Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (11 page)

There is a trail of blood that leads out of the holding cell into the corridor.

There are bits
of clothes here and there. Bits of George’s tie.

Why
the hell was he still wearing a tie?

I see the gun.

Nothing else.

From somewhere down
the other end of the corridor we can hear the infected. We can hear their
howling, moaning screams. We can hear their running footsteps.

Jack is staring
at the pieces of George’s clothes and the trail of blood that leads out of the
room and off into the dark and he says, “What the hell was that? What the hell
just happened? Was that a nano-swarm?”

“Yeah,” I
whisper, feeling numb and sick at the same time.

“It was inside
him?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“It was put
there. By a psychopath.”

“What?”

I lean down and
pick up George’s name tag. The name tag he was clutching as he stood in front
of us, as he stood dying and threatening to kill us.

In the passport
sized photo he is not smiling because I don’t think you’re allowed to smile in
ID photos anymore. Something to do with facial recognition computers.

“Let’s go,” Kim
says. “Into the prison. Come on. It’s our only chance.”

Kim picks up the
gun. She wipes the blood on her pants.

And I know it’s
the right thing to do. I know we need to move. If we don’t move we are dead.
But I am absolutely paralyzed. I have just witnessed my own death. I look at my
watch. In exactly fifty hours and twenty-six minutes, I am going to suffer the
same fate as George Walters, prison administrator. The warden.

I feel like
throwing up.

But Jack grabs
me by the hand and gets me moving. “Come on!”

I slide George’s
name tag into my pocket. I do this because I fear that when it’s my time, I
might need a physical reminder to not become like the warden.

I
must not lose myself.

We step out into
the corridor. More blood. But no George. Nothing. Not a damn thing. The
nano-swarm is also gone. More shredded bits of clothes. Another bit of his tie.
Not much though. I’m guessing the swarm ate everything else.

And we can hear
the infected. We can’t see them yet. They are still too far away, hidden by the
darkness. The glowing red emergency lights are not strong enough to illuminate
them. But their screams are getting louder. And I am constantly reminded that
the Oz virus is designed to find life.

Kim is backing
away and making sure the gun is loaded. “Let’s go!”

We run down the
corridor. It is a short distance to the security doors that separate the
holding cells from the actual prison. And in this section of the corridor there
are no more holding cells. No more offices. No more rooms of any kind. It is
just a concrete corridor. A concrete trap. A concrete tomb.

We arrive at the
security doors. There is a keypad next to the doors, built into the wall.

“What’s the
code?” Jack says.

“I don’t know,” I
answer. “We didn’t think this part through.”

And I want to
curse myself and slap myself for being so stupid.

Kim presses some
buttons on the keypad at random. It does not work.

Invalid
code. Try again.

She tries again.

Invalid
code.

“This is no
use,” I say. “You’ll never guess the code.”

“I’m not
guessing. General Spears gave me codes to access certain areas. But they’re not
working. They must’ve been changed.”

Next to the
keypad is a barcode scanner.

“Break it,” Jack
says. “We have to break the door down.”

We start kicking
the door because we are starting to panic and we are scared out of our minds.
But just like trying to guess the code, kicking the door is absolutely
pointless. It was designed to withstand this kind of abuse.

“Try the gun,”
Jack says.

Kim flicks the
safety off and raises the gun. “Stand back. Cover your eyes.”

I stand back and
turn away and Kim fires two point blank rounds into the lock of the door. But
nothing happens.

The door is
bullet proof.

I look over my
shoulder. I still can’t see the infected but the noises are getting louder. The
darkness seems to intensify. It’s almost as if the darkness is pressing against
us, trying to hold us down. I am fully expecting the infected to appear,
illuminated by the red glow of the emergency lighting.

But there is
nothing. Not yet.

No movement.

No shadows cast
on the cold concrete walls.

I place my hand
against the wall and for some reason I start thinking about the weather
outside. And since we’re in the middle of the Australian Outback, the odds are
that outside, it’s unbearably sunny and unbearably hot, with hardly any clouds
in the sky.

I can’t remember
the last time I saw the sun.

It feels like a
lifetime ago.

It was the day
Maria and I were following the tank tracks.

The day the tracks
disappeared.

We thought we
had messed up. We thought we had wandered off into the desert for no goddamn
reason. I didn’t tell Maria at the time, but I honestly thought we were going
to die of thirst. Or heat stroke.

We would go mad
first.

And then we
would probably kill each other.

A mercy killing.

A suicide pact.

This entire
scenario played through my mind in an instant when those tank tracks
disappeared.

We’d thought the
tracks would lead us somewhere. To a base. A military installation. But they had
led us to a ditch of severed hands. Severed hands tattooed with barcodes. They
had led us to a metal pole that was actually a barcode reader. It makes me sick
to my stomach to think that someone had cut off all those hands and forearms,
just to try and gain access to the Fortress. It sounds desperate and ruthless.
Psychotic.

The whole thing
reeked of the man in the gas mask. It was sick and twisted and insane. These
are his trademarks. Insanity is his modus operandi.

We didn’t
realize it right away, but we had found the Fortress. The metal pole was a
barcode reader. It was the entrance.

And from there
we entered the Fortress. We descended down into hell. And I haven’t seen the
sun or the sky or the moon since that day, and I probably won’t see the sky
ever again.

I can’t get the
memory of the severed hands out of my head. Fingers clawed in rigor mortis and
covered in dried dark blood that was mixed in with red dust. Each hand, each
forearm had a tattoo of a barcode just above the palm, on the inside of the wrist.
This was the person’s key to the kingdom. Their ticket to asylum, to safety
from the Oz virus. But ultimately, the barcode on the wrist sealed their fate
and guaranteed their death.

The
barcode on the wrist.

Maybe George had
a barcode tattooed on his wrist.

Everyone down
here had one. Even Ben had one. Civilians. Scavengers.

But George is no
more. He is gone. Completely gone.

Kim.

Kim throws her
weight into the door and then realizes that the door is not going to budge. She
doubles over, breathing hard.

“Wait,” I say, a
light bulb appearing over my head. “Kim, do you have a barcode tattooed on your
wrist?”

Jack stops
kicking the door. A look of hope on his face.

“Yeah?” she
says. “Why?”

“Try the
scanner.”

Kim has a look
on her face that says, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of this’. She moves her
wrist underneath the barcode scanner but nothing happens.

“Not
authorized,” she says, reading the small screen.

Damn.

“Who the hell
would be authorized?” Jack says.

“George,” I
answer.

“Well, he can’t
help us. He can’t help anyone anymore.”

I grab his name tag,
and I feel sorry for him and how he went out and how he will be remembered.

The passport
sized photo ID.

No smile.

Job title:
Prison Administrator.

Barcode.

Wait. There’s a
barcode.

“There’s a
barcode,” I say.

“What?” Kim
asks. “Where?”

I slide the name
tag under the barcode scanner and the doors magically open.

Well, the first
set of doors magically open and we step through. The second set of doors
remains locked.

And the infected
finally appear from the dark. They are slowly stumbling towards us. But when
they see us, they start running.

And the second
set of doors has still not opened. The first set of doors has not closed. We
are sitting ducks. We are standing in front of the doors, like we’re waiting
for an elevator.

We must look so
stupid.

This could be
the end.

All because of a
faulty door.

I’m starting to
realize this was a mistake. We should’ve made a run for the subway station.
Taken our chances in the tunnels.

I kick the door
in frustration. “Why the hell is it not opening? What’s going on?”

Kim grabs Jack
and pulls him closer to the second set of doors. “Get behind me!”

She raises the
handgun and starts shooting at the closest infected.

She is able to
drop one.

Two.

Three.

She takes out
four infected people.

She keeps firing
but eventually she runs out of ammo. I think back to the box of ammo that
George had found. I have no idea where it is or where we left it.

We back up. We
brace ourselves.

Finally, the
first set of doors close so that now we are trapped between the first set and
the second set. We are safe. We are protected from the infected. But now we are
stuck, we are trapped between both sets of doors.

The infected
slam into the first set of doors. And the doors, they actually begin to buckle
and strain. They appear to bulge forward. And I’m thinking, I thought these
doors were designed for this kind of abuse. They are reinforced. They are
bullet proof. They are built to last. But the energy and the mind blowing
strength of the infected are making a mockery of the security doors.

The doors
continue to strain.

They continue to
buckle.

But they hold.

And the second
set of doors finally open.

And we back
away. We enter the corridor that leads to the military prison. No one says a
word about how we were nearly killed. About how we were just standing there,
waiting for the doors. Waiting for an elevator. Waiting to die.

We walk away from the security doors and the infected. I walk backwards, unable
to take my eyes off them. Their energy. Their aggression. They look so
desperate. All they want to do is break through and infect us.

Simple. Pure.

We keep walking.
It does not take long for the darkness to take over and swallow us.

The corridor and
our world becomes the red glow of the emergency lights, the sound of our
breathing, the sounds of the infected banging and bashing and slamming into the
security doors.

“Are you all
right?” I ask Jack.

“Yeah, I’m
fine,” he answers.

“How long were
you locked up for?”

“From the first
day I arrived. They brought me to the holding cells and I was kept there for
the entire time. They kept threatening to take me down into the prison. They
kept asking me if I was willing to cooperate. I had no idea what they were
talking about. There was a guy. An old guy. General Spears. He came and saw me
a couple of times. Dude was crazy. Most of the time, I had no idea what he was
talking about. I think he just wanted my obedience. My respect or something.
But I was in that holding cell for like, two weeks. Felt a lot longer. I think
I nearly died of boredom a couple of times.”

“I’m sorry,” Kim
says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know they were going to lock you
up. I tried to get you out. You have to believe me.”

“Sorry?” he
asks. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. You took a bullet for us.
Don’t be sorry. We owe you. We owe you big time.”

Kim shakes her
head and says that we don’t owe her anything. And then she
thanked me for saving her life. For getting her to
the quarantine facility in New Zealand.

It was this
weird web of fate. Kim had saved us back in Sydney. She had taken a bullet for
us. And in turn, I had saved her. I got her to safety. Got her to the New
Zealand Quarantine Facility. But because she had an open wound, she had to stay
behind when I was released. And as a result, she was essentially kidnapped and
experimented on. But these experiments saved her life.

The experiments
rid her body of cancer. Turned her into a super soldier. She became a trusted
advisor to General Spears. She was seen as a walking miracle.

A
highly prized asset.

So when Jack ran
off into the desert and was found by the military, Kim was able to convince the
military and the General to let her brother live.

Of course, Jack
would never have run off into the desert if Kim hadn’t been taken away, if we
hadn’t found Doctor Hunter’s computer that had the video footage of Kim being
experimented on.

I think it was
the footage that pushed Jack over the edge. Seeing his sister drugged up and
taken hostage. It was too much for Jack to take.

See what I mean?
It was a messy web of fate. And we had all suffered and we are all tired and we
had barely made it through.

But we did make
it. And we have no choice but to keep going. Keep fighting. Keep suffering.

Once we were
sure the security doors would definitely hold, and we had walked off into the
dark so we were out of sight, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

I am grateful to
be alive but at the same time I am terrified of what lies ahead. I am terrified
of what lies at the end of this dark corridor. I am terrified of what is
waiting for us in the prison.

Criminals?

Infected?

And I am
terrified of what happens to me in less than two days’ time.

I lean against
the cold concrete wall for support. “Guys, I need to sit down for a second. I’m
not feeling so great.”

I start to sway
and Kim puts her hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Yeah, you look
kinda
pale.”

I put my back
against the wall and slide down to the floor.

I am breathing
heavily.

My hands are
shaking.

Jack kneels down
next to me. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

“Yeah. I just
need a minute. I’m fine.”

Jack then stood
and he began swearing with joy. “I am so glad to see you guys. I mean, I
thought I was a dead man. I thought everyone was…”

He trails off.

And I know what
he is going to say next.

Suddenly the
smile disappears from his face and he lowers his head and he whispers, “Where
is Maria?”

There is no
answer from Kim. But Kim does not know where Maria is.

There is no
answer from me, because I don’t want to talk about it right now.

“Where is
Maria?” he asks again.

I look up at Kim
and she wants to know as well.

I take a deep
breath and I say, “The truth is, no one knows where Maria is.”

The man in the
gas mask said he had taken her to the Control Center. But he could be lying.

He could be
lying about everything.

I am about to
say no one even knows if she is still alive.

But I don’t say
this.

Instead I say,
“She’s down here somewhere. But she has been taken. It’s up to us to find her.
To save her.”

“Save her?” Jack
says. “Is she in trouble?”

“Yes. She is in
big trouble.”

“Who the hell
took her?”

“I don’t really
know. A bad man. A crazy son of a bitch. A psychopath wearing a gas mask that
he has stitched into his scalp.”

“Do you have any
idea where she is?” Kim asks. “Any idea at all?”

I shake my head.
“No. Not really. The man in the gas mask said he had taken her to the Control
Center.”

“Why?” Kim asks.
“What’s at the Control Center?”

“Wait,” Jack
says. “What if she was being kept in one of those holding cells back there?”

“She’s not,” I
answer.

“How do you know
that?”

“Because. I just
do. Plus, we didn’t see her on the security cameras.”

“But why the
Control Center?” Kim asks again.

“I’m not sure. I
think the Control Center is the main communication hub for the Fortress.”

“Yeah, so?”

“This guy, the
man wearing the gas mask, he wants to kill Maria on camera. He wants to
broadcast her death to the world. He needs to do this from the Control Center.”

Jack does not
understand. He is confused and angry. He runs his hands through his hair. “Why?
Why does this moron want to kill Maria?”

“He wants the Oz
virus to spread around the world. He wants to kill everyone. He doesn’t want
Maria getting in the way of his sick, twisted dream. He doesn’t want anyone to
make an anti-virus from her blood. So he is going to kill her on a global
stage. He is going to terrorize everyone. He is going to spread fear.”

The implications
of what I have just told Jack, sinks in immediately. He now knows what’s at
stake.

“We have to find
her,” Jack says. “We have to go and get her. Right now.”

“We will,” I
say. “But we have to be careful. If we go running off into the dark, we will
get ourselves killed. This whole facility is completely overrun. It’s wall to
wall with the infected.”

Jack is pacing
back and forth. He is anxious and nervous. He knows it is time for action. “So
what the hell happened?” he says. “What the hell is going on down here? How did
this place fall apart? How the hell did you guys even get here?”

I catch him up
on how Maria and I found our way here, to this godforsaken place known as the
Fortress.

I told him what
had happened when Maria and I made our escape from Daniel’s camp. Is escape
even the right word? Maybe. Maybe not. I was unconscious when Maria made the
decision to leave. So I can’t be sure. But according to Maria, Daniel had gone
insane. He was becoming violent. He was sick.

I now realize he
was displaying the withdrawal symptoms of the nano-virus.

“So Maria made
the decision to take one of the Humvees and look for you,” I say.

“You left the
camp?” he asks.

“Like I said, I
was unconscious at the time. But had I been awake, I probably would’ve done the
exact same thing. Of course I would’ve. We had no choice. And you just freaking
left us. I know you were trying to find your sister. I know you warned us you
were going to do it. But goddamn it Jack, you just… you just left us!”

Jack doesn’t
look at me because he knows he did a stupid thing. “I didn’t think you would
come after me. I didn’t think you would follow me into the goddamn Australian
Outback!”

“What did you
expect us to do?”

“I expected you
to get the hell out of the country.”

“We couldn’t
leave. Daniel’s jet was screwed. There was no extraction. We were stranded. We
had no choice.”

Jack is shaking
his head. He knows he messed up. “No extraction? I didn’t know. I thought
Daniel’s people would get you out. I thought…”

He trails off as
he realizes that he left us while we were still stranded.

“But anyway, I’m
not important,” he continues. “I am nothing. You risked Maria’s life. And now
we don’t know where she is. She could be dead for all we know.”

“She’s not
dead,” I say. “She’s not.”

“How do you know
that? You don’t know that. You
can’t
know that.”

I look at the
watch. Fifty hours and two minutes.

This countdown
means something.

Well, I don’t
know for sure.

But I do.

Call it a hunch.

Call it what Ben
called it. A cold, sinking, awful feeling.

You come to trust
that feeling, Ben said. You come to trust it with your life.

The man in the
gas mask is going to kill Maria. He is going to show the world.

And he wants me
to watch. He wants me to struggle and fight. He wants to torture me. And it is
working. I am on the verge of breaking apart. I am on the verge of giving up.

But I don’t. I
can’t.

I remember back
to the day of the massacre at the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We had barely survived.
We were treading water in the harbor and Kenji was looking at the ruins of the
bridge. And in that moment, he made a vendetta. He wanted to find whoever was
responsible and make them pay.

We have that
chance now.
I have that chance now
.

Is the man in
the gas mask responsible?

Did he cause
this plague? Did he cause the outbreak?

I don’t know.

But I do know he
wants to kill Maria.

The watch beeps
at me. At us.

It tells me I
have fifty hours to live.

“He is waiting,”
I say.

“Who is?”

“The man in the
gas mask. He has Maria. And he is going to kill her. In front of the cameras.
He is going to record it. He is going to broadcast it to the world. Live. In
real time.”

Jack thinks
about my theory. But he is still not convinced. “What the hell is that watch
counting down to?” he asks.

“I have been
injected with a time-release nano-virus. When the countdown reaches zero, the
nano-bots will eat me from the inside. Just like what happened to George.”

“Who did this to
you? Why did they do this to you?

“The man in the
gas mask,” I answer.

“But we can fix
you, right?” Jack says. “George mentioned something about a cure. We can stop
the nano-virus before…”

“Yeah,” I lie.
“We can fix me. I’ll be fine. But first we need to find Maria. We need to stop
the man in the gas mask before it’s too late.”

Kim nods her
head. “We have to get to the Control Center. The nerve center. I’m pretty sure
it’s on one of the higher levels. It contains all the communication equipment.
The satellite link. It’s the only connection to the outside world.”

“That’s where
he’ll do it,” I say. “That’s where he’s taken her. That’s where he is waiting
for us. That’s where we’ll find him.”

“And Maria,”
Jack says.

“Yeah. And
Maria.”

I take out the
blueprints from my back pocket. “But first we have to go through the prison
system.”

I lay the
blueprints on the ground and we sit down and study them in the faint red
emergency light.

“OK,” Kim says.
“According to these blueprints, the military prison is connected to the
civilian prison.”

Jack and I are
both nodding along.

“So we should be
able to eventually make our way through,” she continues.

“What about this
part here,” Jack says, pointing to a section of the blueprints that is shaded
black.