A World on Fire: Secret Apocalypse Book 6 (Secret Apocalypse Series)

by James Harden

“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.

  Denial.

  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 questioning 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. She opens it 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 says 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 d
on’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, 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 told 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 been 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. 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 the 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 is not 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.

  I will share his fate.

  I don’t mind.

  We walk past the door with
the red X.

  Subway Station - Commercial Sector 1.

  And I don’t know about the others, but personally, I am holding my breath as we walk past.

  We eventually make it to Commercial Sector 2. This is the one and only safe subway station in this entire sector. Smoke continues to fill the tunnels and this whole area. It slithers across the roof, snaking its way into every crack, every hidden room and every secret pathway. We move through the subway station, making our way to the stairs that lead up to the shopping mall.

  “Get your gas masks ready,” Sarah says. “We might need to put them on in a hurry.”

  “Hold up,” Daniel whispers. “Let me just study these maps.”

  The maps he is referring to are the maps of the subway and the layout of the commercial areas.

  The shopping district.

  The entertainment district.

  The food district.

  “There’s no time for that,” Sarah says. “We need to go now. You have to trust me. I know the way.”

  Daniel holds his hand up. “Just a few seconds.”

  He is scanning the maps. His eyes are darting from side to side. I guess he is just confirming that this map displayed here, is the same one he studied before he came down into the Fortress.

  Sarah shakes her head. “You want me to trust you guys, right? That you can get me above ground? That there’s a rescue waiting for us at the Vehicle Access Point? That there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well guess what? I’m you’re one chance of getting to that pot of gold. And it’s a two way street. So right now, you need to trust me. If we spend any more time here, the infected will break through those doors. They’ll break through and they’ll find us. Jack can’t run. He won’t survive.”

  Jack looks over his shoulder, back the way we came. We can still hear the faint sounds of the infected, echoing through the maintenance passageway. The banging of fists and skulls on wooden doors. The howling screams.

  He looks up at the smoke slithering across the ceiling.

  Daniel nods his head along even though he is still studying the map. “OK, I’ve got it. We move through here, right?”

  He points to the map.

  “Yeah,” Sarah says. “Sort of. We have to take a slight detour. Like I said, you need to trust me and you need to follow me. And we need to go. Right now. Come on.”