by James Harden
The man in the gas mask said. “The nano-bots will eat you from the inside. There is no stopping it.”
The watch currently reads: sixty-two hours and ten minutes.
So I need to get moving. I need to get out of this room. I need to find my friends.
Maria.
Jack.
Kenji.
Kim.
Big Ben.
I know they are down here somewhere. I know they are because I choose to believe they are.
And I choose to believe they are still alive.
So I need to get moving.
But right now I am curled up in the fetal position and I am suffocating.
Come on, Rebecca. Move!
There is only one door to this room. I actually don’t know if it is locked. I hope it’s not. I don’t have the strength to kick it down.
There is a giant one way mirror situated on one of the walls. I suppose I could break the glass. But I have no idea who or what is on the other side. The noise of breaking glass would also be bad.
I’m not entirely sure, but I think this section of the Fortress is now completely overrun with infected people. Noise attracts them. Like a lightning rod. A magnet. Life attracts them. My heartbeat. The electrical impulses that my brain and my body produce.
This is how sharks hunt.
They sense electrical impulses in the water.
This information is swirling around in my head. I don’t know why. It is long forgotten and fairly useless trivia I learnt during ‘shark week’ one year.
I need to get it together. I need to focus.
Come on, Rebecca. Focus!
But it is hard to focus. It is hard because I am terrified. I am starting to realize that I have stumbled into hell. Willingly. And down here there are all manner of demons and killers. Butchers and torturers. Maniacs and psychopaths.
Yes.
This is hell.
And this small realization begs me to ask the question: Am I already dead? Have I died and descended to hell for the sins I have committed?
But what sins have I committed?
Let’s recap.
I stole a ‘My Little Pony’ from Wal-Mart once. Her name was Cotton Candy. She came with a special accessory. A special limited edition brush that you could use to brush her mane and tail with. I just had to have it.
So I stole it.
And then I stole a GI JOE action figure with special Kung Fu grip to protect Cotton Candy from poachers and evil businessmen who worked at the dog food factory and the glue factory.
I realize this is stupid
And after I smuggled the toys home without anyone at the store finding out, without my mother finding out, I felt so bad and so guilty that I couldn’t even play with the toys anyway.
Cotton Candy would look at me with those big beautiful eyes, judging me. It’s as if she was saying, “You don’t deserve to brush my beautiful pink mane.”
GI JOE would look at me and say, “Real American Heroes do not steal.”
And who cares about toys? God?
No.
God does not care about toys.
God does not care about the trivial.
God does not care about My Little Pony.
So what sins have I committed? Why am I being punished? Why would God punish me?
For death I have caused.
For murder.
I killed a man. An old fisherman with a messy, grey beard. But he deserved to die, didn’t he? He was crazy, wasn’t he?
Yes. He was a butcher. A cannibal. He deserved to die and I did the right thing. I will defend my actions. To my last breath.
But maybe I have already taken my last breath.
Again, the question is begging to be asked.
Begging.
Am I already dead?
Is this hell?
Where is the devil? Where is Lucifer? I need to speak to that crazy son of a bitch. I need him to send me back. I’ve got things to do.
I need to find my friends.
I need to get them to safety.
I need to save Maria Marsh.
I need to kill the man in the gas mask and anyone else who gets in my way.
There is a whole list of things I need to do before I die.
Before I die in exactly sixty-two hours and seven minutes.
I can hear a noise.
It’s this weird beeping noise. A reminder.
An alarm.
My watch beeps every hour. On the hour.
I now have sixty-two hours left.
Seven minutes just disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Time does not exist in hell, in the afterlife.
Heaven. Hell. Purgatory.
Eternity.
Darkness again.
And then light.
Asleep.
Awake.
Conscious.
Unconscious.
Eight more hours pass and I keep having this dream. I had it just then. You know the dream. You’ve had it before. Everyone has.
You’re giving a speech.
You’re giving a presentation.
You’re taking a test.
An exam.
All of a sudden you’re not wearing any pants. All of a sudden you’re naked. In public. Everyone sees. Everyone stares.
This is a dream about fear. The fear of failure.
This is a dream about not being prepared.
And I’ve been having this dream a lot lately. It’s funny how our sub-conscious can articulate our fears so clearly. So concisely. So accurately.
For example, when I was fifteen, I had this part time job back in Brooklyn at a fast-food joint. You know the one. I only worked there for a few months, and I don’t know if it was the worst job in the world, but it sure felt like it. The store manager was an absolute jerk.
Anyway, I gave my notice. I quit.
The manager was shocked. “Is everything all right?” he asked. “We were just about to give you a pay rise. A promotion. More responsibility. It would look great on your resume for future employment prospects.”
I said, “Nothing’s wrong. I have so much school work.”
I lied.
It was a white lie to save face. I just wanted out.
The manager said he understood. But he’d keep my details on file just in case I needed extra cash or if they needed someone to work in an emergency. Like if they had an employee shortage or whatever. I thought nothing of it. Anyway, a couple of months later he sends me a text. He doesn’t even call; he just sends me a text.
“Can you work on Friday?”
I had a dream that night.
Not a dream. A nightmare.
I dreamt I was a prostitute. It was my first time. My first night. My boss, the manager, the pimp, was encouraging me to do it. I needed the money, right? There’s nothing wrong with it.
I woke up in a cold sweat.
My subconscious had articulated how I felt, how I felt whole heartedly about working that job. Working for no other reason than to get paid.
I shake my head. Those problems feel so old world. They feel like they were from another lifetime. I would gladly go back to work, flipping burgers and working the deep-fryer. I would gladly go back to a shitty after-school job with shitty pay.
“Hi, may I take your order? Would you like to upsize?”
This sounds like a kind of heaven right now. A kind of paradise. Hell, I’m getting teary-eyed just thinking about it.
But I no longer have the luxury of choosing not to work a part-time job.
This is my life now:
Running.
Fighting.
Killing.
Hiding.
Food
Water.
Surviving.
And I am not prepared. I am not ready. This is my final test. And I forgot to study.
I forgot my pants.
I am struggling to survive.
It always came down to food and water. We were always so hungry. S
o thirsty. Me. My friends. The little group we had formed. We were basically a small unit of soldiers. We had to be. It was the only way we were ever going to make it. A ‘fire team’ is what Kenji called us. And we were pretty awesome.
But not anymore.
So my life is this: I need to find them. I need to find them because I have no idea where the hell they are, and I have nothing else to do and nothing else to lose.
And I need my friends.
My friends are all that I have left in this life.
I have no idea if they’re dead or alive, but I choose to believe that they are alive because the other scenario is completely not good. The other scenario would probably cause me to shut down.
So my dreams are no longer about whether or not I’m ‘selling out’.
This is my dream. The dream I just had.
I’m giving a speech. I’m trying to make a case. An argument. I’m trying to persuade people, someone. Someone important that my friends deserve to live.
Suddenly I’m naked.
I’m afraid of failing.
My friends are tied up. They are standing on the gallows. Noose around their necks. Black hessian sack over their heads.
The hangman is there, but I’m not talking to him. He’s just following orders. He’s just a soldier. He’s just a pawn.
There is someone else. The mastermind. The man in control. I need to convince him.
And I’m failing. I am not prepared for this.
The hangman pulls the lever. My friends are hanged. I hear neck bones and vertebrae snap.
I hear choking noises.
And then I hear the rope creaking against the wooden gallows.
And then I hear silence.
And then I’m awake.
And I realize I am not dreaming.
I realize that…
This.
Is.
Real.
And I am in pain. And the pain is freaking excruciating. And the pain is real.
I am disorientated and confused and I’m thinking way too much. And my thoughts are real and terrifying. And dead people don’t think like this, do they?
No. There’s no way.
My watch beeps three times.
And I can’t believe how hard I am breathing. How hard my head is throbbing.
The watch says fifty-three hours and fifty nine minutes. And the clock is ticking and I need to get a move on.
I re-read the message that the man in the gas mask left for me.
He wrote it on a piece of paper that Kenji had folded into an origami crane.
The whole world will look
for a girl to save their souls.
They will watch hope die.
This is a powerful message. It tells me what the man in the gas mask plans to do.
He is going to kill Maria on camera. He is going to record it and broadcast it and show the world.
He is going to terrify everyone across the globe.
He says he wants to set them free.
He says this because he is insane. He says this because he is a mass-murdering psychopath.
I am lying on my back and I scrunch up the piece of paper and throw it into the corner of the room.
And I want to get up. But I can’t.
So I close my eyes.
And more time disappears forever.
But then there’s a thump at the door. The scratching of fingernails.
And maybe this is the motivation I needed.
The infected are banging on the door. They know I am here. They are coming for me.
And I tell myself, I am ready to die.
I tell myself I am ready for hell.
I am ready for the fight.
“I am ready.”
Let’s do this.
Chapter 1
The wooden door begins to splinter.
And I can’t help but wonder, “How the hell do they know I’m here?”
The Oz virus is designed to find life.
Find life and destroy it. Consume it.
Feed.
Spread.
Repeat.
The watch beeps. It beeps on the hour, every hour. I have less than fifty-four hours, less than three days left and the door is beginning to splinter. The lock is beginning to break. The handle is coming loose.
Carved into the door is another message.
Another haiku of horror.
So how will you live,
when you have three days to die?
The gods do not hear.
I ignore the message left by the man in the gas mask. I ignore his scare tactics and I finally get to my feet. I jam the table against the door. It’s the only thing I can do to stop the infected from barging in here and tearing me limb from limb and eating me alive.
The door and the lock and the handle continue to break. Bit by bit. The door is now open a crack. And now they can see me. They moan louder. They growl and snap their jaws.
They will eventually break through. I don’t have the energy to keep them out for much longer.
I quickly scan the room. My brain is slow and sluggish and I can barely think and I have no idea how I am going to get out of this room. This concrete box. This prison.
The mirror.
It is not made of concrete. It is made of glass.
I can break the glass.
This is my brain on sedatives. Stupid. Slow. Sluggish. But I realize I only have one option. I need to break the mirror and climb into the next room and then deal with the seven years bad luck.
The mirror covers the entire wall and I can see my reflection.
And this is what I see. I see that I am struggling. My hair is still short. They shaved my hair when I arrived at the New Zealand quarantine facility. All those months ago. And now as a result, it’s grown into this weird, messy, pixie cut. My hair is unbelievably dirty and greasy and it matches the state of my skin. And my clothes.
I have bags under my bloodshot eyes.
I have this strange, sad, pathetic look of desperation on my face. It’s a look that says, “I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not here. Not in a room. In a prison within a prison. I don’t want to die alone.”
This is what my face says.
And what I want is; I want to live. I want to save Maria from the man in the gas mask, the psychopath who drugged me and injected me with a time release nano-swarm.
The psychopath who has sentenced me to death.
The psychopath who is going to kill Maria. Record it. Show the world. Like a terrorist.
He wants to destroy hope. He wants to spread fear.
He wants to burn the old Empires. Create a new world.
A better, stronger world.
I need to stop this maniac.
I need to deal with my impending death.
But first, I need to find my friends. I need to believe my friends are alive.
I tell myself, “They are alive.”
So I need to break the mirror and jump into the next room and keep moving. But how? How the hell am I supposed to break the mirror? I have my entire body weight pushed against the table that is pushed up against the broken door.
My weight.
The table.
The broken door.
These are the only things keeping me alive at the moment.
The infected snap their jaws. And their teeth clack together.
They are biting the air because they want to bite me.
I dig my shoes into the smooth concrete floor. The rubber soles take a firm grip. I slide my back down against the door so I am almost sitting down. I stick one leg out to reach for one of the chairs that are situated near the middle of the room. The tip of my shoe brushes against the leg of the nearest chair. But I can’t reach it. I try again and I end up kicking the chair further away. I twist my body, keeping one shoulder against the door. The infected are relentless. The door opens further but not enough for them to get in, just enough to send them into a frenzy, to rile them up even more.
&n
bsp; One of them squeezes half a shoulder and half their arm through the gap. They reach through the gap. It reaches out for me. Its fingers graze my hair.
I ignore it. I focus.
I reach out to the chair. I hook my foot around the leg and drag it over.
I grab the chair and stand up, keeping my weight against the door. Pushing harder. Pushing so hard I hear the bones in the infected man’s arm snap. Despite the broken bones it still moves and thrashes around. It is still reaching out for me. It does not feel pain.
I have the chair in my left hand. My right shoulder is pinned against the door. I swing the chair back and forth, building momentum. Building speed. Building force.
Force = Speed x Weight.
Another documentary. More long lost information.
I throw the chair and it smashes the mirror and the glass shatters and I now have a way out and I now have seven years bad luck.
But I don’t care about the bad luck.
Things can’t get any worse right now so I just don’t care.
I.
Just.
Don’t.
Care.
Now for the hard part.
I need to run to the mirror and jump into the next room. Once I start running, once my weight is no longer pushed up against the door, the infected will barge in. They will chase. With single minded aggression and unimaginable ferocity, they will chase.
I won’t have long. Seconds maybe.
I prepare myself for this.
For the chase.
For the flight.
I take a deep breath.
I move away from the door.
I run towards the mirror.
Chapter 2
I don’t make it.
Not before the door flies open and practically flies off its hinges. The door shatters and splits in half and splinters into bits of kindling. I take two big steps towards the mirror, towards the next room.
But I don’t make it.
The infected barge in. One infected man. He was too close.
He.
It.
Whatever.
It was too close.
I realize in an instant that I am not going to make it. Not unless I fight back.
But I have no weapons.
The infected man, the one that was reaching through the gap in the door, the one that had brushed his hand against my hair, my pixie cut, the one with the arm that was surely broken, a man who was a soldier in a former life, runs at me, sprints at me. It wants to eat me. He wants to eat me. The Oz virus wants to spread. It has this primordial, primeval need to spread, to consume and eat.