by James Harden
TORN APART
Book 4 in the Secret Apocalypse series
By James Harden
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by James Harden
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author.
Fear
I am alone. I have been separated from Maria. From everyone. I am blindfolded and my hands are tied behind my back.
I am in a room. I think.
I’m not sure. I don’t really know where I am.
But I know it is Hell. A place of suffering.
Someone pushes me into a chair. They free my hands, cutting my ties with a knife.
My arms hang at my side and I slowly roll my shoulders, moving the pain and stiffness away.
I reach forward. I am sitting at a table. The ground under my feet is smooth concrete. I am about to remove the black hood over my head. But I am stopped.
A voice speaks. A man. His voice sounds weird. “Do not move. Do. Not.”
I freeze.
“Give me your hand.”
“No.”
“It was not a question.”
He grabs my wrist. Yanks it forward. Slams my hand on the table. “What would you do if you had a day to live? What would you do if you had two days to live? Three? Imagine your last day on earth. What would you do?”
“I… I don’t know.”
I say I don’t know because I genuinely don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. No one wants to think about it.
Death.
Life.
Mortality.
We know that one day we will die. We know that in a sense, we are all dying.
Living and dying.
But we don’t think about it. We can’t.
“When faced with death, some people get depressed,” he says. “A deep depression. They die this way. Feeling this way.”
I try and pull my wrist back. But I can’t. His grip is iron tight. His voice sounds like it is being altered.
“Have you heard of the five stages of grieving?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Denial,” he says. “Bargaining. Anger. Depression. Acceptance.”
Suddenly my arm is jabbed with a pin. Or a needle. The sharp pain shocks me and scares me. I instinctively try and pull my arm away. But I can’t. He is too strong.
I immediately feel weak. Lethargic and sleepy.
“Some people,” he continues. “Most people, never ever get to acceptance. They never reach this final stage.”
My eyes are heavy and getting heavier. “What’s your point? What did you just stick me with? What are you doing?”
“It is a sedative. It is for your own good.”
“Where is Maria?” I ask. “What have you done with her?”
He ignores my questions. “As you know, the military, the company, tried to cover up this disaster. They tried to keep the entire outbreak a secret. They tried to cover up the death toll. They cut off Australia and shut down communication networks. They isolated the entire country. Like it was sick. They kept the world in the dark. They kept the world in denial.”
“Who are you?”
“I am no one. I am nothing. You are the star. You told everyone the truth. You are the hero. And now everyone knows. Everyone. And now the whole world is looking for Maria Marsh.”
“Where is she? Where?”
Again, he ignores my question. “Do you know why they are looking for Maria?”
“Yes. Because she is immune. With her blood they can make an anti-virus. Stop the spread of infection. Stop the death toll.”
“No. You are wrong. The whole world is looking because the whole world is scared. They are afraid. Fear is what motivates them. They do not care if the death toll rises, as long as they are safe. As long as they are inoculated. Vaccinated. They do not care if the outbreak continues. As long as it does not continue near them. Fear is the reason they are looking for Maria.”
“Of course people are scared,” I say. “They should be scared.”
“Fear is like a spark. Fear will ignite a fire.”
I feel dizzy. I am struggling to process what he is saying. I am struggling to understand.
“The world has not seen the Oz virus,” he says. “Not like you and I have. No. They have been protected by their governments. They have been betrayed by their governments. But I will show them. I will show them the Oz virus. The mutations. I will show them Project Salvation. I will feed them fear. I will show them Maria. I will give them hope. And then I will take that hope away. I will destroy it right in front of their eyes.”
I am exhausted and weak, possibly hallucinating, possibly dying. It’s hard to focus. Hard to process what he just said. But as far as I could tell, he was going to execute Maria on camera. Record it for the world to see.
I cannot let that happen. I have to do something.
But what?
What the hell am I supposed to do?
“When I destroy hope,” he continues. “The world will no longer be in denial. They will finally accept their fate. They will be free.”
I am alone. I have been starved and tortured and broken. But I need to stop this madman. I need to save Maria.
We promised each other, at the start of our journey. We promised that we would protect Maria at all costs. Everything else came second. Including our own survival.
We promised.
And as I renew this promise to myself and as the sedative continues to work its magic and I slip in and out of consciousness, I realize I have two choices.
I can curl up into a ball and die.
Or I can live. I can fight. I can fight for Maria. I can fight for my friends.
I’m pretty sure I’m dying. But I choose to fight.
Chapter 1
Denial.
This is where I’m at. I’ve been in this stage for a while now. Months.
I was daydreaming. I had been doing this a lot lately. I dreamt I was sitting on a couch, in a therapist’s office. The person interviewing me and judging me was a Sigmund Freud inspired figment of my imagination.
I told him, “I’m in denial. I’ve been in denial for a long time. Our goal, our mission was to evacuate Maria. Save her. Because she is immune to the Oz virus. We failed. Our group has been torn apart. We have no idea where Kenji is. He just disappeared. Ben, the big guy who saved our lives has disappeared as well. Kim and Jack. We don’t know where they are either. There’s a chance Kim is now working with the military. We just don’t know. And Daniel? Daniel had become sick. Violently ill. We left him at his camp.”
The Sigmund Freud look alike scribbled something in a notepad.
“So now Maria and I are walking through the Australian outback,” I continued. “We are trying to find our friends. We have no idea where they are. We don’t even know if they are alive. We are following a set of tank tracks that we think might lead somewhere. But we really don’t know. We have hardly any water. Our food is all but gone.”
I looked at the therapist, waiting for some advice, waiting for some magical answer that would make me feel better about our current situation. But he didn’t say anything. He just shook his head and checked his watch.
Our time was up.
Maria handed me a bottle of water, snapping me out of my daydream, bringing me back to reality, back to the desert. It was night time. The moon hung low in the sky. The stars were bright.
/> “Lunch time,” she said. “Today we have hot water. A delicacy in some parts of the world.”
It was an attempt at humor.
We had been walking through the desert for three days now. We had been walking at night. Sleeping during the day. As a result, we had totally reversed our body clocks.
The section of desert we were walking through was largely featureless. It offered no shelter. There were no large rocks or caves, or dried up river beds. No trees, no shrubs. When we slept, we had to make our own shelter. We did this by digging ditches to sleep in. A ‘fox hole’ is what Kenji had once called them. The first one we had to dig with our hands and our shoes. We loosened the dirt with our shoes, and then dug the hole with our hands.
It was awful. And hard work. Especially since we had to dig the ditch deep enough so that one side would provide shade. In the middle of the day, when the sun shone directly down on us, we would just cover ourselves with a t-shirt. It was hot and uncomfortable but it was better than walking around in the heat. Walking around during the middle of the day was a one-way ticket to heat stroke and dehydration.
A deadly combination in the Australian desert.
Anyway, the second night, we found an abandoned car. It had broken down. It was out of fuel.
The good thing was, in the trunk, we found a small garden shovel.
After digging a ditch with your hands, digging a ditch with a shovel was an absolute luxury.
It’s the little victories, the little things that keep you going. We just had to ignore the fact that each time we dug a fox hole to sleep in; it felt like we were digging our own graves.
We had to stay positive.
“How’s your head?” Maria asked.
“It’s getting better. I think.”
I had suffered a pretty bad head wound back at the military outpost when we were attacked. Since then, I’d been getting headaches and I’d get dizzy and have trouble with my vision. Although it could’ve been worse. Luckily, I was able to bandage it up and it eventually stopped bleeding. I think it was finally starting to heal.
I had a few mouthfuls of water and handed the bottle back to Maria. She placed it inside her backpack.
And we kept walking.
The sky was beginning to gray. The sun was beginning to rise.
It was time to dig ourselves a bed.
“You know that saying?” Maria said.
“What saying?”
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s completely not true,” she said, pointing to the eastern horizon. “Look. If anything, the night is brightest just before dawn. The darkest part is the middle of the night.”
She had a point.
Because we were out in the open, and it was just the two of us, we took turns keeping watch while the other slept. We were each other’s guardians.
Maria still had the protection of the NBC suit. She complained constantly that it was too hot to wear. It was getting uncomfortable and annoying. But I made her wear it. The suit was bullet proof and bite proof. It was essential.
Although I eventually agreed to let her take it off in the middle of the day, since we’d be able to see any dangers coming from a distance.
But at night, or when she was asleep, she had to wear it.
Today, it was my turn to sleep first. But I had only slept for a few hours before Maria woke me up. She’d noticed it wasn't sunny.
The sky was covered in dense gray clouds.
It was the first cloudy day we had seen in weeks. We decided it would be best if we kept walking. It was a hard decision to make. We needed rest, but we also needed to cover ground.
Jack had once said, “Walking across the desert in the midst of a zombie apocalypse is not something to be taken lightly.”
He was so right.
Eventually we came to a crossroad. Sort of. The tank tracks we had been following branched off. One set continued north. One set headed west.
"What do you think?" Maria asked.
“Doesn't look like a tank,” I answered.
“What?”
“These tracks don't look like tank tracks. They're tire tracks. Like a jeep. Or a Humvee or something.”
“So?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Why do you think they turned off?” Maria asked.
“Don't know.”
I looked through the scope on our one and only rifle that Maria had taken from Daniel’s camp. I saw something on the horizon. Black. Elongated.
It could’ve been a building.
It could’ve been a mirage.
I pointed to the horizon. “There’s something out there.”
“Something?”
“A building. I think.”
“Out here?”
“Could be a mirage,” I said.
“You think they went to check it out?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“Should we check it out?”
“I think we should stay with the tank tracks.”
“Could be food. Water.”
“Might be something else,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don't see any tracks coming back.”
“But who knows how much further we have to walk,” Maria said. “We're running low on water. We can’t afford to pass this up.”
It was simple really. There might be water. There might be food. Or there might be death.
We had a choice to make. If we made the wrong choice, we would die.
“How far do you think that is?” Maria asked.
“A mile? Two?”
“Won't take long,” Maria said. “We go and check it out and come straight back.”
I nodded. “OK.”
“We can't afford to pass it up,” she repeated.
She was right.
Chapter 2
We had been walking about twenty miles a night, and to pass the time we had been playing a couple of games to lift our spirits and boost morale.
My favorite game was ‘Life BZ’. BZ stood for ‘Before Zombies’.
“OK, tell me something about Kenji,” Maria said.
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
I thought about it for a second. “Kenji went to Japan with his parents this one time when he was younger,” I said after awhile. “He told me that they went to an ‘all you can eat’ restaurant. A self-serve ‘all you can eat’ restaurant.”
“You mean like a buffet?” Maria said. “Like Sizzler?”
“Better. Each table had its own, built-in deep-fryer.”
“What? A deep-fryer?”
“Yeah.”
“Built into the table?”
“Yep.”
“Like, right in the table?”
“Yes.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
Maria was shaking her head. She didn’t believe me. “Like, with the hot oil and everything?”
“Yeah. So basically you would load up your plate with food. Anything from meat, chicken, fish, shrimp, vegetables. Whatever. Everything was on skewers. Then you would dip your food in egg yolk, and then bread crumbs. And then you would dip the skewer in the deep-fryer. Leave it in there for a minute or two, and voila. Your food would be deep fried to a perfect golden crisp.”
“Wow,” Maria said. “That sounds awesome. And kind of dangerous.”
“Yeah, no kidding. I don’t know how they make it work without people hurting themselves.”
“It’s like a major lawsuit waiting to happen,” Maria agreed.
“OK, your turn,” I said.
“I can’t. I’m still thinking about the deep-fryer in the table.”
“You have to. It’s your turn. And the thought of deep-fried food is making me hungry. Please talk about anything but food.”
“All right, let me think,”
She paused, trying to think of something. “OK, I got one.”
; “Lay it on me.”
“I remember Jack’s first ever surfing tournament. It was a couple of years ago now. This guy dropped in on his wave. Stole Jack’s wave. Which is against the rules. The guy was penalized and deducted points and everything. But that wasn’t enough for Jack. He swam over to the guy and punched him in the head. Nearly knocked him out. Of course, then Jack was disqualified from the tournament. But he didn’t care. He was there for the waves. For the love of it. And that guy stole his wave, a really, really good wave. That’s all that Jack cared about.”
Maria trailed off lost in her own thoughts. She was smiling.
“He apologized to me the next day,” she continued. “He swore that he wasn’t normally a violent person. But I didn’t care. He’s just so damn passionate, you know?”
I nodded. This is why Jack had run off into the desert to find his sister. He wasn’t thinking about his own safety. I don’t think he ever did. He was thinking with his heart. Screw the danger.
Maria was about to say something else but she stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
She pointed to the overcast sky, to birds circling off in the distance. Vultures maybe. Or eagles.
“What the hell are those?” Maria asked.
I looked closer and realized they weren’t birds.
“They’re aircraft,” I said. “Predator drones.”
“Like the one from the airport?” Maria said.
“Yeah. I guess this means we’re on the right track.”
“Should we hide from it?”
“Where would we hide?”
We looked around lazily. We were both so weak. There was nowhere to hide.
“I guess we could dig a hole to hide in,” I said. “Cover ourselves in dirt?”
This was our only option. But at that moment, we both knew there was no point in digging a hole and hiding from the drone. The drone had already seen us. So there was nothing to do but keep walking and just hope and pray that the damn thing wasn’t armed with missiles, and that it wasn’t going to blow us up.
We kept walking at a brisk pace, keeping one eye on the tire tracks and one eye on the sky. But the closer we got to the building, the more cautious we became. It appeared to be a barn of some sort. We crouched down to study the building and see if it was safe.