Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (12 page)

“What the hell
is that?” I ask.

“Not sure,” Kim
answers.

Unfortunately,
this black section is what connected the two prisons. It also connected both
prisons to the research labs. But because it is blacked out, we would not be
able to use the blueprints to navigate through.

I take a closer
look. The black section is labeled ‘classified’. “Why the hell would this
section be classified?” I ask. “This whole installation is classified and top
secret. What could possibly be top secret within a top secret military base?”

No answer from
Kim. She is thinking hard.

“Whatever it
is,” Jack says. “It can’t be good.”

He’s right. It
never is.

Kim rolls up the
blueprints. “Come on. It’s this way. We need to keep moving.”

We come to what appears to be a service elevator. The gate is open and the
elevator platform is in a lowered position.

We look down.
It’s a distance of about thirty feet.

“What now?” Jack
says.

I shrug my
shoulders. “I guess we have to climb down.”

Kim points to
the wall. Lucky for us there is an emergency ladder that can be easily
accessed. We climb down carefully and finally arrive at the entrance to the
military prison.

The entrance to
the prison is basically another set of security doors.

Next to the
security doors is a small room that looks similar to a toll booth. I guess
maybe it’s supposed to be a control room for the security doors.

“How do we get
through here?” I ask.

“Might need to
use George’s access card again,” Jack says.

“Maybe.”

I look for a
scanner but I don’t see one. Maybe the door had to be opened by pressing a
button in the control room. The control room appeared to be a small square room
with windows all around. It’s slightly bigger than a toll booth.

The windows are
covered in dust and dirt. We can’t see what’s inside the room.

“We might need
to break the windows,” I suggest.

“They’re
probably reinforced,” Kim says.

“We could shoot
them out?”

Kim checks the handgun.
“I’m out of ammo, remember.”

As soon as Kim
has the gun in her hand, a bright red laser appears from somewhere inside the
booth. A red dot appears on my chest. Right on my heart.

“Stop right
there,” a voice says.

There is a man
with a rifle. He is hidden in the control room. His voice sounds weird because
it is being amplified by a voice box that is built into the window. His voice
sounds like it is being broadcasted on a crappy AM radio station.

We stop
immediately and raise our hands.

“Drop the gun,”
he says.

“It’s not
loaded,” Kim answers.

“Don’t care.
Drop it.”

“We’re not here
to cause trouble,” Kim says.

“Drop the gun,”
the man repeats. “Place it on the ground. Slowly.”

Kim does exactly
what the man says. “We’re not a threat. We’re just trying to survive.”

“Who are you?”
he asks.

“Does it really
matter who we are?” Jack says.

Jack is
obviously fed up with being treated like a prisoner. He is sick of being locked
up. Sick of having guns pointed at his head.

Kim tells her
brother to calm down. “My name is Kim. This is my brother Jack. And this is
Rebecca.”

“What are you
doing here?” the man asks. “Are you civilians?”

“Yes,” Kim
answers. “We’re civilians.”

“Are you
infected?”

“Do we look
infected?”

“Looks can be
deceiving. I’ve seen a person take days to turn. Took us all by surprise. Not
making that mistake again.”

“None of us are
bitten,” I say. “We’re not infected. You have to believe us.”

And even as I
say this, I know that I really am infected. I am infected with a time release
nano-virus. And once it is activated, it will eat me from the inside, and then
it will be a threat to everyone else.

I am literally a
ticking time bomb. A ticking time bomb of mass destruction.

I keep this
information to myself.

“Doesn’t
matter,” the man says. “The virus has gone airborne.”

“We aren’t
infected,” Jack says. “And we can’t go back. The holding cells are overrun. The
rest of the facility is overrun.”

No response.

“Please, you
have to let us in,” Kim says. “We have nowhere else to go.”

“That is not my problem,”
the man replies. “And we know the rest of the facility is overrun. Why do you
think we’re hiding down here?”

“We have the
architectural blue prints of the prison,” Kim says. “We can lead the way out of
here. To the residential prison or the research labs. From there we can make it
to the Control Center. We can get out of here.”

“And we have the
warden’s access card,” Jack adds.

“You can’t get
out that way,” the man says. “You have to go through the labyrinth. And trust
me; you do not want to do that.”

“Please,” Kim
says again. “You have to let us in. Please!”

This is weird.
Trying to convince someone to let us into a prison. The prison is now the
refuge. The safe haven. The roles have been reversed. And the world has ended
and society has crumbled. And the irony is not lost on anyone.

This man, this
gatekeeper is crouching behind the walls of the security room. He has a rifle
aimed right at my chest. He is not taking any chances, and he is not letting us
in.

Suddenly someone
else enters the room. We can’t see clearly because the windows are all covered
in a thin layer of grime and dust. I’m guessing this place hasn’t been cleaned
in a few months. Maybe longer.

They start
talking.

“What the hell
are you doing?” the gatekeeper says.

“I’m leaving,” a
man answers. “I got unfinished business.”

“Leaving? You
can barely walk. You can barely see.”

“I’m fine. Get
out of my way.”

The voice of the
stranger sounds familiar.

“I can’t let you
leave,” the gatekeeper says. “If you get caught, you’ll give away our position.”

“They already
know our position, you idiot.”

The gatekeeper
pauses, hesitates. “I still can’t let you leave. What about the infected? What
if you get in trouble? What if you get trapped? What if you let them in through
here? We can’t have them attacking from both sides, we aren’t prepared for
that.”

“We
ain’t
prepared for much. And living like this is not much
of a living at all.”

“At least we’re
still alive. At least we’re still breathing. At least we’re not goddamn
zombies!”

“Look, I
appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. I appreciate the bed and the
cell. The food and water. But I am leaving. I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got
unfinished business. And I need to pay some people a visit.”

The voice sounds
familiar. The way he speaks sounds familiar. His whole attitude sounds
familiar.

“No,” the
gatekeeper says. “I won’t allow it. I can’t let you leave.”

We hear the
noise of a shotgun being cocked. “I wasn’t asking.”

It is Ben.

Big Ben.

He was thrown
into the prison by General Spears. He was almost beaten to death. And now he is
back on his feet. And once again he is out for revenge.

Out for blood.

Through the
dirty windows of the control room, I see the gatekeeper lower his rifle and
back up against the wall.

The red dot is no
longer pointed at my chest.

Ben presses a
button and unlocks the security doors. He moves outside of the control room and
takes one look at us and says, “And Thomas, let them in. You can trust them.”

“You know these
people?” Thomas asks.

I take a step closer
to the security doors, to the prison. “Ben, are you OK?”

It was a stupid
question. His face is still swollen and bruised from his fight with General
Spears. He is still hunched over. He is still struggling. He has been
struggling for weeks now. But he refuses to stop. He refuses to give up. He
waves us forward and we walk through the security doors and across the
threshold and enter the prison.

Thomas is backed
up against the far wall of the control room. “Stay right there! Don’t come any
closer!”

He re-aims his
rifle. Puts the red dot back on my chest.

I stop
immediately.

“I’ll shoot you
where you stand,” he threatens.

But he never
gets the chance to make good on his threat. Ben reaches out in one blindingly
quick movement, and snatches the gun out of Thomas’s hands. The support strap
of the gun is around Thomas’s neck, so his whole head and neck and body is
dragged towards Ben. When this happens, Ben strikes him with his elbow and
Thomas falls to the ground.

I lower my hands
and thank Ben. We enter the control room.

The control room
is basically a small square office. I guess this was some kind of processing
room for the prison, where they would check and confirm the identity of a
prisoner before they led them inside to their cells. It is a sparse room. One built
in desk. One control panel. One computer. There is also a mattress on the
floor, like someone has been sleeping and living in here.

Thomas is on the
ground. He’s not totally unconscious but he is still pretty dazed. Ben relieves
him of his weapon and turns the infra-red sight off. The fact that Ben is up
and walking and talking is an incredible feat of strength in itself.

What the hell
did it take to put this guy down?

He had suffered
bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds. He had survived a savage beating at the
hands of a nano-virus strengthened General Spears. He was beaten to an inch of
his life only a few days ago.

This had barely
slowed him down.

He was a
survivor. No other way to describe him.

And now he was
strapped up with guns and ammunition. He was ready to go to war. Again. He
carried the shotgun with the familiarity of someone who has spent a lot of time
with a shotgun. He also has a cowboy style handgun strapped to his leg.

Kim and Jack are
standing cautiously behind me.

“What’s going on
here?” Kim asks.

“Thomas is just
having a little freak out,” Ben answers. “He’s suffering from a little cabin
fever. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

There is no
response from Thomas. He shakes his head and feels his jaw to check if it is
broken.

“Are you all
right?” I ask Ben again.

“Yeah. I’m
fine,” he says to me. Lies to me.

He then turns to
Thomas. “And yeah. I know them. Well, I know two of them.” He points to Kim. “I
don’t know her.”

Thomas blinks
his eyes open, and finally regains his composure. “So you can’t vouch for her?”

“No.”

“Then she’s not
coming in. And if you hit me again…” Thomas begins to threaten Ben, but then he
stops. Thinks better of it.

Kim takes
George’s access card out of my hand and holds it up. “I’ve got the warden’s
access card. This is our ticket out of here. And we’ve got the blueprints. This
means we’ve got the map and we’ve got the key. You need us. You need me.”

“And we’re not
coming in without her,” I add. “We’re not leaving her. You’re crazy if you think
we’re leaving her out here by herself.”

“Don’t care
about the blueprints,” Thomas says. “We don’t need them. We don’t want to
leave.”

“Why not?” I
ask. “How else are you going to find your way out of here? You can’t go running
around blindly. You’ll get lost. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“What makes you
think we want to leave?”

“Wait,” Jack
says. “You don’t want to leave?”

“This is a safe
place,” he says. “They can’t touch us down here. They can’t get to us in our
cells. The prison is the perfect refuge.”

“What the hell
are you doing for food?” I ask.

“Prison
cafeteria. It’s not the world’s best food. But it’s pretty well stocked. It
should last a long time. Maybe years.”

“And then what?”

“And then we’ll
figure out our next move.”

“You can’t stay
down here forever.”

“Maybe not. But
we can wait it out. Wait for the infected to kill themselves, or die, or
starve. Wait for the rescue.”

“There is no
rescue coming,” I say. “They cut us off. We’re on our own. And the infected
don’t die. They’re already dead.”

“They
gotta
die somehow.”

“They’re
zombies,” Jack says. “The living dead. You can’t just wait for them to fall
over. It doesn’t work like that.”

“There has to be
a way. There has to be a time limit. There has to be a life span. There has to
be a way.”

“Yeah. A bullet
to the brain,” Jack says. A sledgehammer to the brain. You destroy the brain.”

“Whatever.”

“And there is no
rescue coming,” I repeat.

“Bullshit. This
is a military installation. A very important military installation. They are
coming. Maybe not for us. But they are coming. And once they get here they’ll
have to let us out. They’ll have to rescue us.”

This guy is more
delusional than I am. And I think that maybe it’s a kind of survival instinct.
The mind doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that you are already dead or
slowly dying. So it creates a fantasy for you to believe in. You come to
believe in this fantasy with your life. You believe in it wholeheartedly. And
then the fantasy consumes you.