Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (10 page)

We start sliding further along the vents. Away from the direction we came. Away
from the infected.

“There should be
a manhole, a grate up ahead,” Kim says. “It should lead us into a room that
branches off the corridor with the holding cells.”

“And the rest of
the infected,” I add.

“Yeah.”

“How far away
from Jack’s cell?”

“I don’t know. I
can’t remember which cell Jack is being kept in.”

“So how do we
find him? I ask.

“I guess we just
call out?”

This part of the
plan was possibly stupid and definitely desperate. It reflected our current
state of being. We are definitely desperate.

We eventually
arrive at the manhole. I still have the screwdriver that George gave me, so I
attempt to loosen the screws that are holding the grate in place. Again, this
takes a while because my right hand is cut up and bleeding and every time I
grip the screwdriver, more blood seeps out of my wounds on to the handle,
making it even harder to turn.

I wipe my hands
on my jeans and I wipe the handle of the screwdriver on my shirt.

“Here,” Kim
says. “Let me.”

Kim takes the
screwdriver and gets the job done in under a minute. She moves the metal grate
out of the way and we climb out of the air vent and through the manhole and
down into an office. The office is similar to George’s office.

“Put the grate
back,” I say.

“Good idea.”

Kim stands on
the desk and slides the grate back into place so the manhole is covered. “What
now?” she asks.

I put my ear
against the door and listen for the infected. I can’t hear anything. I open the
door slowly. I take a peek outside.

Nothing.

I look up and
down the corridor. It is extremely long. The red emergency lighting gives the
place a creepy, atmospheric feel, like we’ve stepped into a house of horrors on
Halloween. The corridor appears to be empty. Both directions disappear into
darkness, giving the impression that the corridor goes on forever. But I know
appearances can be deceptive. And I know the infected are close.

I just don’t
know how close.

To my left are
the holding cells. Jack is inside one of those rooms. And according to the
blueprints, somewhere to my right is the entry point to the military prison.
The entry point is a large set of security doors. This is our escape route. And
I have to be honest, it sounds like the worst escape route in the history of
escape routes. Escaping to a military prison? A prison that could very well be
overrun with zombies and criminals and more zombies?

No thanks.

But this is our
best option. Our only option. This is how desperate we are right now.

I look at Kim
and shrug my shoulders. “What now?”

“Call out,” she
says.

“Really? You
think that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah. But do it
quietly.”

“Call out
quietly?”

“I don’t know.
Whisper.”

I step further
out into the corridor. “Jack?”

No response.

“Louder,” Kim
says.

“Jack!?”

“Too loud.”

I am about to
retreat back into the office when suddenly Jack sticks his head out of his
holding cell. His cell is only a few doors down, on the other side of the
corridor.

And he can’t
believe it.

And I can’t
believe it.

He opens his
mouth and he’s about to say something, but we wave him back into his room and
we join him. Kim and Jack hug and I try and shut the door just in case but I
can’t. It’s an automatic door and it’s firmly locked in place. So right now we
are exposed and if we don’t get the hell out of this holding cell we will be
trapped.

Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.

No air vents to
climb into.

This room could
very well turn into our tomb.

As I’m peering
out the door, checking the corridor to see if we’re in any immediate danger,
Jack grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me back into the room and hugs me. He
hugs me tight and I know we don’t have time for this but I eventually relent. I
hug him back and I am in complete disbelief. And I don’t know why but I feel
like I am going to burst into tears. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s all
too much. To be honest, I never thought I’d see Jack again. Because the last
time I saw him, was in that one horse, one street, abandoned town in the middle
of nowhere. I thought that would be my last memory of him. Alone and desperate
and broken. Trying to do the right thing, trying to find his sister and
failing.

He had been
found and captured by the military. He was surrounded. He was on his knees and
I thought he was going to be executed. And then Kim appeared from nowhere and
vouched for her brother. Convinced the powers to be to let him live.

So yeah, I never
thought I’d see Jack again. And the relief and the joy that I am feeling right
now is so massive it feels like I am being crushed. I can’t explain it. My
chest is being squeezed and crushed, and even though I am happy, I want to cry
and I can barely breathe.

Jack hugs me
tighter and I finally whisper, “We have to get the hell out of here before it’s
too late.”

He takes a step
back and shakes his head. “I can’t believe it. How did you get down here?”

“I’m not sure.
We got lucky.”

Jack then turns
back to Kim. “What took you so long? Where have you been? And why is Maria not
with you like you said she would be?”

“I’m sorry,” Kim
says. “This whole place has gone to hell. It’s completely overrun.”

“Where is
Maria,” he asks again.

“She’s down
here,” I say. “She’s in the Control Center.”

Kim looks at me
as if to say,
how do you know that?

And then Jack
says, “How do you know that?”

“There’s no time
to explain,” I say. “We have to go.”

“She’s right,”
Kim adds. “The infected are all over this place. We have to put distance
between us and them. And preferably some heavy duty locked doors.”

Jack nods. “OK,
so where the hell do we go?”

“The prison,” I
answer.

I have the
blueprints tucked into my jeans and I say, “According to these plans, the military
prison is close by. Down the other end of this corridor. We can make it. As
long as the coast is clear.”

“Is it clear?”
Kim asks.

I check the
corridor again. “Well, I can’t see very far. But I don’t see anyone, or
anything. We should go now. The entry point to the prison should be to our
left.”

As far as I can
tell, George’s office is right down the other end of the corridor. This is good
news. It means the infected are all situated down there, as far away as
possible.

Out of sight.

Even still, it is
extremely unnerving to realize that we are currently sharing, and possibly
trapped in a long dark hallway with an entire horde of infected people. Sooner
or later they will find us. We need to get out of this hallway. And then we
need to seal it off somehow.

“OK, you guys
ready?” I ask. “We have to go.”

Kim nods.

“Let’s do it,”
Jack says.

We step out into
the corridor but then Jack says something. He asks a very important question
that I hadn’t given any thought.

He says, “Wait.
How do we get through the security doors? Won’t they be locked?”

And I think,
damn
. That is a very good question. How
the hell do we get through the security doors?

How the hell do
we get through two sets of large, reinforced doors that are designed to keep
criminals from escaping a prison?

I feel like
cursing myself. I feel like slapping myself in the face for being so stupid. Of
course those security doors would be locked up. It separates this whole section
from the goddamn prison. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts. I feel downright
stupid. I open my mouth to answer Jack, to say something, to say anything.
Something like, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll totally be all right. We’re fine. We’ll
figure it out when we get there.”

But I don’t get
a chance to say this pathetic excuse, this pathetic sentence, because standing
a few doors down from us, to our right, towards the horde, is George Walters.

Prison
administrator.

The warden.

He has the gun
pointed at us. At me. Directly at my chest.

He has a look of
absolute desperation on his face.

“You’re not
going anywhere,” he says.

And I believe
him.

George is standing a good fifteen feet away from us. A few holding cells away
from us. He looks like a demon in the red glow of the emergency lights. For a
second I think about running, or jumping into one of the holding cells so I’m
out of the line of fire. But as soon as that thought enters my exhausted mind I
push it out. There is nowhere to run to.

Nowhere to hide.

The holding
cells are a dead end.

They are nothing
but potential tombs.

This whole
corridor is a dead end.

“You can’t shoot
us,” I whisper. “You’ll draw their attention. They’ll hunt you down.”

“You
wanna
take that risk?” he fires back. “You
wanna
play Russian roulette?”

The gun is in
his hand; his finger is on the trigger. His hands are shaking. If he squeezes
too hard he’ll fire the gun. He’ll probably hit one of us. But that will be
beside the point. The main point being, if he fires that gun, the infected will
hear the shot. And then they will come running.

“You,” George
says. “All of you are staying here. One way or the other. All of you. I am
leaving.”

One way or the
other means dead or infected. These are our two options at this point in time.

“You’re
leaving?” I ask. “Where are you going to go? You’re trapped. Just like us. Just
like everybody else down here.”

“No. He is
coming back for me. I opened the cells just like he wanted. He is coming back.”

I shake my head.
“He is not coming back. Not for you. Not for anyone. He has left you for dead.
The only way we get out of this, is if we work together.”

George clutches
his name tag. “He didn’t leave me. He needs me. I am the warden of this prison.
He needs me.”

As he tells us
how much he is needed he is clutching his name tag.

George Walters.
Prison Administrator. The name tag has a little passport sized ID photo. Below
this is a barcode.

He is clutching
the name tag because it represents who he is. It is a part of him.

People like to
think that their job, their profession, their occupation, does not define them.
But sometimes it does. And to other people, your job definitely defines you.
People define you, they judge you,
they
put you in a
box.

You are a
student.

A soldier.

A police
officer.

A nurse.

A doctor.

A prison
administrator.

And sometimes
you begin to believe it, to accept it, to let this actually define you. And you
become the job.

Somewhere along
the line, George had become his job. He was the warden through and through. He
was the boss. He was in charge. He was in charge of the guards and of the
prisoners.

Everyone had to
do what he declared.

The problem is,
that right now he thinks his job title gives him control in this arena, in this
messed up situation. But he is not in control. He hasn’t been in control for a
long time.

The game has
changed.

The rules have
changed.

Society has
crumbled.

The world has
ended.

And he is no
longer in control.

There is a man
in a gas mask stalking these hallways and these tunnels. He is stalking us and
hunting us. He is controlling us and manipulating us and he has pushed George
over the edge.

From way down
the other end of the dark hallway, we can hear the moaning howls of the
infected.

George looks
over his shoulder and I think about charging him and so does Kim. Kim actually
takes a slight step forward. Not even a step. She tenses up and leans forward,
ready to pounce.

I hold her back.
We would never reach him in time.

George turns
around and waves us into the nearest holding cell. “Get inside. Face the wall.
On your knees.”

And I’m
thinking, maybe we should’ve charged at him. Maybe we should’ve gone out with a
fight.

I have the
feeling this room is about to become our tomb.

“He’s not coming
back,” I say. “You can’t trust him. You can’t!”

“He is coming
for me. I don’t have much time.”

His
watch. The countdown.

When George
first showed us his watch he had less than ten minutes.

How long does he
have now?

Minutes.
Seconds.

When the watch,
when the countdown reaches zero, the nano-virus will be released. It will be
activated.

It
will eat you from the inside. It will kill you. There is no stopping it.

“He is not
coming back,” Kim says. “You have to realize that.”

George points
the gun at Kim. “Shut up. No more talking.”

I think about
yelling out. But I don’t.

“You think the
infected will hear us?” I ask. “Are you really worried about them right now?
You’ve only got a couple of minutes. And then you’re dead. I’ve got just over
two days and then I’m dead as well. I’ve come to terms with this. I have
accepted my fate.”

I tell him I have
accepted my fate. But I am lying.

Jack says, “What
the hell are you talking about?”

But there is no
time to explain to Jack.

“I’ll be long
gone by the time the infected get here,” George says. “And he will know what to
do. He will save me. He has
bought
my
trust. And I trust him.”

“Where the hell
are you going to go?” I ask.

“We’re getting
out. He told me that we will be the first ones of a new society, a new world. A
stronger, better world. He told me that we are going to watch it burn. Burn the
old Empires. Start over.”

These are the
words, the teachings, the ramblings of the man in the gas mask.

The pressure has
destroyed George’s ability to think rationally. He is so far gone. It is
terrifying to watch and terrifying to think that I might turn into something like
this in just a couple of days’ time.

“Please,” Kim
says. “You can’t just kill us like this. It’s wrong. It’s so goddamn wrong.”

“We can’t take
you,” George says. “More mouths to feed. Everything is limited. Everything. We
can’t take you.”

“You are not
special,” I say. “You are not the chosen one.”

I show him my
watch again. “See? I am screwed as well. I am a dead man walking. Dead girl
walking.”

He shakes his
head and I get the feeling that maybe he knows that he is screwed. Somewhere
deep down, he knows. But he can’t admit it. And he’s angry. He’s angry and mad
because he has been taken advantage of and manipulated and tortured and he has
been sentenced to death.

His freedom has
been taken away and he is no longer in control of anything.

Not this prison.

Not his life.

“No more
talking,” he says. “It is time to die.”

And as soon as
he says
time to die
, his watch beeps.

And beeps.

And continues to
beep.

It beeps
continuously and incessantly and the infected horde that is all the way down
the other end of the dark corridor has definitely heard this.

And George’s
eyes go wide.

His time is up.

Suddenly, little
cuts begin to appear on George’s skin. His face. His neck.

And his nose
bleeds.

And his ears.
And his eyes.

The time release
nano-virus has been activated.

And he begins to
choke and cough up blood. And more and more cuts appear on his skin and his
face and blood begins to stain his white shirt.

He is being
eaten by a nano-swarm from the inside.

“No,” he
whispers as he looks at the blood dripping from his hands. “God, no.”

He is still
speaking and choking and gurgling. He hasn’t screamed in pain because maybe he
can’t feel it. Maybe each cut is so tiny, so microscopic and so precise that he
can’t feel it. But then this theory is trashed, when all of a sudden he starts
screaming.

And now I can
see the nano-virus. The nano-swarm.

Slowly but
surely it has eaten its way through his flesh and skin. It looks like he is
surrounded by fruit flies or gnats or mosquitoes or some kind of swarm of tiny
insects. And then the swarm gets larger and darker and he continues to scream.

Jack, Kim and I
are frozen in shock.

George screams
louder and I know the infected are on their way to us.

The swarm is
bigger now. It continues to grow and grow. It continues to eat George. It has
almost engulfed him completely. It is swarming around him, like a tornado, a
tornado that is alive.

I hear the
familiar hissing sound of the swarm.

Like a snake.

George is
bleeding profusely. He is standing in a pool of blood. And I’m not sure if he
slips in the blood, or if the nano-swarm trips his legs, but all of a sudden he
hits the floor and now he is on his back, writhing in pain and agony.

And choking.

And then he
stops screaming and choking.

George’s face
and head are completely covered in blood, and I can’t tell if he has eyes
anymore.

He stops
breathing.

And then his
body is disassembled and taken apart, like soldier ants swarming and eating a
larger prey. A memory of a time lapse video from some other documentary I watched
once upon a time, when people were able to sit back and watch documentaries,
flashes across my mind. A time lapse video of a swarm of ants eating a large
scorpion. The scorpion’s arms and legs are removed and taken away. Its tail.
Its head. Its body.

Everything.

What’s left of
George’s body is dragged out of the room by the swarm and I think he is already
dead but he’s not. As his body is dragged out of the room, his one remaining
arm, and his one remaining hand, and his last remaining fingers latch onto the
door frame.

And he holds on
for dear life.

But then the
swarm intensifies and his fingers disintegrate and fall apart and disappear.
And then what’s left of his body finally goes limp.

And then George
is finally dead and gone, and the swarm is gone.