Tunnels and Planes

by Christina Rozelle

  Logan and Syd emerge from the cage, and Logan races toward me, gathering me up in his arms. Syd joins the group hug amidst the madness, then Jade, sobbing.

  “We thought you were dead,” Logan says, unsheathing the twin katana.

  “Not yet,” I say. “How’d you find that?”

  “Remember that fucker, Danny, who took our shit when we came in?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s him.” He points to the headless guard. “He had them both, swinging them around like a fucking madman.”

  “Did . . . you do that?” I ask.

  “Yep. After he’d turned. But then there were too many of them, so we jumped in the cage. Can you take us to the dorms?” he asks Kelly. “Then get us the fuck out of here?”

  “I’ll do my best. Follow me.” And she heads off toward the Cross again. “Mando, cover us.”

  “Got it.” And he takes our rear, sweeping the area with what looks like an old-school M60 E6 machine gun.

  “What happened to you?” Logan asks me as we take off after Kelly.

  “She’s very sick,” Jade answers for me. “I’ll explain when we get to safety, papi.”

  Murray lags behind us, as exhausted as I am, so I let Logan and Jade support my weight.

  “Take . . . the katana,” I tell Syd. “I . . . can’t.”

  “I got you.” She takes it from my hand and holds it at ready as we head down the ramp behind Kelly.

  Logan doesn’t know about Missy. It’s why he wants to go to the dorms. But I can’t tell him—not now. We need to go there anyway. We need to save those little girls. And I don’t have it in me to say those words to him yet—she’s gone.

  Thirty-Four

  Murray struggles to keep up as we enter the Cross, and I keep losing sight of him. My vision blurs in and out, my ears ring, and my head pounds. My heart thumps slow, winding down to null, as I approach the threshold, the jumping off point from this life to the next.

  “Two thousand,” Kelly says, then fires, taking two shirts and two skins out ahead of us. “Whoever opened those doors just let two thousand of those things loose in the Tunnels.”

  Behind us, Mando sprays bullets into a horde entering from one of the opened sector archways.

  “That’s the Lair,” Logan says. “Where I was staying. Fuck, how’d they get there?”

  “Whoever did this opened every door they could.” Kelly glances at me as we pass beneath the jumbotron. “Are you okay?”

  “Have to . . . get out . . . to Gideon.”

  She nods and picks up her pace, inserting another mag into her M16. “They’ll keep filtering in here from Lab floor four, but most of them are trapped on the lower floors, thank goodness. Our main worries now are the ones that turn.”

  “I’ll cover the entrance,” Mando tells Kelly once we get to the archway leading back to the dorms.

  “Thanks, Mando.” She taps his shoulder and he tips his beret.

  The five of us turn down the corridor to the dorms, Murray still lagging behind, and now my feet have decided to reject any further movement. Logan and Jade carry me between them as we pass the dorm entrance desk, to a corridor littered with parts and pieces. Up ahead, Peggy comes toward us, glasses bouncing on their gold chain as she runs.

  “Peggy, stop!” Kelly raises her weapon. “I said stop!”

  But she doesn’t, and when she gets closer, and her intestines hang from a gaping hole in her blouse, Kelly fires into her freshly manicured ringlets, splattering blood and brains on the wall behind her.

  When we get to dorm A, Logan and Jade prop me against the wall, breathing heavily, while Syd keeps watch a few feet away, katana raised. Kelly scans herself, and the door opens to an empty room.

  “Where are they?” Logan demands.

  “I don’t know,” Kelly says. “Let’s check the next one. I bet they’re all together, wherever they are.”

  The throbbing in my broken feet reminds me of my shoes in dorm B. There’s no way I’m leaving here without them. When Kelly opens the door to find it empty as well, I tug at Logan’s sleeve, show him my wounded, dirty, and bloody feet. “My . . . shoes.”

  “Where?”

  “Locker twelve.”

  He races in as Kelly moves down the hall to the next door. A minute later, Logan appears beside me, red-faced, my shoes and our clothes under one arm, gripping Missy’s abandoned bear in his fist. “Where is she?”

  But the words won’t form right beneath the sickness, nor do I have the strength to support their weight. Logan speeds ahead behind Kelly, and Jade and Syd take me under the arms, waiting for word of Kelly’s findings from the last two doors.

  “Empty,” she says, then she draws her weapon, firing three times at approaching predators behind us. She points to the playroom door, crosses the hall to it, and scans herself.

  When the door slides open, and we find Sheryl-Dean with fifty-something little girls, relief comes, but along with it, my body takes a turn for the worse, and I drop to my knees.

  “Grace, oh my God!” She hurries to me with one of the twins on her hip. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

  “We have to . . . take them,” I say. “Kelly . . . is helping us escape. Please, Sheryl-Dean. You can . . . come with us.”

  She frowns, glancing back at “her” girls. “The babies will die out there—”

  “They’ll die in here.”

  “But out there, they could get everyone else killed, too. You know, with the . . . crying.” She gives Smiles—or Sunshine, I can’t tell them apart—a kiss on the temple. “Take the rest. Go now.” She weeps, because she’s come to the same conclusion we all have—they’ll probably die out there, but at least they have a chance. More importantly, they’ll be free.

  “What about . . . the boys?” I pant.

  Sheryl-Dean gazes into her hands. “The boy’s dorms are . . .” She cringes, wipes her eyes. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way to get to them.”

  “We gotta move.” Logan barges into the room. “If we don’t soon, we won’t be saving fucking anybody today. Where’s Missy? Missy! I have your bear, sweetheart.” Logan glances from girl to girl. “Where’s Missy? Where the fuck is Missy!”

  “She’s . . . gone,” I say. “They took her.” I stumble, but Syd slides a hand around my waist.

  “I gotcha,” she says.

  “Who took her?” Logan asks.

  Jade slips my shoes out from under his arm and kneels to put them on my feet.

  “But I’m not sure . . . She might . . . still be here . . . somewhere—”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” he yells, panic in his voice.

  “I’ll stay,” Sheryl-Dean says. “I’ll stay with the babies, and I’ll watch for her. You go. Take them. Save them.” She bawls, because she knows what it means. She won’t be seeing any of us again.

  “I know . . . where she is . . . if she got out,” I reassure Logan, but it doesn’t appease the obvious fiery guilt, and burden of responsibility he and I both share.

  “Y-you do? What th—?”

  “I’ll . . . explain . . . after we get out.”

  At the dorm entrance, Mando fires his machine gun, then it stops, and there’s a few seconds of silence before he fires again.

  “Okay, come on, girls!” Jade hurries to finish tying my left shoe, then she claps. “Follow us now, big girls help the little ones and let’s get the fuck out of this shithole. Our friend Kelly’s gonna help us.”

  Too terrified to show signs of excitement, the girls grab hold of one another and head toward the door. I wave goodbye to Smiles—or Sunshine—and my heart splinters, but I know there’s no other way. But when I spot the scared little redhead in the corner, there’s a jab in my heart. I see her mother’s face, the pleading of her eyes when she begged me to help her. Maybe she’s there, too, with Missy
.

  “I have to . . . take her.” I point to the girl. “Her mother . . . might be where Missy is. Jade, grab her.”

  “Uh—okay, momacita.” And she crosses the room to snatch the little girl from the ground.

  “Are you sure?” Sheryl-Dean asks me.

  “No. But . . . I have to try.”

  There’s the urge to vomit, but I hold it, stumbling down the hallway as far away from them as I can, until I’m rendered helpless by the contractions of my stomach. I hold a hand out to whoever’s running to my aid, telling them to stay back, as I dry heave. Better safe than sorry.

  “Time to leave, kiddo.” Murray struggles to help me to my feet. I feel his fatigue in my soul, but also, his strength. He won’t quit—not until I’m safe. I know that now. He helps me over to the others, where Syd re-sheathes the katana to support my weight.

  “Gotcha,” Syd says as Murray hands me off to her. He shrinks away from the group to lean against the opposite wall, removing his snowcap to wipe the perspiration from his brow. My vision blurs, the room spins, and I close my eyelids for a moment to make it stop.

  “Here, take this,” Sheryl-Dean says. “Supplies.”

  I open my eyes again as she hands Logan a full trash bag. “Food, water, medicine, necessities—it ain’t much, but it’ll get ya through a day or so with ’em.”

  “Thank you.” He swings the bag over his shoulder, then motions to Syd. “Jade’s got the baby, so we gotta help Grace.”

  “I’m not leaving her side,” Syd says.

  Logan makes it to my left, sheathing his katana to shoulder the trash bag. They struggle with my dead weight, but I’m spent. Black dots sweep across my vision, as shots from Mando’s firearm ring out in the corridor again, but the sound is cut off abruptly, replaced by bloodcurdling cries, and pleads in Spanish.

  “We have to go.” Kelly raises her weapon and fires three shots down the hallway. “They took Mando.”

  The little girls scream and cry, huddling against the wall.

  “I’ll see you . . . again,” I tell Sheryl-Dean.

  She kisses my forehead. “You’re a strong woman, Grace. I’ll never forget you, even if I do survive this. Now go. Save those girls.”

  Thirty-Five

  Logan stuffs Missy’s bear and our clothes into the trash bag, then drapes my left arm over his shoulder again. We start down the corridor behind the herd of girls, and Jade, with the little redhead on her hip. Kelly takes us through the emergency exit near the fire extinguisher, and through a series of narrow passageways that all look identical and always end in more stairs. In the walls around us, echoing through the water pipes are the sounds of screaming and rapid fire, all becoming a hum behind the droning in my head. But the alarm sound is muted now, at least.

  Things begin to flutter like snapshots as I drift in and out of consciousness, and for a moment, I lose sight of Murray in one of the stairwells.

  “I’m here.” He says from somewhere behind me.

  “I’m . . . dying,” I tell him.

  “No, you’re fucking not,” Logan says, struggling to catch his breath. “You can’t.”

  “I’m . . . infected,” I whisper in his ear.

  He whips his head around. “What?”

  “They . . . injected . . . Mindset. Said . . . I might be . . . immune.”

  The hallways turn sideways with a rush of warmth, and I stumble into Logan, making Syd stumble, too.

  “What the fuck are you saying, Grace?” he asks.

  But I’ve lost the ability to speak, willing myself not to black out.

  “We’re here,” Kelly says ahead of us. “Logan, where are you?”

  “Right here.”

  He and Syd carry me through the group in the tight space, up the last few stairs to Kelly, standing in front of an opened door marked “ML.” She jingles something in the air, then drops it into Logan’s hand.

  “I thought they burned it?” he says.

  “They lied. Go out door D and all the way up. It’ll take about ten minutes if you go fast, but be careful on those turns in the narrow space. By the time you get up there . . . I will have hopefully made it to the hatch controls for up top.” She gives me a hug. “I don’t know what happened, but I hope you pull through it, Grace. And I think you will—you’re a strong girl. Say hi to Missy and Gideon for me when you find them. Oh—and give Buddy a good scratch for me, too. He’s still waiting for you up there.”

  Logan hugs her neck. “Thank you.”

  “You bet.”

  “What . . . about you?” My head spins when I try to speak, and I can’t tell if my words are even audible.

  “I have to stay,” she says. “There are still innocent civilians inside.”

  “Thank you so much . . . for everything.”

  “Of course, Grace. Go find Gideon.”

  §

  On the other side of the doorway is an enormous garage, where black SUVs and white vans are parked sporadically. When our van comes into view, something like home rejuvenates my spirit. We have a way out when we thought there was none. Miracles abound. Maybe I will make it out of this alive.

  Logan opens the passenger side door, and he and Syd lift me to the seat inside. I curl up, fetus-style, while Logan goes to help load the children on.

  “I’ll be right back,” Syd says. “Promise.”

  I try to answer her, but all I can muster is a nod and a full-body shiver before she closes the door beside me.

  “Clear out most of those supplies!” Logan yells. “That’s the only way they’ll all fit!”

  They open the back of the van, and an orange beam of light paints the dashboard, then Logan curses. “Never mind, it’s fucking empty. Of course it is.”

  The van sways from the surge of bodies, and there’s shuffling around as girls are loaded on. Then, there’s sniffling behind my seat. In less than a minute Jade and Syd are climbing over me to the middle of the seat, with baby red in tow, and Logan’s jumping in the front, keys in the ignition before he closes the door.

  “Hang on, girls!” He throws it in reverse and peels out into the garage. “This might get crazy.”

  Through the blur in my vision, I make out a row of rolling metal doors with stenciled yellow numbers above each of them. The door below the yellow “D” is rolled up, revealing a ramp that ascends at an alarming angle.

  “Like I said!” Logan announces. “This shit is steep as fuck, so don’t sit against that back door! Everyone line the walls and face the center. Use your hands and feet to keep yourself from sliding, otherwise people will get crushed back there.”

  “I’m scared, Grace!” a little girl says. Cholita, I think.

  “It’ll be okay . . . sweetheart.” But the words are a breath in the storm inside me, and I feel myself drifting further and further from life as we start our climb, little girls squealing in the back. Ironic, that I’m spiraling toward certain death as we ascend the winding exit to freedom. I hope I survive long enough to tell them where to find Missy and to see them get their chance at life.

  Don’t go . . .

  Missy’s words inside my head, a whispered wish for life, for the strength to defeat the impossible.

  “I’m trying . . . to stay,” I murmur. “I’m trying . . .”

  §

  When we reach the surface, the stars shine in an open sky above the looming silo. Kelly did it. We did it. We made it out alive. Only now do I realize we’re missing someone.

  “We left him,” I mumble, trying to sit up.

  “Who does she keep talking to?” Syd rubs my arm, then smoothes my hair back from my face.

  “She’s delirious,” Logan says. “She said she was infected, but I don’t see any bites on her. Mumbled something about possibly being immune.”

  “No shit.” Jade gasps. “Oh my God, that’s why . . .�
�

  The van jerks to a stop, and Logan ejects from the driver’s seat without notice. In seconds, there’s the patter of feet, then a panting in my ear, followed by a lick to the cheek. I manage to form a half-smile, because at least we’ve got our Buddy again.

  “If she says she’s infected,” Jade says when Logan starts to drive again, “then that’s a great possibility.”

  “What? How?” Logan scoffs. “And how do you know?”

  “I . . . lied. I wasn’t really a waitress. I volunteered in sector five.”

  “Sector five? I thought there were only four?”

  “It’s unauthorized to most civilians. Clearance level orange.”

  “Oh, yeah? What is it? And how the fuck did you manage to score clearance?”

  “Sector five is the Labs. I majored in bioengineering. Not many of us around anymore, so . . . they settled for a she-male.”

  “She-m—? Hm, no shit? Coulda fooled me.”

  “Thanks, hot stuff,” she says in her flirty way, and I imagine her winking at him.

  “But no, sorry,” Logan says. “I’m a strict vagitarian, as some people around here would say.”

  Syd chuckles.

  “So, what’s in the Labs?” Logan asks. “What do they do there? And why the hell were most of those dead fucks naked? Just when you think shit couldn’t get any more goddamned disturbing,” he mumbles.

  “The test subjects were always stripped before they went in for testing and observation,” Jade says. “Many reasons, but mainly because their clothing and possessions could be reused. There’s . . . a lot of things going on down there most people don’t know about, okay? A lot of twisted shit, a lot of twisted folks. So, we gotta get somewhere, and fast, and wait it out with her. But if she turns . . .”

  “What do you mean ‘if she turns’?” The fear in his voice matches my own inner pleading for life. “I still don’t get how she could’ve gotten infected! And test subjects? You mean they were turning these fucks on purpose?”