by Bowman, Dave
And he never saw any women. There had been no trace of Naomi or Jack since they had been separated two days ago.
The women prisoners were kept completely separate from the men. Brent saw a couple of female guards now and then, but no female inmates. Naomi and the other women must have been kept in a separate part of town.
Finally, the guards stopped the group of men in front of an abandoned lot. Brent and the other men looked at each other wordlessly. What work job were they to perform today, they all wondered?
Nearby, a couple of young guys were unloading their bicycle-pulled trailers. They put their tools on the ground, then rode off on their bikes. Once they were gone, Brent’s crew was led to the end of the block, where the teens had dumped off some supplies. Brent got a look at what they had left behind: shovels.
“You’re first, 155,” the guard Brent knew best said, looking in Brent’s direction. The guard had a huge tattoo of a spider’s web across his neck. The other guards called him Spider.
Spider picked up a shovel and led Brent toward the far corner of the empty lot. The weeds were tall, and the lot was littered with garbage and debris. Once Spider was satisfied with their location, he stopped. He unlocked Brent’s handcuffs, handed him the shovel, then raised his rifle threateningly.
“Don’t even think about trying anything, 155,” Spider warned, narrowing his beady eyes at Brent. “Start digging.”
Brent stabbed the shovel in the ground. The earth was dry and hard. The digging wouldn't be easy. He jumped on the top edges of the shovel, driving it into the ground. Then, lifting a shovelful of dry, rocky soil, he tossed the dirt behind him.
"That's the spirit, 155," Spider said between guffaws. "Guess you got the hang of it yesterday."
Brent didn't look up at him as he drove the shovel into the ground again. He snuck a glance at the other men, who were stationed at scattered points around the empty lot. The other five prisoners were guarded by only two men. Brent was assigned his own guard because he was what they considered a flight risk.
Brent sighed, breathing out a mixture of exasperation and dread.
If only he had been more alert back on the highway. If only he had been paying more attention when Jack was siphoning the gas for the Pathfinder two days ago, he wouldn't be doing slave labor for these lunatics.
The thing was, Brent had been alert out there on the interstate. And he was pretty sure Naomi had been paying attention, too. Those guys had attacked them out of nowhere. They must have have been waiting in damned good hiding places for who knows how long when Jack had stopped the Pathfinder for gas. There had been no movement, no noise, no sight of the men as they lay in wait. Out of nowhere, the guards had attacked Brent and his friends, surrounding them and pointing rifles at them.
Brent, Jack, and Naomi never even had a chance.
And now, the three of them were prisoners.
The people who had ambushed Brent's group had led them to a big adobe house – their headquarters. There, the leaders of this operation had assigned Brent, Jack, and Naomi to separate detention facilities. Camps, they had called them. But really, they were prisons.
Jack, Naomi, and Brent had been handcuffed, then led away by armed guards. Though Brent had tried to see where his friends had been taken, the guards made sure that his friends’ whereabouts were kept a mystery.
Jack had been led in the opposite direction from the others – back toward the interstate. Jack had mouthed off to the head honcho, Oscar. And Oscar had sent him to the C Block. Brent assumed it was a facility for the worst offenders. He shuddered to think what they were doing to Jack now.
And Brent hadn't seen where Naomi had been taken, either. Brent's guards had led him away from the main road. They’d taken him to the west several blocks, then to the south. They had taken several turns, probably intentionally to disorient Brent and make him forget his whereabouts.
Brent hadn't seen where Naomi was taken. There had been two men guarding her, but when they got outside, Brent saw that Naomi had been passed off to two female guards. That, at least, was a small sign of hope that maybe Naomi wouldn't be treated too terribly. But still, he worried about her. She had been in such a state of grief before they had been captured. How was she responding now to this horrific turn of events?
That first day, Brent had been taken to the first floor of the dormitory. He had been assigned a room with a middle-aged man named Quinn. That first day had been terrible. Brent was furious, pacing back and forth across the room they had locked him up in, trying to get free of the cuffs. But Quinn was in a panic.
"We have to get out of here!” Quinn had cried. “They're going to kill us! I know they are, I know it!"
Brent had collapsed on his bed in frustration. At that point, his hands had still been cuffed behind him, and Quinn's were too. Brent looked at his roommate. The normally pale, round man had turned red. His nostrils flared as he breathed in and out furiously. He looked over at Brent, suddenly remembering his presence.
"You’ve got to calm down," Brent said. "You're going to hyperventilate and pass out. Then you'll never get out of here."
Quinn looked at him. "But we’ve got to escape! You're just lying there! You're not just going to give up, are you?"
"No, I'm not giving up. But I don't know how we can get out of here at the moment," Brent said angrily.
Quinn stared at Brent as if he were unable to believe the younger man's words. Then, all of a sudden, he threw himself at the window. He tried to wedge his shoulder behind the plywood on the window and pry it off, but the panel wouldn't budge. Quinn only succeeded in ripping his shirt and cutting a gash in his shoulder. Next, in a frenzy, Quinn fell on the floor and started to kick the plywood.
Brent closed his eyes, trying to shut out the noise of Quinn's frenzied attempt to escape. Brent was fighting back his own panic, and seeing his roommate go berserk wasn't helping. He began to feel like a weight was pressing against his chest. He found it hard to breathe.
How was he going to get out of this room?
Finally, Quinn collapsed on the floor, groaning and spent from his effort. The plywood hadn't budged.
He looked up at Brent, anguished. "What are we going to do?" Quinn asked. "We’ve gotta find a way out. Now!"
"I want to get out of here just as much as you do. But we have to think about this. We have to plan our best course of action."
Quinn thought about it for a moment while he caught his breath. "Okay, our plan is to rush them when they open the door."
Brent sighed. "I don't think that’s such a good idea. They all have guns. And there are so many of them."
"So, what then?" Quinn demanded angrily. "You're just going to do what they say? Play nice with these . . . these monsters?"
"I don't know," Brent said. "Maybe that's what we'll have to do, at least in the beginning. Maybe we can escape later."
Quinn didn't answer. He just lay on the floor, his face turning redder and redder.
About an hour later, they heard movement in the hall. Brent and Quinn looked at each other. When they heard a key in the door, Quinn scrambled to his feet.
"I'm getting out of here," Quinn muttered under his breath, "with or without you."
"No, wait," Brent said as the doorknob turned and the door began to open. "Wait!"
But Quinn was already charging ahead. Brent rose to his feet, trying to block Quinn. The older man plowed into Brent, pushing the younger man forward just as the door swung open.
"Stop!" Brent yelled.
Then, a deafening blast shot through the room. An incredible force slammed Brent to the floor. He became aware of the feeling of warm, thick liquid on his skin.
At first, Brent thought he had been shot. His looked over his own body, checking for a bullet wound.
Then, he understood what had happened.
The guard had shot Quinn, whose body had fallen on Brent's legs. Brent moved to push Quinn off him, but a force to his side came out of nowhere. Pain seared through
his body.
Brent looked up to see the guard lifting the butt of his rifle in the air.
"No one gets out of here!" the guard roared. "There's no escape!"
The rifle slammed into Brent's side again, sending fiery currents through his body. He screamed in agony.
The guard stood over him a moment, watching him. Finally, he gave Brent a push with his steel-toed boot.
"That'll teach you to try to escape," he said. He walked out of the room, leaving Brent lying on the floor.
Brent groaned. Quinn was still lying on top of his legs, pinning Brent in place.
Brent lifted his head up to get a look at the guy. He shook his legs a little, seeing if Quinn responded to the movement.
He was dead.
Suddenly disgusted by the dead body lying on top of him, Brent struggled to be free of the weight. He pushed the body off him, then squirmed away from him on the floor.
Brent was covered in Quinn's blood.
Brent felt a wave of nausea. He was overcome with an urge to escape from the room, to breathe fresh air.
He looked over at the door. Surprisingly, the guard had left it open. Was this a test? Were they waiting to see if Brent tried to escape?
But a moment later, the guard was back. And this time, he had company. Another man, this one with a shotgun, stood at his back.
"On your feet, 155."
Brent struggled to push himself up. It was hard enough with his hands cuffed behind his back. But now, after the beating he had endured, the pain made it difficult to move. The guards laughed openly as Brent struggled and fumbled.
The guard with the shotgun gave Brent a push out the doorway. "There's been a change of plans. Your new home is the fourth floor."
"But I wasn't trying to escape!" Brent protested. "I was trying to stop the other guy from running out."
The guard brought the butt of his rifle up again. This time, it struck Brent's jaw.
Brent stumbled backward, suddenly dizzy.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. They were all still there. The guard hadn't hit him hard enough to break anything. Brent guessed that meant he was lucky.
"I don't like the sound of your voice, 155," the guard said. He grabbed hold of Brent's collar and tightened it around Brent's neck. "Keep that big mouth of yours shut, understand?"
He let go of Brent's shirt and gave him a push backward.
And that was how Brent got reassigned to the fourth floor.
They had led him up there, locking him in for solitary confinement. And he had only been let out the following day, when it was time for him to work. Yesterday, the work had been digging a latrine – a long ditch. But today they weren’t digging a ditch. The prisoners were scattered around the empty lot. They were digging a massive hole.
Brent dug at his patch of earth slowly but steadily. Yesterday, he had learned that when he stopped to rest, he would get hit. His body still ached from the beating two days ago. He didn’t want to be hit again. If he could keep an even, steady pace, he could last until the short water break they gave them every hour, then the lunch break around noon, when unarmed men would bring them trays of that same gray stew.
He was trapped in a nightmarish reality. And there didn’t seem to be any way to escape. At least not yet. Brent kept his head down and did the labor they assigned him, but he waited for the moment he’d have a chance to break free. He didn’t know when it would come, or how – he was under lock and key, or under the close watch of an armed man, at all times. But he had to keep hope that the chance to escape would come at some point.
If he were to ever lose that hope, he’d just let them shoot him.
And some of the guys – either willingly or not – chose that route. Especially on the first day, Brent had heard several confrontations between prisoners and guards. It always ended with the prisoner being shot dead. Brent suspected that Quinn knew he’d be killed, but chose to go die, anyway. The men who remained knew they’d have to cooperate if they wanted to live.
Brent would have to be alert for any opening, any chance to get out of there. Then he’d have to find Naomi and Jack. As he dug at the rocky earth, that seemed about as likely as going to the moon.
“That’s deep enough,” Spider grunted. “Start widening it out now.”
Brent nodded, then paused just for a second to wipe the sweat from his brow. There was something going on at the far side of the lot. A crew of young guys on bikes had arrived, and some of the older prisoners were unloading their cargo from the bike trailers. Brent squinted in the sun, trying to make sense of the scene. Then, he recoiled in disgust when he realized what the cargo was.
They were unloading dead bodies.
“This ain’t break time, 155!” Spider barked. “Get back to digging.”
Brent realized with a jolt he had stopped working for too long. The sight of the bodies had shocked him, and he had stood there motionless. Before Spider decided to hit him, Brent got to work with the shovel again.
They were burying the prisoners these guards – these monsters – had shot.
Brent was helping to dig a mass grave.
I have to find a way out of here, he thought as he tossed another shovelful of dirt out of the hole.
I have to get out of here or someone’s going to be dumping my body here in a few days.
4
Sunday, 10:48 a.m. - Northeastern, Tennessee
The sound of pots clanging to the floor woke Brody Walsh with a start.
Brody opened his eyes to see his mother in the kitchen. She looked over at him guiltily.
Brody shuffled on the couch. The flu-like ache in his limbs reminded him of the events of the past few days all at once.
"Sorry, Brody," she said, picking up a saucepan from the floor. "That was an accident. I was trying to be quiet."
Myra walked over and stopped in front of his place on the couch. "I wanted you to sleep as long as you could. But I needed to do something with that chicken soup I started last night. Don’t want it to go bad." She turned and looked out the window in the living room. "It's got to be at least 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning by now."
"It's okay, Mom," Brody said as he stiffly pushed himself up to sit on the couch. "Is Katie still asleep?"
"Last I checked she was," Myra said. "How are you feeling?"
Brody yawned and looked himself over. "Still feel like death warmed over, but not quite as bad as yesterday, surprisingly. That long sleep must have done me some good."
Myra sat down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, drawing him close. "I'm just so worried about you! I wish… I wish there was something I could do." She shook her said head sadly. "Radiation poisoning! I just can't believe this is happening!"
Brody sighed. "Yeah, if only I had stayed home. I should have never gone out looking for Kevin. I should've stayed with Katie. Then I wouldn't have gotten sick!"
Myra looked at him. "But it was a good thing to do, all the same. You were just looking out for that little boy. That's how I raised you kids – to care for people."
Brody scoffed. "And look where it got me."
He had already told her everything the night before – how he had searched for the neglected little boy, and how he had been delayed getting home after the nuclear bomb. And the strange symptoms that had showed up the next morning after the radiation exposure.
His words had been hard for Myra to hear. Just like his daughter Katie, Brody’s mother had kept insisting that Brody was wrong – maybe he only had the flu. But eventually, his mom had come to understand that it wasn’t the flu. She had believed him, but she still searched for some kind of solution. Or some kind of alternate reality in which her son wasn’t deathly ill.
Myra clenched her hands in frustration. "But there's got to be something we can do! Some kind of remedy. We could induce vomiting – or you could take some charcoal tablets. That's what they do for poisoning sometimes."
Brody shook his head. "It won't work. Those things are for po
isons taken by mouth. This radioactive stuff – I guess it gets to you through your skin. And I already washed off the first day as best I could. The damage has already been done. The fallout – the radiation – whatever it is . . . It’s probably made its way to my organs by now.”
Myra twisted her hands in worry. “Oh, dear. I – I’m so sorry, Brody.” She looked at her son with tears in her eyes. “This can’t be happening! I can’t lose you. I can’t lose my son!”
Brody took her hands in his. “I’m sorry, Mom. It’s not fair. None of this is.”
The two sat there without speaking for a while. Myra wept quietly, and Brody tried to comfort her. But what could he do? He was slowly being poisoned. And to make matters worse, there was still no sign of Henry.
A movement in the room made them look up. Katie was standing before them, her face twisted in a frown.
“What’s going on, Dad?” Katie asked.
Myra looked at Brody, then wiped her tears.
"Come sit down, Katie," Brody said, patting the couch beside him. "Your grandmother and I were just talking."
Katie crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. "Why are you doing this, Dad?"
Myra was confused. "Katie, what do you mean?"
"You're still going on about how sick you are?" Katie asked, glaring at her father. "Why do you want to upset Grandma so much?"
"Katie, I'm just telling her about the radiation exposure. You know how sick I've been –"
"With the flu!" Katie said, raising her voice. "It's just the flu, Dad! You know it is."
"Katie, I don't think this is the flu," Myra began. “I think this is serious.”
"Grandma, he's just doing this for attention!" Katie insisted. "Just like he says I do stuff for attention. He just caught some bug! He's going to be better in a couple of days!"
Brody reached his arm out toward his daughter, trying to take her hand. But the teenager turned away. In a blur, she began to run up the stairs.
"Katie!" Myra exclaimed, shocked by her granddaughter's behavior.
Katie stormed away. The sound of her bedroom door being slammed made Myra jump.
