The Secret Apocalypse: Box Set 2

by J. L. Harden

  Kenji talks about strength. About courage. He talks about honor. “Giving up now would be doing Daniel a disservice,” he says. “Because Daniel never gave up. Not once. He sacrificed himself for us. So we need to honor him. We need to honor his memory and his sacrifice by not giving up. By fighting. By surviving. I know we’ve been doing it for a long time now, but we need to keep doing it. We need to keep fighting for our lives, fighting for our freedom, our future.”

  Kenji talks but no one makes eye contact with him, everyone’s gaze is lowered. Everyone is staring at the dirt. Everyone is silent.

  Kenji points at Sarah. She is our only hope. “Sarah. You said there was a town. You said they built walls. Well, this is it. This is our only hope. This is all we’ve got.”

  Sarah nods her head. She knows how important it is. She knows this town is giving us hope. She knows it is the only thing keeping us going, because it’s the only thing keeping her going.

  My sister is still there. I need to get back.

  “You better not be lying,” Kim says.

  “The town is real,” Sarah answers quickly. “The walls are real. They kept out the infected. And they kept out the other things. When my sister and I made it there, we were in bad shape. We had lost… everything.”

  She takes a deep breath. She swallows hard, fighting back tears. Her sister is keeping her alive. This is the reason she won’t quit. This is the reason she won’t stop.

  And it is the only reason why I believe her.

  “When we found the town,” Sarah says, pausing, thinking back. “We were on our last legs. We were completely out of water. Completely out of food. We had no energy. When we walked, we weren’t really walking. We were just falling forwards, stumbling.” She rubs her forehead as she remembers how close she was to dying. “At first we didn’t know what we were looking at. I’d never seen anything like it. Giant black walls, towering over the rest of the town. Taller than most of the buildings. Taller than the houses. The clock tower from the town hall and the church steeple were the only things taller.”

  I picture the town. I imagine the giant black walls.

  “For some reason, the walls gave us a renewed strength,” Sarah continues. “We were drawn to it. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. We crept into the town. We snuck into the town. There were infected everywhere. We should’ve stayed away. Every other town we had come across had been overrun. Every other town was too dangerous to even go near. But like I said, we were completely out of water, completely out of food. We had no choice.”

  We have all been in this situation. We all know the temptation.

  Risk vs reward.

  Life vs death.

  Is the reward, is water and food and shelter worth risking your life?

  Sarah shakes her head. “But it was more than that. More than the prospect of finding water. We had to see it, we had to know what those black walls were. We had to get there. We had to stand in their shadows. We had to know what was behind them. I know it’s stupid, but in my mind, in our minds, there was hope behind those walls. There was a safe place. A paradise. A home. A future. The closer we got, the taller they got, the bigger they seemed. The more powerful. We ran into some people from behind the walls. They were on a scouting mission. They were checking the town for supplies, checking to see if they could reclaim any more of the town. I guess they took pity on us. We would’ve looked so pathetic. Anyway, they let us in. We were saved.”

  We were saved.

  And I want to be saved.

  I want to be rescued.

  I want to be taken to a place far away…

  “My sister is still there,” Sarah says. “I should never have left her.” She points to the ground, to the red dirt. “What I did down there, in the Fortress, I did to survive. I lied. I cheated. I stole. I killed. I did these things because I was forced to do them. I had no other choice.”

  And we have no choice. It is time to go.

  “So, which way?” Kenji asks. “Are we heading in the right direction?”

  Sarah looks toward the horizon. “I don’t know,” she answers, whispers, still trying to get her bearings. “It’s south from here.”

  Up until this point, we had once again been following tank tracks and tire tracks. We were hoping they would lead to a road. But at the moment, we couldn’t see any roads, or fences. There were no signposts and no signs of civilization.

  Kenji points to the sun over his shoulder. “That’s west. That’s south.”

  Sarah nods. “If we head south, we’ll eventually hit a road. Or a boundary fence. Something we can follow. Something we can use to get our bearings with.”

  “Let’s go,” Kenji says. “No point in wasting anymore time.”

  So we move away from the tank tracks. We head south.

  We are hoping to find a road soon. Or a fence.

  And hope is all we have.

  Chapter 1

  It’s been months since the fall, since the outbreak.

  It feels longer. And it feels like an eternity since I entered the Fortress. It feels weird being outside, back in the desert. It feels weird being in such a huge and open environment. I feel like I can breathe a little easier, like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I can’t describe how amazingly breathtaking it is to look out at the horizon and see endless space, to look up at the sky, see the sun, the moon, the changing colors of the heavens, from blue to purple, to pink and orange and red.

  There were times, trapped in the Fortress, when I thought I would never see the sky again.

  Daniel once told me it was the little things, little things can break you, or little things can save you. He told me it was the little victories that keep us going.

  I tell myself that seeing the sky is a little victory.

  Kenji is leading the way. He walks at a pretty fast pace and as a result, we’re all struggling to keep up. Dusk is fast approaching. This is a good thing because we will need to do the majority of our walking at night. It’s still too hot to move around during the middle of the day. I suddenly realize that we’ll be walking for the next twelve hours or so, only stopping briefly to rest, to drink a few mouthfuls of water each.

  My feet already ache.

  “So why did you leave?” Kim asks Sarah, cross-examining her, interrogating her. “Why risk it?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you dare lie to me. You do know. Why did you leave? Why did you leave that safe haven? Why risk going back into the desert?”

  Sarah takes a deep breath. She opens her mouth to answer but she hesitates.

  She is obviously uncomfortable talking about this. But she needs to tell us, she needs to tell Kim. She needs to be completely honest with us, because if she’s not, no one will trust her.

  Eventually she says, “I fell in love.” She answers quietly, softly. “Again, I know it’s stupid. But… I thought I was going to die out here. My sister and I, we were all alone. We had escaped from a bad situation. So when we made it to the town, when we were finally safe, I let my guard down. I let myself relax. I let myself believe we were safe. For some reason, I truly believed that all of this, this virus, this outbreak, was just temporary, that everything would eventually go back to normal. And that’s when I met him.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Ryan,” she says, pausing. “Was…”

  She trails off because this is painful for her. Because this is not a happy story.

  “Anyway, he had been taken in as well,” she continues. “He had been saved. We had both lost so much. And it was through this shared… trauma… that we bonded… or fell in love. I guess. And it happened so quickly, you know?”

  She pauses again and collects her thoughts.

  “It’s so stupid,” she repeats, cursing herself. “So goddamn stupid. He left one night. He kept talking about it. He said the rest of his family would’ve gone to Adelaide, or maybe even Perth. He talked about going to search for them one day, when he had
built up the strength. He was convinced they were still alive. I didn’t know how to tell him otherwise. And in the end, I just couldn’t do it. I mean, how do you tell someone that their family is dead? How do you tell someone to give up? I couldn’t do it. Even though, I probably should’ve.”

  “So he left?” Kim asks.

  “Yeah. He left in the middle of the night. Not sure how he got out. Maybe someone let him out. Maybe he snuck out. I’m not sure. But I do know it’s all my fault. I should’ve talked him out of it. I should’ve convinced him not to go. As harsh as it would’ve been, I should’ve told him that his family was dead. Just like mine, just like everyone else’s family. But I didn’t tell him. It was my fault he left. And now he’s dead too.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say. And as soon as I said it, I regretted it.

  Because she did know. We all knew.

  Sarah doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t dignify my foolishness and naivety with a response.

  “So that’s why I left the town,” Sarah says. “I wanted to find him. Bring him back. I wanted to save him. I left because I was reckless and stupid. I left because I let my heart, my emotions get the better of me.” She lowers her head. “I will never let that happen again.”

  I can’t tell if Kim is satisfied with this response. I don’t know if she will ever be satisfied. Maybe once we’re behind the walls she’ll be happy with Sarah’s story.

  Maybe.

  “What’s the name of the town?” Kim asks, continuing her aggressive line of questioning.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Sarah says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not allowed to. If word gets out about this town… people, survivors, they would come from all over. We wouldn’t be able to handle it. The town’s not big enough. It would be too much.”

  Another mouth to feed. Another nail in the coffin. This is the reality of our situation.

  We walk in silence for a few more hours. Eventually Maria breaks the silence and asks Kenji for a drink of water.

  But we don’t have enough.

  Sarah has a couple of bottles. But she says we should save this for when we really need it.

  I see the look on Maria’s face. It’s right about now that she realizes how truly screwed we are.

  Apart from our lack of water, we also have a distinct shortage of food. Our supplies are ridiculously, dangerously low. Other than Sarah’s precious bottles of water, she also had a few cans of food. Baked beans. Peaches. Canned tuna. This is all the food that Sarah had been carrying in her backpack when we escaped from the Fortress. None of it sounded appealing, even though I was starving.

  And weapons? Forget about it.

  We have one gun with one magazine.

  Two EMP grenades.

  This is not enough to defend ourselves with.

  At some point, we will need to find a town and scavenge for supplies. We will need to find something.

  Water first.

  Food second.

  Weapons.

  Shelter.

  I am reminded of the mad soldier who greeted Maria and myself when we had unknowingly arrived at the Fortress. The mad soldier had been exiled to the desert by General Spears. This was his punishment for questioning the authority of the General. As a result, he had suffered heat stroke and dehydration. He had suffered insanity brought on by pressure and isolation.

  There is nothing in the desert…

  He had buried himself in the red dust, in the dirt, he had set a trap in the small chance that someone, anyone, would stumble across his hiding place. What kind of headspace does a person need to be in to do something like that? How far gone? How desperate?

  And I can’t help but wonder if this will be us in a few days’ time.

  Or maybe we are already there.

  Desperate.

  Gone.

  No way back.

  While I’m thinking about water and food and whether or not we’ll die of thirst and heat stroke and insanity, Kenji stops suddenly and I almost walk up the back of him.

  He tells us to stop.

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something out there.”

  “Where?”

  “On the horizon.”

  Kenji has amazing eye sight. But I can’t see a damn thing. No one else can.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Don’t know.”

  Kim puts her hand over her bruised face, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “Where? What are you talking about?”

  Kenji points at the horizon, to the south. He is pointing dead ahead.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jack says.

  I finally see something, but it could just be a heat mirage. I look closer. The heat waves give the impression of movement. The whole thing shimmers and distorts. The optical illusion reminds me of a nano-swarm.

  “Trust me,” Kenji says. “There’s something there.”

  I believe him.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s infected people,” Jack says.

  “Or a nano-swarm,” Maria adds.

  Sarah reaches into her backpack and retrieves an EMP grenade. She hands it to me. “We’ve only got two of these left.”

  “No,” Kenji answers. “I don’t think it’s a nano-swarm, or infected people. It could be a car. A Humvee. It could be a tank.”

  “Might have supplies,” Kim says.

  “What do we do?” Maria asks. “Do we go around it? Do we avoid it?”

  “I think we need to check it out,” Kenji says.

  Maria doesn’t like this idea at all. She tightens her grip on Jack. “And what if there are infected people hiding inside? What if there’s a goddamn nano-swarm?”

  Kenji thinks it over. “If there are infected people inside whatever the hell this thing is, and they can get free, they’ll eventually come running after us. It’s better if we get the drop on them. I’d much rather take them out first. It’s better than having them sneak up on us in the middle of the night.”

  Kenji answers Maria’s questions calmly and methodically. He understands why she is afraid. She is afraid because if we get attacked, Jack won’t be able to run.

  “And what if it’s a nano-swarm?” she asks.

  “We’ve got EMP grenades,” Kenji says. “If there’s a nano-swarm close by, we use the grenades. This usually causes the nano-swarm to disperse. It usually causes them to take evasive action.”

  Yeah, that’s what usually happens. But there’s a first time for everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if the nano-swarms had started to figure out how to completely avoid, or even survive an EMP blast. And there’s always the chance of human error. There’s always the chance that I’d completely screw up. Maybe I’d drop the grenade. Maybe I’d throw it in the wrong direction. Who knows?

  I suddenly start to feel nervous. I suddenly start to feel pressure.

  “Kim is right,” Kenji says. “Whatever it is, it could have supplies. We need to check this out. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. But Jack, you might want to keep your distance. I think you should stay back, just until we know it’s safe.”

  Jack doesn’t argue.

  So we keep walking, and slowly the object comes into view. It starts out as a shimmering dark blob. The heatwaves make it look bigger than it actually is. At one point, the thing appears to tower over the horizon. But the closer we get, the smaller it gets, and the more solid it becomes. For a second I think that maybe it really is a nano-swarm. But it appears to be stationary. It isn’t moving.

  It begins to take shape, until finally, it makes sense in my mind.

  “It’s a helicopter,” Kenji says. “A Blackhawk.”

  “Are you sure?” Kim asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know it’s a Blackhawk?” Sarah asks.

  “I just do,” he says, turning to Kim. “Give me the gun.”

  Kim hands over our one and only weapon to Kenji. He checks the magazine. �
�Stay close,” he says. “Stay behind me.”

  Chapter 2

  We move quickly and silently towards the chopper. Jack and Maria hang back. I have given them an EMP grenade just in case.

  The rest of us are moving up, directly behind Kenji. Kenji has the gun armed and ready. He is holding it with two hands. Finger on the trigger. The safety is off.

  He is not taking any chances.

  The chopper is covered in a large, dark green tarp. But I know it is not just a tarp. It’s an invisibility cloak. Just like the one Daniel’s team used to cover and conceal their camp with, back when they needed to hide from the military and from everyone and everything else. And just like that invisibility cloak, this one had long run out of power as well. Or maybe it was just broken.

  We move in close to the chopper. Kenji slows down. It appears that the chopper’s nose is partially buried in the ground, like it has nose-dived. Kenji pulls back the cloak, revealing a scene of carnage, a scene of destruction and chaos.

  The chopper had crash landed. The rotor blades are crumpled. The windows of the cockpit have shattered.

  The pilot is dead.

  The co-pilot is dead.

  There are two dead Evo Agents in the back. Their NBC suits did nothing to protect them.

  There is one other passenger. He has a black hood over his head. He is, or rather was, a prisoner. And now he is a dead man. There is a long and sharp piece of metal, part of the helicopter; that has pierced his stomach.

  No one could’ve survived this.

  Jack and Maria have joined us. And Jack says, “Is that who I think it is?”

  I’m not following. I’m too distracted by the dead bodies, by the scene of carnage in front of me. By the smell of it.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Who is it?”

  Jack points at the prisoner. He doesn’t say anything. He just points.

  The person wearing the black hood, the passenger, the prisoner, they only have one hand. The other has been hacked off.

  It was Doctor Hunter.

  Was.

  The parasite is finally dead.