He looked at the others and asked, “Do any of you have any wiggle room?”
“I do a little bit,” Bryson said.
Alex looked over at him and could see that there was a little bit of room between his wrist and the rope, allowing him to move back and forth slightly. He looked back at the door to the hallway and heard Julie giving orders.
“Work it back and forth,” Alex said. “See if you can slip your arm out.”
Bryson worked. If they had been cuffed, there would be no help of escape but ropes were finicky and Julie’s gang were not professionals.
Shouting rang out from the hallway. Screaming. Then four gunshots boomed through the prison. The entire group looked up at the door across from them in shock. There was silence for a couple of moments, then more screaming and more shots. Julie and her group were working their way down the hallway, executing prisoners as they went.
Alex felt a sense of urgency to help them. He didn’t know why. Something gnawed at him, telling him that none of this was right and that it was part of his job, part of his duty, to make sure everyone, prisoners included, made it out alive.
Bryson managed to work his right arm free and then he went to work on the other arm. Two more prisoners were dead.
Finally, Bryson was free. Then he worked on Gwen.
Two more prisoners were dead.
Gwen was free.
When he got to Alex, another set of prisoners was killed. Alex ran to the door and watched through the window. The group behind him had finally freed Trent. The four of them were weaponless, but Alex still felt the need to do something.
“We need to get out of here,” Trent said. “There is absolutely nothing you can do.”
Trent was right. Without weapons, it wasn’t like they could stop Julie and her crew from performing the executions, and they would inevitably be killed, too. Their only move was to make for their truck.
Alex clenched his jaw. “Fine,” he said.” Let’s go.”
He was about to turn away when he watched Julie and her crew open another door to a cell. This time, the executioner’s gun jammed, giving the prisoner inside just enough time to lunge forward. The prisoner took the gun from the executioner’s hand and slammed his face with the butt of the rifle. Then he went after Julie. The prisoner was so fast that he got another crew member’s gun and started firing on each of them.
Blood drained from Alex’s face as he watched Julie and her crew drop one by one. The second prisoner grabbed the keys off the ground and started opening cell doors down the line.
“It’s time to go,” Alex said, his heart pounding.
With one last glance at the floor, he saw Julie look up at him through the glass. Then a bullet went through her neck. Alex’s eyes darted upward and several prisoners stared back at him. Alex turned to his group with wide eyes and screamed, “Run!”
They were out the other exit within a second, but he could hear shouts from the prisoners in their cell block calling one another to charge after them.
Alex ran to the front of the group because he knew his way around the prison. Julie should have listened to him. She should have left the prisoners alone. Sure, Alex would have probably tried to free them, which would have seen him dead, but now he was running for his life anyway. The best answer would have been to leave them where they were.
They made it into the mess hall before the first of the gunfire boomed behind them. The rest of the group jumped behind a table, but it would only provide cover for a moment or two. Screams rang out and bullets flew over their heads. This was not what they had bargained for when they came on this trip.
“Stop!” Trent screamed. He held out both hands in surrender. The group of prisoners stopped on the other side of the room, but there was still murder in their eyes.
“We are not part of that group,” Trent said. “We tried to talk them out of doing what they just did. But they tied us to chairs and left us unarmed.”
Alex didn’t see this ending well, so he motioned for Bryson and Gwen to follow him on their hands and knees. He wasn’t sure if the prisoners could see them moving, but he thought if they stayed below the tables and along the edge of the wall that they might be inconspicuous enough. He wasn’t trying to abandon Trent, but if his surrender didn’t go well, it would only be his life on the line.
“You see?” Trent said. “I don’t have a weapon. Why would I have been in there without a weapon? Because those people took ours from us. We were coming in there to get you out.”
Alex couldn’t see the prisoner Trent was talking to, but he heard the response.
“Why would you help us? That doesn’t make much sense either.”
“Mostly because they started talking about executing you,” Trent said. “We didn’t know you were here. The prison has been empty for two days, or so we thought. We were just coming here to get food and medicine.”
“Do you know what happened?” the prisoner asked.
“Nobody does,” Trent said. “All we know is the power is out, and it’s been out for two days. And no one has come to fix it. Cars don’t work. Lights don’t work. Nothing works. Unless you can get something to work again on your own.”
“You got a car?”
Alex didn’t like the excitement in the man’s voice. This was where everything would fall apart.
Trent was a dead man.
Alex didn’t need to go with Bryson and Gwen to the truck. He needed to get them weapons. There was a small chance they could make for the car and leave Trent behind. In that scenario, they might make it out alive. But they were closer to the key safe room. It was the same key safe room Alex had been in two days before when he came face-to-face with Savage. They could shut it and would be safe. There also may be a weapon or two in there.
“Take us to it,” the prisoner said. “Take us to it or we will blow your head off.”
Alex looked at Bryson, and Gwen and motioned for them to follow him. In a second, they were off in a sprint. The prisoners yelled after them.
If they got to the room first, they would be safe. If they ran to the car, they might not get away in time because the other prisoners might overtake them.
Alex chose the safe room, and the prisoners sprinted after them.
Chapter Thirty-Six
It was an act of desperation to look for Cora at the hospital, Leland knew. The state of her apartment had shown Leland she had at least been home within the last two days since the power outage. It had also shown him that she had been scared, which made him nervous.
It would make sense that she had gone to the hospital. As he understood it, she didn’t have a lot of friends here and she was a naturally caring person. There was a chance she was there simply because she didn’t have anywhere else to go and the hospital was a place she would be needed.
He knew the farther away he went from Henry’s brother’s apartment, the further he separated himself from Henry. It was a concern, but not nearly the concern he felt over his daughter. He had been nervous about Gwen, but at least in Hope, Leland had been in familiar territory and with familiar enemies. Here, though, nothing was familiar to him. Not only did he have no idea where his daughter was, but he didn’t know how he was going to get her out of the city, or even the neighborhood for that matter.
When Leland reached the entrance to the hospital, he was met by a guard at the front of the building who stood proud with his shotgun over his chest. The guard stepped forward when he saw Leland and looked at Leland’s rifle.
“You’re not getting in there,” the guard said.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” Leland said. “She’s a nurse. She works here in the emergency room. I have to look for her and get her out of the city.”
“You’re not getting in there,” the guard repeated.
Leland understood the need for security considering all the rioting and looting that had been going on, but this was important.
“Please, sir, you have to understand. It’s my daughter. I c
ame all the way from Hope, Wisconsin to bring her back with me. I need to see if she is in there. Would you be able to tell me if you saw her? I can describe her to you.”
“I’ve seen hundreds of people come through here,” the guard said. “What makes you think I’m gonna remember some ER nurse?”
“Her name is Cora West,” Leland said. “Do you recognize the name?”
“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” the guard said.
“Does it matter to you at all that I’m a police officer? The county sheriff?”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction, Sheriff.” The guard said this with a grin, but it wasn’t a friendly grin. It was one that declared himself to be the victor of the situation. He held his gun out, not quite pointed at Leland, but close enough. “You’re not sick. You’re not injured. Even if you were, there’s no room for you here, now go away.”
Leland turned from the guard and looked out to the streets in front of him. Was he really going to be deterred by some badgeless guard? Leland spun to face him. “Do you realize what we’re going through here? I think if you did, you wouldn’t be standing guard outside this hospital. I think you would be looking for food and water. I think you would be looking after your loved ones and making sure they were going to make it through all this.”
The guard swallowed. “I’m going to get a raise and a promotion for this,” he said. “Ain’t no other guards stuck it out as I have. I’ll be in charge of all of them once this mess gets sorted out.”
“That’s what you don’t seem to understand,” Leland said. “This isn’t getting sorted out anytime soon. If someone was working on getting it sorted out, you would have seen evidence of that.”
“I saw the army mobilized.”
Leland wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the real army, but he held his tongue. Arguing with the man about something like that wasn’t going to help. He believed what he wanted to believe, and nothing was going to change that.
“Besides, you’re really not supposed to be here with a gun,” the guard said.
Leland rolled his eyes, exasperated with a man who refused to see the situation for what it was—hopeless. He took a few steps back and was about to say something to the guard again, when a thought struck him. This guard just said he was the only one who had stuck out the job. That meant he was likely the only person guarding the entrance. Sure, this was the main entrance, but there were countless other entrances around the building. It wouldn’t take much for Leland to break through them. Besides, if it came down to it, Leland could just blow open a window and climb in that way so long as it wasn’t near the guard. If they were lacking in manpower as much as the guard had just indicated, then Leland was in good shape.
Beyond the guard, Leland could see people lying on the floor of the atrium as though they were part of some military mobile hospital unit.
Leland wanted to find his daughter, but there was a large part of him that hoped she wasn’t in there. Even from the outside, Leland could tell it was a terrible place where death was prevailing over the will to live. Cora wasn’t strong. Not like Gwen. If she came here and saw this, she would have buckled. She would have probably turned and gotten lost in an alley. He hated his lack of confidence in the girl, but she had never been one to face her fears. Out of the three kids he took shooting when they were younger, Cora was always the one to turn her head and fire instead of watching her target.
And there was only so much death one could witness before it started getting to someone—before it started to change them. Leland wasn’t sure what that threshold was, but he didn’t want his daughters to come anywhere close to it.
“What do you suggest I do then?” Leland asked.
“I don’t care about your daughter,” the guard said. “All I care about is you getting away from me.”
Leland wanted to say, what are you going to do, call the cops, but he held his tongue. The man was right to guard the entrance. There were plenty of people who would see the hospital as a potential way to get what they wanted. What this man was doing was noble, and Leland secretly admired him for it.
He made his way to the other side of the hospital near the urgent care entrance.
There was no guard here, but there didn’t need to be. The scene in front of him made him gag. People were strewn all across the waiting room floor in every direction. Gunshot wounds. People vomiting. It was a festering sore in the middle of the hospital. If any of these people stayed in here long, they would be dead. The smell hit his nose like a hammer, and he tried to suppress it. Even pulling his shirt over his face did nothing to subdue the stench.
He didn’t suspect Cora would be one of the victims on the floor, but there was no way for him to know. If she had been injured, she might have come here because she knew people here and she knew they would take care of her. But with the influx of patients and the absolute horror of the last two days, she would undoubtedly be lumped in with the rest of them as doctors and nurses worked their way through the people. One look at the situation and Leland knew it was not sustainable. These people were going to die, and there was nothing any medical professional could do about it.
Darkness permeated the entire hospital. He could hardly see through the urgent care entryway. He finally made it to the other side where the light was only slightly better. He couldn’t see faces, but the smell followed him so he knew there were still bodies everywhere. He decided to do the only thing he thought could work quickly.
“Cora!”
It didn’t feel like his voice carried far.
“Cora!”
He looked from person to person, desperate to see his daughter’s face, desperate to see someone look up at him in recognition. Some did look up at him, but he didn’t know who they were.
“I’m looking for my daughter. Her name is Cora. Has anyone seen her?” He got no response. He found a nurse trying to help a patient who was throwing up in the corner. He tried to ignore the foul smell of the man’s vomit and the retching noises he produced. “Do you know a nurse named Cora West? She works in the emergency room. Do you know who she is?”
The nurse shook her head. “No, I don’t know who that is. I’m sorry.”
Desperation grabbed Leland’s chest. His heart beat faster and he finally started to realize that finding his daughter may prove to be an impossible task. It hadn’t even been a thought in his mind that he and Henry would come back from Chicago empty-handed. He wanted to tell himself that he would never give up looking for her, but he had another daughter to look after, too. For now, Gwen was safe, but he would never be able to forgive himself if he left Chicago without Cora.
He marched slowly through the hospital, and this time his voice carried along the corridors and bounced off the walls. “Cora! Cora!”
He was going to call out her name as loudly as he could until he either found her or his voice gave out.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was difficult for Cora to make her way through the hospital corridor, but most of the rooms had been left open to let in the sunlight from the windows on either side of the halls. Still, it was changing to night and she feared what the hospital would be like in the darkness, particularly for a young girl like Michelle. She was sick and barely conscious, so she probably wouldn’t notice. Cora didn’t want to stay here any longer than she had to. The hallways were already overrun with patients moaning and groaning with few nurses and doctors to take care of them. Even for the nurses and doctors who were working, there weren’t enough resources to help them all. The place would seem like a haunted house by the end of the night. She wondered how many people would die.
She made her way toward the maternity ward, making certain to avoid going past the NICU. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the sadness that endured there in a time such as this.
Cora felt overwhelmed. Even though she had set her goal on helping one person rather than trying to spread herself thin by helping so many others, the oppressive weight of suffering and deat
h was heavy on her shoulders. She was desperate to get out of the city, but she couldn’t leave Michelle alone.
What was her goal here? What could she possibly do to help this little girl other than find her some medicine? As soon as Cora decided to step in to help, she had made a decision: she couldn’t just leave Michelle here. But could she really feel good about taking Michelle away from Chicago? There was a chance her mother was still alive. She could spend a few days looking for her, but they would run out of resources and the two of them would likely not survive. No, Cora had to get out of the city and if she couldn’t find Michelle’s mom soon, she was going to have to take the girl with her. It seemed crazy, but what good was helping her in the hospital only to abandon her to the fate of starvation or worse? Cora had put herself in this situation, she understood. And she wasn’t going to turn away from it.
Cora carried Michelle into the maternity ward and found an empty room as she entered. It was almost pitch black for the lack of windows—a sliver of light peeked through the door from the windows in the outside hallway. Even the sky was dimming, and soon the entire hospital would be in complete darkness.
When Cora set Michelle on the bed in the middle of the room, the little girl looked up at her with tired eyes. “Please don’t leave me.” Her voice was weak and frail, and it broke Cora’s heart to hear it.
“I’m not going to leave you,” Cora said. She brushed the girl’s hair out of her face and rubbed her damp forehead with her thumb. “You just try to rest, okay? I’m going to find you some medicine.”
Michelle nodded, and by the third nod, she was asleep again. Cora left the bed and went to the hallway. There she could hear the grunts and moans from people who had taken up residence in some of the other rooms. Likely, none of them were maternity patients.
At the end of the hallway, Cora heard rustling paper bags and the jostling of pill bottles. When she stepped closer to the noise, she saw a man struggling with five duffle bags.
Fallen Earth | Book 2 | Aftermath Page 18