Dead Last (Vol. 1): Dead Last

by Quaranta, Marc

  "Yea, yea. Man, they got a whole mini mart in here. We're not going to be able to carry this all."

  "If they found a way, we can too. Seth start loading it up. Pete get back over here, man. Put your gun on them," and that is what they did. Seth jogged over to the refrigerator, grabbing trash bags on his way over, and started loading things into the bag. I couldn't see him anymore, but I could hear him dropping things in. Pete came back over to us and kept his gun pointed at each of us. Swinging it back and forth.

  Jack snuck his way up behind the black guy and Pete. He held up his finger and motioned to us to stay quiet and not to give him away. I didn't know at what point in this conversation he snuck up there. He could have been there the whole time waiting.

  "Now we're going to take your food, water, and a couple of the trucks you've got in the back. Where are the keys? And not to the one with the blood all over the front," he said.

  I looked outside and saw the truck that Jack had been driving. I never looked at it before but the front end was dented and the windshield was covered with blood. I didn't want to look away from it, but it wasn't going to give me any answers. I looked back at Jack and he had moved a bit closer.

  Then he pulled it out. That rat bastard had Scott's gun the entire time. He had it tucked away in the back of his pants. He pulled it out and checked to make sure the safety was off. We asked him just a few hours earlier if he'd seen the gun and he said no. He looked Kurt square in the eyes and said no to him. But he lied. He did take it. If I found that out earlier, I would have been pissed, but now it was going to help. The fact that Jack hated the group and stole the gun was coming into play quite nicely.

  He darted up behind Pete and clocked him in the back of the head with the gun and then pointed it at the black guy before he could react.

  "Drop the gun or I swear to God I'm going to give this carpet a paint job and I'm thinking red," Jack said to him.

  The guy kept the gun on Kurt, "You sure you want to do that? You shoot me, I shoot him."

  Jack looked down at Pete, who was completely unconscious. He looked at Kurt, then, too. He stared at him like he was trying to decide if my fiancé should live or die; like he had the right to make that decision. He smiled. Jack actually was smiling and was about to shoot the guy.

  Kurt realized he had an opportunity to make a move and made one. He pivoted on his knee and grabbed the guy's arm. He pulled him down and locked him in some sort of submission move. Kurt twisted his wrist in a way that it wasn't supposed to be. I could see his elbow turning red and about to pop.

  "Drop the gun," Kurt screamed. The guy didn't drop it, though. That was when Jack walked up to the guy and kicked him in the face. Twice. A third kick to his nose knocked the guy out. Kurt let go of the guy's arm and picked up the gun. Jack picked up the gun that Pete dropped and was now holding two.

  "You're a son of a bitch," Kurt said to Jack.

  "If I told you I took the gun, you would have taken it back and I wouldn't have been able to save you. We're even," Jack handed Kurt one of the guns, keeping one for himself. Kurt took it.

  The celebration didn't last long because they realized that there was a third guy in the kitchen packing up all of our food. It was the little one, Seth. They both jogged over there silently and got ready to jump him. Jack stood up against the wall and Kurt stood out a couple of feet.

  "Hey, Seth? Come here," Kurt disguised his voice.

  "Yea, what's up?" Seth, apparently, came walking out of the kitchen looking to get more orders from one of the other guys. When he saw Kurt standing there with both of their guns and his friends lying on the ground unconscious, he froze. He dropped the bags that he was packing and put his hands in the air.

  Jack clocked him in the face and it knocked him out immediately.

  "Was that really necessary?" Kurt asked Jack.

  "Hey man, they hit Scott and you."

  "So? He was harmless."

  "Well, now he's really harmless," Jack said with a smile.

  I looked around the room to make sure everyone was okay. I checked on Janet and Barry to make sure they were fine and they were. She shooed me away to check on the others.

  "We've got to tie them up. Do we have anything to do that?" Jack asked.

  "Scott?" Kurt looked over to Scott who was rubbing his head and making sure his gash wasn't too deep.

  "There are cable cords and wire all over this place. There's no way they'll be able to get out of that."

  "Will you grab some?" Kurt asked him. Kurt was doing more every hour to get the title of leader.

  Scott nodded and began walking down the hallway back to the Engineering department.

  "Travis go with him," Jack ordered. I think Jack was trying his best to make sure that people still saw him as the one in charge, too.

  I watched Jack and Kurt giving out orders and playing off of each other. While they were acting well together at the moment, I knew in the bottom of my heart that this partnership could implode at any minute. First, Kurt showed up a day later and immediately began to take control. Then, Jack lied about having a gun with him. While things were fine between the two of them now, I could see their egos being bruised every time the other one talked. It was a matter of time before they started going at it. It was a matter of time before the group started choosing sides.

  XV

  Emily Clark, April 19th, 2013 8:59 a.m.

  A sunrise used to be a beautiful painting. It was a mix of yellows, reds, and oranges overtaking the purples and blues. The slight beam of the sun appearing over the horizon used to take our breath away. Not anymore. It was all so plain now. It was boring. In a word; annoying. I used to sit and watch the sunrise every other morning before work. On most days, I had to be at the office around nine in the morning, but there were some days when I'd have to get in extra early for paperwork or a meeting. Those were the days that I'd really get to relax and enjoy the sunrise. It used to fill me up with so much hope.

  It's funny how quickly things had changed. I watched it this morning and it filled me with nothing but doubt and anger. Everyone has that one friend, whether growing up with that person or meeting them as an adult, where you'll get along perfectly and it will seem like a friendship that will last forever, but then something goes wrong. You begin to go your separate ways and lose touch with one another. Unexplainably, that friendship ends and you begin to feel hostile towards that person. For some reason, it's not civil anymore and inside you desperately hate that person for no reason at all.

  That's how I felt toward the sun. I didn't blame the sun for what has happened, but I looked at it like an accomplice. It knew what the air was doing and the sun didn't care. It just let all those people die with no warning what so ever. Every morning when the sun rose it meant one thing; it was another day of this hell. Every day the sun rose in the distance was just another day I was closer to wishing for death.

  After everything that just happened, I wanted to find a blanket, a corner of the office, and ball my eyes out. I wanted to close my eyes and clear everything out of my head. I wanted my parents to take care of everything. I wanted to be a kid, again. My parents weren't here though, and I was the one with a kid. I knew I had to be strong. I knew that I had to be a voice of positivity, not just for my family, but for everyone stuck in WTIX.

  Once the three guys, Cam, Seth, and Pete, were tied up by extra extension cord lying around the station, I checked on Scott's injury. He was hit pretty hard in the back of the head. He doesn't know what hit him, but I'd guess it was the butt of the gun that Pete was carrying. Scott told me that the only thing he could remember about the incident was walking in the halls. He said that he was coming to find us, cautiously, after hearing a gunshot go off. He said he was walking through the hall and then felt a blow on the back of his head. There was a little bit of blood on the back of his head, but then he felt one more rush to the head. After that, he blacked out.

  "Please, Scott, don't touch it. Just let me see, " I said to
him as I looked at the wound. He was like a little kid during a regular checkup. He couldn't sit still and was being a baby. The wound wasn't terribly bad, but it would have to be looked at. At my first glance, stitches weren't necessary. A bandage wouldn't be necessary. If he washed it, kept it clean, and made sure to check it every night, I think that it would be okay.

  "Sorry, it just hurts," he said to me.

  "I know that it does, but you're going to be fine. I need you to go clean it out right now, though. Wash it and then do not touch it!" I had to be stern with him because I knew that the rest of the day he would be touching it and playing with it.

  "Alright, thanks Emily," he said to me before walking off. He walked away just like a kid, too. Like washing a wound was the worst thing in the world.

  After he left, I noticed Kurt was walking quickly over in my direction, but I had a feeling he was going to pass me up and head straight over to the three stragglers. I knew I had to stop him, though, so I could offer up any help but also to take his mind off of things if only for a quick moment. Maybe I would stop him from doing something he would regret.

  "Kurt, is there anything you guys need?" I asked.

  He actually stopped and spoke with me, "No. Thank you, Emily. How's Scott?"

  "He's fine. The wound isn't too bad. He's in the back washing it. We'll just have to keep an eye on it."

  "Great. Thank you for looking at it."

  "Hey, that's my job...well it was my job," I realized that I wasn't a doctor anymore, just like he wasn't a Master Control Operator and my husband didn't work in sales anymore. Nobody was anything.

  "It still is your job," he assured me. "Would you do me another favor and make sure everyone else is alright? Make sure nobody else got hurt during that."

  "Sure," I said.

  Kurt walked away and I turned to go find Sam. I didn't want to see how Kurt was going to treat the three guys. There were no rules anymore. There was no law and order; there was no court system. Kurt and Jack could do anything they wanted to those guys and there would be nobody there to stop them.

  I was going to check on the rest of the group, I was, but I knew that I needed to start with Sam. He had gotten a fever the day before and I was starting to grow worried. Any time before, I would have brought him some antibiotics, told him to get a lot of rest, and a lot of fluids. That would be it. But now, with the problems and the airborne outbreak, I was afraid it was something more.

  I came to the outside of his office and peaked inside. I didn't want him to know that I was there. I knew the last time I checked on him that he was putting on a brave face and wasn't letting me see him in a weakened state. I poked my head into the room and saw him with his forehead pressed against the wall. I could see the back of his neck. I could see the droplets of sweat building up into a pool of perspiration. The cold wall was probably the only way to chill himself down.

  "Sam, Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine. Really," he said to me, but his voice wasn't confident.

  "What are you doing? You need to lie down and relax."

  "I can't relax anymore. I just need to get out of here. We need to get out of here!" he was starting to raise his voice. I saw at that moment that he was beginning to suffocate inside the building. We all were, but I couldn't imagine how badly he wanted to get out.

  "Babe, relax," I grabbed his arms and walked him back toward his chair. My hand's temperature raised a couple of degrees just by touching him. His shirt was damp. His pants were damp. I had no way of taking his temperature, but just by touch I knew that it was over 100. It might have been a couple degrees over. He wouldn't last much longer like this. He needed help.

  "Sit down," I continued, "I'm going to run to the medicine cabinet and grab some Ibuprofen," I turned his chair, putting his legs underneath his desk so that he wouldn't be able to get out that easily. I wanted him sitting and relaxing. I slowly closed the door behind me and when I turned around I ran into my only daughter.

  "Hey, how's dad doing?" she asked me.

  "Umm...he's fine," I wasn't convincing and she picked up on that. The look she gave me guilt tripped me into being honest. "He's got a bit of a fever, Elyse, but you can't mention that to anyone," I kept my voice low. "If someone finds out that he has a fever, they won't rest until your father is outside of this building."

  "Do you think it is from breathing in the air? He's been in here the whole time with us."

  "But there have been so many people going in and out now that...I don't know, baby. Just stay quiet with this, okay?" I held her hands for a moment and she nodded at me. I told her to try and relax, but to stay away from the stragglers tied up. I told her that I didn't want her to see anything that might happen to them.

  I went over to the kitchen to look for someone that works in the building and came across Heather.

  "Heather, where is the medicine cabinet?" I asked her.

  "Is everything okay?"

  "Yes, Sam's just got a slight headache and I'm looking for some Ibuprofen."

  "Poor guy," she said with very little conviction. But that was okay. A headache would have been the least of my worries too. I was praying that this would only turn into a headache. "If you go to the back of the building, there is a wellness center. It should be in there. If you hit Finance, you've gone too far."

  "Thanks," I said with a smile.

  I walked my way to the back of the building and found the wellness center. On the entire walk to find the Ibuprofen, all I could think about was Sam. I wasn't thinking about his illness, I was thinking about what the rest of the group would do to him if they found out he was sick. We had been trying since the moment we got here to keep this sickness out of the building. That was the whole reason we were in here in the first place, and now Sam might have quite possibly brought it in with him. It wasn't his fault, though. It was Kurt and Jack and Haylea and all the others who kept bringing people in and out.

  When I got to the wellness center, I opened the cabinet and found nothing. There were no bandages, there were no bottles of Tums, and there was no Ibuprofen. The entire cabinet had been wiped clean.

  XVI

  Kurt Elkins

  W hat if somebody had gotten hurt?

  That was the only question I could ask myself. What if someone had gotten seriously hurt? Scott took a shot on the back of the head and when I first saw him after that, it didn't look good. His eyes were glazed over, he was staring into space, and I was worried he would fall down with every step he took. Luckily, he'd be okay. I made sure to go find Emily and ask her how he was doing.

  He had a small cut on the back of his head and a little bit of a headache, but he was going to be just fine. I saw him walk off to the back hallways, my guess was he was going to go shower and clean the wound out. Seeing him walk on his own was good. It calmed my nerves.

  But what if something else had happened? It was my idea to go out there and talk to Cam and his friends. It was my idea to try and help them. I should have listened to Jack. It kills me to say that, and I would never say it out loud, but I should have listened to Jack. He wasn't going to let them inside. He wasn't going to give them the time of day. He was going to let them sit out there and rot. It was so inhuman.

  I couldn't believe Jack. He could watch a group of people standing outside in the dangerous air and not care. He didn't care if they lived or died. He didn't care if Nick lived or died. It was all about Jack. For the first time since this disaster happened, I was beginning to see the importance in thinking like Jack. It really was survival of the fittest, but I still would never be like Jack. It is survival of the fittest, but I'm not just going to look out for myself, I will look out for every single person in this group.

  I watched Cam, Pete, and Seth sitting together over by the north pillar of the building. They sat with their backs against it and their hands tied together, and around the pillar. They weren't going anywhere. Jack and myself tied them together ourselves. We tied their wrists so tight that they wouldn't be able
to escape even if they were magicians, at least not without cutting their hands off, first. Cam and Pete were still unconscious from Jack's sneak attack.

  I stood, without taking my eyes off of them, trying to figure out our next move. A solid chess player will try to play three moves ahead; know what the opponent's next move is before making his. That is what I was doing. I had to figure out what to do, what I would do after that, and then what I would do when it's all over.

  Jack walked over behind them and checked on the knots in the cord. He tugged at them a couple of times before he was convinced that they weren't going anywhere. I stood with Haylea. She was so worried. Worried about the group, worried about Cam, but I think she was most concerned with me. I don't know why, but she was worried all the stress this was causing me wasn't going to be good. Stress was going to be the least of our worries in this new world.

  "What do we do?" she asked me.

  "I really don't know. We can't leave them like that forever."

  "That's why we should have never tied them up, Kurt. We should have kicked them outside, waited until they woke up, and then watched them die," Jack came over to us. I could see that his eyes were filled with rage. I also saw he had the gun tucked away in the back of his pants.

  I put the two guns we got from Cam and Pete and put them on the counter next to me. I knew that there wasn't another person in the building who would steal one of the guns like Jack did earlier, but I didn't want to take my eyes off of the weapons.

  "We'll wait until they wake up and see why they came here," I said.

  "What good is that going to do? Who cares why they came here?" Jack said.

  "They might actually need some food or supplies."

  "And we're just going to give it to them? Did you forget that they just tried to kill us?"

  "Nobody tried to kill anyone," Haylea said to him.

  "Sorry. They took us hostage. Because that is so much better."