Affliction Z: Abandoned Hope (Post Apocalyptic Thriller)

by L. T. Ryan

  Tears welled in her eyes. She risked her one chance and had blown it. She began to descend the tree, stepping carefully on each branch. As her torso brushed against the bark, she felt the mug inside her jacket. She reached the final branch, steadied herself against the tree, and then jumped down.

  Ralph gestured with his head for her to come closer. He held up a handheld GPS. “Don’t think about doing anything. They know exactly where I’m at. Now, I want you to get on the back of this ATV. You jump, I’ll shoot you. Try to strangle me, I’ll shoot you. Do anything but sit there like a good girl, and I’ll shoot you. Got it?”

  Addison nodded, eager to sit down. He motioned for her to do so. After she was settled, he stepped over the seat and came to rest on top of it. She leaned back, reached inside her jacket and pulled out the mug. It felt solid in her hand. She let her right hand drop to her side. Her body shifted in the same direction, then jerked left. She brought her right arm up, high in the air. The momentum continued downward, slamming the mug into the back of Ralph’s head. The mug shattered and Ralph’s scalp split open. Blood flew everywhere. Ralph slumped forward as a river of crimson poured down his back. She didn’t know if he was unconscious or dead.

  And she didn’t care.

  She climbed off the ATV, and then pulled Ralph off of it. He began to cough as she dragged him across the forest floor. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose. He must have smashed his face when he fell forward. She left him propped up against a tree so that he wouldn’t gag on his own fluids.

  Addison raced back to the ATV and searched for the GPS unit Ralph had shown her. She found it tucked into a bag strapped around the handlebar. The GPS reminded her of one she’d used at her grandparents. Her grandfather told her he could track her with it. It always made her feel safe. Not so much today, though. She powered off the unit and threw it on the ground near Ralph’s feet.

  Addison turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. The gas gauge indicated the tank was full. Not enough gas to get her to Charlotte, but maybe to the border. She had a general idea of where she was. All she had to do was head south. Eventually she’d find a road. With the ATV, she could get off quickly if the situation warranted. Fuel was a concern, but she would cross that bridge when the time came.

  She cast one last glance at the bloodied man resting against the tree. His eyes were open. He extended his middle finger in her direction.

  She returned the gesture, and then she took off into the woods.

  Chapter 20

  Turk gasped for air. His arms, chest and core burned. Sweat rolled down his brow and stung his eyes. His hands were numb from holding their grip for so long. He pulled his body up, aiming to clear his chin over the top of the bar he hung from.

  “One…more,” he said, his teeth clenched.

  He completed the rep and dropped to the floor, landing in a crouching position. Sweat flew off his body, splattering the thick rubber mat that lined the workout room. The mat gave off a strong odor even though it had only been installed four years ago.

  He shifted his gaze from the mirror in front of him to the monitor with the security feed. Four separate images were shown on the screen, each showing a section of the perimeter of the compound. It looked quiet, empty outside.

  It’s time, he thought.

  Turk returned his gaze to the mirror. Marcus stood in the doorway behind him. Turk nodded, and then rose and turned to face his brother. There had been no further major incidents with Marcus, but it was obvious to Turk that no one, including himself, felt comfortable around the guy. Marcus was, as he had always been, bad news. Turk could tell that the guy would grow to be a major nuisance in the compound if they were in there for an extended period of time.

  Marcus used different types of intimidation with the others. Sometimes it was a look or a stare, other times it was more apparent, like a shoulder bump or a deliberate elbow. He saved the hardest of those for Turk while in the gym or on the rec floor. The others inside the compound would have thrown the man out if it weren’t for Turk’s relationship with him.

  “Wanted to see me, bro?” Marcus asked.

  “It’s time,” Turk replied.

  Marcus furrowed his brow and held out his hands. “Time for what?”

  Turk walked past his brother, bumping his shoulder into the man. “Time to lock up.”

  “What about—”

  Turk turned around and raised his hand to silence his younger brother. He knew the reason Marcus was concerned was because the man’s ex-wife and son were supposed to arrive a few days prior. They hadn’t shown up. “It’s time to lock up. Everyone that’s here is here. We can’t worry about those that aren’t. Chances are that anyone creeping around out there doesn’t have our best interests at heart.”

  “C’mon, Turk. Just give them another day.”

  Turk turned away from his brother and began walking. A few seconds later he heard his brother’s footsteps fall in line behind him. The sound echoed off the surrounding concrete. They weaved their way through the structure until they reached the front entrance. This was the only point of ingress and egress that Turk made known to those inside. He couldn’t trust anyone else with the knowledge of the secret tunnel that led two hundred yards to the north, with an exit camouflaged near the woods.

  They stopped in front of the steel security door. Turk closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He reached out to the side with his right arm and grabbed Marcus’s shoulder. Turk squeezed, and said, “You ready?”

  “For what? We just locking it up, right?”

  “Why would I need you here if that was all?”

  “I don’t know. Figured you might have some code or something I needed to memorize.”

  Turk grinned. “Nothing that complex, man.” He reached out and flipped the cover off the security pad. Then, while entering the code, he used his body to block Marcus’s view.

  “Seriously?” Marcus said, an edge to his tone.

  “Yeah,” Turk said. “Seriously. I’m the only one who knows it.”

  “What if you die?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan for that.”

  “Yeah, well, we might all be finding that out sooner rather than later.”

  Turk finished entering the code, returned the cover to the keypad and pushed the door open. He stopped and looked back at Marcus. “You threatening me?”

  Marcus shrunk back an inch. It wasn’t much. Just enough to let Turk know that he still had control.

  “Follow me,” Turk said.

  He led Marcus through a carved out tunnel. Red emergency lights cast small pools of light over the space. A gap of five to six feet persisted between each where blackness took over. Five minutes later, they reached the outer security door. Turk felt along the wall for the hidden panel and pulled it open.

  “Ain’t that already locked?” Marcus asked.

  Turk nodded.

  “Then why do we have to lock it up?”

  “I’m going to disable it.”

  Marcus exhaled loudly and crossed his arms over his chest. “And why’d you bring me down here? Do I need to know this code?”

  Turk activated a monitor affixed to the wall next to the door. He used a controller next to the security pad to rotate through the outside cameras. Once he determined the area to be clear, he disengaged the door lock and pushed it open. Humid air scraped past them. Turk felt sweat bead up on his forehead. He looked at Marcus and extended his arm.

  “What?” Marcus said.

  “You’re the badass. Go on out there and secure the perimeter.”

  Marcus squeezed past Turk. He stopped before making it all the way past. He turned halfway. “Give me a gun.”

  Turk eyed his brother for a moment. Should he arm a sociopath? He reached behind his back and retrieved a pistol. He extended it toward Marcus, barrel in his hand. Marcus grabbed hold of the weapon and pulled it toward him. Turk didn’t let go.

  “It returns to me the moment you walk through thi
s door. Got it?”

  Marcus nodded. Turk released his grip on the handgun. The two brothers faced off for a few more seconds. Finally, Marcus broke off the stare and looked down at the gun. He started to inspect, but Turk cut him off.

  “It’s loaded.”

  Marcus looked up, nodded, turned and moved toward the ladder. Turk watched as Marcus ascended the ladder to the hatch.

  “Hold off on opening it,” Turk said.

  “All right,” Marcus said.

  Turk ducked back inside the tunnel and cycled through the cameras once more. The area looked clear.

  “Okay, you’re good to go.”

  He heard the hatch lift and the sound of his brother climbing out of the tunnel. Turk pulled the door shut but did not engage the lock. He watched Marcus move toward the wood’s edge. His brother ran crouched and low to the ground, dropping to his stomach once. Marcus remained prone for a minute, then rose and continued to the woods.

  “It’s time,” Elena said from behind him.

  Turk said nothing. He stared at the monitor. His wife’s hand fell upon his shoulder and squeezed gently.

  “He’s a cancer,” she said. “You know it. I know it. Everyone inside knows it.”

  “He’s my little brother.”

  “And he’s going to end up killing someone. What if it’s me? Worse still, what if it’s Layla? What will you do if he hurts one of us? If he hurts anyone inside, for that matter?”

  Turk lowered his head to the side until his cheek brushed Elana’s hand. She traced her fingers along his shaved head.

  “All right,” Turk said. “Watch the monitor and let me know if he starts heading back.” He pulled the door open and climbed the ladder. At the top, he secured the hatch lock. This was one of two manual locks in the compound. On his way back down the ladder, Turk fought off tears. He imagined his mother looking down on him as he effectively shut off his little brother.

  Turk sulked through the tunnel doorway. His wife pulled it closed behind him. She reached out to hug him, but he pulled away.

  “Lock it up, Baby,” she said.

  Turk engaged the lock and cut off the monitor. He looked over his shoulder at his wife, who nodded in return. He took a step back. Taking a deep breath, he reattached the panel to the wall. Elana grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the door.

  “When I was seventeen,” he said, “I took Marcus to the lake. Mom forced me to do it. Football practice was starting up the following week. I was going into my senior year. I wouldn’t be around much after that. I already knew I that I was going to enlist in the Navy and planned to leave for boot camp the day after I graduated. She knew this was the last chance for me and my little brother to bond. I brought along some girl, don’t even remember her name now. We only dated a week or two. Anyway, I spent the entire time talking to her, ignoring Marcus. He went out into the lake, probably further than he should have. I look over and saw him out there swimming, then turned back and kissed the girl. Next thing I know, I hear Marcus screaming bloody murder. By the time I stood up and swung my head around, he was gone.”

  “You’ve never told me this before,” Elena said. “Why not?”

  Turk shrugged. “Anyway, I sprinted to the edge of the lake, ran into the water, and as soon as I was knee deep, I dove in. Even back then, I was a strong swimmer. The water was pretty clear, but I couldn’t see him, so I kept on swimming. Finally, about twenty yards out, I see him floating, struggling about eight feet under the surface.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’d felt something brush his leg and thought it was a gator or a copperhead or something. He panicked, began twisting around and flapping to get back to shore. He’d come across an old net, anchored to the lake bed. All that kicking and thrashing got him twisted up. The more he fought, the further he dragged himself down.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Obviously he got out. How?”

  “I had a six-inch blade clipped onto my shorts.”

  “That was lucky.”

  “Yeah, it was. I always had it when I went fishing, though, and we planned on doing a little bit of that at the lake that day. So I grab a breath and dive down about ten feet and begin to cut the net. Marcus was still kicking and somehow he managed to catch me in the face. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it surprised me and I dropped the knife. I kept going by hand, but couldn’t finish, so I swam back up, grabbed another breath and dove down. The lake was around twenty-five feet deep there, I guess. I had no idea how I’d find the knife. Luckily, there was enough light that the blade, I don’t know, kind of winked at me. I grabbed it and swam back up. Marcus was motionless by this point. I worked fast and freed him. I remember my lungs burning and my vision going black, but I refused to stop. As soon as we hit the surface I started mouth-to-mouth. I’d swim, stop, give him a breath, and repeat it. The girl, Elizabeth was her name. That just came to me. Anyway, she had grabbed the car and was waiting for us by the beach.”

  They stopped at the bunker entrance. Elana leaned against the door and gestured for him to continue.

  “We got him to the hospital, but it took too long. He ended up being in a coma for a month. Doctors said he might not make it, and if he did, he’d probably have brain damage. We didn’t know what to expect. The guilt killed me. I refused to leave his side. Missed football practice, all the two-a-days and whatnot. Coach was so pissed at me, he benched me until the ninth game of the season. It ruined it for me. No scholarships, nothing. Mom couldn’t afford college, so I enlisted.”

  “Wait a minute,” Elana said. “You just said, and you’ve always said, that going into that year, you planned on joining the Navy. You wanted to be a SEAL.”

  Turk nodded. “I apologize for that. Thinking otherwise always reminded me of what happened that day. You see, Marcus wasn’t a bad kid until after that event. He seemed so normal when he woke up from his coma. But he wasn’t. We just didn’t know it yet. Over time we saw, though. He wasn’t born a sociopath, Elana. I turned him into one.”

  She reached out and touched his face, tracing his jawline. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It is.” He pulled away from her, opened the door and stepped through. She followed him back to the control room. And as he overrode the system in order to seal them in for thirty days, he said, “I’ll always live with the fact that I turned him into a killer. And I’ll always have to live with the fact that I just sentenced him to death.”

  The monitors all displayed a scene from outside. Marcus appeared from the woods. He moved from monitor to monitor as he headed toward the hidden hatch. They watched as the man stopped, bent over and tried to pull the door open. It didn’t budge. Marcus rose and looked around. He spotted a camera and walked up to it. Though the sound was off, Turk had no trouble reading his brother’s lips.

  “Turk, stop fucking around and let me in.”

  Elana left shortly afterward.

  Turk sat and watched his brother come to grips with the fact that he’d been exiled from the compound.

  Chapter 21

  The ground felt damp and cold. The few remaining bugs crawled across Kathy’s exposed skin. She didn’t care. Not about the cold, the wet, or the bugs. She felt disassociated from herself. Her jumbled thoughts told her she should be dead. After all, she slept shirtless through a near-freezing night.

  What had happened to her shirt?

  She struggled to recall. Words were difficult to form in her mind, so she resorted to images. She’d taken off after something, an animal for food perhaps. The creature led her into the woods. A collision with low hanging branches resulted in her shirt being torn off her body.

  Had that been yesterday, or the day before?

  She couldn’t tell. The last few ran together.

  She no longer felt sick. The coughing had stopped. The fever had gone away. New sensations replaced the old. She felt a hunger, a craving, for flesh. She needed to eat. It didn’t matter that there was a pantry full of food. That did nothing for her when s
he scarfed it down. The desire for warm, raw meat had taken over. She had also become acutely aware of everything around her over the past few days. It was in stark contrast to the way she felt about the shell she inhabited. She could brush her fingers across the bark of a tree and it might as well have been a silk sheet. It didn’t register. But when a rabbit moved fifty yards away, she honed in on it.

  Few human thoughts remained with her. The ones that did were powerful. She thought of the man she called her husband, and the girl she called her daughter. Those words meant little to her anymore, but she still felt a strong connection with the memories of the two of them. Scenes of her life with them would fire off in her mind at odd intervals. She never noticed a scene that played twice, and she could no longer recall an event after she saw it. She knew they were there, somewhere, but she could not access them again, no matter how hard she tried.

  The house that she hung around held some significance to her as well. She knew enough to go inside to find food, but aside from that, she wasn’t sure what it was for. Yet, she did not want to leave it. In the shadow of the house, she felt something. Normalcy, perhaps. That’s the word that came to her, at least.

  Kathy licked her dirt-caked lips and lifted her head. She glanced up at the gray sky and wondered if it were about to rain.

  Would she care? Would she even know what rain was by the time she felt it again?

  This is how it played out in her mind. One minute more human than monster. The next, more monster than human.

  She pushed herself off the ground, sliding her feet underneath her so she could remain crouched. The tall grasses in the field provided her with cover. She heard a rumbling in the distance. It reminded her of the truck driven by the man she knew was her husband. With her head exposed enough that she could see around her, she scanned the area in front of the house. A squirrel darted across the lawn. That was it. She shuffled her feet and turned in a circle. She was all alone.

  Kathy rose and started toward the house. She didn’t know why. She felt pulled toward it.