot. A scream. A shout. Something. We would’ve heard. They couldn’t just disappear silently. It’s impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. The nano-swarm tricked them. It deceived them. They lowered their guns, they lowered their guards. They thought they were looking at a person. A lone survivor. Just like we did. Once the men were disarmed, once the swarm was close enough, it attacked. It dragged them off into the tunnel. Into the darkness.”
And I think to myself, it would’ve fed on them. It would’ve eaten them. Flesh. Bones. Skin. NBC suit. Everything. And it nearly had me. It could’ve taken me so easily. I was so close.
Parker is shaking his head. He doesn’t believe it. Doesn’t want to believe it. “Scott’s right,” he says. “If they were attacked, we would’ve heard something.”
“Not if the swarm was close enough to choke them,” I answer. “It would’ve filled their mouths, their throats. If the swarm was close enough, if the men were as confused as I think they were, as I know they were, it would’ve choked them, it would’ve tripped them over. Dragged them off.”
“It did this to three men?” Scott asks. “Three highly trained soldiers? All at the same time? Quick enough so none of them had time to scream or shoot or make any sound whatsoever?”
Other than choking sounds, I think to myself. “Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.”
Parker holds up the belt of EMP grenades. He counts them. “Nine grenades. It’s not enough, is it?”
“So how did it camouflage itself as a person?” Scott asks. “We’ve never
seen this before.”
“We saw a nano-swarm mimic a car,” Maria says. “It moved like a car, looked like a car, had headlights like a car.”
“From a distance?” Scott asks.
“Yeah,” Maria answers. “From a distance.”
Parker is still not convinced. “Pretending to be a car from a distance is a lot different than shape shifting into a person. I mean, we were close. We couldn’t have been any more than fifty feet away. It looked like a real person. It had wrinkles. We could see the whites of his eyes, the veins in his eyes. Coffee stains on his teeth. It doesn’t make any sense.” He points at me. “And you were right up next to it. How long did it take you to figure it out?”
Longer than I am proud to admit. But there’s a reason for that. Seeing a swarm that looked exactly like the Warden, a snake, a reptile of a man that tried to kill me, it messed with my head more than anything. Seeing a dead person. I guess it was like seeing an infected person for the first time, seeing a dead person move, a friend, a lover, seeing a relative resurrected. And then having that person attack you. Bite you. Infect you.
That would’ve messed up a lot of people when it first happened. It would’ve been the death of a lot of people.
“I knew something was wrong,” I say. “I just didn’t know what. The closer I got. He… it… was just floating there. I could see flashes of silver. I could hear it.”
“Hear what?” Scott asks.
“The hissing sound. The sound of the nano-bots moving through the air.”
“You could hear it?” Parker asks.
“Yeah. It was only a faint noise. But I could hear it. Haven’t you guys heard the noise before?”
Scott and Parker look at each other. I get the feeling this is their first close encounter with a nano-swarm. And maybe this is their first time in the field.
We’re stretched thin.
“Wait,” Jack says. “They dropped you guys in here, and you haven’t even dealt with a nano-swarm before?”
“We can’t tell you guys about what we’ve been doing,” Scott answers. “You know that.”
“I told you,” Daniel says to me, and to all of us. “We’re stretched thin.”
Jack still can’t believe it. “Man, they threw you guys to the wolves. They threw you in the deep end. Welcome to Australia. We’ve got man eating sharks. Venomous snakes. Zombies. Nano-swarms. Mutations.”
“So why did you hesitate?” Parker asks, getting back to the nano-swarm. “Why did it take you so long to react, to realize what it was?”
“Because that swarm,” I answer. “It looked exactly like…”
A snake.
A reptile.
A monster.
“Like who?”
“George Walters,” I finally say. “The Prison Administrator. The Warden. “I… we, were locked up in the holding cells. And George was one of the only survivors of that area of the facility. But he had been injected with a time release nano-swarm. We both had. We had been injected and sentenced to death by the psychopath in the gas mask.”
I think about the man in the gas mask and I still can’t believe how close I was to him, to killing him. I still can’t believe no one has put a bullet in his brain. I wonder where he is. He was probably safe somewhere. Showered. Clean. Fed. Hydrated.
Same with Doctor Hunter.
Two of the people responsible for the outbreak. Safe and sound.
People love to remind other people that life is not fair. That life is hard. And sure, no one said life would be easy. No one said life would be fair, but this is just ridiculous.
“Kim and I saw it as well,” Jack says. “The swarm, it ate its way through George’s skin. He started bleeding from his nose, his eyes, his mouth. Little, tiny cuts appeared all over his skin. He… he disintegrated before our very eyes. Right in front of us.”
Kim has her head lowered, thinking back to the holding cells, thinking back to the moment George betrayed us, tried to kill us. Thinking back to the moment we saw a time-release nano-swarm eat George the Warden alive from the inside.
“I’m not following,” Parker says.
“Yeah,” Daniel adds. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the time-release nano-swarm was inside George Walters. I’m saying that once it was activated, it ate George from the inside, killing him. It ate everything. And now that nano-swarm is loose. I don’t know how, but it has the ability to mimic George, to project a life-like image of him. To shape shift. We all just saw it.”
“So the swarms can now pretend to be people?” Maria asks.
“And you really think this swarm killed the others?” Parker says again, still not wanting to believe it. “Before they could scream, before they could shout an alarm, before they could fire their weapons?”
I nod my head.
“We are so screwed,” Jack says.
Maria shakes her head. She still looks tired. She looks down right exhausted. Like she wants to give up. I can’t let that happen. We need to stay strong. For each other. Daniel is right, we can’t lose hope.
We drive for about thirty minutes. No one says another word. We eventually come to a fork in the tunnel.
One of the tunnels is blocked with what appears to be a makeshift barricade of wooden pallets. The other tunnel is clear.
Daniel stops the Humvee. “Which way?” he asks.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Maria says, as she points to the clear tunnel. “We have to go that way.”
“We’ll check it out,” Parker says as both he and Scott exit the Humvee.
Ben gets out of the car as well. “I’m coming with you.”
Kim does not like that idea at all. “What? Don’t get out of the car. That thing is somewhere back there. It’s coming. The infected are coming.”
“We have to check it out,” Daniel says. “There’s no point driving any further if both tunnels are blocked.”
Kenji takes out the handgun that Daniel gave him. He makes sure to keep it hidden from Parker and Scott, just in case they decide to disarm him.
Maria and Kim can’t believe we have stopped. The clear path is the obvious path to take.
And we can’t afford to waste time.
Behind us are the infected.
A rogue nano-swarm.
A raging inferno and toxic smoke.
Behind us is death.
Maria is right. Kim is right. We need to keep moving.
Chapter 10
We’ve figured out that the tracks, the tunnel that leads to the residential sector has been almost completely boarded up with wooden pallets.
Parker and Scott move slightly ahead, scouting out the clear tunnel, making sure it’s not blocked further along.
Ben checks out the massive wooden barricade.
I can’t be certain but there appears to be a walkway built into the barricade, so people can come and go.
“Hey, is there a pathway built into that wall of pallets?” I ask.
The others are all staring out the front windshield of the Humvee.
“I think so,” Kenji says.
“What’s the point of making a barricade with a built-in path?” Maria asks. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
The gap is too small for any vehicles. It’s barely big enough for a person. If Ben wanted to fit through he would have to turn sideways and hunch over.
Parker and Scott walk further and further into the other tunnel. We can no longer see them clearly. We can only see the lights of their torches moving back and forth as they check out the tunnel and the tracks.
Ben looks long and hard at the barricade, the walkway. He then turns back towards us, and shakes his head.
Kenji opens his door. “I’m going to check it out.”
Daniel puts the handbrake on and switches the engine off. “Me too.”
And so we all decide to go and have a look.
As we walk up close to the barricade we can now see how big this wooden structure is. It completely fills the entrance o
f the tunnel. From side to side. From wall to wall. And from floor to ceiling. It is completely made out of wooden pallets. And it is really deep. Looking through the gaps in each pallet, I can’t see where it ends.
Jack reaches out and touches the barricade. “Who the hell built this? And why?”
“Keep people out,” Ben answers.
“So why build a pathway?” Kim asks. “It defeats the whole purpose of having a barricade.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Ben says, thinking out loud, ignoring Kim. “The residential sector is completely contaminated. It was the worst hit. No one was prepared.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Daniel says. “We have to go this way.” He is pointing to the other tunnel. The clear path. The obvious path. “It will lead us to the western Vehicle Access Point,” he continues. “That’s our exit point. That’s where we’ll get rescued.”
I point to a door built into the side of the subway tunnel. “What about in there? Where does that lead?”
“It’s a maintenance passage way,” Ben says. “It follows the train tracks, so maintenance crews can access the tunnels when they need to, wherever they need to.”
“Should we check it out?” I ask.
“No point,” Ben answers. “Not as long as we’ve got the Humvee.”
“What’s taking your men so long?” Maria asks Daniel. “We need to go.”
“They’re just being thorough,” Daniel says. “There’s no point driving down there if it’s also barricaded off.”
“What if it’s blocked?” Kenji asks. “What’s our back up plan?”
“Backup?” Daniel says. “There is no backup plan. We’re making this up as we go. We’re on the run.”
“If that tunnel is blocked further along,” Ben warns. “Then we might have to move through the residential sector.”
“Hold up,” Jack says. “Didn’t you just say the residential sector was the worst hit?”
“Yeah,” I say, agreeing with Jack. “And isn’t it contaminated with the airborne strain?”
Ben moves off to the side of the train tracks. He crouches down and starts drawing a basic map of the residential sector in the dust.
Everyone crowds around.