Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (8 page)

How
long do we have? How long does Jack have?

Seconds.
Minutes.

How long would
the door to this room hold?

Seconds.
Minutes.

The door is made
of wood. I am reminded of the story of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf
made short work of the house made of sticks.

But how long did
Jack have? The door to his holding cell is now wide open. He is completely
exposed. Completely screwed.

We watch him
through the security camera. He stands up and moves to the door. He peers out.
He looks up and down the corridor. But then he hears it. He hears it at the
exact same time as we hear it.

It is a noise
that I will never forget as long as I live. Which, now that I think about it,
is only a few more hours. It is a noise that has come to mean trouble and death
and running and hiding. It is the howling, screaming, moan of the infected. It
is a noise that begins somewhere in their stomach and chest, the back of their
throat.

Jack ducks back
inside his room. He slides underneath the single bed in his holding cell.

He has nowhere
else to hide. Nowhere else to run.

We are his only
hope.

“Why the hell
did you do that?” Kim whispers.

Kim crouches
down in the corner of the room, away from the door. She grabs me and pulls me
down with her.

Stealth is now
our only option.

“He said he
would save me,” George answers.

“Who?” Kim asks.
“Who the hell is the man in the gas mask?”

“He injected me,”
George says. “He said he had given me a choice. He said he had given me
freedom.”

My eyes had been
focused on the door. On the gap between the frame and the floor. Looking and
watching for shadows. But then the warden said,
he injected me
, and I suddenly forget all about the door and the
things on the other side.

“He injected
you?” I ask.

“Yes. He
injected me with a time release nano-virus. He said he would give me the cure,
the anti-virus, if I unlocked the holding cells, if I released the infected.”

“And you
believed him?” I ask.

“I had no
choice!”

“Keep your
voices down,” Kim whispers.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Do you know who
he’s talking about?” Kim asks me.

I nod. “Yeah.
The man in the gas mask did the same thing to me. He injected me with a
sedative first and then injected me with a time release nano-virus.”

I showed her the
watch. Showed her the countdown.

Fifty-one hours.
Less than three days.

George rolls up
his sleeve. He has the same watch. “I’ve only got a few minutes left.”

And I think to
myself, this is why he is frantic. This is why he is panicking. This is why he
is doing the stupid things that he is doing.

And now it all
makes sense.

The warden has
the same watch as me, and he’s been injected with a time release nano-virus
that is programmed to eat anything and everything, including human flesh, and
his countdown is nearly at zero.

He has minutes.
Less than ten minutes.

This is why he
is freaking out.

I wonder if this
will be me in three days’ time. I wonder if I will freak out and lose my cool and
lose myself. I wonder if I will betray myself and my friends and the people
closest to me.

God, I hope not.

Kim shakes her
head. She does not fully understand. “What the hell is going on? I dragged my
brother into this mess. He wouldn’t be here… if... if...”

Kim is starting
to blame herself for everything that has gone wrong. This is not the time to
play the blame game.

“You need to
keep it together,” I say to Kim. “You know this place. So do you,” I say,
pointing at George. “And since you just made getting out of here damn near
impossible, you’re going to help us get out. And you’re going to do whatever it
takes.”

“I had no
choice,” George says. “He blackmailed me with my life. What was I supposed to
do?”

“How are you
going to get the cure if you're dead?” Kim says.

George looks at
his watch. “He’s coming back for me. I know he is.”

“How?” Kim asks.
“How the hell do you know that?”

“He knows this
place,” George says. “He knows it better than anyone. He outsmarted General
Spears for crying out loud. He is a genius. And he will get me out of here. And
then he will put a stop to all this madness.”

The warden is
delusional. I guess when confronted with your own death people act this way. I
know I was. I was still clinging to hope.
I
was still trying to live, fight, survive.

I had not given
up.

See? Delusional.

“Wait,” Kim
says. “That man out there knows this place?
”

George nods his
head. “Better than anyone. He moves through the service tunnels, the
maintenance shafts, the air ducts, the shadows.” George holds up the
blueprints. “You see this? All of this. He has memorized it all. Not just for
the prison. The entire facility. The entire Fortress. He is smart. He is
unbelievably smart. And he
will
come
back for me.”

I point to the
blue prints. “Are they
his
?”

“No. Like I
said, he’s memorized the entire layout of the Fortress. He doesn’t need them
anymore. I got these blueprints because I was trying to figure it out. It's
genius. And the way he talked about the virus. And the nano-swarms. He
understands all of it. He can fix it. That's why he injected us. Don't you
see?”

“See what?”

“He injected us
for collateral. You can't trust anyone in this new world. Not anymore. You have
to earn trust. Really earn it. He didn't have time. That's why he injected us
with a time release virus. He was
buying
our trust.”

“No, he's a
psychopath,” I repeat for the millionth time. “He’s insane. He’s evil. I don’t
care how smart he is. You can't believe a word he says. You're right about
trust. Trust is a hard thing. A dangerous and deadly thing
.” Again,
I think back to Father Damon. We
trusted him. It nearly cost us everything. “And you can't trust this guy. He
has left us for dead. We don't survive this. Do you get that?”

George’s eyes
are fixed on the security camera footage. He is biting his lip. He doesn’t
answer me.

“You need to
understand,” I continue. “You need to come to terms with it because we don't
survive this. We are already dead. He wanted you to unlock those cells because
he wants the infected to kill any remaining soldiers, any remaining survivors.
That's it. That’s all he wants.
” I hold up my
watch. “I’ve got less than three days. You’ve got less than ten minutes. What
are you going to do? How do you want to be remembered?”

It sounds like a threat but I swear I
didn’t mean it to.

George does not
back down. He keeps at me. He keeps himself in denial. “What did he ask you to
do?”

“What?”

“He wants
something from you,” George says. “He wants you to do something. He is trying
to change you. He is trying to make you see the master plan. His master plan.”

I think about
this question. He wants me to watch the world burn. He wants me to watch hope
die.

I don’t say this
out loud. I can’t say it out loud.

“What does he
want from you?” George repeats.

“He… he wants me
to watch the world burn. He wants me to watch Maria die.”

“We can’t stop
him,” George says. “He is too smart. He is too cunning. He is ruthless. There
is no stopping him. That is why we have to do what he says.”

“Goddamn it,
George. Are you even listening to yourself? You are already dead. I am already
dead. He has killed us. He is killing us. Slowly. He is torturing us.”

George is
shaking his head. He does not want to believe.

And I am
reminded of something the man in the gas mask said.

The
five stages of grieving.

Stage one is
denial. And George was still there, he was stuck in this stage. He is unable to
move on.

And I am done
trying to convince him.

Maybe the man in
the gas mask was right. Maybe I will have to kill him.

I look at Kim. I
try and make eye contact with her. I try and send her a telepathic message to
let her know that we will need to gang up on George and get his gun and
probably kill him. But I am unable to get Kim’s attention. She has moved back
over to the computer and is staring at the CCTV footage on the screen. She is
glued to the images.

The infected are
starting to stumble out of the holding cells.

Jack is still hiding
underneath the single bed. I can just see one of his shoes. He is trying to
hide as best he can, because he has no other choice.

Suddenly there
is a knock at the door, followed by a bump at the door, followed by the
scratching of fingernails.

I can see
shadows moving and shuffling between the frame and the floor.

We are the three
little pigs.

We are hiding
behind a wooden door.

We have been
talking too loudly.

And now the big
bad wolves are here.

The infected are right outside the door. They know we are here.

I am holding my
breath.

I don’t know
what to do. We have to move. We have to leave. Without Jack.

Suddenly the
lights go out and we are plunged into darkness.

“What the hell?”
Kim says.

“He cut the power,” George answers.

“What?”

“He cut the goddamn power.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

The emergency
lighting kicks in. These are faint red lights that give barely any light at
all.

“Oh god, we’re
going to die in here,” George says. “We’re dead. He said he would save me. He
promised me. Why is he doing this? Why?”

“Keep your voice
down and keep your head together,” I say.

And as I’m
telling George to keep his head together, I’m thinking the exact same thing. He
said he wanted me to watch the world burn.

He
wanted me to watch.

If he wants me
to watch, then why is he trying to kill me?

He’s crazy, I
tell myself. He is torturing you because he enjoys it. He is a psychopath and
he wants you to struggle and beg and run for your life.

This is the
reality. Deal with it. I have to focus on surviving. On getting out of this
room. Out of this prison. Away from the infected.

Saving Jack.

How do we get
out of this?

There has to be
a way.

I won’t let Jack
get eaten.

I won’t let Jack
die.

He did not have
long.

His door is wide
open.

He is hiding
under the bed for crying out loud.

The only good
thing, the only thing going for us at the moment, is the infected have
obviously heard our voices. So they are currently trying to break into this
office room.

They are paying
Jack no attention.

George begins to
cry.

“I told you to
shut the hell up,” Kim says.

“No,” I say. “We
need to make noise. More noise.”

“What? Why?”

We need to distract
the infected. Keep them occupied. As long as they’re trying to break into this
room, they’re not trying to eat Jack.

And right on cue
the infected ramp up their assault on the door.

Bang.

The wood begins
to splinter.

Kim nods her
head. She understands.

George on the
other hand, is still coming to grips with everything that has happened, with
everything that was promised to him and then taken away. He is losing his
goddamn mind.

And I need to
get the gun off him. He is proving to be unpredictable and dangerous.

“The door won’t
hold,” George says. “It won’t. We’ve got maybe a couple of minutes. And then
we’re screwed.”

“We climb
through the vent,” I say.

“And go where?”
he asks.

“To Jack’s
room.”

George shakes
his head. “No. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t climb down into the holding
cells. They don’t have vents. Only tiny air holes. They wouldn’t be very secure
holding cells if you could just climb out, and come and go as you please.”

Bang. Crack.
Wood is no match for a skull turned battering ram.

“We still have
to climb through the vent,” I say. “At the moment it’s our only exit point.”

“Agree,” Kim
says. “Let’s go.”

I point to the
table. “Make sure we take the blue prints. And the ammo.”

I am about to
suggest to George that maybe Kim should have the gun, because she is a police
officer and is trained to operate firearms. I want to do this as a subtle
attempt to get the gun off him. But I don’t get the chance.

George is
already on the table, popping the vent out. He is about to climb up and leave
us behind. Leave us for dead.

I grab his leg.
“Wait just a second.”

“Let go of me.
I’m getting out of here.”

“Hold up, buddy.
You got us into this mess. You opened those doors and now you need to help us
get out.”

“He said he
would save me. I had to release them. I had to do it!”

“Oh yeah? Then
where the hell is he?”

“He’s here. He’s
always here. He’s always watching. I just need to get out of this room. And
then he’ll find me.”

Kim and I both
pull on his legs, and he eventually stops climbing up into the vent. He stands
back on the desk. He then pulls out the gun from the waist of his pants and
points it right at my head. “Get back! I’ll shoot you. I’ll shoot you where you
stand.”

So
that’s where he was keeping the gun.
I never would’ve
been able to get it off him.

“Do it!” he
says. “Get back. Right back. Against the wall. Move or die. I will not hesitate
to shoot you.”

And I believe
him. He is cornered and desperate and dangerous. He has minutes left. So we
reluctantly move back against the wall and put our hands up. George continues
to climb and slide into the air vent. Like a snake.

And just like
that, George is gone and the door is almost broken and the wolves, the infected
are almost through, and Kim and I are in real big trouble.