Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (9 page)

George has climbed out of the room, into the air conditioning vent. He has left
us to fend for ourselves. To fight for ourselves. To rescue Jack.

He has left us
for dead.

This is the way
of the world now. Every man, woman and child for themselves. Maybe the world
was always like this. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by George’s
callousness. He has already tried to kill me today.

So yeah, I
shouldn’t be surprised.

We can hear
George squeeze and shimmy and slide his way through the air vents.

I’m guessing we
have to wait until he is long gone before we even attempt to climb up. If we
climb up now while he is still in the vicinity, he will probably turn around
and shoot us.

So we have to
wait.

Kim grabs the
pen light that George left behind and looks at the blueprints.

I keep one eye
on the blueprints and one eye on the door.

Bang.

Crunch.

The door is
quickly breaking apart.

We need to make
a move.

We need to make
a plan.

We have a
minute. Maybe less.

“I don’t know,”
Kim says. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

A chunk of wood
splinters off and flies into the room. They can see us now. And the sight of
us, the sight of fresh meat spurs them on.

The door begins
to break off its hinges.

“Just grab the
blue prints,” I say. “Take them with us. We have to get out of here.”

It is the only
thing I know for certain.

We have to get
out of here.

We need to go.
We need to get out of this room.

We stay. We die.
Everyone dies.

“Is he gone?”
Kim asks. “Is George gone? Will he shoot us?”

“Doesn’t matter.
We’re out of time.”

It was the
lesser of two evils. Face a firing squad or face the infected.

We choose the
firing squad.

“Go!”

I roll the blue
prints up. Kim hands me the pen light and she climbs up into the air vents with
ease. She basically does a one handed pull up. I guess she really is feeling a
lot better. Her meds, the NVX has kicked in. The nano-bots have turned her into
a superhero.

I jump on the
desk and hand her the blue prints and the pen light. I reach up and grab on to
the edges of the manhole. I pull myself up but I struggle to do this. Kim made
it look easy.

I have half my
body inside the vent. Half outside. My legs are dangling.

Suddenly, the
door breaks open and the infected swarm in. Strong and powerful and frantic
hands grab onto me and they nearly pull me down.

Kim takes my
hand and all of a sudden I’m in this epic game of tug of war.

I feel like I am
being stretched and ripped in half.

I can’t let them
bite me.

Don’t
let them bite you!

“No!”

Not like this.
Not yet. I need more time. Just a little more time.

Three days.
Fifty-one hours.

I kick my legs
as fast and as hard as I can. I catch one of the infected in the face and they
fall back.

I kick again.
And again. And again.

Eventually my
legs are free. Eventually I’m just kicking the air and Kim drags me up and into
the vent.

But we are not
out of trouble yet.

As soon as I’m
in the vent, as soon as we start crawling and squeezing our way to I’m not sure
where, the infected have already jumped on the desk. They are already giving
chase.

I look back over
my shoulder.

I see hands.
Decomposing hands. Hands that are dead yet alive. They are hungry and frantic.
Aggressive and strong. They are reaching through the vent. They are reaching
out for us.

“Go!” I yell. “Go!
Don’t look back.”

We crawl as fast as we can. This is not very fast.

It’s dark and
George is nowhere to be seen. Kim hasn’t switched the torch on yet because fear
has taken over and she isn’t thinking straight and I’m not thinking straight. I
take another look over my shoulder, ignoring my own advice about not looking
back. The infected are all trying to squeeze through the vent at the same time.
Another bottleneck.

I can see two or
three of them, moaning and howling. They are looking right at us.

It is a
frightening scene. The sight of the infected looking at us and snapping their
jaws triggers a rush of adrenalin. We push forward and we are able to put
distance between us and them. We round a bend in the vent and we keep going.
Eventually we come to what appears to be some sort of junction. The air vents
go up a few levels and down a few.

We stop and
catch our breath.

We are alive for
the moment.

But we have no
idea where we are. Are we heading towards the sick bay? Or are we heading towards
the holding cells? Towards Jack? I have no idea. We could be heading in the
complete opposite direction for all I know. We could be heading towards the
subway tunnels.

The fear and the
panic and the rush of our narrow escape, of nearly getting eaten and infected,
has clouded my judgment and my sense of direction.

To make matters
worse, we have no idea if Jack is still alive.

We need to keep
moving. We need to act fast.

No time to rest.

Blueprints.
Torch.

Kim is breathing
hard but she has a look of determination on her face. She is ready to rock and
roll.

This gives me
hope and strength.

“The good thing
about our narrow escape is that it has distracted the infected,” Kim says.
“They’re still trying to get us, which means they won’t be looking for Jack.”

I nod my head.
This is good. This is the silver lining to almost getting eaten and infected.
But listening to their moaning, screaming howls echo through the air vents is
making it extremely difficult to concentrate and figure out exactly where we
are. It sounds like they are all around us.

It sounds like
they are coming closer.

Coming for us.

I need to stay
calm. I need to keep my cool. Keep my head together.

But this is
easier said than done.

There’s a reason
it sounds like the infected are all around us.

It’s
because they are.

We are
surrounded.

It sounds like
they are coming closer, coming for us, because they are.

We are being
hunted.

“Jack was on the
same floor as us,” Kim says. “So we need to stay on this level.”

“Yeah. OK. And
then what?”

“I don’t know.”

Kim has the
blueprints and the pen light. She is looking at the blueprints, trying to
figure it out. This is a puzzle that we have to solve. If we solve it, we save
Jack. If we can’t solve it, Jack is dead and so are we.

We are all dead.

So we have to
think this through. We have to figure this out. But it is hard to think. Hard
to plan. Kim is shaking her head because she can’t figure it out. There are too
many pieces of the puzzle. Too many missing pieces.

Piece one: where
the hell is Jack? Where is his room?

Piece two: how
the hell do we get there?

Piece three: how
the hell do we avoid the infected?

If we figure
this stuff out, if we find all these missing pieces and fit them together, we
might just have a chance.

I open my mouth
but nothing comes out. I want to say something constructive, something that
will help our situation, but I can’t think of anything. My mind is blank and
sluggish and drug affected. And I’m starting to panic and fear is taking over.

The noises of
the infected grow louder. Closer.

Kim looks back
the way we came. The vents are dark and twisted and we can’t see very far. And
staring into the darkness of the vents is scaring me more than I already am. So
I look back at the blueprints and I’m trying to figure this out, I’m trying to
solve the puzzle.

“Let’s
brainstorm,” I say. “We just need to get the ball moving. Say anything.
Anything you want. There are no bad ideas during the brainstorming session.
Deal?”

“Deal.”

We’re both
nodding our heads, trying to think, but again we are stuck.

“OK, I’ll go
first,” I say. “We track down George and get his gun and shoot all the
zombies.”

“And then we
shoot George,” Kim adds.

“Whoa.”

“Hey, he left us
there to die.”

“Fair point. And
he did try and kill me.”

“What?”

“When you were
unconscious,” I explain. “When I went to get your meds. He sent me to the sick
bay by myself. He knew there were infected in the room. But he didn’t tell me.
He tried to kill me.”

“Jesus. This guy
is unbelievable.”

“Yeah,” I say
because I don’t know what else to say.

“So it sounds
like we’re going to need a bigger gun,” Kim adds. “And more ammo.”

“Or a tank.”

“Or multiple
tanks. And fighter jets.”

I give Kim a
look.

“Hey, you said
there are no bad ideas during the brainstorming session.”

“OK, so we get a
time machine,” I say. “A
DeLorean
. And we time travel
the hell out of here.”

“Time travel
doesn’t work like that,” Kim points out. “We would still be under ground. Time
travel can move you through time but not space.”

I shrug my
shoulders. “At least there would be no zombies. And who made you an expert on
time travel?”

Kim lowers her
head. “Jack did. When we were growing up. He used to come into my room and say
the weirdest things. Like, he would just walk in, almost in a daze, and explain
the love story in the movie, ‘Terminator’.”

“Terminator?”

“Yeah. So Kyle
Reese goes back in time, right? To 1984. And spoiler alert, he impregnates
Sarah Connor and then he dies in 1984. But then he is born again, in the
future. And then he goes back in time again, and impregnates Sarah Connor again,
and dies again. Over and over and over. He’s stuck in this weird loop. His
whole life, his whole existence is stuck in a loop.”

“He loves that
movie,” I say. “I lost count of the times he made Maria and I watch it.”

And I think about
the whole time travel thing for a second and I nearly go crazy. Kim echoes my
thoughts.

“And I’m trying
to study for finals,” she says. “And Jack comes into my room and says this and
damn near breaks my mind.”

“Wow. Studying.
I remember studying. I remember that I completely sucked at it. I was always
procrastinating. Always wasting time. I was always looking for a distraction. I
always thought school was a prison. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to a
prison. You have your friends. You have almost no responsibilities. Almost no
worries in the world. Just do your homework. Study for finals. Eat your
vegetables.
It’s
funny how one little zombie
apocalypse can change all that.”

“Yeah, I guess
it’s kind of funny. If you’ve got a really sick sense of humor.”

I look back at
the blueprints. Our brainstorming session has yielded no results. No useful
ideas. Maybe we need a whiteboard. And a whiteboard marker. A focus group.

Come
on, Rebecca. Focus.

“Prison,” Kim
whispers.

“Huh?”

“School is a
prison.”

“Yeah, that’s
what I said. What’s your point?”

“There is a
prison down here.”

“Yeah, so?”

She flattens out
the blue prints some more. She shines the torch.

“This is just
the processing part. We’ve got the interrogation rooms. The holding cells.” She
moves the torch along the blueprints. “This section here, it’s connected to the
prison via a tunnel. A corridor. A really long corridor. Two sets of security
doors here.”

I’d made a
mental note earlier that this corridor would probably be our exit point. The
alternative is to make it all the way to the subway station and try and make it
through the tunnels. But the subway station is a long way away. And there are a
lot of infected between here and there.

“There’s an
elevator shaft,” Kim adds. “It leads down to the military prison.”

“Down? How far
down does it go?”

“I’m not sure. I
think I heard someone say the prison was the lowest point in the facility. But
I can’t be certain.”

“OK, so we
somehow get Jack, and then somehow get to the prison?”

“Sort of.”

“Are we sure we
want to go to the prison? It doesn’t really sound like the safest option.”

“It’s probably
not. But there’s no way we can make it to the subway tunnels from here. And
according to these blueprints, the military prison is connected to the civilian
prison.”

“So?”

“So we should be
able to move through both prisons. Make our way out through the civilian prison
system.”

“And what if
they’re both overrun?”

“Then we’ll have
to come back. We’ll have to figure something else out.”

“Like risk going
through the subway tunnels?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

I point to the
corridor that contained all the holding cells. “We still need a distraction. We
still need to keep the infected away from Jack’s holding cell. And we still
need to
find
his cell.”

Kim is about to
suggest an idea but suddenly we feel something crash into the air vents. We
feel vibrations through the metal. Something is crawling and scurrying towards
us as fast as it possibly can. If I didn’t know exactly what it was, I would’ve
thought that maybe it was a giant rat.

But it’s not a
giant rat.

It’s the
infected.

They are inside
the vents. They are coming.