by James Harden
“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 was at this point. 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 of 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.
“This tunnel,” he says, pointing to the barricaded tunnel. “Leads to the residential sector. And the clear tunnel leads to the western Vehicle Access Point.”
“Yeah, we get that,” Jack says. “But the airborne strain, the infected. We should avoid the residential sector at all costs, right?”
No one answers him.
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br /> We are all staring at the map in the dirt.
Ben looks up at the wall of wooden pallets. “Why would someone build this?” he says to himself. “Who would build this?”
“What do you mean?” Kenji asks.
“It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Ben can’t figure it out. And I can’t either.
Why the hell would anyone make a barricade with a built in pathway?
“You think someone is trying to protect themselves?” I ask.
“But I thought it was overrun,” Jack repeats.
“Maybe not all of it,” Ben says.
I remind myself that Ben lived down here for a couple of months. He would know the residential sector better than most. If there were any safe places, any hiding places, any secret passages, he would know.
Maybe Ben could guide us through safely.
“To survive in the residential sector,” Ben says. “You would need to be well protected. You would need to be well hidden. You would need gas masks and plenty of air filters. You would need to be quiet. And you would need to be smart.”
He is shaking his head, looking at the barricade. He can’t figure it out.
“This doesn’t concern us,” Daniel says. “It’s not worth it. We’re not prepared to go in there. None of you are.”
“Plus, if someone is this determined to keep people out,” Kim says. “Then we should keep the hell out.”
“But what if there’s no rescue,” Jack says. “What if we get to the other Vehicle Access Point and there’s no rescue or we have to wait, for like, weeks.”
“What are you saying?” Maria asks. “They wouldn’t just leave us here.” She looks at Daniel. “Would they?”
“No,” Daniel answers. “They are coming back for us. We are getting out of here. Trust me.”
“But if something happens,” Jack continues. “If something goes wrong. I mean, we’re already low on food. We have almost no water. We might have to come back here and search for supplies. We might have to risk it.”
“Jack is right,” Kenji says. “We should plan ahead. For the worst case scenario.”
The worst case scenario being that we won’t be rescued. That we will be trapped down here. For weeks. Months.
I shake my head. I don’t want to even think about that scenario.