The Well's End

by Seth Fishman

  There’s a pause, and then Jimmy grunts and slugs his arm. Brayden winces, and we all laugh; we can’t help it. For the first time in what feels like days, there’s something to laugh at. I guess it is all a matter of scale.

  “Okay, how do we do this?” asks Rob, who gets on his knees near the window and peers out front. “Lots of soldiers at the gate.”

  “One of you,” Brayden says, “knock on the door and make a guard come inside. Be loud and annoying enough that the other guard is distracted too, and I’ll go out door number two at the end of the hall and clock him at the same time that you jump soldier number one.”

  Near the window, Rob shakes his head, probably imagining all the parts where we might get shot.

  “There’s something going on out there,” he says, cupping his hand to the glass. “They won’t let the soldiers in for some reason.”

  Just then, for the second time in as many days, alarms sound. They are loud, persistent and painful—and then, gunshots. Many of them. They sound smaller than I thought they’d be, but they’re coming from everywhere, reverberating in the hills, like we’re surrounded by a million firecrackers. A bullet smashes through the glass of one of the windows, and we all dive to the floor.

  “What the fuck?” Jimmy shouts. He’s shielding Odessa’s limp body with his, and I feel a surge of love for the guy. We all look at Brayden, as if he’s at fault. “I didn’t know there were alarms here,” he says defensively.

  We hear footsteps running down the hall, and then the door opens. The guard only sticks his head through the door to check on us. He has to have seen Brayden, though I can’t tell his reaction because of the suit. The surprise is blown. This is our chance, good or bad.

  “Now!” I scream, trying to get up, but my toes ache in protest. Jimmy beats me to it, hurling himself off Odessa and sprinting to the door. The soldier pushes the door wider, trying to bring his gun to bear, but Jimmy gets there first in a blur of speed and simply smashes the door closed, with the soldier in it. The man’s hazmatted head bangs hard against the wall, and he slumps to the ground. Jimmy peers out into the hallway, then waves us over. We pull in the guard, and Brayden unsnaps his walkie-talkie.

  “Where’s the other one?” I ask, already sweating.

  “Must have gone to see what’s going on.” There’s still shooting, erratic, but now there’s a lot of screaming in the courtyard, and I can hear engines begin to rev up.

  “Everyone,” I say, rushing for my coat, “put your gear on. Jimmy, can you handle Odessa yourself?” He nods grimly, his dark eyes clearing away what has to be a killer headache from the blow to his head, and lifts her up into a fireman’s carry as easily as putting on a jacket. She groans, opens her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” she asks, groggy.

  “Des, honey,” Jimmy says, his voice apologetic, “I’m going to have to run pretty soon. It’s going to hurt some, but I need you to be quiet, okay? We’ll be safe soon, okay? Odessa?”

  “Okay, Jimmy,” she says slowly. “I hurt already.”

  Jo comes up behind Jimmy and pats her cheek. “I know you do, Odessa. We’re going to take care of you.” I stare at her, both pleased and worried—she’s fearless, acting less lost to bereavement, being herself. Thank God Jimmy’s not as contagious anymore, or we couldn’t help them at all.

  Brayden’s at the door. “You guys ready?” I look around, and we are. Ragtag, breathing hard, but we’re ready. I feel adrenaline, like I would at a meet, and can’t help but remember that I’m actually supposed to be in Durango warming up for a race. I’d be sitting alone right now, probably in our hotel room, staring at the wall. Headphones on. Imagining my hands parting the water over my head.

  “Follow me,” Brayden says, breaking into my thoughts, and disappears into the hall.

  We don’t see anyone, but there’s shouting downstairs and the thud of boots. We move, slouching, as quickly as we can to the end of the hallway and then take a left, past the bathroom and to the far door, which opens into a pretty huge bedroom, king-size bed and all. There are even old mahogany dressers and drapery around a set of bedposts. There’s a portrait of a man in a wig that looks hundreds of years old, and the carpet here is thick and white and spotted with new muddy boot prints. Brayden doesn’t even wait; he moves directly to the walk-in closet and pushes aside a bunch of empty hangers, then pulls at the bar they rest on. A door cracks, and he pulls again, huffing at the effort. The door gives, and there’s an opening into the dark.

  He glances back. “There are no lights. The stairs are spiral, and there’s a banister. Just hold it and you’ll be fine.” And then he’s swallowed by the darkness.

  We follow one by one, Jimmy and Odessa first, then Jo, then me, then Rob. I’m glad I’m in the middle of my friends, because as soon as Rob shuts the door behind us, I’m absolutely terrified. My throat is tight, and I just picture us going down and down, moving by feel, deep into a well.

  Jo and Rob grab my hands. “Almost there, Mia,” Rob says.

  And he’s right. It’s over in a flash of light that proves to be Brayden opening the entrance to the kitchen below. He sticks his head out, then closes the door, and we’re engulfed in blackness again. I almost fall down the stairs.

  “Okay,” Brayden whispers. “We’re at the rear kitchen door. When I open this, there’s no going back. Something’s going on, so they’re distracted; we have to move quickly. Follow me right out the door, and we’re going to run straight to the shed. The sun’s rising, so soon we’ll be visible, but if we keep moving, we can make it. Once we get to the shed, I want everyone on the ground. We’ll crawl to an exit in the wall, then we’re a ten-second sprint from the woods. Everyone got that?”

  At first I nod, but then I hear everyone else whisper yes, so I do too.

  “Jimmy”—Brayden pauses—“you got her?”

  “I’m good,” he says, his voice so firm I think he’s almost angry. As an older version of himself, he seems bigger and stronger and more capable.

  “Great. There’s a block of knives on the counter near the door. If you can, grab a knife. Let’s go!”

  Brayden opens the door and slips out before my eyes even adjust to the kitchen light. Jimmy and Odessa go and then Rob’s pushing me gently in the back, and I get down the rest of the stairway and out the door behind Jo to an empty stainless-steel kitchen. I remember to grab a knife—it looks like the others grabbed a couple too—and I get a small paring knife that disappears inside my fist. And then we’re outside and running, my vision bouncing, flashes of light going off from the guns of the men on the towers behind us.

  We make it to the shed and get on our knees, panting hard, even though we only ran about twenty yards. I notice now that it’s snowing lightly, beautiful big flakes that are oddly set against the firefight nearby.

  Brayden’s beaming. “We made it!”

  “Yippee,” says Odessa with irony, grimacing in pain. She must have woken all the way up, because Jimmy has put her down with her back against the shed and she’s right there with us.

  “What’s going on with them?” I ask.

  “Soldiers,” says Rob, cocking his head to listen to the shots.

  “Duh,” Jimmy replies.

  “No,” Rob says, “I mean the others. Infected ones. Dying soldiers. They are fighting each other.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Right before the alarm sounded, I saw a group of soldiers come to the front gates, and they wouldn’t let them in. It just makes sense. Remember how they killed that one in the woods? Remember how angry he was? Imagine you start getting symptoms, and you try to come back to the base to get help—”

  “And they don’t let you in,” Jo finishes for him.

  “Right, and they have guns.”

  “Well,” Brayden says, snapping us back to the task at hand, “there’s no bett
er time for that than now.” As if to prove his point, the walkie-talkie he took screeches, and there’s a voice, unmistakable.

  Corporal Johanson? Corporal? Answer, Corporal.

  We stare at the device in dread. It’s Sutton. I look up at Brayden and mouth, Hurry!

  We are quiet and determined, even Odessa. Her eyes are dark slits as she stuffs her sweaty hair under her cap. Rob bounces on his feet, all energy, flipping a knife he took from the kitchen back and forth between his hands, and Jimmy’s a bull, taking gulping breaths of air. This is it.

  “Jimmy, you take the rear,” Brayden says. There’s something immensely satisfying about everyone working together. No arguing, no overt fear. We’ve done something like this before, snuck out of a prison. We can do it again.

  Brayden’s face is grim. The men firing the bullets on the far side of the house aren’t here yet. But soon that will pass, and we all know it. “Okay. Follow me, then. And stay down.”

  He moves ahead and runs us straight at the tall wall that surrounds Furbish Manor. Exposed, I glance behind us, but it’s darkish and I can only make out flashes here and there. We hit the wall and skirt it, following Brayden blindly. I try not to think how incredibly dangerous it is to be this trusting. I have no idea where we’re going, and we just handed our fate to the boy we know the least. I hope he proves us right. I hope I can release the pit that’s been growing in my stomach since we got to Furbish.

  Suddenly, Brayden disappears. I have to control the urge to scream. But then Rob goes too, and then Jo, and someone grabs my hand and I’m pulled into a well-disguised nook in the wall, where there’s a thick metal door. We all fit inside the nook, completely hidden from everything. Brayden pulls on the door’s handle, but it doesn’t budge. He casts apologetic eyes back at us. “This locks automatically, and you need a key to get in or out, but usually I leave it open an inch. I guess they closed it.”

  “What do we do now?” Jo asks. I’m not cold, despite the snow, and I feel sweat dripping down my back. Maybe we can just hide here, I find myself thinking irrationally.

  “Rob,” Brayden says, turning to face the door, “boost me up.”

  “Are you kidding?” he replies. Brayden raises his hands toward the top of the wall and stands there, one leg up, waiting. Rob lets out a breath, and Brayden puts his big snow boot down hard on Rob’s thigh. “Just don’t get shot,” Rob whispers. Brayden leaps up, grabs hold of the ledge, and Rob and I help push him to the top. Then he’s gone.

  “We’re screwed,” Jimmy says, staring at the sky.

  A key rattles, then the door gives and opens. Brayden’s there, a big smile on his face. “I keep a key under a rock near the door, just in case it locks when I go out.” Without thinking, I give him a squeeze. His face lights up, the single dimple back in his cheek, and he presses my gloved hand. “Okay, straight into the woods,” he says, facing the outside where, now, the guns seem louder and closer. He’s still holding my hand. And then we run.

  The cold air is harsh against my face, stinging me as we go. I can’t see very well, and my eyes tear up. There’s a blinding light of a flare gun not so far away, and suddenly I can see everything. Trees bent with snow sag in our way. Rob’s high-stepping through the snow, Jo almost beside him. We run about fifteen feet before Brayden pulls me down. The others follow suit, and our bodies fall into the soft snow. There’s shouting coming from just around the wall, very close. At that moment, I can make out white shapes moving through the woods to our right, running from tree to tree, infected soldiers approaching Furbish Manor. One, the closest, not twenty feet away, crouches and swivels his gun from side to side. I hold my breath. There’s a crack, and bark flies from the tree near the soldier. He ducks and returns fire, his barrel flashing. Jo’s scooting forward on her hands and knees. The sky is full of small bright suns, flares hissing in the night and, then the very real sound of bullets whizzing overhead, like a whistle and a fist of air. Not at all like the movies. They’re so close they hurt my ears, and I know that just one of them could rip me in half.

  I swallow and move ahead, one leg in front of the other. I realize I dropped the knife and I search for it. Behind me, I can see Odessa pause, motioning me to go ahead. Jimmy is with her, a hand on her back. I can’t find the knife. Screw it.

  The air moves near my head, a bullet flying too close, and I flinch downward. The odds of getting hit by something as small as a bullet have to be tiny, I think—I hope. Soldiers, ones not wearing hazmats, are streaming from the front gate of the manor in our direction, taking positions in a crouch, aiming at the woods ahead of us. They probably should be in suits themselves, but I doubt they had time to put them on. The guard towers are bursts of light and smoke, their big machine guns swiveling this way and that, spraying forward, sending snow flitting into the air all around us.

  The infected soldiers move like ghosts through the trees. They seem to be going slowly, but they aren’t acting stupid or brain-dead like zombies. I imagine the men feeling older, weaker, but still with their faculties, still knowing how to shoot and be afraid of whatever is eating them from the inside out. I can see them call to each other, wave to each other, shoot and run and shoot. Mobile spotlights come on, bright and strong; they strafe the field, find a target in the snow and stick, keeping their beams steady like a Broadway show. I can’t help but watch, fascinated, as these spotlit men are picked off one by one. One buckles, his body spun in a circle and into the snow, his gun flailing in the air. I gasp. Steam rises from the body as it moves, twitching in place. The spotlight roves, shifts its gaze for another target.

  “Mia!” Odessa has caught up with me and is tugging at my boot. “Keep going.”

  Jimmy is behind her, motioning for me to move. I take a deep breath. But the image of that body jerking backward replays. There must have been twenty or so soldiers that I could see attacking. Which probably means near fifty in all. That’s a lot of crazy, desperate men, clearly infected with whatever their suits were supposed to keep out. I wonder why they don’t just shed them. But then I know I wouldn’t, because maybe the suits are doing something, slowing down the disease, keeping them from dying too quickly. I imagine that both sides are terrified. And not even of the bullets. One side of getting sick, the other of not getting better.

  We crawl forward another twenty yards, angling away from the action, slithering over open ground as quickly as possible and moving directly toward the tree line, which is another forty yards off. We’ve moved fast, and the fighting is to our right; the spotlights seem to agree, barely coming near our path. I wait for Odessa to catch up, and shout/whisper, “How you holding up?”

  She grits her teeth, but manages a smile, her face pale. We push forward together, slipping through the dirty snow, my body practically soaking in sweat.

  Toward the battle, a lone figure breaks off from the attacking soldiers and starts running our way. He’s moving quickly, his black boots flashing through the snow, his gun raised. My veins go icy, fear bounding through my body. Has he seen us? As he gets closer, I can hear that he’s shouting something, but I can’t make out the words. I instinctively cover Odessa and push her head into the snow, just as there’s a splash of gunfire. The man jerks in midstep and flips backward and sideways onto the ground. He’s maybe twenty feet away.

  A light follows him and grazes our position. I look over at Jimmy, who’s right next to me, holding Odessa’s hand. He’s breathing hard, then spits in the snow. Blood. I see him see it and pretend not to watch as he covers it up. An ache goes through me; how long does he have now? There’s a hiss from up ahead, and I see the others watching safely from the tree line. Why are we here and not with them? The snow feels refreshing against my burning face, and I wonder how we’re going to get Odessa to the tree line if we have to make a break for it. The men are coming closer, the battle spilling this way as more sick soldiers attempt to flank Furbish. I try to focus on the spotlight dancing alon
g the snow, coming close. But then it pauses—it found the body, registers it as dead, and like the Eye of Sauron, moves on to more pressing matters.

  “Okay, let’s go!”

  And we squiggle forward as fast as possible. I ignore the pain searing up my feet until we catch up to our friends, who pull us to the safety of a concealed snowdrift, as if they were pulling us over the ledge of a building or a mountaintop we had just summited.

  We huff deep misting breaths and try not to watch the massacre. The attacking, sick soldiers don’t stand a chance. There’s less gunfire now, sure sign that the rebellion is ending.

  “We don’t have much time,” Brayden says. “They’ll take stock as soon as this is over, and they’ll definitely scout the woods for us. Jimmy,” he asks, looking the big man over, “I know the woods around here a bit, but I have no idea how to get to the aqueduct from here. Still doable? You know where we’re going?”

  Jimmy nods, reclaiming the task we gave him when we left the barn, which seems like an eternity ago.

  “And can you carry Odessa?”

  He nods again, his big forehead set in a single, determined line.

  “Good.” He pauses, looks around at the group. We’re all heaving, but we made it. He smiles. “Believe me now?”

  Rob does something I never thought he’d do. He picks up some snow and throws it playfully in Brayden’s face. The sky is getting brighter, and I can feel our spirits rise with the sun. If we were back at Westbrook, if none of this had happened, Rob’s move would lead to a snowball fight. As it is, we just grin dumbly at each other.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I say, and everyone moves. We go single file again, Jimmy and Odessa and Jo up front, Rob, then me, then Brayden. We walk for five or six minutes before what’s been creeping into my mind seems like it’s worth doing, and another two or three minutes before I get the nerve. I swallow and grab Brayden in midstep. He looks at me, his nose red either from my kick or the cold, but either way, it’s adorable. His eyes drink up my face—I can feel him doing it, and it makes my mouth go dry, and my toe, the one I can’t feel anymore, it almost tingles.