by James Harden
And thankfully, this feeling of hopelessness, of desperation, it gave us energy, a weird kind of energy. But energy none the less. And so we used this energy. We used it to create a pathetic barricade, a bottleneck.
We used this desperate energy to keep fighting.
“Get the Humvee ready,” Daniel says to Ben. “Drive it into the Western tunnel.”
Ben nods.
The western subway is our exit strategy. And I can’t help but think that this is a terrible exit strategy. Odds are the western tunnel is just as overrun with infected people as the eastern tunnel.
No one says this out loud.
Because saying that out loud, would be admitting that we are surrounded, that we are dead.
After Ben parks the Humvee in front of the western tunnel, he grabs a couple of spare jerry cans of fuel and puts them in the back.
He leaves the rest of the fuel cans. “Won’t we need those?” I ask Ben.
“Yes,” he says. “We will. Don’t touch them.”
Daniel runs off towards the eastern tunnel, towards the infected.
“Hey, where are you going?” I ask in disbelief.
“I have to check on the maintenance access point.”
“Why? What for?”
“I need to see what it’s like outside. I need to see if it’s safe.”
“You won’t know unless you have a Geiger counter,” Kenji says.
“I’ll be able to tell. The weather should’ve changed. It should’ve rained. Nuclear storm. Black rain.”
Kenji nods, showing that he understands. I on the other hand have no idea what he is talking about. Daniel runs towards the eastern tunnel. The tunnel that is currently crawling with the infected.
And I think to myself, that even if it is safe above ground, in a few more minutes, we might not even be able to reach the eastern maintenance shaft. Not if the infected keep coming. And what the hell did Daniel mean about the weather and the black rain?
“What the hell is he talking about?” I ask Kenji.
“After a nuclear warhead is detonated, the energy, the heat that it creates and releases into the atmosphere causes the local weather to change. It causes a storm. It causes black rain.”
“Do you really think it will rain in the desert right now? Let alone storm?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben whistles out to us. He points to a bunch of Jerry cans that he has lined up. “Move them over there.”
He is pointing at the eastern blast door.
We get to work. Each jerry can is five gallons. They’re heavy. But as it always does, the fear of death has given me super human strength. I lift two jerry cans, one in each hand. I put them down in front of the eastern blast door.
I don’t ask questions.
I don’t ask why we need so much fuel. So much oil.
I just do what I’m told.
The other’s help. We look like ants, carrying food, carrying supplies around a nest. As we move the jerry cans, there’s sporadic gunfire from the Evo Agents. This lets us know that at the moment, there were only a few infected people coming for us.
We could handle a few at a time. But we all knew how quickly that could change.
Maria puts down a jerry can of fuel. She doubles over, hands on her knees.
“Come on,” I say. “We gotta keep moving. We can do this.”
“I know,” she answers between breaths. “I’m good. I’m OK.”
She says this as she checks her hands. They are covered in blisters. She shakes her hands out. She keeps working. She doesn’t complain.
“What are we doing this for?” Jack asks Ben.
“This is our exit strategy,” Ben answers.
Before I can ask Ben to elaborate and clarify what the hell he means, Daniel comes running back. His men are following him.
This is not good.
“It’s not working,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“The code, for the maintenance access point. It’s not working.”
“What the hell?” Kim says. “That’s impossible.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?” Jack asks.
“They must’ve changed it. Or maybe the nuclear warheads took out the locking mechanism. I don’t know. But it’s not working. We have to fall back. We have to go.”
Had the codes been changed?
Did the recon team lock us in here?
Did they seal us up in a tomb?
Did they leave us for dead?
There’s no way we can know for sure. So right now there’s only one thing left to do, only one possible choice. We have to go into the western subway tunnel. We have to go back, deeper into the Fortress.
Chapter 8
Ben had driven the Humvee into the entrance of the western tunnel. It was pointed into the darkness, ready to make our getaway.
“Let’s go,” I say. “Everyone in the car.”
No one moves.
No one answers me.
They are all looking back at the eastern tunnel. We can hear the infected. But we can’t see them.
There is a steady volley of gunfire from the Evo Agents as they fall back. They take turns covering each other’s retreat. Parker kneels and fires his rifle, aiming into the darkness of the eastern tunnel.
Scott makes his way back towards us.
Then Parker will turn and run. And now it’s Scott’s turn to shoot.
Cover fire.
Run.
Repeat.
These guys must have amazing eye sight, because at the moment they are shooting into the eastern tunnel as they make their way across the hangar towards the western tunnel. I can’t even see the infected yet.
“Reloading!” Scott yells.
He turns and runs towards us. Parker raises his rifle. Steadies himself.
He watches. He waits.
Ben picks up two jerry cans. “Tell your men to fall back to the Humvee,” he says to Daniel.
“What are you doing with those?” Daniel asks about the fuel containers.
“Just do it.”
“Not yet. We need to hold them off for as long as possible.”
“We will. Trust me.”
“What are you going to do with those jerry cans?” Daniel asks again. “Is that fuel? Or oil?”
“Both. I’m going to cover the floor in oil and fuel. We’re gonna light this place up.”
Daniel understands. He tells Parker and Scott to fall back to the Humvee.
“The red jerry cans are full of fuel,” Ben tells us. “Yellow is oil.”
The Evo Agents reluctantly fall back to the Humvee. Their rifles are still raised and ready. Their eyes are looking down the sights.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Parker says. “Do it quickly.”
Ben takes off the lids of all the jerry cans. He has left a couple of red fuel cans, together in clusters in the middle of the hangar. “Stand back,” he says.
He then kicks over the containers full of oil. All of them.
And a few of the jerry cans of fuel.
This causes the floor of the hangar, between the eastern tunnel and the western tunnel, to be completely covered in oil and fuel. He then leaves a trail of fuel from the oil covered floor of the hangar to the Humvee.
The rest of us pile into the military vehicle.
“Let’s go!” Jack says. “Let’s do this.”
“Not yet,” Ben says, forcing us to wait.
He tells Daniel that we need to let the majority of the horde into the hangar.
Daniel shakes his head. “If we wait any longer, they’ll overrun us.”
“No, they won’t. Trust me.”
Daniel is in the driver’s seat. The engine is running. But he keeps his foot on the brake.
And we all watch the eastern tunnel.
We wait.
We wait when all I want to do is turn and run. Run as fast and far as I can.
Drive as fast as possible. Drive as far a
way as possible.
It feels like we are tempting fate.
It feels like we are taunting and teasing death.
Catch me if you can.
I don’t like this.
The infected eventually arrive, climbing over our hastily constructed barricade of broken Humvees. The Humvees have indeed created a bottleneck. But it does little to slow them down.
They stumble into the hangar, into the oil. They slip. They fall.
The oil slows them down considerably, but they keep coming. Crawling and sliding forward. Always forward, their hollow and bloodshot eyes are locked on to us. Fresh meat. Fresh hosts.
Life.
“Hold your fire,” Ben says. “Not yet.”
Parker and Scott both look at Daniel. They don’t understand why Daniel is taking orders from a civilian.
The infected keep coming. They appear to be moving in slow motion. Super slow motion. If they didn’t look so terrifying, if they didn’t look like walking corpses, like death personified, if they didn’t want to eat us, it would almost be funny.
Ben’s plan, his delaying tactic, has worked to perfection.
The Evo Agents, Parker and Scott, raise their rifles. They are ready for action. Finger on the trigger.
“Not yet,” Ben whispers.
The infected howl and scream and moan. More and more pile out of the tunnel, over and through the Humvees we parked in the threshold. As soon as they hit the oil slick, they stumble and fall.
They begin to pile up.
But they keep coming.
“We have to go,” Maria says. “There’s too many.”
Ben shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“You’re crazy! You’re going to get us killed.”
Ben ignores Maria. He takes out a dirty oil soaked rag from his pocket.
He unscrews the lid of the last jerry can, the last container of fuel. He jams the rag into the opening. “Anyone got a light?”
With the exception of the Evo Agents, who still have their guns aimed at the infected, we all look at Ben like he’s lost his goddamn mind.
“No?” he says. “No one? Fine.”
He takes out a flare and ignites it. The flare is so bright we have to look away.
He holds the flare near the rag and the rag catches on fire. The fuse has been lit. He winds up and throws the jerry can, the make shift bomb, into the pile of infected. The jerry can disappears into the crowd of the undead, into a massive pile of infected people.
The jerry can is swallowed.
No explosion.
No fire.
“It didn’t work!” Maria says.
The Evo Agents open fire, taking out the nearest infected.
The infected have turned black. They are covered in oil and fuel.
“We’re screwed,” Kim says, agreeing with Maria. “We have to go.”
Ben remains calm. He is watching. Waiting. “Give it a few seconds.”
And as soon as he finishes speaking, the jerry can erupts. The pile of infected are launched into the air. Pieces of people, of corpses, of flesh that is dead yet living, is thrown and scattered all over the room.
The flames begin to spread quickly.
Ben throws the flare on the ground and the trail of fuel he laid earlier catches on fire.
The flame races along.
The rest of the fuel ignites, and then the oil ignites. The room begins to fill with bright orange flames and thick black smoke.
The infected are burning. But they are still coming.
The Evo Agents take out a few more. Expert head shots.
More strategically place canisters of fuel explode, taking out more infected. These are the jerry cans that Ben had placed around the room earlier. He had done this throughout the night. He had been planning ahead.
“Switching to incendiary,” Parker says.
“Copy that,” Scott replies.
Both of them change the magazines in their rifles. And now each shot looks like a bright red laser beam, streaking into the infected, into the hangar.
“What the hell?” I ask.
“Tracer rounds,” Kenji explains.
The Evo Agents aim for the remaining jerry cans. Each shot, each direct hit is a mini-explosion that takes out the infected in the immediate vicinity. But still more infected come. And more. They continue climbing out of the tunnel, they continue climbing over and through the Humvees, climbing through the oil and the flames and the smoke.
There is a lot more than any of us thought there would be.
It’s an entire horde.
It’s an army.
They climb and crawl right into the flames. They don’t stop. They don’t feel pain. Fire does not scare them and it does not kill them. At least not right away. Eventually the flames intensify and some of the infected begin to cook. They begin to split open and burst like sausages on an open grill. The heat becomes too much to bare for us, and the smoke is getting thicker and thicker. It is turning into a dark cloud of death that we will need to avoid and outrun.
“Let’s go,” Daniel says. “Into the Humvee.”
Ben and the Evo agents cram themselves into the car with the rest of us.
Daniel jumps back into the Driver’s seat.
I look out the rear windshield as we speed off. The infected are still coming, they are still crawling through the flames and the smoke. And they will eventually climb into the western tunnel. But we have slowed them down. Ben’s plan has worked.
Once again, we have bought ourselves some time, and once again, I am reminded that maybe buying time is all we are really doing.
Are we just delaying the inevitable?
We run from one room to the next.
Lock a door.
Buy some time.
We catch our breath.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Buying time to outrun death. Is that all we are doing?
We know they will not stop. So how the hell do you outrun something that doesn’t stop? How do you beat something, outrun something that is relentless? How do you outrun something that is alive, yet dead, something immortal, something that has all the time in the universe to find us, eat us, and infect us?
To them, time is irrelevant. So what’s the point of buying time? What’s the point in running?
I shake my head as the Humvee speeds off into the dark. I don’t know the answers to these questions.
We drive deeper into the fortress, away from the exit.
No escape.
And I’m shaking my head.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to live like this.
But I don’t want to die either. The fear of death is strong. It is a powerful force.
So we keep running.
We keep buying time.
Because we have no choice.
Because we want to survive.
Because we want to live.
Because we want a future.
Because we do not want to die.
Chapter 9
“Let’s go,” Kim says, sitting forward, leaning over Daniel’s shoulder. “Step on it.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Daniel answers.
Daniel has maneuvered the Humvee so we are actually driving over the train tracks. And because the tracks are bigger, wider and deeper than normal train tracks, because they are designed for super-fast trains, he can’t actually drive that fast. One wrong move and the Humvee could become wedged or completely stuck. So he drives as fast as he dares. Which to be honest, feels nowhere near fast enough.
Kenji is riding shotgun.
Jack, Kim and Maria are behind them.
And even further back, in the very back of the Humvee, where there are no seats, are the rest of us.
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.
“So what’s the plan now?” I ask Daniel. “You guys are the experts. So 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.”