by J. L. Harden
I look over at Jack. His head is still lowered. He is lost in his own mind, his own thoughts.
His face is blank. But I know what he is thinking about.
Maria.
He has let her down.
Kim. His sister.
His family.
I keep my weight on top of Sarah. I keep a firm grip of her forearm. If I let go, she’ll probably kill me.
I wouldn’t blame her.
“You’re too close to him,” she says. “I know this hurts. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all lost.”
And Daniel says, “She’s right.”
You have been lucky. But sooner or later….
“No,” I say. “No!”
I’m saying NO out loud. I’m saying it over and over. But in my head, I’m saying ‘yes’. Yes, he has to die. Yes, he is already dead.
He is infected.
It’s only a matter of time.
How much time?
Minutes.
Seconds.
He could be about to turn. He could turn right now.
I know this. Deep down, I know. But I don’t care. I don’t care because I’m not going to kill him. And I’m not letting Sarah kill him.
I slam Sarah’s arm against the concrete floor.
Repeatedly.
I hear a crack. Her wrist. Her forearm.
There’s a good chance something has broken.
She muffles a scream. She clenches her jaw. She is so strong. She is a survivor. She still has a hold of the knife. I slam her arm down one more time.
The knife finally comes loose.
I pick it up and I move away from her so my back is against the wall. I hold onto the knife. I point it at Sarah. At Daniel. I am a wild animal. I am cornered. I am lashing out. I am not thinking straight. Rational thought has gone out the window. I am thinking with my heart, with my emotions. I am fighting with all of my might and strength, with all of my soul, to save my friend. To save a guy who saved my life. To save a guy who is already dead.
I know it doesn’t make any sense.
I know he is infected.
I know he needs to die.
I know he is already dead.
But I can’t accept it. And I won’t kill him.
Sarah sits down, she is holding her wrist. Her hand is shaking. She motions with her head towards Jack. “He knows. He knows it better than anyone.”
And Jack nods his head. “Give me the knife. I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it?” I say. “You’ll drive the knife into your head, through your goddamn skull, into your brain?”
“Or just leave me here!” he snaps. “Whatever. But you have to do something. We’re running out of time.”
A thought, an awful, selfish thought enters my mind.
I could leave him here. That would be easier… I could do that.
“No. I’m not leaving you here. I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
Daniel’s words of warning play over and over inside my head.
You have been lucky. But sooner or later…
“I’m infected,” Jack says. “I’m dead. You have to leave me. Leave me or kill me. That’s it. They’re your only two options at this point.”
I start bargaining for Jack’s life because I can’t accept his fate, his death.
I am reminded of what the man in the gas mask said to me about the five stages of grieving.
First comes Denial.
Then comes Bargaining.
I am bargaining for Jack’s life. For what little life he has left.
I’m bargaining for more time.
I need to buy some more time.
And this is all we are doing. Buying time. This is as good as it will ever get.
“Look, we don’t know that he’s infected,” I say. “We don’t even know if the arrow he was shot with had been used before, or if it was covered in infected blood. We don’t know. And besides, he’s not displaying any symptoms.” I turn to Jack, “Are you?”
What are the symptoms? How quickly do they appear?
Skin discoloration.
Bleeding.
Extremely high fever, followed by a lowered core body temperature.
Impaired cognitive functions.
Jack shrugs his shoulders. “I… I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“No fever? No facial hemorrhaging? No skin discoloration?”
Jack shakes his head.
“Maria said it felt like her bones were on fire,” I continue. “And then she felt cold.”
“No,” Jack says. “Nothing. Just the pain from the arrow wound.”
I look at Daniel. At Sarah. “That’s a good sign. Doctor Hunter said a person infected with the Oz virus would lose feeling in their limbs.”
“Who is Doctor Hunter?” Sarah asks.
No one answers her.
Daniel doesn’t know what to do. He looks at the body of Scott. He is questioning his abilities, his leadership. He is wondering why he is alive, when his brothers didn’t make it, when his fellow soldiers die around him.
Sarah’s hand is shaking. She is taking deep breaths.
And for a second I think maybe the fight has left her, maybe she will let go.
“I’ve seen it happen in seconds,” Sarah says. “I’ve seen a healthy person turn in the blink of an eye. We can’t take that risk. We shouldn’t still be here. Either we kill him now, or we leave him here. We tie him up and we leave him here. We barricade the door and we get the hell out.”
She has turned her back on everyone. She has isolated herself. This is how she survived. I admire her strength. I really do.
“No,” I say. “Not doing it. We’re not killing him. And we’re not leaving him.”
In the distance, from somewhere down the other end of the maintenance passageway, we can hear the infected.
They are howling and moaning and screaming.
They know there is fresh meat close by.
They are coming for us.
“So what now?” Sarah says. “What happens next?”
She looks at me and now I can see the fight, the war raging in her eyes. She doesn’t want to be the person she has become. But she knows it’s the only way to live. She knows it is the only way to survive in this new world. She looks at me with desperation. She holds her broken wrist.
She wants it to be over and done with.
The longer it takes. The harder it will be.
And then I see Daniel has removed his own knife. It is a small knife. It was hiding in his boot. It has a short blade. But it is big enough to do the job.
And there’s no way I’ll be able to fight him. There’s no way I’ll be able to overpower him.
There’s no way I’ll be able to wrestle him to the ground and break his arm.
Daniel stands up.
I shake my head. “No. Please.”
I am still bargaining for Jack’s life.
I am begging.
The five stages of grieving.
Denial.
Bargaining.
What comes next?
I don’t know.
“Do it,” Jack whispers. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 23
Daniel is standing in the middle of the tiny maintenance room with a knife in his hand.
And we have been arguing and shouting at each other.
We are inviting the infected to this party. We are ringing the dinner bell.
Suddenly we here a soft and distant thump.
Followed by another.
They have arrived at the access to the maintenance tunnel.
Sarah moves over to the door, sliding the shelf, our pathetic barricade, out of the way. She opens the door slowly and peers out.
Another thump.
“We don’t have long,” she says.
“How far away are they?” Daniel asks.
“Not far. We need to go.”
And Jack says, “Do it. Come on! I’m ready.”
Jack say
s he’s ready. But he’s not. He’s got too much to live for.
And I’m not ready.
We need to find Maria. And Kim. And Kenji. We need to find his family.
My family.
And then we need to get the hell out of here.
We need to escape from the Fortress.
We need to escape from this nightmare.
We need to escape from this hell.
I am not ready.
I move to the middle of the room. Knife in hand. And I suddenly realize I am about to get into a knife fight with a man who is a super soldier.
A man who is a trained killer.
I am not thinking straight. I am not thinking rationally.
And I don’t care.
“Rebecca,” Daniel says.
“I know,” I answer. “But I don’t care. I will fight you. I will. I’m not going to just stand here and do nothing.”
I slash wildly with the knife. I don’t know why. I slice the air and nothing else.
Daniel doesn’t move. He doesn’t react. “Just calm down. Relax.”
“How the hell can I relax? How the hell can I calm down? You’re going to kill one of my best friends, one of my only friends, one of the only people in the whole world I care about, and you’re telling me to relax? We don’t even know if he’s infected!”
I say we don’t even know. But we do know. Scott turned because he had been shot with a blood covered arrow. Maybe even the same arrow that Jack had been shot with.
Scott had then bitten Parker. Infected Parker.
If Jack turns he will be a threat to us, to our survival. He will attack us, with unimaginable force and ferocity, he will attack us.
“I’m not killing him,” Daniel says. “No one is killing him.”
“Huh? What?”
Sarah nods her head. “Then let’s go. We’ve wasted too much time already. He could turn any second now. And the infected are getting closer. We need to go.”
“And we’re not leaving him behind,” Daniel continues. “He’s coming with us.”
Now I’m the one in shock. Is this a trick?
Is he trying to disarm me?
When I lower my guard and lower the knife, he’ll knock me out and kill Jack.
I’m not falling for it.
I’m not buying it.
“No,” Jack says. “It’s too risky. I don’t want to put you in danger. I don’t want to put the group in danger. And I don’t want to kill anyone. Just go. Just leave me here.”
“I’ve left too many men behind,” Daniel says. “I’ve lost too many. I’m not losing anymore.”
Sarah is shaking her head. “I’ve heard this before.”
“I don’t care,” Daniel replies. “He’s coming with us.”
“I’ll just slow you down,” Jack says. “I can’t run. I can barely walk.”
Daniel uses the rope he had been tied up with, to tie himself to Jack. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you walk.”
“As soon as he turns,” Sarah says. “You put that knife in his skull.”
Daniel nods.
I reluctantly give Sarah back her knife. I apologize about her wrist.
She doesn’t respond. She takes the knife and slides it back in her belt. She moves back over to the door and listens out for the infected.
“So where to?” I ask. “And who the hell took my friends?”
“I told you,” Sarah says. “There’s a few people left down here. They’ve gone crazy, they’ve gone wild”
“Well, let’s go and get them,” I say, like rescuing my friends will be as easy as a stroll in the park.
Sarah shakes her head. “No. I’m done. This is too much.”
“What? No. You have to help us. If they’re not dead, then we need to go and find them and…”
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing.”
“We can get you out,” I say. “We can help you.”
Sarah is shaking her head. She doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t believe us. And why would she? Our group has been separated and splintered and torn apart. We are dying right in front of her.
How can we save her when we can’t even save ourselves?
“Please,” I say. “Our friends are going to die if you don’t help us.”
“They won’t die,” she repeats. “They won’t kill your friends. Well, maybe the soldier. But the others. They won’t die. They won’t kill them.”
“So why take them?” I ask. “What are they going to do to them?”
“Torture. Pain. Physical and psychological. If your friends don’t cooperate, they’ll kill them. Make an example of them.”
I think about Kim. I think about Kenji. Are they the kind of people to cooperate with torturers?
No.
“Please, we have to find them,” I repeat, begging for my friends lives. “Before it’s too late. You saw Kim. You saw how much she argued with you. She won’t obey these people. She won’t cooperate.”
“She will if she knows what’s good for her.”
“Where did they take them?” I ask.
“Deeper into the residential sector.”
“If you won’t take us to them, can you draw us a map or something?”
“No. I told you. I’m done. I’m out.”
“Please, you have to help us. We can’t just leave them behind. We need your help. We need you to guide us.”
Again, Sarah thinks it over.
“I can talk sense into these people,” I say. “I know I can. There’s no reason we all can’t get out of here. Together we can escape this Fortress. We can escape this nightmare.”
For some reason, I feel like I am lying. I feel like I am making promises I can’t possibly keep.
“You can’t talk sense into these people,” Sarah explains. “No way. But you might not have to. You might be able to sneak in and get your friends, without them even knowing you were there.”
“How?”
“Simple. Part of the torture, the breaking down process, will be to leave your friends in isolation for days. Sometimes they will tie them up in stress positions.”
“Stress positions?”
“Yeah. So they’ll be tied up, forced to stand.”
“For days at a time?”
“Yeah. It all depends on whether or not they cooperate.”
“So, if they’re being isolated for days at a time, how do we get them out?”
“They’ll be locked up in an apartment,” she answers. “They won’t be guarded. Because even if they somehow escape, which they won’t, there’s nowhere to go.”
“So if that’s the case, then you’ll help us?”
Again, she thinks it over. And again, I see the war in her eyes. She is thinking about her sister. She is cursing herself for leaving her. “Only if you promise you can get me out of here. That you can get me above ground.”
“Yes, I promise.”
“I’m serious,” she says. “I need to get out. I can’t stay down here any longer. I thought I could. I thought I could wait it out. I thought I could hide for as long as it took. Months. Years. I was telling myself, I’ve been telling myself every day, every night, that’s how long I could stay down here for. I told myself that I could stay down here forever, if that’s what it took. But I can’t. I can’t stay down here any longer. I need to get out. You need to get me out.”
“Trust us,” Daniel says, backing me up. “There is a rescue coming.”
We need Sarah’s help, I think to myself. So I don’t tell her my fears…
I don’t tell her that maybe the company won’t rescue us civilians.
That we’re expendable.
That their own soldiers are expendable.
Sarah continues thinking over her options. I can tell she doesn’t want to trust us. She doesn’t want to believe in something that sounds too good to be true.
But she has no other choice. No other option.
Daniel is looking down at his fallen brothers. And even though they had bee
n making life difficult for Daniel, I could tell he was still really shaken up. I could tell he was on the verge of losing control of his emotions. Losing control of everything.
But just like he did in Sydney, he keeps himself together.
“OK, I’ll help you get your friends back,” Sarah finally says. “But you have to promise me one thing. You have to promise me you can get me out.”
“I promise,” I answer for Daniel. “I swear on my life, on my friend’s life, my family. We will get you out.”
And again, this is a promise I can’t possibly keep.
“All right,” she whispers. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 24
Before we leave the supply room, Daniel searches Scott and Parker’s clothes. He finds the belt of EMP grenades hidden in Scott’s pants.
“I’m pretty sure Parker had the EMP grenades,” Daniel says, thinking out loud.
I’m not following. “So?”
“So at some point Parker gave Scott the grenades. At some point he hid the grenades in Scott’s pants.”
“You think he did this to hide them from those people, from their captors?” I ask
“Yeah,” he answers. “Why else would he do it?”
Daniel had a good point. I just wish Kenji could’ve somehow left his gun behind as well. Even though firing a gun in this confined area would not be a smart thing to do, I just do not like the idea of walking around completely unarmed. Still, the EMP grenades were better than nothing. At least we could defend ourselves if the nano-swarm showed back up.
Sarah finishes bandaging her wrist up and tells us to hurry, that we don’t have much time. She leads us out into the maintenance passageway, and it sounds like the infected are getting louder. Closer.
“This way,” Sarah says. She is still whispering, murmuring. She sounds calm, but I know she is not.
She is panicking. She is angry.
She is furious.
Because we have put her life in more danger than she was ever in before. Because even though we’re offering her a way out of this place, we may have ruined her one chance for survival. And honestly, if I was her, I wouldn’t trust us at the moment. I wouldn’t believe a word we say. We are in no position to offer anyone a way out. We are in no position to offer asylum. We can’t even look after our own.
Sarah picks up the pace. Daniel and Jack struggle to keep up. At the moment, Daniel is helping Jack walk. He is Jack’s crutch. So, if we’re ambushed now by a horde of infected, by more than one, we are screwed. We won’t be able to fight them, and we won’t be able to outrun them. Well, Jack won’t be able to outrun them. And I’m not leaving Jack behind.