Immunosupression

by Jose Luis Solorzano

  Chapter Five

  It was a noise, a scream. From the sound of it, the scream came from the first floor. It also sounded as if it belonged to a young woman, or at least a small child. The voice screamed again, this time much louder, and seemed to actually be saying something. The voice was so jumbled however that whatever it was screaming for was unintelligible. Of course, no one would be screaming like this unless they were calling out for help.

  Anna looked directly at Zack, who seemed to be thinking the same thing he was. “Do you think we should help whoever it is,” she quickly asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zack said, honestly unsure of what the next course of action should be. “I mean, it only seems like it’s the right thing to do—”

  “Shouldn’t that be enough then,” Anna interrupted.

  “Yes, it should,” Zack stammered, “but, with the way things are, there aren’t many people you can trust right now.”

  “You saved me though, remember?”

  “Yes, and it was very lucky for the both of us.” Zack smirked as he saw Anna try to hide a look that was a cross between a smile and a grimace. The screamer’s voice was still on his mind however. “Let’s just be careful about this.”

  Anna nodded, sure that he meant that they were going to be looking for the person who was screaming for help on the first floor. She lead the way down the escalator, her axe nearly ready in her battle position, truly unsure of what she was about to face. They turned, following the sound of the screams, which was near the back of the store.

  They were now in the middle of the women’s clothing section when the small person who owned the mighty voice was facing them. It was a little girl who seemed to be no older than eight or nine years-old. Her brown hair was tattered and dirt was patched around her face. The clothes she was wearing didn’t appear as if they had been washed for quite some time.

  “How did she get here,” Zack muttered to Anna.

  The two of them lowered their weapons, now feeling foolish that they were only threatening the child. She didn’t appear to have the capability to harm anybody, if not by her attitude, by her short and weak stature. Zack relaxed as Anna kneeled down toward the little girl, holding her tightly. As Anna put pressure on the little girl, her crying suddenly stopped. The store was deathly quiet…well, almost. There was small scuttling sounds that could only be heard because no other significant noises were blocking them out. Zack found this very odd, but before he could react, the sound of a hand gun being readied to fire echoed right next to his ear drum.

  Three other readied guns were armed around Zack, Anna, and the little girl who now seemed very calm. Anna being unable to move, the little girl wiggled free from the older woman’s grip, her frown now a solemn smile. She seemed to almost dance as she passed by the person who was holding a gun right at Zack.

  “Did I do good, Nick,” the young girl cooed, searching for the figure’s approval.

  “You did excellent, Kate,” the figure spoke, rubbing the little girl’s head.

  Zack slightly turned his head to get a good look at the person who went by Nick. The two of them looked eye to eye, a light skinned young man with his blond hair similar to a military crew cut. While he seemed to have the face of a child, Zack guessed that this guy had a lot more upper body strength than he did. Not only that, they had enough stealth skills to get them in this position.

  “We mean you no harm,” Zack said, feeling as if he had to say something, even if it was futile. While he wished he could have said something that didn’t sound so cliché, there were other pressing matters on his mind at the moment.

  “I certainly hope not,” Nick said, his voice sounding almost smug. “I am Nicolas, the leader of these young survivors who are obviously more talented than the two of you.”

  Zack and Anna panned around their surroundings. They saw young boys and girls, most not looking much older than fourteen, holding different kinds of weapons. One thing that connected them was the look in their eyes, the look of fear and terror. Those who held bulky weapons like guns made their fear very visible with their shaking hands.

  “Well, it is good to see some new faces for a change,” Anna chimed in, hoping that she could defuse the stress placed on the situation. “It has only been the two of us for a while now. We believed to be the only people left in California.”

  “Are you two really alone,” Nicolas questioned, his brow raised in suspicion.

  “Yes, it’s only the two of us, you can look for yourself,” Anna stuttered, now wishing that she would have been clever enough to have lied.

  “Even so, I’ll be sending a few of my men out to search the rest of the place as we take you two to our safe house,” Nicolas said, snapping his fingers. A young boy and girl, one of whom carried a gun, broke away from the group as they went to search the rest of the store.

  “Safe house,” Zack asked, feeling relived.

  “Don’t get too happy there, sword boy,” Nicolas said, a bit of a chuckle in his voice. “We never said that we were going to be your allies. Quite the contrary, really. Believe it or not, we have been betrayed by others before.”

  “Then let us go free,” Zack urged, backing off when Nicolas raised the gun right to his nose. “I mean, if you don’t trust us, let us just go our separate ways and hope that we never cross paths ever again.”

  “If only human beings were that simple,” Nicolas sighed. “We have no reason to not trust the two of you, but we also have no reason to believe that you won’t go looking for our safe house in hopes of taking it for yourselves. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my beloved brothers and sisters.”

  “We promise we won’t follow you,” Anna cried out.

  “I think I’ve heard enough from the both of you. I may be acting unreasonable from your point of view, but that is the nature of this new world; I’m sure the two of you can at least understand that. We pretended to be civil to each other in the old world because it was deemed the appropriate way to act, but now, with what we are left with, we can finally be the beings that we were meant to be.”

  There was no more civil conversations after that. The two of them were ordered to place all of their belongings on the ground and then move away from the pile. The two of them knew that it would be foolish for either of them to escape; it would just be a waste of their energy if either of them even attempted to get away, only to end up with unneeded injuries or if they were killed. They were then told sit on their knees, their hands placed behind their backs. Two young girls came to entangle their hands in strong, plastic ties. Quickly after that, they placed dark blindfolds over their eyes.

  A lot of whispering followed between Nicolas and the children that were his followers. Seconds seemed to last for minutes as the two of them sat there in silence. Zack thought that they were lying about taking the two of them to their hideout and just decide to kill them right there and allow the creatures outside to devour the remains. There was no logical reason for Nicolas to take the two of them anyway, or there wasn’t one that Zack could think of.

  Before Zack could over-think things further, there was a mass movement amongst the group of kids.

  “Stand up,” Nicolas ordered the two.

  They seemed to move almost immediately; even with nothing to lose, neither of them wanted to risk death. From behind, they were being led by two children, their small hands pushing them in the direction the rest of the group was traveling. Zack and Anna had lost all sense of space and direction, not truly knowing how far they were travelling until there was a sudden stop which almost caused Zack to fall over onto his knees. There was an audible click, followed by the sound of a metal door opening up.

  “Hurry up and get it,” Nicolas ordered, his voice still very cool.

  Zack felt the need to question him, but he thoughtfully held back his remarks as he was led into what he believed to be a large van. Both Anna and Zack were squished together, still blindfolded as they heard the scuffling of other kids entering the
vehicle. While Zack was clearly unable to notice his surroundings, he couldn’t help but feel the barrels of the guns that were pointed right at him in case he attempted to be a hero.

  There were a couple of loud slams, the first of which being the sliding door that they had originally opened. Seconds passed, then came the slam from the driver’s seat door. Keys were jangling, the van’s engine began to roar to life, and then there was the sound of tires screeching. Zack knew that this much noise was going to attract more zombies, but it didn’t seem to matter to Nicolas at all.

  During the ride in the van, there were several impacts to the vehicle coming from the front as well as from the sides. Some hits being coupled with a soft sneer of satisfaction coming from the driver’s seat, which led Zack to conclude that they were running over zombies as if they were an obnoxious child crushing flowers in a newly planted garden. His initial thought was that at least it seemed that Nicolas was good for at least something. The less of these creatures that exist in this world, the better. It didn’t cross Zack’s mind that this may, in fact, be the last several minutes or hours that he was alive.

  For Zack, it felt like they were in the car for hours. Whenever he was tempted to fall asleep, it would seem that Anna would beat him to it by resting her head against his shoulder. Even in this heightened state of danger, he had wanted to just enjoy this small moment in his life. If he was going to die today, then at least all of it wasn’t completely unbearable. Still, having succeeding at doing nothing didn’t seem like the proper way to end a life, especially one where he was given a second chance. This wasn’t the way he wanted to go out.

  Finally, it seemed that the van had come to a complete stop, but the engine was still running.

  “You, open up the gate,” Nicolas voiced from the front of the car.

  Zack could feel one of the smaller children moving to where the side door was, quickly opening it. The sudden burst of light broke through the bottom of the blindfold for only a short moment, but enough to cause Zack and Anna’s eyes to sting. There was a veritable amount of rustling coming from the outside; metal was clanging for several seconds until there was a loud screeching. Presuming the door was still open, the car began to move forward and then stopped a short distance afterwards. Similar metal clanging was heard again, but was finished at a quicker pace. There was a shifting of weight, the door slamming shut, and the car moved forward another several feet until it came to a complete stop, the engine shutting down.

  “Take the boy to the nurse’s office and the girl to the library,” Nicolas ordered at the children. “Do nothing to either of them until I have said otherwise, do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, Nicolas,” the children said in nearly perfect unison.

  “Zack! No!” Anna cried out as the door slid open again, the two of them being forced out of the vehicle.

  “Anna, it’ll be okay,” Zack said, doing his best to try to keep her calm. If either of them acted too wildly against Nicolas’s will, they would no doubt be dead by the end of the day. “We’ll see each other soon. Everything will be okay, I promise. I’ll even take you to El Paso as soon as we can get out of here.”

  Nicolas muttered something, but Zack didn’t bother to listen to his comments. He felt a bit of shame in the pit of his gut, knowing full well that he was lying to Anna. Zack knew that there was no way either of them were going to be able to escape Nicolas’s prison, which he believed to be a school from the description of the holding rooms. Hell, he thought as he felt small hands aggressively guide him inside the building, if we’re able to make it out of here in one peace, I’ll live up to my stupid promise.