“I don’t think anyone knows how it is spread. It seems like everyone has their speculations but no evidence to back it up with.” This adds another level of fear, though. The thought of avoiding water was manageable for the time being, but not knowing what to stay away from isn’t manageable at all.
As I peek through the tiny slits of my nearly closed eyes, I pat the man down, finding nothing more than a knife in his side pocket. Blood is coating the plastic protective biohazard suit and the skin on his left arm is gone, exposing muscle and bone. The right side of his face looks the same. “That family tried to eat them?” I somewhat ask, somewhat confirm what I’m looking at.
“Yes. It’s similar to what was going on in Chipley.”
“But you said that was because of the food we were eating,” I remind him.
“That’s correct,” Sin says, standing up and wiping his hands down the length of his sides. “It isn’t the food here, though.”
“How do you know?”
“It would be impossible to ensure seventy percent of the population were eating the same food. Water is a more feasible solution to that, but even still, there’s more to this than we know.”
“Chipley was conditioning us to fight the rest of the population,” I say, realization pulsating through my head.
Sin drops his hands in his back pockets and leans up against the wall. “That’s exactly what my mom is coordinating. They can control us by the food we eat in Chipley.”
I look back down at the men, wanting to look away, but also needing more confirmation that this is real. “It would be a bloodbath.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom doesn’t care because all residents of Chipley are criminals,” I add in.
“Yeah,” Sin says again. “They’re testing out a new kind of warfare. This is what the world has come to.”
“But if you think about it, if the people in Chipley become strong enough to win this fight, and they stop eating the food that’s altering the chemicals in our brains, society could potentially return to normal.”
“Exactly.” Clearly I’m late to the party of understanding, but it all makes sense now.
“So now what?” I ask, sort of knowing the only option left. I want to hear him say it first.
“We join forces with my mom. We tell them what we saw here and help train the people of Chipley to become better and stronger.”
The question of “how” lingers in the back of my head. They fight each other for food. They kill each other out of hunger. I don’t see how any of them could be trained to do anything.
“Before we worry about the ‘hows’ and ‘what ifs’, we need to get back to Chipley in one piece.” Sin jogs back into the apartment and right back out, slipping a backpack over his shoulders. “Ready?”
Like I have a choice.
We make our way out of the building, peeking out first to make sure there are no patrols waiting for us. The street is clear, though. As we reach the end of the street, Sin looks both ways before pointing in one direction. “It’s that hill.” He reaches for my hand, pulling me in close behind him. The empty road ahead provides a slight relief since there is nowhere for anyone to jump out from. But for that reason, I check behind me every few seconds to make sure no one is coming up from behind.
It only takes a few minutes to reach the corner where the strip of shops begins. “It looks like it must have been a nice town before this,” I say softly.
Sin doesn’t respond; his hand just squeezes mine a little tighter. The warmth of his skin against mine helps me remain calm.
While crossing the narrow street, we stop at the sound of footsteps. “Excuse me,” a gentle voice calls from down the street of the shops. So much for relief. He isn’t in a plastic biohazard suit or a gas mask. He’s wearing navy-blue slacks and a white dress shirt. He’s a middle-aged man with a well-kept, clean appearance, the total opposite of anything I’ve seen here so far. That, in itself, is a trigger to run from this man who’s taking slow steps toward us with his hands in his pockets and a non-threatening, slim smile stretched over his lips. “Do you need help? Are you lost?”
“What the hell is this?” Sin mutters under his breath before answering the man. “No, thanks, we’re good.”
The man shrugs his shoulders. “Doesn’t look like it to me. You aren’t from around here, are you?”
“No, but we’re leaving now,” Sin says. Usually, I would expect him to answer a little more tersely, but he’s playing along with this guy.
Sin’s arm wraps around my back, pinning me to his side. “Pretty sad what happened around here, don’t you think?” the man asks, approaching the edge of our shadows—too close for comfort. Sin’s hand slips down into my back pocket, curling his fingers around the folded-up pocket knife.
“I’m not going to hurt you. There aren’t many of us left, you know? Us, meaning, those who weren’t infected, those who are allowed to carry on as normal.” Normal? There is no such thing anymore.
“Where is everyone else?” I ask. I know Sin would rather I not ask questions, but we sure as hell won’t get real answers anywhere else. Maybe everyone’s lies will eventually point to at least one common truth.
“Like I said, there aren’t many of us. I’m a government worker, one of the lucky ones who survived this chaos.” He’s calling this world-ending epidemic “chaos.” I think it’s safe to assume that he isn’t right in the head. The hairs on the back of my neck are starting to rise, and I think it’s time to make a run for it.
“Right. The government workers survived this. Lucky you,” Sin says, pulling me across the street.
“You seem as though you lucked out as well,” he says, saying more or less the same thing over and over but with different words.
“How do you know we aren’t sick like the others?” Sin continues, still pulling me ahead, creating more space between us and the man who is now following us.
With my head twisted over my right shoulder, I watch as the man stops walking, laughs and pulls his hands from his pockets, crossing them over his broad chest. “Trust me, son, you know when someone is sick. After five years of living like this, I’ve learned who to stay away from.” He lets out a frustrated groan and continues after us. Please, just leave us alone. “I’m Alan,” he says, reaching his hand out toward us, not that we’re anywhere close enough to shake his hand, even if we were crazy enough to do so. “Where are you headed?”
“Chipley,” I say, earning myself a deadly glare from Sin. Yup, probably shouldn’t have offered that information. But none of those patrols seemed to know what I was talking about, nor did they care. Or, maybe they did and like everyone else, they were screwing with me.
Alan laughs again. “You must know my brother then.”
“Your brother?” Sin replies, stopping momentarily.
“JJ Solis. He’s a Fed agent in your town.” I can’t help but to choke, laughing a little through it.
“Toothless JJ?” I ask him. “The man who sleeps behind a shed, trying to kill people with venom-infused berries?” As the words are slipping from my tongue, I recall the familiarity of the well-dressed man who was in the observation room with me in the bunker. He looked just like JJ, but I never got confirmation on that. I could have been imagining that, too, for all I know.
The smile on Alan’s face is becoming uncanny. “My brother was always the best undercover agent this state had. Nothing gets by him. Nothing. Including his own brother.” The smile is gone, and our shadows on the sidewalk are covered by his once again. “Take me with you.” His voice is soft but stern, almost demanding. “You’ve got to help me get out of here. I’m surrounded by people who have more or less turned into animals. The patrols here think they were actually in the military before this shit happened, but they’re nothing more than ingrates who found biohazard protection to use as a method of power and defense to run this town into the ground. Those veterans who survived are smart enough to stay away from this shit. Because of those patro
ls and their lack of experience, there’s hardly any of them left now, leaving me alone, living in a hole below one of those shops down there. Please, let me help you people in Chipley.” That explains why none of them had real weapons, I guess.
Sin’s grip on my hand relaxes, which surprises me a bit. “Your brother isn’t a criminal?”
Alan snorts. “God, no. The guy never even had a detention in high school.”
“The patrols are dead. Possibly all of them,” Sin says.
Alan’s head cocks to the side, and his eyes widen. “What? All of them?” He looks shocked by this news even after he just told us there aren’t many of them left.
“There was a family in one of the apartments a few streets back. They attacked the patrols. I don’t know how many of them there are here, but any of them that I saw are now dead.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit, Shit, Shit.” Alan’s sturdy disposition weakens as he runs out into the street, looking in each direction. “There were Juliets alive and loose?”
“Yeah, about nine of them,” Sin replies.
“Oh shit. My God. We need to move…now!” He’s right. We’ve been more concerned about the patrols than these Juliets. “Can you get me into Chipley with you or not?” He’s borderline having a nervous breakdown.
“I don’t even know if they’re going to let us back in,” I tell him.
“We can try,” Sin says, pulling me with him as we continue forward toward the hill. “Follow us.” Another surprising move from Sin. He doesn’t trust anyone, including his mother, yet he’s allowing this guy to come with us, possibly into Chipley, which ironically enough might be the only safe place left.
“I tried to find a way into Chipley a few times, but I was unsuccessful. I figured since my brother is married to the mayor, they’d come looking for me or something, but they never did. He thinks I’m a traitor because I didn’t come with him in the first place. I mean, who would volunteer to go live and work in a criminally insane compound? Whatever the case, I should have gone when I had the chance. I know that now.”
“He’s married to the mayor?” Sin questions.
“Amelia James,” Alan replies.
“That’s my mother,” Sin says, catching me up to speed. I know Sin’s weaknesses, but I didn’t know his last name or his mother’s name.
“Well, I guess that makes me your uncle,” Alan says, as if it’s nothing important.
“How do you know all this?” Sin asks.
“I was an FBI agent. I have my ways.”
“An FBI agent who couldn’t find a way into Chipley?” Sin replies with snark.
Alan doesn’t respond, and none of us say another word as he slowly follows up the hill that steals every one of my breaths.
“Dammit,” Sin says, placing his backpack down on the ground as we near the edge of the cliff. “They gave me ropes to get back down, and those fucking patrols confiscated all of them.”
“How did you both get up here?” Alan asks, leaning over and placing his hands on his knees as he catches his breath too.
“Climbed,” I say.
“Well, we’ll have to climb back down, carefully,” Alan says.
A sound blending in with a passing breeze pulls my attention back toward the decline of the hill we just climbed. I take the few steps over to the peek down, looking out over the small town. “Guys, we should move quickly. Two Juliets are hiking toward us.” I sound strangely calm while informing them of this, but with the brief memory of what they did to those patrols; I quickly turn and run back toward Sin and Alan. I lower myself down to the first part of the narrow path on the decline toward Chipley, supporting myself by holding on to anything sturdy within reach.
“Reese, slow down,” Sin says, following after me.
“You saw what they’re capable of,” I tell him.
Without further discussion, the two of them follow me down the hill. I only slip a few times, and thankfully it isn’t more than a couple of feet each time. One wrong move and I know I could fall off the side of this thing.
After descending the hill for only a few minutes, one of the Juliets pokes his head over the side, looking directly at us. His face is a blur, but I think it’s the son of the man who shot himself. If so, he’s coming after us with a vengeance, I’m sure.
With that thought in mind, I speed up my pace yet again, twisting my ankles over and over. Ignoring the pain, we continue down for what feels like a half hour before we reach the bottom. But we come to the bottom without falling and that’s a plus right now. What’s not a plus is that this Juliet kid is halfway down the hill, as well.
We all break into a run, Sin now leading the way with my hand in his. My ankles throb as we move forward in what I can only hope to be the right direction toward whatever entrance or exit we came out of.
The second we reach the familiar glass wall, Sin crashes his fist into it several times, yelling for them to open it up. Can’t they see us? They must. I don’t know if they’re going to let us back in, though.
I turn around as Sin is banging on the glass, focusing on the kid that is now only a good hundred feet away from us. “Sin, he’s close.” Panic is surging through me as I consider the possibility of going out the way those patrols did. A man in plastic-coated camouflage comes to the glass wall, shaking his mask-covered head with disappointment. I turn back once more, finding the Juliet no more than ten feet from us. “Please,” I mouth to the man behind the wall.
The glass parts and Sin and I are yanked inside as the door closes quickly in front of us, leaving Alan outside. “Wait, we have to help him!” Sin yells at the man. “Help him!”
“He’s not welcome in here. Just orders from his brother. Sorry,” the man says as we’re all forced to watch the Juliet—kid—enjoy a fleshy meal covered in a pressed dress shirt and expensive pants. “Glad you two morons made it back.”
36
Chapter Eleven
SIN
“Take me to her,” Sin says. “And Reese stays with me this time.”
“Your mother is on a call right now,” the patrol says.
I laugh, only because by now the thought of a phone working is humorous to me. Here I thought we were re-entering the dark ages. “Just takes us to the Queen, please. We’ll wait outside until she beckons for us.” Reese snickers from behind me, but it’s only because she doesn’t know how serious I am. I know I’m supposed to honor thy mother or some bullshit, but yeah…I decided against honoring my parents when Dad punched mom in the jaw for the first time and then of course when Mom left me at Chipley. Screw them both. They deserve each other. There was a long period where I felt bad for her—the poor abused woman. I only saw one side of things. Not that abuse is a solution or answer to a problem, but for all I know, Mom pushed Dad the same way she pushed me. It was all about her all the time. For God’s sake, she pulled me away from my life to bring us into the middle of a condemned town fit only for the criminally insane.
The patrol leads us down a hallway lined with doors, one every ten feet or so, until he stops in front of one and lifts his hand to check his watch. Reese and I lean up against the wall behind us, both staring at this man. I want to know his story. I want to know how he found his way here and what made him want to do what he’s doing. “Does that thing ever get hot? Like…are your balls sweating under that plastic armor?” I laugh silently to myself, testing him, wanting him to react.
And he does. He breaks eye contact, looking up toward the ceiling. “It gets pretty bad,” he mutters.
Reese is giving me a look, and while I’m not looking directly at her, I’m almost positive she’s rolling her eyes at me. “Are you serious right now?” she says.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” the man says to her. The unexpected conversation forces a loud rumble of laughter out of me. I bury my mouth in my shoulder, realizing I’ll probably get this poor idiot in trouble when that door opens.
“What’s your story?” I ask him, lowering my voice.
“Marines, ten years, combat veteran, came home from Afghanistan to orders I would never have imagined. I’ve been here from two weeks before the attack until now, working for her,” he nods his head toward the door behind him.
“For her,” Mom says as she opens the door. “Does ‘her’ have a name you should be referring to, Staff Sergeant Locke?”
The man turns towards Mom and salutes her. What is this fucking shit? Is he saluting her? She has no military background or training. This is unbelievable. “Ma’am, I apologize.”
“You are dismissed,” she shoos him off.
Locke disappears down the hall, tail between his legs, muttering something to himself beneath his breath.
“I see you two made it back in one piece.” Mom rolls her eyes and turns back, walking into her office. Since she didn’t close the door in our faces, I follow, taking Reese’s hand and squeezing it, before pulling her in along with me. Reese closes the door behind her, and we both take seats in front of my mother’s desk.
Mom sits down in her chair, immediately focusing her attention on her computer monitor while clicking the mouse several times. This gives me a minute to look around the room, and I notice a whiteboard I didn’t see the last time I was in here. There are several photos attached to the whiteboard—half of them are of me, mostly as a child. The other half are of her and JJ in a location that doesn’t resemble Chipley or any place I’ve ever seen. It looks like an island or something exotic.
“Geez, you should have told me I have a new daddy now. Isn’t that something a mother would normally discuss with her son?” I say this while holding my focus tightly on her left hand, wondering why there isn’t a ring on that finger. “JJ let himself go after you two got hitched, huh?”
“JJ isn’t who you think he is,” Mom says.
“He’s an undercover government agent,” I tell her, taking away the power of that secret.
Her eyes grow wide and her eyebrows rise with question.
Locked In: No Way Out Series - Book One Page 22
